Genius means thinking outside the box. We owe this world to geniuses. You are reading this article using a highly intricate digital device with the help of the internet, and these facilities would have never existed if there were no geniuses who were brave enough to follow their imagination, helping humanity in the process.
And while this post pays tribute to some of these geniuses, it has more to do with their quirky sides. I mean, after all, you can’t expect someone to conform to the societal standards of normalcy while also coming up with original ideas, right?
So here is a list of some amazing thinkers with oddball thinking habits that are random, but yet are credited with enabling these people to come up with some of the most creative ideas in history. Read on!
Honore de Balzac
Balzac was a prolific author and playwright, best known for his La Comedia Humaine. However, such a legendary figure in French literature ascribed all his creative output to coffee. Not one or two cups after every couple of hours. No. Honore de Balzac consumed 50 cups of coffee every day. You can call him an addict, but he wasn’t shy about his indulgences. In fact, he wrote an entire article on the creative benefits of coffee in highly poetic language. Read here. You are right to think that all this coffee wouldn’t have caused him insomnia. This brings us to our next genius.
Nikola Tesla
Tesla is perhaps the most underrated scientist of all time. Had it not been for Christopher Nolan and the internet, most new science students would have virtually missed him altogether, despite his stellar accomplishments. Known for his work on electricity, Tesla filed for more than 300 patents.
His secret? Sleep is for the weak! Tesla used to wake up in the early hours of the night and continue till the clock struck 11 PM. This wasn’t even polyphasic sleep, which Edison practiced. Needless to say, Tesla suffered from his lack of sleep when he had a mental breakdown at the age of 25. Of course, he recovered and continued his scientific output. But don’t forget that sleep is essential for healthy cognition.
Albert Einstein
No list of quirky men or geniuses (or both) can be complete without Einstein. A ‘slow’ person since childhood, Einstein had his mind so firmly fixed on the deep questions, such as the origins of space and time that he found himself unable to do many mundane tasks that we take for granted. It is alleged that he failed to learn to drive. He would also embark on bird-watching walks, where he would play his violin till his eyes filled with tears.
Can These Random ‘Techniques’ Be Explained?
Maybe. Possibly the sections of the brain responsible for repeated actions like driving or tying shoelaces may be weaker in these men as compared to sections devoted to creative and critical thinking. For instance, Werner Heisenberg developed the famous uncertainty equations involved in quantum mechanics, the rules that explain the behavior at small scales of tiny subatomic particles. However, Werner almost failed his doctoral exam because he knew virtually nothing about experimental techniques. Strange, isn’t it?