Sam Altman's Method for Clear Thinking — Transcript

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1. 0:00no I'm a huge notetaker oh tell me about
2. 0:02that there's all these like fancy
3. 0:03notebooks in the world yeah you don't
4. 0:05want those um you definitely want a
5. 0:06spiral notebook because one thing that's
6. 0:08important is you can rip Pages out
7. 0:10frequently and you also want it to lie
8. 0:12like flat and open on the table and if
9. 0:14you like open pages you want them to
10. 0:15like you know like be able to lay like
11. 0:18this whatever you definitely want to be
12. 0:19able to like rip Pages out I'm a big
13. 0:21believer of like I take a bunch of notes
14. 0:23and then I like clearly like rip them
15. 0:26out so I can look at multiple Pages at
16. 0:27the same time and I can like crumple
17. 0:29them up and throw them on the floor and
18. 0:30I'm done like when our house cleaner
19. 0:32comes in on like a you know whatever
20. 0:35there's just these pile of crumpled
21. 0:36papers that I'm like type my notes in or
22. 0:39whatever on the floor you definitely
23. 0:40want like a kind of paper that is uh
24. 0:44like good to write on which is a feel
25. 0:46thing but most paper is terrible to
26. 0:47write on huh um you want a hard front
27. 0:51and back to the notepad so and you also
28. 0:53want something that can fit in a pocket
29. 0:54I was about to say that I think the
30. 0:57uniball
31. 0:58micro point five pen um is the best pen
32. 1:02overall but the Muji 36 or 37 in dark
33. 1:07blue ink is a very nice pen for other
34. 1:09reasons uh so those are the two I would
35. 1:11use but I think this kind of notebook
36. 1:13and one of those two pens is the right
37. 1:15answer and how many notes you're writing
38. 1:17per day on that thing uh I go through
39. 1:20one of these like every three two or
40. 1:22three weeks oh wow so you're taking a
41. 1:24lot of well this you can see how much
42. 1:25I've ripped out like this used to have
43. 1:26like 100 pages inits so that's how you
44. 1:28think about it so you're going to
45. 1:29basically take the notebook and then you
46. 1:31rip out the pages you don't have
47. 1:32completed notebook I don't have
48. 1:33completed notebooks wow what inspired
49. 1:36this where does this come from lots of
50. 1:37trial and error uh many kinds of
51. 1:39notebooks many pens many different
52. 1:40systems this one's really good another
53. 1:43thing I've been thinking about when it
54. 1:44comes to the influence of AGI on
55. 1:46Creative mediums is just the competence
56. 1:50with the written word is going up so
57. 1:51much and here's what I mean there's now
58. 1:54you know with Sora you can create videos
59. 1:56using text as the input you can do that
60. 1:58with music you can do that with images
61. 2:01and that's a big change in terms of the
62. 2:03influence on of writing on our world
63. 2:05again for me like writing is a tool for
64. 2:08thinking most importantly and I don't
65. 2:10think that's going anywhere and so I
66. 2:12think it's like it's really important
67. 2:13that people still learn to write for
68. 2:16this reason in the same way that even if
69. 2:18there's going to be like less
70. 2:19traditional coding jobs coding is a
71. 2:20great way to learn to thing too you
72. 2:23should still learn to code So when you
73. 2:24say it's important that people learn to
74. 2:26write what does that
75. 2:27mean what it means to me is that I like
76. 2:30figured out this tool to think more
77. 2:31clearly now if there's a better way to
78. 2:33think more clearly with a i great I
79. 2:35would switch to that definitely not
80. 2:37found that yet when you're sitting down
81. 2:38to write and you're thinking about
82. 2:40creating a focus State what is it that
83. 2:42you're doing in your process to really
84. 2:44create that I used to think like oh I
85. 2:46got to get in the perfect place and I
86. 2:48got to like set a time that I'm gonna
87. 2:49like go to this coffee shop and put on
88. 2:50my noise cancell in headphones and I'm
89. 2:52going to be in VAR mod and now I will
90. 2:55take any 11 minutes uninterrupted that I
91. 2:58can get like sitting in the back of a
92. 3:00car laying in bed like whatever it is I
93. 3:03mean if I do have like if I had like a
94. 3:06perfect thing it would be like you know
95. 3:08Saturday morning with a cup of coffee
96. 3:09and nothing scheduled and that is great
97. 3:12like if I got to sit down and like if I
98. 3:14have to write like a long thing I will
99. 3:16try to set that up but most of it
100. 3:18happens in like short chunks in the back
101. 3:20of a car you know what I use a lot is I
102. 3:23use the voice feature I take it and I
103. 3:26ask it to just clean it up and I find
104. 3:28chat gbt to be so helpful with that
105. 3:31because I'm much more generative with my
106. 3:33mouth than I am with my
107. 3:35fingertips interesting for me it's the
108. 3:36opposite really yeah I'm convinced
109. 3:39there's ideas I would never have sitting
110. 3:41and talking with people that I just need
111. 3:42to sit and type for this is like
112. 3:45obviously a very common observation but
113. 3:47but figuring out like the right amount
114. 3:50of being with people talking you know
115. 3:54getting exposed to like a lot of ideas
116. 3:57and then having some time alone to think
117. 4:00to write to just sort of like do some
118. 4:02deep work whatever that is I think
119. 4:05obviously this is a super important
120. 4:07pattern to a lot of people definitely to
121. 4:09me my sort of like roughly rough rhythm
122. 4:11is I'm like you know in the office kind
123. 4:13of non-stop all week uh I have no time
124. 4:16to think it's just like kind of crazy
125. 4:17packed and then on the weekends I have
126. 4:20like long quiet blocks and I'm not
127. 4:22really around people and uh that cycle
128. 4:25is very important to me H and is that
129. 4:27fractal like do you sometimes take a few
130. 4:29weeks weeks off or anything like that I
131. 4:31used to uh I think that's like really
132. 4:34good like when I've taken like long
133. 4:35chunks of time off I would do like a
134. 4:38month of like non-stop hanging out with
135. 4:39people and then like a month of you know
136. 4:42being in the woods on the beach whatever
137. 4:43that doesn't really happen anymore