What We Can Learn from Einstein's Quirky Habits

Albert Einstein was one of the smartest guys the world has ever seen. Since his death in 1955, scientists have been left scratching their heads trying to unlock the secrets of his genius. Although he never took a test, some have guessed that his IQ clocked in at around 160, a maximum score also achieved by Stephen Hawking. For perspective, a genius score is thought to be anything above 140, while the average score is between 90 and 110.

Beside his smarts, Einstein also had some pretty eccentric behaviors. From slurping down oodles of spaghetti to sleeping for 10 hours and even chomping down grasshoppers, here’s what we can learn from Einstein’s quirky habits.

Genius Minds And Their Strange Habits

Einstein isn’t the only genius in history to combine his cleverness with behaviors that the average person would call unusual. Famed inventor Nikola Tesla swore by toe exercises and would repeatedly curl his toes up to 100 times for each foot every night, because he thought the practice boosted brain cells.

U.S. founding father Benjamin Franklin had a particular penchant for “air baths,” which basically involved sitting naked in an armchair at his open window. Apparently, Franklin championed the belief that the common cold was caused by being in close quarters with other germ-infested people rather than simply being exposed to cold air. So, he took frequent air baths to increase air circulation and avoid getting sick, obviously.

Meanwhile, Newton bragged about the powers of celibacy, Beethoven dunked his head in water before composing and Pythagoras was terrified of beans! But Einstein was by far the most eccentric of them all.

10 Hour Sleep

It’s true that sleep is good for your brain and you probably should get more of it. In fact, research suggests sleep plays a housekeeping role that helps remove toxins in your brain that build up while you’re awake, but Einstein took this advice more seriously than most.

Ever the over-achiever, Einstein reportedly slept for at least 10 hours per day. For some perspective, that’s nearly one and a half times as much as the 6.8 hour the average American clocks in each night! It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that some of the most important breakthroughs in human history, including the periodic table and the structure of DNA, were made while their discoverer was asleep. In fact, Einstein’s famous theory of relativity also came to him in a dream, and not just any old dream.

The eccentric genius dreamed he was walking through a farm when he came across some cows by an electric fence. He saw the cows jump at the same time as the fence gave them an electric shock, but the farmer, who was stood at the other end of the field, saw them jump one-by-one, like a Mexican wave. Einstein realized their views of the same event had been different, which lead to his coming up with the theory of relativity.

Here’s a fun fact: did you know that Einstein’s brain weighed less than the average persons at just 1,203g compared to the average of around 1400g? No wonder it was so easy for someone to steal his brain during his autopsy!

Do you really need to sleep for 10 hours to get those cogs moving along properly? The short answer is no. Sleep requirements vary slightly from person to person, but most healthy adults need somewhere between 7-9 hours of sleep per night to function at their best.

When we fall asleep, the brain enters a series of cycles. Every 90-120 minutes, the brain fluctuates between light sleep, deep sleep and a phase known as "rapid eye movement" or REM, which is associated with dreaming. According to Stuart Fogel, a neuroscientist at the University of Ottawa, we spend about 60% of our night in this type of sleep.

Non-REM sleep is characterized by bursts of fast brain activity which are known as spindle events because of the spindle-shaped zigzag the waves trace on an electroencephalogram, a machine used to track and record brain wave patterns. A normal nights sleep involves thousands of these events, which last no longer than a few seconds each. It’s pretty simple: more sleep = more spindle events. But does that make you cleverer?

Spindle events begin with a surge of electrical energy generated by the rapid firing of the thalamus, an oval-shaped region in the brain which acts as its main switching center. These surges travel up to the brain’s surface and then back down to complete a loop.

According to research, those of us who have more spindle events tend to have a greater fluid intelligence. This refers to our ability to solve new problems, use logic in new situations and identify patterns, sounds a lot like our old pal Einstein, doesn’t it? Ultimately, it seems the jury is still out over whether people have more spindle events because they are smart, or whether they are smarter because they have more spindle events. Either way, it seems like there’s nothing wrong with getting a bit of extra shut eye.

