Productivity secrets from the king of geeks Nikola Tesla

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

In honor of Tesla's birthday, we remember what helped the scientist get ahead of his time.

Tesla could practically not sleep, and at the same time his productivity did not fall. The fact that his approach to work is truly a model of efficiency is eloquently indicated by a long list of inventions that we successfully use to this day.

Attention to detail

“The moment an inventor constructs a device to implement an immature idea, he is inevitably at the mercy of his thoughts about the details and imperfections of the mechanism. While he is engaged in corrections and alterations, he is distracted and the most important idea, originally laid down, leaves his field of vision. The result can be achieved, but always at the cost of quality loss.

My method is different. I am in no hurry to get down to practical work. When an idea is born to me, I immediately begin to develop it in my imagination: I change the design, make improvements and mentally set the mechanism in motion. It doesn't matter to me at all whether I control my turbine in my head or test it in the workshop. I even notice that it is out of balance. The type of mechanism does not matter, the result will be the same. This way, I can quickly develop and improve the concept without touching anything. Nikola Tesla

Tesla believed that one should not begin to implement an idea until the project has been thought out to the smallest detail. This does not mean at all that you need to get hung up on trifles, bringing the form to perfection. But the basic principles must be well thought out.

Imagine that you are a practicing physicist working on a new invention or testing a theory. You will immediately become more attentive and calculate your actions several steps ahead. Still, physics is a serious science. Why should things be different with your project? Why launch something that is only thought out in general terms? Practice will tell you the rest?

Intuition

“Intuition is something that is ahead of accurate knowledge. Our brain has, no doubt, very sensitive nerve cells, which allows us to feel the truth, even when it is not yet available to logical conclusions or other mental efforts. Nikola Tesla

Tesla believed that a person's natural sensitivity to the space around him plays a very important role. It's just that in the age of technology, we forgot about it, stopped listening to the inner voice.

Of course, in his experiments, the scientist relied solely on proven facts and data. But his intuition told him how successful the invention would be and what else needed to be corrected in order for everything to fall into place.

When you are thinking about something new or working on something that you have been assigned, do you listen to your inner voice? After all, part of our intuition is accumulated experience. All the knowledge gained remains in us, although we cannot always mentally get to it. In moments of intense tension, they break out of our subconscious and tell us the right path.

Will

After reading the novel "Son of Aba" Nikola Tesla decided to train his willpower. At first, these were simple actions. For example, if he had something tasty that he wanted to eat, he would give it to someone else. Tesla went through an addiction to gambling, smoking and coffee. As a result, over the years, the contradictions between desires and will smoothed out, and he came to harmony with the world around him.

“At first it required a lot of internal efforts directed against inclinations and desires, but over the years the contradictions smoothed out, and in the end my will and desire merged into one. Such are they now, and this is the secret of all the successes that I have achieved. These experiences are so closely related to my discovery of a rotating magnetic field, as if they were an integral part of it; without them, I would never have invented an induction motor. Nikola Tesla

Concentration

“I am completely exhausted, but I cannot stop working. My experiments are so important, so beautiful, so amazing that I can hardly tear myself away from them to eat. And when I try to sleep, I think about them all the time. I guess I'll keep going until I drop dead. Nikola Tesla

Getting up at three in the morning and studying until late seven days a week. Constant work on yourself and no empty doubts - once an idea has come to mind, it means that you need to check it, even if your physics teacher is sure of the opposite. This is how Tesla's electric motor was born.

Physical strength

“At that time, I was exhausting myself with hard work and continuous reflection. He instilled in me the idea of the need for systematic physical exercise, and his offer to train me was readily accepted. We exercised daily and I quickly gained strength. My spirit was also noticeably strengthened, and when my thoughts turned to the subject that absorbed all my attention, I was surprised to note the confidence in success. Nikola Tesla

We are talking about Mr. Szigeti, who, according to the scientist, possessed phenomenal strength. Thanks to him, Nikola Tesla maintained excellent physical shape, which ultimately gave him a fairly long life (86 years) and health, despite the fact that in childhood he was on the verge of death three times. As can be seen from the above quote, the scientist believed that a person's confidence, his mental strength and physical form are inextricably linked.

On the one hand, there is nothing fundamentally new in this list - just a repetition of what personal growth coaches and other successful people are now saying from all sides. But the example of Nikola Tesla and his achievements are so amazing that you involuntarily begin to wonder how ineptly we are wasting the opportunities and time presented to us.

This person simply saw the goal and moved towards it, ignoring the rules and questioning the statements of the professors. He knew that the main ingredients for success are hard work, continuous self-improvement, willpower and intuition. An amazing combination of a cold mind with periodic emotional outbursts, expressed in acrobatic somersaults and recitation of verses with insights at the end. Incredible experiences and emotions under the control of the same incredible willpower. Visions and mysticism mingled with precise mathematical and physical calculations. After that, the impossible no longer seems so impossible.