Sam Ullman returns and discusses his current projects and the upcoming YC batch.

Introduction

Sam discusses the importance of minimizing cognitive load and avoiding distractions.

Minimizing Cognitive Load

Sam talks about the trap of getting caught up in unimportant tasks and the importance of focusing on what truly matters.

Finding Focus

Sam shares his approach of periodically evaluating his work and ensuring he is focused on the right things.

Checking In and Evaluating Priorities

Sam discusses the importance of exploring multiple projects, being honest about their success, and cutting the ones that are not working.

Exploring and Cutting Projects

Sam talks about following his interests and pursuing projects that seem interesting, even if they may fail.

Choosing What to Work On

Sam shares the benefits of taking a year off, exploring different fields, and reconnecting with friends and family.

Taking Time Off and Reconnecting

Sam discusses the importance of understanding risk and being willing to take calculated risks.

Understanding Risk

Sam emphasizes the importance of focus, prioritization, and surrounding oneself with ambitious people.

Creating Value and Prioritization

Sam reflects on the perception of innovation and discusses his ongoing project of finding new funding mechanisms.

Innovation and Funding

Sam highlights the value of perspective shifts and the importance of mental flexibility.

Embracing Perspective Shifts

Sam shares his approach to productivity, emphasizing the importance of prioritization and avoiding wasted time.

Productivity and Prioritization

Sam discusses the challenge of balancing random opportunities with focused work and the benefits of having accountability buddies.

Balancing Random Flux and Focus

Sam advises against deferring one's true passion and emphasizes the importance of committing to what one truly wants to work on.

Avoiding the Deferred Life Plan

People want you to win, but doing anything worthwhile takes time and emotional trauma.

The Problem with the Deferred Life Plan

Discussion on purpose, meaning, and the importance of finding it somewhere.

Finding Purpose in Work and Careers

Intelligence may become less important in the future, but currently highly valued in society.

The Changing Value of Intelligence

Observation on how intelligence is highly rated but people seem disconnected from their bodies.

The Disconnect between Intelligence and Physical Health

Conversation about the benefits of lifting weights and the difference between physical shape and strength.

Fitness and Strength Training

Recommendation of a short book called The Way to Love by Anthony DeMello.

Book Recommendation: The Way to Love

Spending a decade being incredibly busy and stressed without moving forward

Getting caught up in office politics and power games

Focusing on unimportant tasks and neglecting important ones

Jumping from one project to another without completing any

Take time to explore a lot of things and trust your intuitions

Follow a strict rubric for all your projects

Focus on urgent tasks and ignore unimportant ones

Avoid making mistakes by not taking risks

Pursue projects that seem interesting and cut the ones that don't work

Create similar metrics for each project and follow a conservative path

Immediately jump into something trendy and follow the crowd

Stick to one project and don't explore other options

Read textbooks, learned about various fields, and made investments

Traveled around the world and explored different cultures

Took a break from work and spent time with friends and family

Focused on helping others and learning from their experiences

They are too risk averse and worry about short-term catastrophic risk

They are not interested in pursuing ambitious goals

They lack the necessary resources to take risks

They are influenced by people who want them to be average

Having a complex system with multivariable charts

Finding a system that keeps you disciplined and focused

Joining small groups of accountability buddies

Forming small groups of accountability buddies

It is a valid approach to achieving one's goals

It is a strategy that rarely leads to success

It is the best way to balance work and personal life

It is a necessary step in building a successful career

- Sam Ullman discusses the importance of minimizing cognitive load and avoiding distractions that don't matter.
- He emphasizes the trap of being busy and stressed without moving forward.
- Ullman suggests focusing on important tasks and regularly evaluating if you're working on the right things.
- He shares his personal method of taking time to think about what's working well and what's not.
- Ullman advises exploring various projects and being honest about what's actually working.
- He highlights the need for decisive decision-making and being brutally honest with oneself.

