How Geniuses Spent Their Days

[Linda Anderson]

"What makes a genius a genius?
"According to these graphics, it's good time management.
"Using Mason Currey's book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work - which draws on diaries and letters from the thinkers themselves - designer RJ Andrews has mapped out the comings and goings of some of history's most important figures, right down to the hour.
"From Mozart to Freud and Darwin to Dickens, the waking, working and, in some cases, procrastinating of history's greatest minds are laid out for scrutiny.
"From Balzac drinking 50 cups of black coffee a day, to Milton spending hours memorising the Bible, the results are not always as you would expect. The variation is also surprising, from Freud's 13 hours of work a day to Mozart's four, there is not, alas, a simple recipe for success.
"Even so, people can now mimic the schedule of their intellectual heroes. Who knows, something might rub off..."


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...z2xU81s7R7
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[Eva Elisabeth]

(03-30-2014 04:46 PM)Linda Anderson Wrote:  What makes a genius a genius?

"From Balzac drinking 50 cups of black coffee a day..."

Beethoven drank over 60!

[L Verge]

Well, the one thing that most of the geniuses and I have in common is that they/I like to sleep!

[BettyO]

I LOVE coffee....but not that much!! Guess I'm not much of a genius unless you count eating chocolate all day like I used to do.....

[LincolnToddFan]

A few months ago there was a TIME LIFE special edition about the mystery of human genius on the newsstand. At least a couple of historians have posited that Abraham Lincoln was probably a genius. One online site has listed the IQ's of each American president since the beginning of the Republic, and Lincoln was in the top ten.

With only a handful of exceptions, our country has been led by men of quite formidable intellect.

I have no idea how one can ascertain the IQ of someone who lived so long ago, but Lincoln was obviously an unusually brilliant guy. I know he taught himself everything he knew including law, logic, mathematics, grammar and history. He is also the only president to have a patent. But a true genius?

What do you all think?

[L Verge]

I want to know how many of us know our own IQs, much less those of the great leaders. I have always been told that our IQs are listed in our school records. Is that true? When do they test for that? I was a teacher for nearly a decade and never remember any of those darn standardized tests being designated as one for IQ.

Those IQ lists (at least prior to 1900) make me suspect that they are compiled by people pretending that they know enough to rank people according to what they think the IQs should be.

[JB Banning]

Laurie,

My IQ score was in my high school transcripts, a copy of which the US Navy gave me when I was discharged. I once asked the guidence counselor what mine was but she wouldn't tell me, stating that if it was low she didn't want me to feel bad about myself and if it was high she didn't want me to think i didn't have to study and work hard.

[L Verge]

At this age, I guess I don't care what mine is; but the counselor's comments are certainly good ones. Did your records indicate at what age you were tested for your IQ?

[LincolnToddFan]

Hi L Verge, I think JB Banning is right. I remember being tested when I was very young, but I didn't ask for my score because I wasn't even sure what it meant. I took another IQ test about 15 years ago and I scored higher than average...but I don't believe it for a second and neither should you!

By the way, have you appeared on the History Channel? You look very familiar to me, if that is your photo?

[LincolnMan]

Beethoven drank 60 cups of coffee a day? No wonder his hair was all wired!
Lincoln surely had a high IQ. We've heard it said that the physicians attending his autopsy were curious about his brain size as related to that point- but it turned out to be average size.

[JB Banning]

(04-01-2014 05:25 PM)L Verge Wrote:  At this age, I guess I don't care what mine is; but the counselor's comments are certainly good ones. Did your records indicate at what age you were tested for your IQ?

No, it didn't say when I was tested. I just assumed that it was sometime in high school.

[HerbS]

I am not to sure about the IQ of-Nixon or our recent George Bush.How about Coolidge and Harding[Bright]? VP's in our time-Agnew-Gore and Biden did not impress me.Brightest of all government officals-Kissenger?

[L Verge]

Yep, Toia, I have been on the History Channel a few times as well as some others. The best production (IMO) was one done by Greystone Productions back in the 1990s.

I always ask them to make me look like Raquel Welch, but it doesn't work!

[Gene C]

You don't have to look like Raquel, you have that inner beauty that the eye of a camera doesn't always see and that only gets better with time

[L Verge]

Bless you my child! I just saw a recent photo of Raquel, however, and she is still hot -- and a few years older than I. That hurts...