The Einstein Principle, Visualizing History, & More
Today at a Glance
- Quote: Caring about what others think.
- Framework: The Einstein Principle
- Tweet: Visualizing the history of our world.
- Article: Not disappointing yourself.
- Podcast: Lex Fridman on Huberman Lab.
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One Quote:
"Caring about what others think of you is a waste of time. Most people don’t have a clue what to think of themselves." ― Zane Baker
The Spotlight Effect says that we overestimate the degree to which other people are noticing our actions.
Just be you.
One Framework:
The Einstein Principle
Albert Einstein was already an accomplished mathematician by the time he arrived at the ETH Institute in Switzerland in 1912. He had published many works, held professorships, and started to gain notoriety in his field.
But none of us would know anything about him if not for the 3-year period from 1912-1915.
It was during this time that he formulated his theory of general relativity, which is widely considered to be the greatest scientific achievement of the 20th century.
For most of us, formulating a world-changing math theory (or the equivalent in our field) is probably a bit out of reach—but the principle that was foundational to Einstein achieving this success is one that we can all apply to enable us to reach our individual potential.
I first read about the Einstein Principle in a Cal Newport blog while in college (his study tips were enormously helpful to me at the time).
The idea is simple:
"We are most productive when we focus on a very small number of projects on which we can devote a large amount of attention."
Albert Einstein devoted three years of his life to deep focus on the specific task of generalizing his theory of relativity to account for that pesky little thing called gravity. He didn't work on ten things during this period—he just focused on the one thing that really mattered.
The key (and the hard part) to applying this principle into our own lives is to narrow our list of projects down to those that truly matter. We may never be able to narrow the list to one project—but we can all aspire to get down to ~3-5 core focus areas.
Try the Two-List Approach:
What are all of the projects in your professional life right now? Write them down on the left side of a piece of paper. It's ok if the list is long.
Go through the list and circle only the top 3-5 items. These should be the absolute top priorities in your professional life. These are the items that will have the greatest impact on your trajectory—the compounders. These are the items that TRULY matter.
Write these 3-5 priorities on the right side of the same piece of paper. This is your focus list. Write down all of the other items below them. This is your avoid-at-all-costs list.
We may never formulate our own theory of general relativity, but we can all achieve up to our potential by internalizing the Einstein Principle.
Focus. Focus. Focus.
One Tweet:
Great thread of visuals from one of my favorite accounts on Twitter.
All of them were interesting, but I thought this "languages of the world" visualization was particularly eye-opening.
One Article:
"Listen. Every time you’re given a choice between disappointing someone else and disappointing yourself, your duty is to disappoint that someone else. Your job, throughout your entire life, is to disappoint as many people as it takes to avoid disappointing yourself." - Glennon Doyle, Untamed
Short but very powerful piece on avoiding the trap of obsessing over the external world, and instead choosing to embrace your internal world.
One quote that hit hard:
"When you show up for the truest and most beautiful version of your life that you can imagine, you feel excited and alive."
This was worth the 2 minutes of your time.
One Podcast:
Dr. Lex Fridman: Navigating Conflict, Finding Purpose & Maintaining Drive
This episode of the Huberman Lab podcast brought together two of my favorite interviewers and hosts.
A few of my favorite insights (with my reactions in italics):
- Your actions create the community that surrounds you. Big believer in the concept that our actions are "magnets" that attract or repel people accordingly. Take actions that will attract the type of people you actually want to be around!
- You realize what really matters when you lose everything, which are the people in your life. I recently read Four Thousand Weeks, which has a chapter that talks about this at length. It talks about the fact that we often complain about minor inconveniences (e.g. traffic jams), but after losing someone, we may come to think of those inconveniences as tiny joys of being alive. How much would that person we just lost give to just be able to experience those inconveniences now? That reframe has changed my life.
- When you fill your day and you’re busy, that busyness becomes an excuse that you use against doing the things that scare you. Busyness as an excuse is something I haven't thought about a lot, but it rings true. We "flex" on being busy, but are we just hiding behind busyness to avoid our fears? Interesting and something I want to spend more time on.
Listen to it here.
