Isaac Newton (March 28, 2026)

Admirable (or at least interesting) things that Newton would do:

On getting completely immersed to the point of being lost:

• Would get so immersed in his work he would often forget to take his meals
• Could regularly work 20 hour days
• Often sat with a problem or task at the forefront of his mind for months, constantly persisting in trying to solve it
• Often lost track of external surroundings entirely, especially at his deepest points of thought
• Would sometimes sit on his bedside for hours late at night, having little to no stimulation but his unceasing whirring of thoughts

Main inspiration: Independence, immersion in one's own systems and interests, still complying with (and actually studying) the external world to an extent, living on your own terms etc (Learning about many of the practices he did that were under this umbrella is an extremely prominent influence on my idea of the Systematic Individual and many other important things)

On note-taking and writing compulsions:

• Could allegedly take 100 pages of notes in a day if he felt his work required it
• Would spend hours revising calculations, wordings, all manner of things
• Could return to the same topic and attempt to refine it further almost every day for months and even years

Main inspiration: The sheer fervor in which he processed, externalized, and defined many different types of things, which were often systems (to a degree) can be taken as motivation to pursue your own path

On his more esoteric interests:

• Studied alchemy and theology more than he did physics
• Believed there was codes in the bible
• Was very heretical for his time
• Practiced and wrote on these things constantly

Main inspiration: His obsessive need to bring abstract patterns into realm of the tangible, as well as his need to understand them as where I want to get in terms of synthesis, system creation, and everything under that general umbrella

On his management of the Royal Mint:

• Showed he could comply with external systems while still resembling what I'd almost certainly perceive as a Systematic Individual
• Went to bars and caught counterfeiters himself
• Had extremely high work ethic and discipline

Main inspiration: Isaac Newton's management of the Royal Mint shows what happens when someone who heavily resembles a Systematic Individual is crammed directly next to an external system; he complies with it however much he needs to, does what he needs to do using his own ways of thinking and methodology, learns to love his work, and tackles immense networking-based and leadership-driven problems while still remaining fiercely defined and independent

Overall, the man basically illuminated my current philosophy, because when I heard about many of the things he did that I've listed above, they were extremely helpful in lighting lightbulb after lightbulb regarding how I (currently) think I'd like to live my life.