Sam Altman on the importance of focus, Tom Brady's advice on becoming the best, and Facebook's old employee handbook

Welcome back to the Z Fellows newsletter! Every Monday we share 3 ideas - to help you build companies, ship products, and create your life's work.

1: Sam Altman on the importance of focus

“If I had to distill my advice about how to operate down to only two words, I’d pick focus and intensity. These words seem to really apply to the best founders I know.

They are relentlessly focused on their product and growth. They don’t try to do everything—in fact, they say no a lot (this is hard because the sort of people that start companies are the sort of people that like doing new things.)

As a general rule, don’t let your company start doing the next thing until you’ve dominated the first thing. No great company I know of started doing multiple things at once—they start with a lot of conviction about one thing, and see it all the way through.

You can do far fewer things than you think.”

Source: https://playbook.samaltman.com/

2: Tom Brady’s advice on becoming the best

"I'm in a locker room with every guy for twenty years.

I look at everything they're doing. Everything they're taking. The way they eat. The way they talk about their body. And I'm constantly going, 'Okay, that doesn't work. That doesn't work.'

But then, 'He's onto something.' And then you incorporate them into your routine. Then you go prove it.

"Inherently we're taught that hard work is going to get you everywhere you want to go. ‘I can work out once a day, so if I work out twice a day, I'll be better.’ My view of that is, if you're working harder at the wrong things, you're getting better at getting worse. If you have a good routine, a good process, I think you see the benefit."

Source: The Performance Paradox by Eduardo Briceño

3: Facebook’s old employee handbook

Best of The Week

See you next Monday,

- The Z Fellows Team

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