Albert Einstein once said, “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.”

He was of course overstating things a bit, but Einstein’s essential point was that a genius wonders about things, and then wonders about them more.

Genius is always asking questions, is always seeking to understand.

Newton, when asked how he had discovered his law of gravitation, replied, "By thinking about it all the time.”

Same thing.

One day, as Einstein and a friend were crossing the street in Princeton, his friend asked him if quantum mechanics didn’t mean that a star could pop into existence.

Einstein stopped dead in his tracks. He was so deep in thought that he stood in the intersection holding up traffic!

That’s how to think like a genius: maintain your childhood sense of wonder, always ask why, and keep thinking and thinking and thinking about it.