Steal Sam Altman's Genius Note-Taking Method (Pocket Notebook Power!)

Hey, guys, today's video is going to be something a little bit fun and different. Actually, a few weeks ago, I was watching a video with David Perell. I think I pronounced that correctly. And he does a lot of videos on how people write and interviews a lot of really interesting folks, interviews them about their process of writing. And this particular video had Sam Altman, which most of you probably know from OpenAI and previous to that, Y Combinator. So, venture capitalist, super duper, you know, smart and innovative person.

In particular, he's someone that, as you can imagine, is just full of ideas constantly. So, kind of at early stage of this interview, I'm gonna play a little clip here in a second. He actually is sparked to kind of talk about his process of note-taking, and he pulls out of his pocket a little pocket notebook. And so, I'm gonna let you take a look at this clip, and then I'll be right back. After that, we'll do a little top down and we'll talk about this strategy and how I've actually been using it for the last couple weeks.

Let's take a look at the video first and have Sam personally explain his strategy in using a pocket notebook.

“Do you take notes during the week that you reflect on or is it just on your hand?”

“Yes, no, I'm a huge nuttaker.”

“Oh, tell me about that.”

“There's all these fancy notebooks in the world. You don't want those. You definitely want a spiral notebook because one thing that's important is you can rip pages out frequently, and you also want it to lie like flat and open on the table. And if you open pages, you want them to be able to lay like this, whatever. You definitely want to be able to rip pages out. I'm a big believer of like, I take a bunch of notes and then I like clearly like rip them out so I can look at multiple pages at the same time. And I can like crumple them up and throw them on the floor, and I'm done. Like, when our house cleaner comes in on like a whatever, there's just these pile of crumpled papers that I'm like type my notes whatever on the floor. You definitely want like a kind of paper that is like good to write on, which is a feel thing, but most papers are terrible to write on. You want a hard front and back to the notepad, and you also want to be in the confidant pocket.”

“I was about to say that. I think the Uniball Micro 0.5 pen is the best pen overall, but the Muji 0.36 or 0.37 in dark blue ink is a very nice pen for other reasons. So, those are the two I would use, but I think this kind of notebook and one of those two pens is the right answer.”

“And how many notes are you writing per day on that thing?”

“I go through one of these like every three, two or three weeks.”

“Oh wow, so you're taking a lot of...”

“Well, you can see how much I've ripped out. Like this used to have like a hundred pages in it. So, that's how you think about it.”

“So, you're gonna basically take the notebook and then you rip out the pages and you don't have completed notebooks.”

“I don't have completed notebooks.”

“Wow. What inspired this? Where does this come from?”

“Lots of trial and error, uh, many kinds of notebooks, many pens, many different systems. This one's really good.”

So, you saw how Sam does it. And so, I went out to Amazon and found something that was kind of consistent with his prescription. These notebooks—actually, this is a brand that I've used pretty consistently for—and you've heard me talk about this on other videos, my three notebook system. I have kind of a horizontal notebook orientation that I put underneath my keyboard, and this is the same brand, and so it meets the prescription.

Also, I had this pen laying around, which is actually a space pen, and interestingly enough, it's the only pen that really fits in here, so kind of like the most interesting part of this system because in this system I kind of put aside and I don't think I'll do this for very long. We'll talk about this in a second. My Lochby pocket journal, which I like to kind of keep.

The problem with this, particularly with what you heard Sam talk about in the use of his notebook, is he just tears sheets out. And so, this is like ideal for kind of keeping track of those as you're indexing them. Now, I know he talks about sort of tearing them out and immediately putting them into, you know, some other system. Again, I'll talk about that. I put mine into Notion.

But, you know, a system like this and using my pocket notebook from Lochby would kind of be the best scenario, but unfortunately, this doesn't do the job. It doesn't fit in here because of that spiral thing. So, you're kind of left, instead of having this nice little thing to have your writing instruments on, you're kind of stuck with figuring out how to find something that fits here.

I'm not a big ballpoint guy, but this is really all that fits, and I kind of went through my collection of pens. This is my Uni1, which I love as well. Kind of does it, but it's kind of a pain in the butt. Just stick it in and out there. So, this is probably, if I do this more often or long term, I'm probably just kind of suck it up and go with this because I like this so much better than a ballpoint.

Yeah, my other go-to kind of does it. So, that might be an option as well. The larger, this is the micro Uniball, it'll fit in there, but the kind of the normal size, for whatever reason, is a little bit thicker and so it doesn't fit in there. Of course, you're like a complete no-go for any sort of fountain pen, especially if it's the least bit nice. So, you're kind of stuck. You know, maybe you do a Parker or something like that.

So, there are options for sure in this, but let's take a look at how I'm using this system and we'll go through a little bit of a top down and take a look at this. I'll go through the complete system from what I put in here particularly, and then also, what do I rip out, and what I do with it, and you can see, well, maybe you can't really notice, but I've already started to pull some pages out of this and index them into Notion.