He may have had a soft spot for a long snooze, but Einstein liked his naps to be short; one second short, to be precise. According to apocryphal legend, when it came to cat-napping, Albert would recline in his armchair with a spoon in his hand and a metal plate strategically placed underneath. He’d allow himself to drift out of consciousness for about a second until he would be rudely awoken by the sound of the spoon slipping from his grip and hitting the plate.

Daily Walk

We know that Einstein’s daily walk was a sacred part of his routine. While he was working at Princeton University in New Jersey, he would walk the entire mile-and-a-half journey there and back, every single day. And he isn’t the only diligent walker who had a big ole’ brain to boot. Charles Darwin would also reportedly spend 45 minutes walking every day on a gravel track near Down House, his home in Kent, which he aptly named his “thinking path”.

Besides the obvious benefits of regular walking like fitness, health and quiet solitude, scientists tout another big positive to being on your feet: something called the state of transient hypofrontality. It might sound like a total mouthful to you and me, but this proposal actually raises some interesting points.

When we walk, we unknowingly enter a state of mind that is only prompted by pursuits that require physical exertion but very little thought or concentration. That means that the parts of the brain that coordinate general concepts and rules are turned down, while the motor and sensory parts are turned up. In other words, you stop thinking about all the things that preoccupy your brain during the day and focus subconsciously on putting one foot in front of the other and not falling over instead.

In this new-found state, your brain adopts a totally different style of thinking, one which may lead to insights you wouldn’t get during other day-to-day tasks. This is because certain parts of the brain have been momentarily toned down; including the frontal lobes, which are involved in higher processes such as memory, judgement, and language.

This is also why Darwin’s son said his fathers walks were for “hard thinking”. As he wandered around kicking stones, Darwin let his idle mind metabolize the massive meals of data it had been fed throughout the day. If we’re going to get all deep here, think about it this way: the human condition involves a continual to-and-fro between the body and the mind, and walking is beneficial to both!

Eating Spaghetti

We can’t be sure exactly what fueled Einstein’s incredible mind, but the internet points to a particular penchant for spaghetti. Of course, this doesn't mean that the theoretical physicist lived on a diet consisting solely of mamma’s ‘sketty recipe, but we do know that he was partial to the dish. This is partly because he once joked that his favorite things about Italy are “spaghetti and Levi-Civita,” a mathematic symbol.

Although carbs like spaghetti have earned a negative reputation over the years for their belly-building potential, when it comes to giving your smarts a helping hand it seems Einstein may have had the right idea. The brain is an incredibly hungry organ. In fact, your think-box is responsible for consuming about 20% of the body’s energy, even though it only accounts for 2% of its total weight! That’s because the brain’s primary function, processing and transmitting information through electrical signals, is very, very expensive when it comes to energy use.

The brain requires an almost-continuous supply of energy, and to fuel itself it prefers to snack on simple sugars such as glucose which have been broken down from carbohydrates. But there’s one small problem: the brain also has no way of storing any energy, so when blood glucose levels drop it quickly runs out.

So how does your brain cope? According to Leigh Gibson, a lecturer in Psychology and Physiology at the University of Roehampton, the body can tap into some of its own glycogen stores by releasing stress hormones such as cortisol. But this isn’t without its side effects. If you’ve ever skipped a meal and found yourself feeling lightheaded, dazed or as if you’re crashing, you’ll know exactly what this means.

Sugars can definitely give the brain a valuable boost; one study from 2008 even found that people on low-carb diets have slower reaction times and reduced special memory in the short term. But that doesn’t mean binging on spaghetti is a fool proof way to improve your smarts. According to Gibson, evidence suggests that about 25g of carbohydrate is certainly beneficial to the brain but doubling that might actually begin to impair your ability to think.

Pipe Smoking

Even if his theories were destined to last for centuries after him, Einstein was still a product of the era he lived in. These days, the health risks of smoking are widely known, but it’s important to remember that times were vastly different back then.

So, it might surprise you to learn that Einstein was actually a hardened pipe smoker. In fact, accounts of his time at university have even stated that he was known as much around campus for the cloud of smoke which followed him as he was for his ground-breaking theories!

