Intellectual Attributes

According to Thomas Edison "Genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration" this mean that you must be more on hard work than wishing to be someone. Even if you are not a genius, you can use the same strategies as Aristotle and Einstein to harness the power of your creative mind and better manage your future as an intellectual or anything for that matter.

The following 5 tips encourage you to think productively, rather than reproductively, in order to arrive at solutions to problems. These strategies are common to the thinking styles of creative geniuses in science, art, and industry throughout history.

1. Prepare yourself for chance.

Whenever we attempt to do something and fail, we end up doing something else. That is the first principle of creative accident. Failure can be productive only if we do not focus on it as an unproductive result. Instead: analyze the process, its components, and how you can change them, to arrive at other results. Do not ask the question "Why have I failed?", but rather "What have I done?"

2. Be Productive.

Thomas Edison held more than 1000patents. He guaranteed productivity by giving himself and his assistants idea quotas. In a study of 2,036 scientists throughout history, Dean Keith Simonton of the University of California at Davis found that the most respected scientists produced not only great works, but also many "bad" ones. They weren't afraid to fail, or to produce mediocre in order to arrive at excellence.

3. Visualization!

When Albert Einstein thought through a problem, he always found it necessary to formulate his subject in as many different ways as possible, including using diagrams. He visualized solutions, and believed that words and numbers as such did not play a significant role in his thinking process.

4. Combine thoughts & Ideas.

The laws of heredity on which the modern science of genetics is based came from the Austrian monk Grego Mendel, who combined mathematics and biology to create a new science.

5. Think metaphorically.

Aristotle considered metaphor a sign of genius, and believed that the individual who had the capacity to perceive resemblances between two separate areas of existence and link them together was a person of special gifts.

Again, these are just strategies for helping one to think like a genius. The use of tips will not make you a genius or give you extreme intellect, but they are sure to make your time and energy more productive and worthwhile. Granted only a very small amount of people have truly been considered geniuses and these are some of the strategies they used on a daily basis to help hone that amazing level of knowledge. Feel free to respond letting others know what you do to stay ahead of the academic curve!