Sam Altman on Priorities Quotes

"The difference between a good year and a great year is often just how well you picked your top three priorities in January."

"I try to spend as much time as possible on the things that only I can do, and delegate or ignore the rest."

"Prioritize work that has high optionality or high compounding potential. Avoid dead ends."

"Compounding is the most powerful force in the universe. You should prioritize things that compound over time."

"Prioritize speed. In a startup, speed is one of your few advantages over larger competitors."

"The best way to stay focused is to be deeply passionate about your priority. Passion makes the 'no' easier."

"A big secret of the most successful people is that they are very good at ignoring things that aren't their top priority."

"If you are working on a startup, your priority should be making a product that people love. Everything else is secondary."

"Always prioritize the bottleneck. If you fix anything else, you aren't actually making progress."

"The most important thing to prioritize is your own learning. If you stop learning, you stop growing."

"Most people waste most of their time on things that don't matter. Once you have figured out what to do, be relentless about getting your small handful of priorities done quickly."

"Saying no is a superpower. It allows you to protect your focus for the things that will actually change the world."

"You have to be willing to say no to a lot of things to be able to say yes to the one or two things that truly matter."

"You should be thinking about what you want to achieve in ten years, and then prioritize your daily tasks to align with that vision."

"You have to be ruthless with your time. It’s the only resource you can’t get more of."

"The best founders are the ones who can look at a list of 100 urgent things and pick the one that is actually important."

"If you don't get your priorities right, you will spend your life working very hard on things that don't move the needle."

"You should always know what your number one priority is. If you don't know it, you haven't thought enough."

"It’s better to do one thing exceptionally well than ten things mediocrely. That requires hard choices about priorities."

"Don't prioritize status or optics. Prioritize substance and results."

"Extreme focus is required for extreme success. You can't do everything, and if you try, you'll end up doing nothing well."

"A common mistake is prioritizing the urgent over the important. You have to fight to keep the important on your calendar."

"You have to prioritize building a great team. Without the right people, your other priorities won't matter."

"One of the most important things I've learned is to ignore the noise and focus on the signals that actually lead to growth."

"Don't get caught up in 'fake work.' Fake work is anything that makes you feel productive but doesn't actually contribute to your primary goal."

"The secret to high output is to work on a very small number of things and to be extremely intense about them."

"If you have more than three priorities, you have no priorities."

"The most successful people I know are obsessed with their priorities. They don't just have them; they live by them."

"I think the most important thing for a founder is to be able to prioritize. There are a thousand things you could be doing, but only one or two really matter."

"Prioritize the long term. Most people are too focused on the next week; the real gains come from the next decade."

"It is much more important to work on the right thing than it is to work many hours. Most people waste most of their time on things that don't matter."

"The hard part is deciding what to work on. Once you've decided, the execution is just a matter of discipline."

"Focus is a force multiplier on work. Almost everyone would be better served by spending more time thinking about what to focus on."