A thought for you

The letter behind the bicycle comparison

The image text is a free English rendering of a shortened comparison from Einstein’s German letter to his son Eduard, dated 5 February 1930. It is not an English original. The letter compares a person with a bicycle and says that moving makes balancing comfortable. The familiar version changes the subject to life and leaves out that qualification.

View the letter facsimile in the Aguttes catalogue (PDF page 12, right; printed page 21, lot 177). The catalogue Les collections Aristophil – Germanica, dated 4 December 2019, is hosted by Bibliorare. The Albert Einstein Archives record 75-990 confirms the date, recipient and German language. The wording check used the pictured letter, not the archival metadata alone.

A detail the short version loses

Einstein welcomes Eduard’s return to his usual activity. Soon after the bicycle comparison, he notes that he himself has had to reduce his workload. This qualification is missing from the stand-alone image text.

Choose a manageable dose of a task

Pick something you have been putting off, such as a pile of papers. Choose one small section and allow ten minutes. Decide on your stopping point in advance: sorting one tray, for example. Afterwards, note what you completed and whether the portion was manageable. If it was too much, make the next section smaller; if it worked well, you can repeat the same amount. Include breaks in the plan. This exercise is a present-day suggestion from Motivation4you, not an instruction from the letter.

Letter facsimile, archival record and both language versions checked 27 October 2026. Editorial note and exercise: Motivation4you.