How to Think Like Einstein: Simple Ways to Break the Rules and Discover Your Hidden Genius
“It’s not that I’m smart, it’s just that I stay with the problems longer.”
- Albert Einstein
It’s courageous to explore curiosities, different ways of thinking, and possibilities beyond our current rules and norms, so this month we are cracking open How To think Like Einstein: Simple Ways to Break the Rules and Discover Your Hidden Genius by Scott Thorpe. Skeptical? Thorpe assures us the aim is not too lofty—we too can think like Einstein.
We’ve all certainly heard of E=mc², but who was the man behind the equation (beyond the unruly white hair and mustache)? Thorpe paints a picture of Einstein: a boy defiant of rules who got into trouble and dropped out of high school (otherwise known as Gymnasium where he lived). In college, he skipped classes in favor of laboratory time. Unable to secure professor recommendations for a university position post-graduation, Einstein instead worked at a patent office and pursued physics on the side. His defiance of norms moved beyond the classroom and scientific community, with Einstein even rejecting his German citizenship.
Below are some of the book’s main takeaways, but grab a copy for a full view (chapters focused on Einstein thinking in organizations and everyday life are not included in the excerpts below), and put these concepts into practice with the provided exercises and worksheets.
Four Steps to Think Like Einstein
1. Find the right problem: Enabling vs. disabling problems
“Many of Einstein’s contemporaries had been working on the same phenomena, but they were trying to solve a very different problem. Their problem went something like this:
‘How can nature appear to act that way when we know that it can’t?’
They did not succeed….Einstein succeeded because he was working on a problem that enabled a solution. He asked himself:
‘What would nature be like if it did act the way we observe it to act?’ (25).
“To free yourself to think about better alternatives, identify your current top three solutions. They are now off-limits. You can’t break rules and cling to your rule rut at the same time” (34).
2. Break the pattern: Consider anything
“We will use seed ideas to pull us beyond our rules….A good seed idea has little relation to the problem you wish to solve. It will seem ridiculous….but without the seed idea to hold your mind open, your thinking slips right back into its old habits” (58).
“Brains have a mechanism that is the mental equivalent of an immune system—it rejects ideas that are foreign to it. Humor suppresses your mental immune system. If you treat a new idea humorously, you will be able to explore it more thoroughly because you won’t immediately reject it” (60).
“...try to merge the seed idea with an anti-solution, a concept that seems to make your problem worse. Oxygen and hydrogen behave explosively when they are apart. Together they are benign water” (67).
3. Break the rules: Look beyond what seems possible
“Einstein solved the two toughest problems in physics in one year by breaking the rules” (22).
“We would expect Einstein’s problem-solving to correlate with his intelligence and knowledge. Instead, his problem-solving ability declined as his knowledge increased. Innovation was highest when knowledge was lowest….People willing to break the rules solve impossible problems. They are usually newcomers to the field, without the baggage of years of precedent” (6).
4. Grow the solution: Suspend judgment
“Breakthroughs seldom work the first time and great ideas are rejected by almost everyone. It took the Wright Brothers years after their first successful flight to interest anyone in their airplane, and their idea changed the world in their lifetime” (137).
“Experts are proficient in conventional knowledge, but they have a poor record of recognizing great new ideas…” (141).