There’s hope for those of us with messy desks. This is a photo of Albert Einstein’s messy desk [1] taken in April, 1955.
I enjoyed this anecdote [2] regarding Einstein:
EINSTEIN came to Princeton University in 1935 and was asked what he would require for his study. he replied: “A desk, some pads and a pencil, and a large wastebasket to hold all of my mistakes.”
Linus Pauling had the same approach [3] to coming up with good ideas: ““The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas, and throw the bad ones away.”
I have often heard that Einstein said that one should not memorize things that one can look up. Here’s the story on which that alleged quote is based, [2] as best I can tell:
ONE OF Einstein’s colleagues asked him for his telephone number one day. Einstein reached for a telephone directory and looked it up. “You don’t remember your own number?” the man asked, startled.
“No,” Einstein answered. “Why should I memorize something I can so easily get from a book?”
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