Sam Altman Blog Notes #3: The days are Long but Decades are Short

Photo by AB on Unsplash

1. Never put your family, friends, or significant other low on your priority list.
2. Time is extremely limited and goes by fast. Don’t spend time trying to maintain relationships with people you don’t like and cut negative people out of your life. Negativity is really bad.
3. How to succeed: pick the right thing to do (this is critical and usually ignored), focus, believe in yourself (especially when others tell you it’s not going to work), develop personal connections with people that will help you, learn to identify talented people, and work hard. It’s hard to identify what to work on because original thought is hard.
4. Work very hard — a surprising number of people will be offended that you choose to work hard — but not so hard that the rest of your life passes you by. Aim to be the best in the world at whatever you do professionally. Even if you miss, you’ll probably end up in a pretty good place. Don’t be afraid to take some career risks, especially early on. Most people pick their career fairly randomly — really think hard about what you like, what fields are going to be successful, and try to talk to people in those fields.
5. Talk to people more. Read more long content and less tweets. Watch less TV. Spend less time on the Internet.
6. Have clear goals for yourself every day, every year, and every decade.
7. One of the benefits of working hard is that good opportunities will come along, but it’s still up to you to jump on them when they do.
8. Go out of your way to be around smart, interesting, ambitious people. Work for them and hire them (in fact, one of the most satisfying parts of work is forging deep relationships with really good people). Try to spend time with people who are either among the best in the world at what they do or extremely promising but totally unknown. It really is true that you become an average of the people you spend the most time with.
9. Get rid of distractions in your life.
10. 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.
11. If you think you’re going to regret not doing something, you should probably do it. Regret is the worst, and most people regret far more things they didn’t do than things they did do. When in doubt, kiss the boy/girl.
12. Exercise. Eat well. Sleep. Get out into nature with some regularity.
13. Go out of your way to help people. Few things in life are as satisfying. Be nice to strangers. Be nice even when it doesn’t matter.
14. This too shall pass.
15. Do new things often. This seems to be really important. Not only does doing new things seem to slow down the perception of time, increase happiness, and keep life interesting, but it seems to prevent people from calcifying in the ways that they think. Aim to do something big, new, and risky every year in your personal and professional life.
16. Don’t screw people and don’t burn bridges. Pick your battles carefully.
17. Be a doer, not a talker.
18. Given enough time, it is possible to adjust to almost anything, good or bad. Humans are remarkable at this.
19. The days are long but the decades are short.

Source: The days are long but the decades are short