Technology has slowly made taking physical notes a thing of the past, to the delight of Gen Z who have long embraced jotting down ideas on their phone or leaning on voice memos.
However, its complete demise may not happen anytime soon, at least if OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has anything to say about it. Despite being the leader of the company behind productivity-enhancing chatbot ChatGPT, the billionaire remains a staunch believer in writing physical notes. Especially when the going gets tough.
“I think of writing as externalized thinking. 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,” Altman said on the How I Write podcast.
“I’m a big believer of, I take a bunch of notes, and then I clearly rip them out so I can look at multiple pages at the same time, and I can crumple them up and throw them on the floor when I’m done.”
Note-taking is a practice that Altman maintains has helped him become a better thinker while building his $300 billion AI giant—and as well as wanting to crumple the notes up after, he has some more highly specific requirements when it comes to his note-taking habits.
