[bluedino]

>> we've lost a lot of "boring but living wage" jobs with little to no supervision. Einstein had a lot of time to think and sketch and write formulas at jobs like the Swiss Patent Office. How many jobs do you see around you that you can do that and survive?

Aren't you describing most office jobs? Don't a lot of people in our industry say they do "1, maybe 2 hours of real work each day"?

[JohnFen]

> Don't a lot of people in our industry say they do "1, maybe 2 hours of real work each day"?

Yes, but that doesn't mean people have 6 or 7 hours of free time every day. It means that 6 or 7 hours of the day is absorbed by work activities that don't contribute to the actual work.

[MichaelZuo]

Not from my understanding, it's very rare for peripheral activities to take up multiple hours every day on average, in a well oiled team at least.

Of course there will always be Dilbert esque situations but the vast majority of actual or potential super-geniuses I imagine would have at least a few hours of actual free time per day, on average.

[JohnFen]

It's true that if you just add up the minutes, then peripheral activities don't take up the majority of the time. But you also have to take into account the cost of context-switching. An hour-long meeting costs more than an hour of time because you have to ramp back up to speed afterwards. On average, this takes about 20 minutes. When you add in all of the distractions through the day -- meetings, people talking in the next cube, people stopping by for a "quick question", that sort of thing, that ramping-up can absorb a ton of time.

[MichaelZuo]

Not for actual or potential super geniuses similar in situation to Einstein at the Swiss patent office.

By definition they spend very little time and effort on 'context-switching'.

[aatd86]

At what age was he there though?

What about the Pascals, Newtons etc.?

These people were ultra precocious.

Nowadays, people navigate toward soft or practical science such as Comp.Sci or Medicine (as practionners)...

Scientists from yesteryear seemed to be more self-driven too.

[helij]

The rest is admin, meetings and actually thinking on how to solve the problem (this one is actually 24/7).