Sam Altman on Deep Work Quotes

"I find it very helpful to have long blocks of time where I’m not interrupted."

"The world wants to pull you toward superficiality; you have to fight for depth."

"Energy and focus are the two things that matter most for output."

"I don't believe in the 100-hour work week for most people, but I do believe in intense focus."

"You need to have the discipline to stay focused on the long-term vision."

"The best way to be productive is to have a lot of things to do and then ruthlessly prioritize."

"If you can't focus for a few hours at a time, you're going to have a hard time building anything significant."

"If you're not spending your time on the most important thing, why are you working at all?"

"Hard work is not a substitute for thinking clearly."

"I think focus is a huge force multiplier."

"Great things happen when you get a small group of people to focus intensely on one problem."

"The most successful people I know are obsessed with their work and spend huge amounts of time in deep thought."

"Distraction is the enemy of great work."

"Focus is about saying no to a thousand good ideas so you can say yes to the one great one."

"The most important thing is to find something that you can be obsessed with."

"Productivity in the wrong direction is just a faster way to fail."

"It’s much better to do one thing perfectly than ten things poorly."

"The biggest mistake people make is they don't spend enough time thinking about what to work on."

"I value my time more than almost anything else, so I guard it fiercely."

"You want to be in a state of flow as much as possible."

"Success comes from a combination of working hard and working on the right things with total focus."

"Compound interest works for your career too, and it starts with deep, focused effort."

"I think one of the most important skills is being able to sit in a room and think about a hard problem until it's solved."

"I find that I do my best work when I have a clear goal and no meetings."

"I try to avoid context switching as much as I possibly can."

"Most people waste most of their time on things that don’t matter."

"Don't let the urgent crowd out the important."

"You have to be able to ignore the noise to get the signal."

"If you can find a way to get 10% more out of your brain every day, that compounds incredibly."

"It is very hard to do great work without some amount of focus."

"I try to keep my schedule as empty as possible so I can react to things and have time for deep thought."

"The ability to learn new things quickly is a superpower, but it requires deep concentration."

"Cognitive load is real; protect your brain's capacity for the hard stuff."