- The speaker believes in paying for expected value and learning from failures in investing.
- They recommend angel investing and playing poker as ways to learn about business and risk.
- The speaker emphasizes the importance of sleep, exercise, and nutrition for productivity.
- They discuss their own best time for productivity and the number of good hours they have each day.
- The speaker mentions the importance of trying different things and allocating more resources to what works.
- They talk about the perception of risk and the need for perspective shifts.
- The speaker mentions the value of surrounding oneself with ambitious and inquisitive people.
- They suggest reading poker books and biographies of successful people to understand risk.
- The speaker discusses the importance of getting important tasks done, avoiding wasting time, and making lists for productivity.

- The speaker believes that productivity can be overcomplicated and that any system that keeps you disciplined and focused on your goals is effective.
- Written lists can be helpful for multitasking.
- Forming small groups of accountability buddies can improve productivity.
- The speaker believes that innovation is still happening, particularly in software and the internet.
- The speaker is working on finding new funding mechanisms for projects that may not have immediate value but could create value in the long term.
- Balancing random meetings and new ideas with focused work is challenging but necessary.
- The speaker criticizes the "deferred life plan" and encourages individuals to choose one goal and commit to it rather than trying to do multiple things at once.
- Authenticity and motivation are important for success, as people can sense if someone is genuinely passionate about their work.

- The speaker discusses the importance of having people who want you to succeed, such as investors, the press, and your team.
- They emphasize the need to be willing to face emotional trauma and criticism in order to succeed.
- The speaker mentions the importance of finding purpose and meaning in work and careers, regardless of the field.
- They predict that with the arrival of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), human intelligence will become less valuable.
- The speaker discusses the disconnect between intelligence and physical fitness, mentioning their own experience with weightlifting.
- They recommend a short book called "The Way to Love" by Anthony DeMello.

Sam Ullman emphasizes the importance of minimizing cognitive load and avoiding unnecessary distractions. He suggests focusing on important tasks and regularly evaluating if you're working on the right things. Ullman advises exploring various projects and being honest about what's working. He highlights the need for decisive decision-making and being brutally honest with oneself. The speaker believes in paying for expected value and learning from failures in investing. They recommend angel investing and playing poker as ways to learn about business and risk. The speaker emphasizes the importance of sleep, exercise, and nutrition for productivity. They discuss their own best time for productivity and the number of good hours they have each day. The speaker mentions the importance of trying different things and allocating resources to what works. They talk about the perception of risk and the need for perspective shifts. The speaker mentions the value of surrounding oneself with ambitious and inquisitive people. They suggest reading poker books and biographies of successful people to understand risk. The speaker discusses the importance of getting important tasks done, avoiding wasting time, and making lists for productivity. They believe that any system that keeps you disciplined and focused on your goals is effective. Written lists can be helpful for multitasking. Forming small groups of accountability buddies can improve productivity. The speaker believes that innovation is still happening, particularly in software and the internet. They are working on finding new funding mechanisms for projects that may not have immediate value but could create value in the long term. Balancing random meetings and new ideas with focused work is challenging but necessary. The speaker criticizes the "deferred life plan" and encourages individuals to choose one goal and commit to it. Authenticity and motivation are important for success. The speaker discusses the importance of having people who want you to succeed. They emphasize the need to be willing to face emotional trauma and criticism to succeed. The speaker mentions the importance of finding purpose and meaning in work and careers. They predict that with AGI, human intelligence will become less valuable. The speaker discusses the disconnect between intelligence and physical fitness and recommends a book called "The Way to Love" by Anthony DeMello.

Sam Altman - https://twitter.com/sama - expands on ideas that have come up in several of his essays. Specifically: choosing projects, creating value, and finding purpose.

