“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.”
Only then can he get to work thinking through tough ideas. Each time he sits down to write, he comes away shocked at the power of this seemingly simple exercise.
“I find it astonishing how much writing just for yourself … helps clarify what you actually think, helps sharpen stuff in a way that for me—and I think for a lot of other people—is somehow impossible to do, just like thinking carefully on a long hike,” he said on the How I Write podcast.
“It’s harder to hide really messy thinking when you have to actually write it down and stare at it.”
“Clear communication is very much less important, and very much downstream, of actually clear thinking … Unclear communication is a symptom of unfocused thinking, for the most part.”
Fortune reached out to OpenAI for comment.
Similarly, Branson, the cofounder of Virgin Group, said it’s hard to find him without a way to write down his thoughts.
“I go through dozens of notebooks every year and write down everything that occurs to me each day. Some of the ideas contained inside end up turning into reality, and some don’t—but they are all noteworthy,” he wrote in a 2017 blog post.
“An idea not written down is an idea lost. When inspiration calls, you’ve got to capture it.”
And while he admitted he isn’t opposed to digital notes, what matters most is that some form of note-taking is happening: “It doesn’t matter how you record your notes—as long as you do.”
