Productivity

Productivity. An essay by Sam Altman, from April 2018.

Small gains, compounded

People often ask Sam Altman for productivity tips, so he wrote them all down. His starting point: compounding works on careers, not just money.

Get a bit more done than others, and improve a little every day. Over a fifty-year career, the gap grows enormous.

So it's worth real effort to work out what makes you productive.

Direction first

Speed is worthless in the wrong direction. Choosing what to work on matters most, and it's the part people barely think about.

The most impressive people he knows hold strong views. If you always side with whoever talked to you last, that is a bad sign.

You'll be wrong at times. But conviction lets you act boldly when you see something important that others miss.

So he keeps time free to think: reading books, spending time with interesting people, and being out in nature.

Work you like, people who lift you

He can't be productive on work he doesn't care about, so he arranges not to do it. He's lucky: he found work he'd happily do for free.

Delegate the same way. Others also do their best on what they enjoy, so hand each task to someone who likes it.

If you've disliked your work for a long time and a break doesn't fix it, consider a major change. You can learn new things faster than you'd expect.

Surround yourself with smart, positive people who push you, not ones who belittle your ambitions. And expect to work hard as well as smart.

Three pillars, and lots of lists

His system rests on three pillars: get the important things done, skip the pointless stuff, and keep plenty of lists.

Lists for the year, the month and the day, on paper. He copies them out again often, which makes him rethink each item. A star marks what matters.

He orders work to build momentum: getting things done feels good, which gets more done. Each day starts and ends with real progress.

He's relentless about his most important projects and ruthless about saying no to the rest. He suspects his emails read as rude.

Guarding his time

He skips most meetings and conferences. But he leaves room for chance encounters: most are wasted, but the one in ten that works pays for the rest.

And the one-hour default is usually wrong. Most meetings should take 15 to 20 minutes, or a full two hours.

His mornings are his best hours, so nothing gets booked then. Meetings go in the afternoon, and when his focus fades, he takes a break.

Most people undervalue their time. He sees people who earn $100 an hour spend two hours on a chore they hate, to save $20.

The year, not the day

One trap: productivity porn. People endlessly tune their systems, and seldom ask whether they are working on the right problem.

Altman's line: “The right goal is to allocate your year optimally, not your day.”

Sleep, and morning light

On the body, what works for him may not work for you, so experiment. Years of small changes made him at least 1.5 times as productive.

Sleep matters most. He likes his bedroom cold, dark and quiet, with a really good mattress. He eats little before bed, and finds skipping alcohol helps a lot.

More controversially, on nights he can't sleep he takes a very low dose of a sleep aid. If you already sleep well, he advises against it.

His favorite: 10 to 15 minutes of full-spectrum light most mornings. If you try one thing on his list, he says, try this.

Exercise and food

Exercise comes second. After trying several programs, he settled on lifting heavy weights three times a week, plus some interval training.

Third is food. He rarely eats breakfast, so most days he goes about 15 hours without eating. He doubts that suits most people.

Sugar makes him feel worst, and his willpower is weak, so junk food stays out of the house. Caffeine: two espressos a day.

He's been vegetarian since childhood, and settled on his supplements after a year of blood tests, every three months.

Everything else

His ideal workspace: natural light, quiet, long uninterrupted stretches, and comfort. He also scripts his repeated chores and learned to type fast.

Sometimes motivation vanishes for a week or two. His only answer is to wait it out, trusting the fog always clears.

Overcommit a little: a slightly-too-full plate sharpens your focus. Overcommit a lot, and it all falls apart.

And never trade away family and friends for productivity. You'd be less happy, and probably less productive too.

In short

Direction beats speed: think hard about what to work on.

Do work you like, with people who push you to be better.

Lists, momentum, and a quick no to everything else.

Sleep, exercise and food are part of the job.

The original says it better than this. Read it: blog.samaltman.com/productivity