Sam’s the president of YC Group - https://ycombinator.com/ - and co-chairman of OpenAI - https://openai.com/

The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon - https://twitter.com/craigcannon

***

Topics

:55 – From The Days Are Long But The Decades Are Short – Minimize your own cognitive load from distracting things that don’t really matter. It’s hard to overstate how important this is, and how bad most people are at it. http://blog.samaltman.com/the-days-are-long-but-the-decades-are-short

3:20 – Stepping back and evaluating your work

5:00 – Creating metrics for your projects

6:00 – Taking a year off

9:00 – Figuring out when to commit

11:00 – Poker

12:00 – From Productivity – Sleep seems to be the most important physical factor in productivity for me. Exercise is probably the second most important physical factor. The third area is nutrition. http://blog.samaltman.com/productivity

14:30 – From You and Your Research by Richard Hamming – If what you are doing is not important, and if you don’t think it is going to lead to something important, why are you at Bell Labs working on it?’ http://blog.samaltman.com/you-and-your-research

16:00 – From The Days Are Long But The Decades Are Short – Things in life are rarely as risky as they seem. Most people are too risk-averse, and so most advice is biased too much towards conservative paths. http://blog.samaltman.com/the-days-are-long-but-the-decades-are-short

17:00 – Perspective shifts

19:45 – From Productivity – My system has three key pillars: “Make sure to get the important shit done”, “Don’t waste time on stupid shit”, and “make a lot of lists”. http://blog.samaltman.com/productivity

22:00 – What Happened to Innovation http://blog.samaltman.com/what-happened-to-innovation-1

24:20 – From You and Your Research by Richard Hamming – He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. http://blog.samaltman.com/you-and-your-research

26:20 – The deferred life plan doesn’t work

31:20 – From The Merge – Our self-worth is so based on our intelligence that we believe it must be singular and not slightly higher than all the other animals on a continuum. Perhaps the AI will feel the same way and note that differences between us and bonobos are barely worth discussing. http://blog.samaltman.com/the-merge

33:40 – Weight training

35:00 – The Way to Love by Anthony de Mello https://www.amazon.com/Way-Love-Meditations-Anthony-Classics/dp/038524939X

Interviewed with more than a thousand companies.

OpenAI's going really well, excited about that.

I'm ready for this year to be winding down, but it's been a good 1.

So I want to do something a little bit different for this episode and just break apart a lot of your essays.

I have a rough outline with a few general topics that you seem to have written about a few times, and I figure we can kind of just go into each 1.

So it seems like there are several categories from observing your thoughts and then choosing what to work on, and then creating actual value once you've chosen a thing, and then past that, kind of purpose in general, like purpose in your work.

The first 1, the first quote that I liked was from your essay, The Days Are Long, But The Decades Are Short.

And that quote was, minimize your cognitive load from distracting things that don't really matter.

It's hard to overstate how important this is and how bad most people are at it.

I think it's very easy to spend a decade being incredibly busy and incredibly stressed every day and feeling like you're working incredibly hard and creating a ton of Movement but not moving forward.

And I think this is like a big trap and it's so easy to get caught up in things that are urgent but unimportant.

Or it is so easy to get caught up in like the trifles of office politics and plain status and power games that don't matter, but feel so fun and so important, or just like random other bullshit that piles up in life.

And I've at least found for myself, I have a fixed budget of cognitive output per day.

But if I let it go on unimportant stuff, then I never have time to get to the really important stuff.

And it's so easy to get heads down and focused and sort of miss like, what am I actually accomplishing?

The number of people who have said to me like, man, I thought for 10 years I was doing incredible work because I felt like I was creating a huge amount of output, but in retrospect it was in the wrong direction, is always depressing.

You do need to focus and do stuff, but I think it's really good to focus for some period of time and then step back and think, am I doing the right thing?

You also don't want to make the mistake that the stereotypical Silicon Valley 22 year old or 21 year old college dropout says of, you know, I'm going to solve all the world's problems in 3 months.

And if I haven't done in 3 months, I failed.

So I'm going to give up and do the next thing.

And then they like jump onto some other project.

