Men Who Einstein Revered and Study Secrets of my Gifted Friend

One of the most frustrating thing for me growing up was asking my gifted friend Mark whether he had studied for the upcoming exams.

“Hey Mark, what do you reckon about mathematics, physics and chemistry? I heard they want to separate the year into the more academic and less academic. I definitely am aiming for the ‘A’ class.” I said as my ultra competitive type A personality kicked in.

“Oh, really? I wasn’t aware. I’ll have a look at the work about two days before the exam, doesn’t seem too difficult.” He replied with his non-competitive more relaxed and reflective type B personality.

I really hated it, he was so cool and relaxed, exams were upon us in a matter of weeks!

There I was, repressing my impending apoplexy. I had been studying for three weeks already and he nonchalantly remarks that he will ‘have a look’ and breeze through the work two days prior to the exam.

He would always do this, even in class he would listen and then straight away fire an insightful question at our lecturer and have the lecturer stretching the limits of his own knowledge on the subject. While grasping for an answer to the profound question he had received from Mark. Mark learned things extremely fast.

I was so amazed, and envious at the same time. I had to work for my grades. It became a little of an obsession of mine at one time. I would stare at his head, and ponder why his brain was so much better than mine. He just cruised through life, effortlessly achieving higher grades than me in every subject. It was frustrating trying to keep up with him academically and I realised I had to compete with me and not with him. It was like trying to take on Einstein. Okay, I exaggerate, but that’s what it felt like much of the time.

One of my favourite movies is Good Will Hunting and one of my favourite scenes in that movie is when the Mathematics Professor Gerald Lambeau sets a mathematics problem for his advanced students, a problem that took a team of professors two years to solve, and Matt Damon (the janitor, named Will Hunting), solves the problem overnight.

see the scene here.

That professor probably felt a lot more of an intense envy for Will, than I did for my friend Mark because he had actually spent his whole life trying to master his chosen field and here comes this young upstart to upstage him, without even breaking a sweat.

Speaking of Einstein, there were two men that he looked up to and one that even he revered.

Most people think it was Newton, and once they asked Einstein if he was standing on the shoulders of Newton, and he responded, he was standing on the shoulders of Maxwell.

James Clerk Maxwell was a Scottish mathematician and physicist best known for his formulation of electromagnetic theory. Maxwell, however, was not the person Einstein referred to as all knowing.

Einstein stated there was a man who, ‘was the last man in the world to know everything’

This man had an IQ of between 210 and 225, depending on the IQ test undertaken.

Einstein’s hero was a playwright, novelist, poet, scientist and theatre director, and an amateur artist. He is referred to as a ‘polymath’ that the Cambridge English dictionary defines as. ‘a person who knows a lot about many different subjects.’

The profound wisdom of Einstein’s hero are manifest by some of his quotes.

‘It is not enough to know, we must also apply, it is not enough to will, we must also do.’

‘There is nothing insignificant in the world, it all depends on the point of view.’

‘No one is more a slave than the man who thinks himself free, while he is not.’

‘All extraordinary men who have accomplished great and astonishing actions, have ever been decried by the world as drunken or insane.’

The man that Einstein revered was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

It rather intrigued me that even Einstein had men he looked up to and respected for their intellect.

Speaking of respecting the intellect of others, let’s return to my little world where my gifted friend Mark lives.

I discovered my friend’s intellectual secrets.

I looked up to my friend Mark for his amazing intellect and his ability to learn so fast and understand things at lightning speed.

Many years later, I would discover Mark’s amazing abilities were not actually from a superior intellect. Don’t misunderstand, he was and is a very intelligent man. But what made him really harness his intelligence and make the most of his academic exploits at school and university was his discipline and focus.

He had what I call ‘Before and After’ discipline.

Before he entered a science class or history or biology, etc. He had already done pre-reading and tried to understand the information that we would cover. That is why he had lightning fast understanding. He had already been through and thought about the concepts prior to class.

Then, straight after class, he would take the time to think about and increase his understanding of what we did in class each day. He would make notes and ensure he understood everything. Pondering the work and principles we had learnt and even trying to understand related matters and principles. This gave him an enriched knowledge that the rest of us just didn’t have.

Then he would read his notes from that day and look back two days and go over those notes, too.

It was a system that he stuck to each day. It was his discipline and consistent work throughout the year that made it easy for him during exam time.

He also had the benefit of mastering smaller chunks of information at a time, unlike the rest of us who were trying to cram a year's work into our brains in 4 weeks. He had a much richer and deeper understanding of the subject, while our knowledge was shallow and fleeting.

Hopefully, if you are studying, you can apply these techniques, if you don’t already.