Sam Altman: “Clarity of thinking, speed, and quality of execution are all linked”

I think of writing as sort of like externalized thinking. I still, if I have like a very hard problem or if I feel a little bit confused about something, have not found anything better to do than to like, sit down and make myself write it out. Write out, like what I'm, you know, how I'm thinking about it, what I think somebody should be. Try to, like, figure out how to explain it to myself or to somebody else. So I think it's just like, it is a super powerful thinking tool. I write for my. Write things down for myself or for the most, and for private groups, the second most, and public at this point, very rarely.

What are the different parameters of clear communication? There's sort of the sloganeering, there is a good tagline. There's also the depth. The idea maze.

Yeah. Actually, I think clear communication is very much less important and very much downstream of actually clear thinking. So if you know what you're going to do, and if you've figured out how to reduce that to the essence of why it's a good idea and what the plan is going to be, what the priorities are going to be, then communicating clearly about that is not so hard. But getting clear about the actual ideas is really hard. And so I think unclear communication is a symptom of unfocused thinking, for the most part.

Napoleon, he has a line about the importance of clear directives, clear communication, because when you're on the battlefield, you need to be able to articulate things simply and have alignment for the team. Lots of similarities with what you're saying.

I mean, I don't think that's just Napoleon. I think that as I understand it, I haven't studied a lot of military history, but that's like a pretty common refrain. Like that seems to have been borne out by history. But I also think that's born out in business, that clarity, speed, quality of execution, all linked.