Here are the 2 pens that OpenAI’s Sam Altman says he uses to take notes

“There are all these fancy notebooks in the world. You don’t want them. You definitely want a spiral notebook, because one important thing is that you can tear out the pages frequently, and you also want it to lie, like, flat and open. on the table,” Altman told Perell.

Altman added that he likes notebooks with hard front and back covers that fit in your pocket.

The OpenAI boss also talked about his two favorite pens that he liked to use to take notes.

“I think the Uni-Ball Micro 0.5 pen is the best pen overall. But the Muji 0.36 or 0.37 with dark blue ink is a very nice pen for other reasons. So those are the two I would use,” he said Altman.

“I think this type of notebook and one of those two pens is the right answer,” Altman added.

Altman’s representatives at OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours.

Altman has long spoken of the benefits of putting his thoughts down on paper.

In April 2018, Altman said in a blog post that he liked to make his to-do lists with pen and paper.

“I prefer lists written on paper. It’s easy to add and remove tasks. I can access them during meetings without feeling rude. I rewrite the lists frequently, which forces me to think about everything on the list and gives me the opportunity to add and remove items,” Altman wrote.

To be sure, Altman isn’t the only business executive who prefers to write things down by hand.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Virgin founder Richard Branson and former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg are also known to carry notebooks with them.

“No matter where I am or what I’m doing – except maybe kitesurfing or swimming – I always have a notebook handy. My secret ‘life hack’ was to write it down too!” Branson wrote in a blog post published in April 2017.

“I can’t tell you where I’d be if I didn’t have a pen handy to write down my ideas as they came to me.”