But I think like making, checking in to make sure you're working on things that matter and working on an appropriate time scale, time horizon is really important.

Cause I kind of wanted to address broadly, how do you even frame that?

You have a certain amount of detachment that you need.

And so how do you step back when you need to?

I am pretty good about in my downtime, I naturally just think about, do I feel like I am being maximally useful and working on the right things?

Or are there like, you know, should YC be doing something totally different than we are today?

Like, should we be willing to throw everything out and rethink about it?

But I think people find different ways to do that.

1 specific thing I do, which has sort of become this annual ritual I really like, is December 31st every year I take a break from vacation and I sit and I write down what went well last year, what didn't.

I look at how I did on my to-do list for the year, and I write that 1 out for the next year.

And because I know I'm going to do that every year, I stress about it less the other 364 days.

But I think the fundamental pattern that has always worked for me is take time, explore a lot of things, try a lot of things, try to have like a beginner's mind about what will work and what won't work.

But trust your intuitions, pursue a lot of things as cheaply and quickly as possible.

And then be very honest with yourself about what's working well and what's not.

And then the hard part is cut all the stuff that's not working and focus down and down until you're eventually focused on the 1 thing that's really working, or the 2 things that are really working.

In terms of choosing, I mean this sort of transitions into choosing what to work on and how to create value.

But in terms of establishing those metrics for, you know, so say you have like, you know, YC, OpenAI, and then the rest of your life.

Do you create similar metrics for each 1 or does each 1 have its own?

I am skeptical of these systems where you try to have everything on the same rubric.

I mean the best thing I can say is I've like, I follow my interests, I try to pursue a lot of projects that seem interesting.

I realize that most of them will fail and I don't care.

And then the ones that, as long as the ones that work really work.

So like, OpenAI really works, YC really works.

I've done plenty of other things in the last 5 years that have not worked at all.

We should explore that because I think it's something that's not talked about and it's to the detriment of everyone.

So for example, like last year, a year before, you were doing a lot of political stuff.

I am, let's not, let me try to frame it in like an area where a lot of things went wrong at once.

So I sold my startup when I was like 26, something like that And I worked at the acquiring company for a little while, maybe 25, I don't remember.

And in that year, which is hard to do, it's really hard to do in Silicon Valley, because in a place where social status is determined by your job and what you're working on.

Like when you show up at a party and someone says, oh, what are you working on?

And you're like, I'm kind of just taking the year off.

Like you can sort of see in real time, their eyes like look for someone else in the room to talk to, it doesn't feel that good.

But it's an incredibly privileged thing to be able to do this, but if you are in the position between jobs where you can take a year off, I highly recommend it.

I think it was like 1 of the 2 or 3 best career things that I ever did.

In that year, I read like many dozens of textbooks.

I learned about fields that I had been interested in.

I didn't have any idea that they were all gonna come together in the way they did, but I learned a lot about nuclear engineering.

AI was starting to work, so I learned a lot about AI.

That was the year that I started being like, well, I had made like maybe 4 angel investments before this, that I was like, all right, I'm gonna get serious about this and try it and see if I like it.

I kind of like really got a feel for, a much more of a feel for like, what the rest of the world is like.

I met people that were working on all sorts of different things who were nice enough to talk to me.

I got badly needed time to reconnect with my friends and family.

And I just sort of like helped people that seemed, I had unlimited time, right?

I met someone interesting and it seemed good and needed help, I would just help them.

And they would teach me stuff or they would like offer me the chance to invest in their startup later.

So I'd like the drop of a hat I could like fly to another country for a conference.

And I started doing all this random stuff and out of all of it, almost all of it didn't work out.

But the seeds were planted for things that worked in deep ways later.

So you both sound like it was positive and it was great and you had a great time.

But when you say it didn't work out, how does that?

Like I invested in a bunch of companies that failed.

I got really excited about a few companies I wanted to start that turned out to be bad ideas for different reasons.

But that's like fine because that's the thing.