So, let's take a look at the top down.

All right, let's do a top down, and sort of review how I'm implementing Sam Altman's Pocket Notebook strategy. So, again, if you've ever watched some of my videos before, you know, I'm a big fan of the Lochby for a couple of different reasons. One, I can store, you know, whatever my writing utensils and appliances are really easy. I can stick, you know, standard field notes in here.

You can use the Lochby version if you prefer that, or if you want to go to the cheaper option from Amazon, this is the field book, and so I'm a big, you know, user of this, an active user, as you can see, of this system. To some degree, I kind of do some of what Sam is talking about, and then I kind of earmark some stuff to put into my sort of larger, you know, database, which is Notion.

However, I thought there were some interesting features to what Sam had to say here. So, one, you can kind of have a similar setup and having, like I talk in kind of the intro about your pin options or a little more sort of constrained. But you can certainly find some pins that work in here so that it's kind of a self-contained system, you know, to do extra loops or, you know, have necessarily a notebook cover or pocket notebook cover.

So, that's kind of interesting. Like I said, I pulled out these and I'll link to the actual brand. So, this is a great, great brand. I look through a couple to find something that would sort of satisfy the specs of what Sam Altman was talking about. So, this is what I came up with.

It's got the craft cover, so of course, you can write on this, label it in whatever way you would want to do it. Then, as you go in here, this is a really good paper. You could actually even do some watercolor on this if you wanted to and some sketching. I will probably do that. But you can see in the first sort of week or so, I've already torn some pages out of here.

But I wanted to give you a real feel for sort of, you know, specifically what I'm using this notebook for. So, you can see here, this is a podcast, and I'm working on a book currently. So, you'll probably learn more about this on this channel as I progress a little bit further in this, so I took some notes specific to some book advice that Tim Ferris—I think this was, yeah this is Tim Ferris and Ryan Holiday podcast together.

I can't remember who was lead; I think Ryan was leading him. But anyway, grabbed some notes there. This is definitely gonna get ripped out and put and indexed inside of my Notion database because this is a specific advice, particularly this around beta readers that I'm going to use.

You can continue it over here. This is another podcast with Rick Rubin, and again, grabbed some quotes. So, it's kind of feeling a little bit like a commonplace notebook up to this. There you go. I've got the working title of my new book. Again, it's a book advice that I got somewhere along the way that I want to incorporate in there.

And then this like sort of again the commonplace approach. I think this is kind of how this will work. However, I think you're going to see some ideas in here before, but again, sort of capturing some interesting things here. This got some book reviews and some things to kind of look into from some of those audience development.

This is a concept inside of the book that I'm working on, and so I was kind of working through and thinking through some ideas there. Again, something that's going to come out and will ultimately be incorporated on. I'll give you a look at this, rig it on a no card here, and you can probably tell that I'm a fan of Brian Holliday and his approach to book.

So, this is actually the book as it stands today so far, so there's a lot of the research that's going into that. So, this particular, you know, item will be pulled out and put into that stack and built into a card. Progressive writing was a concept that I wanted to look into more depth. I didn't really understand that. I went quickly where I heard it, and so I just put it on here as a note to myself to do a little more research and see if that's useful.

So again, book recommendation, some pieces from that. Another concept that I heard that I wanted to do a little deeper dive on in the future. This is a tip on using chat GPT. This is a concept, again, that I'm going to take out and put into a piece of content that I haven't developed yet.

So it was a theme; something triggered the thought, and I just kind of wrote it down on here. It's like, hey, I need to talk to people about why it's hard to do PPC on your own, if you're not an expert. This is kind of interesting too, in the concept of personal brands. I wanted to reach these to individuals in a little more depth.

Interestingly enough, as I started doing that, Napoleon Hill is a bit of a shister. Apparently, there's a Gizmodo article a little bit older now. It kind of talks about him as somewhat of a charlatan. So, I know a lot of people respect him, and maybe the writings still have some validity, but it's kind of interesting. As you start to research these people and sort of the story behind them, sometimes you may come to different conclusions than kind of what you originally thought.

So anyway, that was a note there. Oh, here we go. We're talking about this. This is me sort of outlining this particular video and the concept that I wanted to bring to you and kind of share with you on how using this.

So, a couple of things just to go specific to this. As I flip through this and say, I mentioned this and I took this to heart, like you can see I ripped this out, and this is something I was not doing before. So if you kind of look at my normal method, even though I ripped some of these pages out, I used both sides of the page, and so as a result of that, I potentially lose part of that information particularly if I'm, you know, moving in. Obviously, if I move it, I can use both, but if I want to put it in a different place that I can see like my book writing process.

We have different tabs here, and so each note should be relatively discrete, and so his process captures that better. I made sure that I continued to do that by only using one side of the page.

