Inside cover The Einstein Factor is the key to living an extraordinarily effective and creative life!
p.2 Day after day, year after year, the vast majority of people squelch their most profound insights without
even knowing it.
p.3 Scientists calculate that the human brain can pay attention to only about 126 bits of information per
second. Simply listening to another person talk occupies about 40 bits of "attention." That leaves only 86 bits to watch the
person's facial expression and to think about what you're going to say next
p.9 Einstein... believed that you could stimulate ingenious thought by allowing your imagination
to float freely, unrestrained by conventional inhibitions.
p.12 "Invention is not the product of logical thought," Einstein concluded, "even though the final product
is tied to a logical structure."
p.13 "Einstein claimed to think primarily in terms of visual images and feelings.... Verbal
and mathematical representation of his thoughts came only after the important creative thinking was done."
p.13 Einstein attributed his scientific prowess to what he called a "vague play" with "signs," "images,"
and other elements, both "visual" and "muscular."
"This combinatorial play," Einstein wrote, "seems to be the essential feature in productive thought."
p.13 Over the years, my studies have led me consistently to the conclusion that geniuses are little
more than ordinary people who have stumbled upon some knack or technique for widening their channel of attention, thus making
conscious their subtle, unconscious perceptions.
They usually develop this knack so early in life that they completely forget the secret by the time
they grow up. It becomes automatic.
p.19-20 The fact is that we are always dreaming. Psychologists estimate that we spend about
50 percent of our time daydreaming and over 8 percent of it sleep-dreaming. That means we spend 58 percent of our
lives absorbed in passive reception of subconscious imagery... Evidence suggests that the Image Stream literally never ceases.
Even when our minds are preoccupied with work, conversation, or other demanding tasks, the sensory mechanisms of our
minds continue to generate imaginary sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings.
p.58 It can hardly be an accident that researchers in the field of high intelligence have long regarded
that habit of compulsive scribbling as one of the telltale hallmarks of genius.
p.59 In the 1920s, researcher Catherine Cox studied 300 geniuses from history... One sign of genius,
Cox noted, was a penchant for eloquently recording thoughts and feelings in diaries, poems, and letters to friends
and family, starting from an early age.
p.59 Thomas Edison produced some 3 million pages of notes and letters before he died in
1931. The question is, does genius lead to scribbling or does scribbling lead to genius?
Why did these gifted men and women start keeping diaries in the first place?
p.62 A sizable portion of our brains' physical development depends not on genetic inheritance,
or even on outside stimulus, but rather on the feedback from our own spontaneous and expressive activity.
p.67 "... Faraday suspended the need to understand," he concluded, "and simply
acknowledged the thoughts which came into his head. The coherence of ideas was not imposed by any prior framework,
but was allowed to emerge from the chaos of thoughts he experienced."
p.67-68 You buy a notebook and carry it around with you wherever you go... Write down in that notebook
any stray thoughts that come into your head, whether or not they seem worth recording at the time... Whenever
you write down a perception or an idea, you reinforce the behavior of being perceptive or creative. Whenever you
fail to describe or record such insights, you reinforce the behavior of being unperceptive and uncreative. Simple, isn't it?
You will not have to practice this technique long before you notice a sharp increase in the number and quality of
creative thoughts that pop into your head. In fact, compulsive scribbling is a crude form of Image Streaming.
p.69 "What we observe is not nature," said Heisenberg, "but nature exposed to our method of questioning."
p.70-71 "Experts" have become the reigning priests of our day. Nonexperts are sharply discouraged
from expressing opinions. Yet many of the great discoveries in every field have been made by amateurs.
p.71 It is unlikely that any learned scientists in 1831 would have attempted Michael Faraday's famous experiment
of that year. Only the wildest hunch moved Faraday to test what would happen if he spun a copper disk between the
two poles of a horseshoe magnet. Faraday himself was shocked to find that this device actually generated electricity.
"This discovery was an audacious mental creation," Einstein later remarked, "which we owe chiefly
to the fact that Faraday never went to school, and therefore preserved the rare gift of thinking freely."
p.72 Only when we shift our attention away from what we know to what we are actually perceiving
are most problems resolved.
p.85 In the creativity technique known as brainstorming, people are urged to throw out
ideas freely, without worrying about whether the ideas are good. Generally, the best ideas come at the end of the
brainstorming sessions, after participants have loosened up and allowed their subtler perceptions to come into play.
p.89 Guided imagery has proved its effectiveness in mobilizing people's talents, confidence, and emotions
and even in triggering their immune systems to fight disease. But it is nearly useless in solving problems creatively. The
one thing guided imagery lacks is unpredictability. Unless you build a "Surprise!" Space, you cannot hope to get a surprise.
p.125 No rules are so sacred that they should not be broken from time to time.
p.184 "Education," Albert Einstein once remarked, "is that which remains, after one has forgotten everything
he learned in school."
p.279-280 Einstein had a slight advantage. His edge was that he enjoyed
studying physics. He enjoyed it so much that, no matter how busy he was, he always found time each day to
pursue his passion.