When you're in explore mode, you try a lot of projects and you accept that most won't work.

So, yeah, I know a few people that have gone through this and it seems like they don't always so maybe they say, all right, I'm going to go on vacation and that lasts a couple months.

And then I come back and start meeting with people Or maybe they just immediately jump into something, start researching whatever's trendy, which I think is like a separate problem where you're just following everyone else.

The trick is, how do you figure out what to commit to and when?

And this is where I think It takes brutal honesty with yourself about which projects are actually working and which you would like to convince yourself are working.

And I've been guilty of this mistake many times and I will be many times in the future.

This is a very hard thing to train yourself to do, to really step back and dispassionately look and say, am I desperately trying to convince myself this is working, or is this actually working?

But I think it is a muscle that is buildable.

It's just hard, because it means admitting failure in something.

Like, every time I make a major investment in a company, I am convinced it's going to work.

You don't go in expecting to lose your money.

Or at least, you know, like, I am prepared to pay for the expected value that I think is going to work.

And once you've anchored that, it's hard to go back and be like, man, I was so wrong, which obviously happens all the time.

The best thing about investing in a lot of companies is you learn to be, it's very humbling.

You learn to be majorly wrong very frequently and you learn that that's okay as long as the magnitude of the successes pays for all of the failures.

I haven't thought about this before, but say you sold your company and had some money and weren't thinking about being an angel investor.

Do you think it's actually a good idea to angel invest a little bit before you start something else, even if you're not pulled in that direction?

The things that I think have taught me a lot about business are poker and angel investing.

By the way, as a quick plug for poker, so I played a lot in college, fairly seriously, and it's not for everybody, but I strongly recommend it as just a way to kind of learn about the world and business and psychology and risk and everything

I went to school on the peninsula, and so I would go down there a lot.

It did not fund my startup, but it funded my like living expenses as a college student.

Yeah, I'm always surprised by the person, I mean there aren't infinite people who can do this, but there are enough people that actually make solid money.

But I would have done it for free, like I just loved it so much.

Yeah, okay, did you ever get into the online stuff, like 10 hands at once?

That was not as fun and then it kind of stopped.

So you wrote the productivity post fairly recently.

Your 3 main tips were sleep, exercise, and nutrition.

I think that's like a small fraction of the whole thing.

But yes, I believe that stuff is important.

Because if you don't have a foundation, you're off.

The num, look, it is possible that I am incredibly genetically unlucky and I just, like these people who claim they only need to sleep 4 hours a night.

But, I, like I try to sleep 8 hours or close to it as much as I can.

And, If you're trying to like win on really big creative ideas, much better off like cut something, have less of them, whatever.

But Like for me, skimping on sleep, which I have tried at other points in my life, is a terrible trade.

I've tried to optimize what I kind of think of as like my best time.

You know, like I try not to sell my best time for anything other than the projects I want

I think everyone, it takes people a while, but everyone figures out what that is.

For me, it's early mornings, the first 3 hours after I wake up.

And man, do I put a huge premium on anything getting in the way of that.

How many hours do you think you have good hours every day?

I mean like if you take a armadafin or something you get 20.

Yeah but I don't know if that's necessarily the best version of Sam Altman.

I can definitely like sit down and be like super productive for 8 hours in a row

No break, I mean go to the bathroom whatever yeah, no break.

Yeah Which I think is more than most people can do.

I mean, I think I can get 4 before I need to go work out or something.

And I think the people who say 16, I feel like I get much more done than they do.

Until we evolve and someone can get 16 done.

So in your in your broad writing on choosing what to work on.

And he's he's so much more prescriptive than most people are today, which I really enjoy the tone of.

Do you remember that story of the lunchroom?

It's been very interesting trying to sort of help create a research institution here.

And I do think we've done 1 of the more interesting research labs in the last couple of decades.

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Sam Altman on Choosing Projects, Creating Value, and Finding Purpose