Einstein didn’t just view his smoking as a bad habit either, but as a genuine mental aid. He believed that smoking “contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgement in all human affairs”. Apparently, he’d even pick cigarette butts off the street and stuff whatever tobacco remained into his pipe.

Although evidence against smoking as a healthy habit had been stacking up since the 1940s, tobacco wasn’t publicly linked to lung cancer and other illnesses until 1962, 7 years after Einstein’s death. Of course, recent discoveries have shown that smoking can cause all kinds of damage. A tobacco addiction can prevent brain cells from forming, thin the cerebral cortex, which is the wrinkled outer layer responsible for consciousness, and even starves the brain of much-needed oxygen.

It’s safe to say that Einstein was clever despite his smoking habit, not because of it, but there are a few strange outliers in the evidence linking smoking to lack of intelligence. For example, one study in 2012 which analyzed the health and habits of 20,000 adolescents in the U.S. for 15 years found that, regardless of age, ethnicity, or education, more intelligent children grow up to smoke more cigarettes more frequently than the rest of us.

Scientists aren’t exactly sure why this is, perhaps it has something to do with more disposable income, as we all know smoking is also an expensive habit, but it’s not true of other places like the UK, where smokers tend to have generally lower IQs. Einstein may have been a genius, but no one said he was perfect.

No Socks

Ever wondered what kind of footwear it takes to become a genius? Well, if Einstein is anything to go by, the answer is: go sockless! That’s right, Albert Einstein renounced socks and plodded about barefoot instead. But why?

In a letter to his cousin, and later, wife Elsa, Einstein wrote “When I was young I found out that the big toe always ended up making a hole in the sock. So, I stopped wearing socks.” Fair enough. He continued this passionate aversion to socks throughout his life, which can be seen in plenty of photographs where he rocks out without his socks out.

When he couldn’t find a pair of sandals, he opted for a pair of Elsa’s slip-backs or, my personal favorite, the adorable fluffy slippers below!

There was scarcely any occasion that would convince Einstein to reach for the sock drawer. He also wrote “even on the most solemn occasions, I got away without wearing socks and hid the lack of civilization in high boots.” It’s probably true that Einstein really did chose to shun socks because his big toe projected well beyond the second, but is there anything else we can glean from this unusual habit?

Regrettably, there hasn’t been a great deal of research linking lack of socks to increased intelligence, but clothing may still have something to do with mental performance. There have been plenty of studies which suggest that changing into a more casual outfit, instead of formalwear, has been linked to poor performance on tests of abstract thinking.

Lina, The Violin

On June 2nd, 1919, Albert Einstein was wed to his second wife: his cousin, Elsa Einstein. But Elsa wasn’t the only woman in his life. Einstein’s affections were also devoted to a more hollow, firm, and playable woman: his violin Lina. Einstein’s mother was a talented musician, and Einstein started playing the violin when he was 6 years old. In fact, Elsa famously confided in a visitor that she fell in love with her cousin “because he played Mozart so beautifully on the violin”.

The physicist rarely left home without his sheet music, and it even inspired him as he developed some of the most elegant theories in science. Elsa once remarked that “music helps him when he’s thinking about his theories” and explained: “he goes to study, comes back, strikes a few chords on the piano, jots something down and returns to his piano.” In those pre-iTunes days, Einstein took great pains to carry his battered violin case everywhere.

He always said that if he wasn’t a scientist, he’d have been a musician. Einstein made no secret of this love affair, confessing that “life without playing music is inconceivable for me”, “I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music… I get most of my joy out of music.” Ironically, because there are no authenticated recordings of Einstein’s playing, there has always been a lively debate over whether he was actually any good at it.

Whether Einstein was a natural on the violin or not doesn’t really matter because there’s tons of evidence to support the theory that playing an instrument can actually make you brainier. In fact, there is growing evidence that musicians have structurally and functionally different brains when compared with non-musicians.

