Lessons from Einstein by Walter Isaacson -- Part 2

I had a lot of thoughts and takeaways from this book.  And considering it’s the holidays, I wanted to stretch the material out over a couple of weeks.

There you go.  It’s all on the table.

Last week I talked about nonconformity, imagination, and cross-disciplinary thinking.  The next thoughts might be influenced by these three, but I do think they’re distinct.

Photo by Andrew George on Unsplash

Invert, always invert

Einstein worked in a patent office. Here is a quote from his boss – “When you pick up an application,” Haller instructed, “think that everything the inventor says is wrong.”  Page 79.

If you want to know how to break rules, start by assuming they’re all wrong.

If you want to avoid bad investments or opportunities, start by asking how it will fail.

This idea isn’t unique to Einstein.  Charlie Munger swears by this principle.

Speaking from personal experience, it’s easy to be captivated by a new idea, product, or industry.  In the short term, it seems as if they will go on forever.  Remember Dogecoin? 

Einstein made some of his greatest discoveries when he concluded that Newtonian physics could not explain the behavior of light.  He had to create a new way to explain it.  He inverted an old principle

Great professional imbalance comes at a cost

“One of the strongest motives that leads men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness,” Einstein said.  “Such men make this cosmos and its construction the pivot of their emotional life, in order to find the peace and security which they cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.”  Page 233

“He did not like to be constricted, and he could be cold to members of his family.  Yet he loved the collegiality of intellectual companions, and he had friendships that lasted throughout his life.”  Pg 274

Early in his life, before he had developed the theories of relativity, Einstein had a daughter with his wife Maric.  Both of them saw the little girl as an impediment to their personal and social goals.  They had the girl live with Maric’s cousin.  He never saw her.  And they both took great care to erase evidence of her existence.

Throughout his life, Einstein had great professional relationships that were based on work, but struggled to develop and maintain personal relationships.

He could be aloof.  Distracted.  If emotional issues became complicated, he preferred to drift off into the ethereal world of physics. 

I think this is a challenge for anyone who strives to be a high achiever.

Ray Dalio says you can have anything you want in life. But you can’t have everything. 

Time spent on work is time not spent with family or relationships.  A moment can only be spent in one time and place.  There is opportunity cost.

Einstein often traded work for his personal relationships.

Great achievement comes at a cost.

We desire order, but underneath it all is chaos

Newtonian physics describes a world that is based on cause and effect.  One object hits another and that second object moves.

This is a world that is easy to understand and reconcile.  It’s a world that human minds like.

If I work hard, I will succeed.  Cause and effect.

If I am nice to people, they will like me.  Cause and effect.

The human mind likes stories with cause and effect.

Einstein laid the frame for Quantum Physics, which said something totally different. 

Quantum physics says that at the neutron level, the world is described based on probabilities.  You can’t know where a neutron is and which way it’s going at the same time.  All you can do is know the probability.

This is an unsettling thought.

The world that we know and observe in everyday life is Newtonian physics.  The rules of the game we can’t see are quantum.

I think this applies to lots of disciplines.

It’s an idea described by Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.  We like to believe that the most successful among us have the keys to success.  They might have just been very lucky.

I challenge myself to think in probabilities. 

What percentage chance do I give that I will win a deal?

What percentage change do I give that I will fail? 

Is there an opportunity for exponential upside?

Factor in the chaos.

Eruptions of productivity take time

“Once consequence of this equivalence is that gravity, as Einstein had noted, should bend a light beam was a task that would take him four more years, culminating in an eruption of genius in November 1915” p. 190

Sam Walton had a similar experience.  One of my favorite quotes is “Like most overnight successes, mine was 20 years in the making.”

I think it’s natural to want shortcuts.  I want to pay $200 for a class so that an instructor can show me all the secrets to the universe and I can get rich next week.

It just doesn’t work that way.

Stephen King says that to be a great writer, you have to spend a lot of time reading and writing.  There’s no replacement for spending time praying to the muses.

Einstein spent years reading physics studies, mathematical papers, and philosophy.  It took massive accumulations of information to create transformative thoughts.

Massive eruptions of genius take time.  There are no shortcuts.  We all have to pray to the muses.

Ideas grow, evolve, and outlive people

Einstein started as the disrupter and eventually was disrupted.

Once he created the disruption, he became uncomfortable with the consequences of it.  He didn’t like Quantum physics.

He spent the rest of his life searching for an underlying theory that would explain the chaos that he had uncovered.  The studies continued.  People like Oppenheimer and Schrodinger continued the exploration of Quantum physics and its consequences.

Einstein fought against it.  He continued to be a beloved national figure, but the world of physics moved past him.  His thoughts stopped being relevant.

He gave birth to an idea that unsettled him, and it outlived him.

I think this is an idea we all have to come terms with.

If I am successful in building a large brokerage, at some point, it will no longer be my vision that guides it.  I can instill principles in the organization, but other people will inject their viewpoints and beliefs into the organization.

A powerful idea outlives a person and allows many people to attach themselves to it. 

It happens to everyone.

Final Conclusion:

Einstein’s biography was captivating on multiple levels.

He had challenges as a man building relationships with other people.

The nature of his work challenges the underlying viewpoints I have with the world.

The way he approached his work shows a model for success.

And the story arc of his life is relatable.  I think we all fear living so long that we become irrelevant.  I know I do.

Yet, as long as he lived, he maintained a positive spirit and good nature.  I hope to model this in my own life.