Sam Altman's Method for Clear Thinking

no I'm a huge notetaker oh tell me about

that there's all these like fancy

notebooks in the world yeah you don't

want those um you definitely want a

spiral notebook because one thing that's

important is you can rip Pages out

frequently and you also want it to lie

like flat and open on the table and if

you like open pages you want them to

like you know like be able to lay like

this whatever you definitely want to be

able to like rip Pages out I'm a big

believer of like I take a bunch of notes

and then I like clearly like rip them

out so I can look at multiple Pages at

the same time and I can like crumple

them up and throw them on the floor and

I'm done like when our house cleaner

comes in on like a you know whatever

there's just these pile of crumpled

papers that I'm like type my notes in or

whatever on the floor you definitely

want like a kind of paper that is uh

like good to write on which is a feel

thing but most paper is terrible to

write on huh um you want a hard front

and back to the notepad so and you also

want something that can fit in a pocket

I was about to say that I think the

uniball

micro point five pen um is the best pen

overall but the Muji 36 or 37 in dark

blue ink is a very nice pen for other

reasons uh so those are the two I would

use but I think this kind of notebook

and one of those two pens is the right

answer and how many notes you're writing

per day on that thing uh I go through

one of these like every three two or

three weeks oh wow so you're taking a

lot of well this you can see how much

I've ripped out like this used to have

like 100 pages inits so that's how you

think about it so you're going to

basically take the notebook and then you

rip out the pages you don't have

completed notebook I don't have

completed notebooks wow what inspired

this where does this come from lots of

trial and error uh many kinds of

notebooks many pens many different

systems this one's really good another

thing I've been thinking about when it

comes to the influence of AGI on

Creative mediums is just the competence

with the written word is going up so

much and here's what I mean there's now

you know with Sora you can create videos

using text as the input you can do that

with music you can do that with images

and that's a big change in terms of the

influence on of writing on our world

again for me like writing is a tool for

thinking most importantly and I don't

think that's going anywhere and so I

think it's like it's really important

that people still learn to write for

this reason in the same way that even if

there's going to be like less

traditional coding jobs coding is a

great way to learn to thing too you

should still learn to code So when you

say it's important that people learn to

write what does that

mean what it means to me is that I like

figured out this tool to think more

clearly now if there's a better way to

think more clearly with a i great I

would switch to that definitely not

found that yet when you're sitting down

to write and you're thinking about

creating a focus State what is it that

you're doing in your process to really

create that I used to think like oh I

got to get in the perfect place and I

got to like set a time that I'm gonna

like go to this coffee shop and put on

my noise cancell in headphones and I'm

going to be in VAR mod and now I will

take any 11 minutes uninterrupted that I

can get like sitting in the back of a

car laying in bed like whatever it is I

mean if I do have like if I had like a

perfect thing it would be like you know

Saturday morning with a cup of coffee

and nothing scheduled and that is great

like if I got to sit down and like if I

have to write like a long thing I will

try to set that up but most of it

happens in like short chunks in the back

of a car you know what I use a lot is I

use the voice feature I take it and I

ask it to just clean it up and I find

chat gbt to be so helpful with that

because I'm much more generative with my

mouth than I am with my

fingertips interesting for me it's the

opposite really yeah I'm convinced

there's ideas I would never have sitting

and talking with people that I just need

to sit and type for this is like

obviously a very common observation but

but figuring out like the right amount

of being with people talking you know

getting exposed to like a lot of ideas

and then having some time alone to think

to write to just sort of like do some

deep work whatever that is I think

obviously this is a super important

pattern to a lot of people definitely to

me my sort of like roughly rough rhythm

is I'm like you know in the office kind

of non-stop all week uh I have no time

to think it's just like kind of crazy

packed and then on the weekends I have

like long quiet blocks and I'm not

really around people and uh that cycle

is very important to me H and is that

fractal like do you sometimes take a few

weeks weeks off or anything like that I

used to uh I think that's like really

good like when I've taken like long

chunks of time off I would do like a

month of like non-stop hanging out with

people and then like a month of you know

being in the woods on the beach whatever

that doesn't really happen anymore