Sam Altman on Deep Work Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I use a lot of lists to clear my head so I can focus on the task at hand."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I try to arrange my life so that I have the most possible time to think."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"Distraction is the enemy of great work."

"I think focus is a huge force multiplier."

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

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

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

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

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

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