1/ It is not well known but Albert Einstein, one of history’s most celebrated physicists, was a gifted musician. He attributed some of his greatest scientific breakthroughs to his violin-playing breaks, rather than any talent for absorbing absolute knowledge.
2/ “If I were not a physicist,” he once said, “I would be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music. I get most joy in life out of music.” Something in the music would guide his thoughts in new and creative directions.
3/ "Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought,” Einstein alleged. This allowed him to develop parts of his brain in new ways, and discover connections that, even if obvious, seem to escape detection.
4/ Whenever he was stuck on a problem, he would often take refuge in music, and that would usually resolve his difficulties. After playing, Einstein would get up from his piano saying, “There, now I’ve got it!”
5/ He admitted that, “The theory of relativity occurred to me by intuition, and music is the driving force behind this intuition. My new discovery is the result of musical perception.” Einstein rarely left home without his beloved violin, Lina.
6/ Einstein believed there comes a point in everyone’s life where only intuition can make the leap ahead, without ever knowing precisely how.
7/ "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."
8/ My choice of play is poetry, which stimulates the right brain, the same as music. I approach global macro investing like a poet contemplating an epic in progress—conjuring up battles in our imagination, inventing and discarding subplots, balancing rhyme and reason.
9/ When feeling totally lost about something, I disappear into the garden to read a few verses. Researchers have shown contemplating poetic imagery and the multiple layers of meanings in poems activate specific areas of the brain that help us to interpret our everyday reality.
10/ When I find a pattern or connect countless dots to form a particulate cloud of ideas, I come back and jot something down. Like Einstein, intuition makes me look at unrelated facts and then think about them until they can all be thematically organized into coherent theories.
11/ Like Einstein, there are times when I feel certain I am right, without ever knowing the reason. Like Einstein, I have plenty of failings of my own. And like Einstein, I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.