In 2014, a study from Boston Children’s Hospital found a correlation between musical training and improved executive function in both children and adults. ‘Executive functions’ are described as high-level cognitive processes that enable people to quickly process and retain information, regulate their behaviors, make good choices, solve problems, plan and adjust to changing mental demands.

Vegetarian Diet

Nowadays, vegetarian, and vegan diets are more popular than ever before. Back in Einstein’s day that certainly wasn’t the case, but if there’s one thing the eccentric scientist was not, it was a follower.

Although he had supported the idea for a long time, Einstein only became a practicing vegetarian in the later years of his life. In a letter to Max Kariel in 1954, a year before his death, he wrote “I have always eaten animal flesh with a somewhat guilty conscience” … “so I am living without fats, without meat, without fish, but am feeling quite well this way”. He even boldly declared that “it seems to me that man was not born be a carnivore”.

People were so fascinated by Einstein’s sudden change in diet that veggies would exclaim “no wonder he’s so smart, he doesn’t eat meat!”. It’s important to remember that Einstein didn’t become fully vegetarian until decades after most of his major scientific discoveries were made, but is there any truth behind the idea that ditching meat could somehow make you cleverer?

Back in 2006, researchers from the University of Southampton tracked the fortunes of more than 8000 volunteers for a period of 20 years. At the age of 10, the boys and girls sat a series of tests to determine their IQ. When they turned 30, they were asked whether they were vegetarian, and their answers compared to their childhood IQ score.

Analysis of the results found that those who were brainiest as children were more likely to have become vegetarian as adults. The typical adult veggie had a childhood IQ of 105, around 5 points higher than those who continued to eat meat as they grew up! What’s more, the vegetarians were also more likely to have gained degrees and held down high-powered jobs.

A diet which is richer in fruit, vegetables and wholegrains may somehow boost brain power. But what about from an evolutionary standpoint? Humans are naturally omnivorous, meaning vegetarianism would be an evolutionary novel value and lifestyle, suggesting that more intelligent individuals would be more likely to choose to become vegetarian than less intelligent individuals. There’s no concrete evidence to prove that ditching meat will cause a sudden surge in brain power, but it’s certainly something to chew on.

Eating Grasshoppers

For a man so in tune with nature and fully aware of the consequences of human actions, Albert Einstein was prone to making a few rash decisions. Einstein’s former chauffer Stanley Cohen has previously recounted that, during his long and brilliant life, the renowned genius was known to pick up live grasshoppers from the ground and eat them just to gross out his friends.

It may sound like a schoolboy prank or the behavior of someone with impulse control issues, but there’s actually some scientific backing to the whole “eating insects” thing, whether Einstein knew this at the time or not is a whole different story. From an evolutionary standpoint, scientists have suggested that mankind may have benefited cognitively from having to hunt for bugs to eat.

According to Amanda D. Melin, assistant professor of Anthropology in Arts and Sciences at Washington University, “digging for insects when food was scarce may have contributed to hominid cognitive evolution and set the stage for advanced tool use”. The cognitively demanding task of seeking out hidden insects provided a high-quality reward in the form of valuable fats and proteins. It wouldn’t be surprising if Einstein doubled up on his smarts by slurping down spaghetti with grasshoppers in it!

Bugs like crickets, grasshoppers, and cockroaches are rich in protein, healthy fats, iron, and calcium. These are all the things needed to fuel big brains, and some research even suggests they’re just as, if not more, nutritious pound-for-pound as more commonly consumed meats like beef. For example, 100 grams of cricket contains around 121 calories, 12.9 grams of protein, 5.5 grams of fat and 5.1 grams of carbohydrates. Meanwhile, 100 grams of ground beef contains more protein, around 23.5 grams, but is also much higher in fat, containing around 21.2 grams.

According to a 2013 report from the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, around 2 billion people in the world already eat insects as part of a traditional diet, a practice known as ‘entomophagy’. But, in the majority of Western countries, people view entomophagy with disgust and associate eating insects with unsophisticated and primitive behaviors. It seems like we’ve got some catching up to do!

I hope you were amazed at Einstein's quirky habits! Thanks for reading