Then the other thing that I did I don't think he mentioned this but that I found as I was moving through this; because only using one side of the page and you're trying to keep each sort of note somewhat discrete, you move through these pages really quickly, right? So, I've only been using this for a week or so, probably, you know, almost a third of the way through the notebook.

As a result of that, it's kind of hard to figure out where you are because you tend to—it's not like you open a couple of pages, and then you're ready to write. So, I inserted kind of this additional feature, just a simple sticky note where I put on the back side of the last page that I worked on.

So as I pick this up and I want to grab a quick note because that's the intent of this, it is to sort of quickly put down a single discrete note. If you've got more you're working through a book or something, do multiple of these; when I pick this up, I want to be super quick and efficient here.

Like I said, I think this is something that I'm really enjoying. So even if I don't keep with this form factor because I'm still kind of a big fan of this pocket journal, the whole system, so to speak, you know, I may resort to this.

The only thing about this is these are much smaller notebooks, so I'll literally go through this in a week. I don't know if that's effective, so I'm gonna have to figure out how to kind of blend these together. But I can't tell you that I'm really enjoying this process, and I can see how Sam Altman came to this refined process because it's very tuned in to someone who, either their job or just the way their mind works—I've talked about this before—is just sort of constantly full of ideas that you want to make sure you capture.

This is definitely the way to do it. And it's much more efficient or effective at taking everything you capture here. Being comfortable ripping out those pages and getting them into a more comprehensive or kind of the master second brain, which in my case is that database or series of databases inside of Notion.

So definitely encourage you to try this out. In the description, I'll have links to this notebook that I use, a couple of the pens that I found work, you know, really well inside of this system, and then, of course, I'll also link to my Lochby because if you haven't tried this, I encourage you to do this.

If you've never done any sort of pocket journaling before, I would encourage you to either get this Lochby system, which comes with one of these notebooks. You see I'm a big fan of the dot grid, or grab some field notes or kind of the cheaper alternative to that field book.

Again, I'll link to all these in the description, but I would encourage you to potentially start here for a couple of different reasons. One, it's kind of fun to have a system like this, and maybe you don't make the investment in the Lochby cover yet.

But starting here versus here could be interesting because I think one of the sort of most important things in starting a pocket notebook or journaling habit is to sort of quickly and, well, quickly, move through and complete one of these notebooks and get that sort of feeling of traction and understanding of how to make sure that you get this into your daily flow so you're really capturing those ideas and seeing the value of this versus, let's say, using your phone.

There are a lot of advantages to doing this, not only because it just kind of works in a different way, but just being able to get off your phone and thinking in an analog way is super powerful. So, anyway, whichever of these you try, I would encourage you to try the Sam Altman bet approach to this.

Take a look at that video again or scrub it back through and rewatch kind of how he explains it, and then take a look at how I applied it and see what you think would work for you, but definitely encourage you to give it a try.

All right, I hope you enjoyed kind of the top-down view as I went through this. Like I said, I'm still super conflicted because this is my favorite—my go-to. You can even see here on the desk that I use the larger journal, and this is where I kind of took the notes on the video.

So, I'm not abandoning my Lochby, and it's still part of my three notebook system, but there's something really compelling about just being comfortable kind of ripping things out of here. You can kind of do this, you know, with field notes as well, and you can see I've kind of dog-eared some things and have ripped some pages out of here.

I tend to throw these away anyway, so there's a good possibility that, you know, I just continue to combine this with my Lochby so that I can capture some pages and put them in the side before I index them and continue to use the Lochby and have all the opportunity to use the kind of instruments that I like to use there.

But this was kind of fun to go through. And like I said, I've been using this for two or three weeks. I'll continue kind of working through this. The other thing that I like, I haven't done a lot of, but this paper inside of this notebook, you know, works really good if you want to do some sketches and watercolors as well, which I like to do.

So that's another option for this. So I hope you enjoyed this video. I hope you like anything; give these little ideas a test and see how it works in your own approach to the system, you know, if you're like me, for B2B marketing or whatever your particular job is.

Folks, I hope you enjoyed this video, a little bit different, exploring Sam Altman's approach to pocket notebooks, pocket journaling, and kind of his system of ID80 and capturing, and then ultimately documenting or moving those ideas into something more substantive, whether it be content or the database like I do in Notion.

I kind of explored my system and adaptation of it, and so would encourage you to take a look at this and try it. If you enjoyed this video, I'd love for you to like it and potentially subscribe to it.

Every time you like a video gives me a better idea kind of what you're looking for from me as I grow this channel. And then also, down in the description, everything that we talked about today is linked up. Those are affiliate links, so every time something looks interesting or compelling to you, if you buy it through that link, it helps feedback some funds to the channel so we can help it grow and continue to offer you a great experience.

So, I hope you enjoyed this. Again, like us, subscribe, and we'll see you next time.