#100 - Sam Altman - Y Combinator  ## Metadata - Author: **Y Combinator** - Full Title: #100 - Sam Altman - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/a5c0bfee-870e-4110-b126-1f4a269c4dbb ## Highlights - Minimizing Cognitive Load Key takeaways: • It is important to minimize distractions from unimportant things in order to focus on more important tasks. • It is important to have a fixed budget of cognitive output per day in order to avoid getting overwhelmed by the demands of life. Transcript: Speaker 2 So I wanted to do something a little bit different for this episode, and just break apart a lot of your essays. So I went back in time. We'll see. All right. 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 one. 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 pass That kind of purpose in general, like purpose in your work. The first one, 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. Speaker 1 Yeah. 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 playing status and power games that don't matter, but feel so fun and so important. Or just 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. ([Time 0:00:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/88c764e3-0337-43fc-aa36-2a29582f5750)) - The Pros and Cons of Taking a Year Off Key takeaways: • It is important to pursue projects that interest you, even if they will likely fail. • It is important to take a break from your work every once in a while to recharge and explore new interests. • It is important to be able to openly discuss your work with others without feeling judged. Transcript: Speaker 1 It's like I am skeptical of these like systems where you try to have like everything on the same rubric. Yeah. So I, 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 realized 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. Yeah. So like opening, I really works. Why see really works? I've done plenty of other things in the last five years that have not worked at all. Speaker 2 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 or year before you were doing a lot of political stuff. Speaker 1 Yeah, I still think that is going to work. I am, let's not. Let me, let me try to frame it in like an area where a lot of things went wrong at once. But in a way that was really good. Okay. So I sold my startup when I was like 26, something like that. And I worked the aquarium coming for a little while, maybe 25, I don't remember. And then I took a year off. And in that year, which is hard to do, it's really hard to do in Silicon Valley because like in a place where social status is determined by your job and what you're working on, like when You shove 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. ([Time 0:05:35](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7969cd88-44eb-4a1f-ae85-7434af1080ec)) - How Psychedelics Can Help You Achieve Your Goals Key takeaways: • Psychedelics can help people abstract from their daily habits and give them the motivation to pursue things they were on the fence about. • It is important to have people around you who will make you more ambitious and shift your perspective. Transcript: Speaker 2 It doesn't happen very often. Man it's like losing someone close to you losing things for the psychedelic path has become very popular and yeah just on reading the research and you know limited experience you're Like oh so it's both abstracting you from your daily habits and then giving you the motivation to pursue things that you were kind of on the fence with. Speaker 1 Yeah I mean I don't think you need drugs for any of that. And I think you just need to commit to do it and give yourself like a space and a format and people to do it with. The other like thing that I found for all of this stuff that really matters is surrounding yourself with people who will make you more ambitious sort of be more and make you more inquisitive, Shift your perspective more is really ([Time 0:18:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d6ce3a1c-21d3-4b95-8263-bb9831d71793))