Sam Altman on the biggest mistake talented and hard-working people often make

You should have a very high bar for doing anything but thinking about what to work on. I think that's just sort of a higher impact thing most of the time. Of course that doesn't work all the time. At some point you actually have to go execute. But I often see people who I think are really talented, work super hard, are super productive, just not spend much time or surprisingly often not really spend any time at all in a meaningful way thinking about what they're going to work on. And I think that's like the high order bit. I still, if I have a very hard problem or if I feel a little bit confused about something, have not found anything better to do than to sit down and make myself write it out, how I'm thinking about it, what I think somebody should be, try to figure out how to explain it to myself or to somebody else. It is a super powerful thinking tool. I write things down for myself the most and for private groups the second most and public at this point very rarely.