Key productivity advice from Sam Altman

Plus, how creative pros may continue to prosper in the age of AI.

In recent months, I have written fewer design tips and “what’s new” articles, on my blog. The reason was simple: I needed to reflect on whether the direction and value I provide to you is still relevant. On the other hand, I see many other designers on social media intensifying their activities, doing the same things but now amplified with generative AI - which I think is just a rat race without a winner.

The fact that the industry is changing is undeniable. Evaluating the direction, reimagining which skills to develop, and deciding what activities to focus on is more important than ever. This requires reflection, and reflection requires time.

While doing my research, I found an interesting article about productivity from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. It helped me rethink what I should focus on as a designer and creative professional building a personal brand online.

In his blog, Sam Altman (I placed the link to the full article at the end of the article) made the following statement that resonates deeply with me:

„It doesn’t matter how fast you move if it’s in a worthless direction. Picking the right thing to work on is the most important element of productivity and usually almost ignored. So think about it more!”

I couldn’t agree more. However, many people, once established in their profession or workflows, have trouble discovering that perspective.

Choosing the mountain you want to climb

I love this metaphor because every summer and winter, I take my family to the mountains and enjoy days spent on trails, observing spectacular landscapes and wild nature. Choosing the right destination depending on the season, weather and our physical conditions, in most cases determine our level of satisfaction from the trip at the end of the day.

With this thought, choosing the right thing to do, I don’t necessarily want you to rethink your entire career. I still believe that wonderful times lie ahead for designers and other creative pros who leverage AI to do their best work ever. Instead, consider which skills, projects, and activities you should focus on.

If you choose wisely, not only will your career prosper, but you’ll also see a positive impact on your productivity and overall satisfaction (and stop worrying about whether AI will take your job).

How to find the right thing

Sam Altman’s words align closely with the Japanese philosophy called Ikigai, which includes principles for leading a long and satisfying life. In short, it focuses on four factors that, once met together, shape the direction you should follow:

Ikigai suggests that you should choose to do:

• What you love.

• What you are good at.

• What the world needs.

• What you can be paid for.

This framework helps a lot in taking the right direction in life. For many creative professionals, finding their Ikigai has never been an issue. However, as mentioned earlier, recent changes have created uncertainty about where the AI revolution will lead us. Now we can take a step forward and include that in our considerations.

When thinking about Ikigai in the context of AI, when you read the phrase “what the world needs,” you might add “what the world needs from humans.” This slight modification can help you focus on activities that are difficult to replicate or automate or those that especially value human input.

Now, keeping that in mind, observe what is happening on social media - many creators replicate similar designs and posts on Instagram or X, trying to be faster and produce more content all the time with the goal to reach the next client. With AI, this trend is only amplified.

Is this the right race we should be chasing as creative professionals?

If you ask me, I think that is it an easy way to blend into the crowd and get lost in a flood of repetitive AI-generated content.

Amplifying your focus on the right things

After reading all this, you might wonder if using AI is a bad thing. Absolutely not! We just need to apply it to the proper tasks.

When thinking about this, I remember a post on X from Joanna Maciejewska:

I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.

Then, let me add another thought on productivity from Sam Altman, that is very much complementary to previous quote:

“I can’t be very productive working on things I don’t care about or don’t like. So I just try not to put myself in a position where I have to do them (by delegating, avoiding, or something else).”

Combine those two ideas, and you have a clear answer. While I’m not sure if Sam was thinking about leveraging AI for delegation, it seems like agents may be ideal for many boring, tedious tasks. While AI can’t do laundry yet, it can write meeting summaries, find useful benchmarks, fix typos and grammar—and that’s just the beginning.

One great example I’ve experienced recently is working with Notion. Many of us use it daily. In the past, I created an entire system to manage my content as a designer and creator. That system took me hours to develop while learning advanced features in parallel.

Recently, I wanted to refresh my workflow system for a new initiative. With Notion AI, it took me about one hour. All I needed to do was talk to the Notion AI agent, clearly articulate my needs, review the results, and request modifications. No more manual database or page configuration! In less than 60 minutes (compared to about 6 hours before), I could enjoy the content creation process, scheduling, and repurposing content for social media. AI freed up time for me to focus on more fascinating tasks.

The most promising direction for designers

I always say that everyone should find their own path (Ikigai) or specialization. But if you are looking for more specific advice on what to do as a designer facing industry transformation because of AI, I would ask myself a following questions:

• What is the core of our profession?

• What am I paid for?

• What I don’t want to do?

• What skills are worth to invest?

I did this exercise on my own, and came with following conclusions (feel free to stop for a while and before reading my results, answer these questions on your own):

• Good design is good business - I see future design work even closer to the business than today, this means I should seek opportunities to strengthen understanding of how business operates, and what are the goals of my team or partners. Once I got it I may confidently translate these priorities into design.

• Build the stuff - Steve Jobs (oh yes… adding this name to the article surely makes it more serious ;) ) said that “design is how it works”, he was right - now it’s important to remember that even more. With no-code tools like Framer & Webflow amplified with AI capabilities, we can actually build the solutions, or at least prototype them ( this will help developers implement them easier with higher precision).

• We are all design directors - I am not afraid of loosing part of control when building UI. When collaborating with AI I see myself in a position of Design Director, that highlights the vision, strategy and the direction, communicating it clearly to his “AI employee”. Then I evaluate results and ask to iterate till it’s good enough.

• Partners, not clients - this may sound obvious for many, but it is worth to repeat it myself. Treating client as one-shot gig, is the area that has highest opportunity to be replaced by generative AI. I want to invest in a good relationship, that will help me understand the client needs deeper, make better recommendations through design, and contribute to success of my business partners.

• Automation - AI will free myself of thinking on repeatable tasks, so obviously I seek for opportunities to automate everything what I don’t want to do myself.

• Beyond design efficiency - design systems, repeatable patterns they made design valuable to business, but at the same time they make design easy to generate by AI. We should strenghen our creative muscles and look into the future - things that didn’t exist before, including more artistic approach. I want to seek for these aspects, or elements that AI can’t catch yet, something hard to be reproduced.

These are principles that I want to use to continue work as creative pro. I hope that once you do the same, you’ll be also much more confident about making your career future-proof.

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Exercise for the upcoming week

Let this article be a starting point for you to take action.

You know that Sam Altman thinks of productivity primarily as doing the right thing—not as just boosting efficiency. You may read his full view on productivity on his blog. Maybe it’s worth starting to think this way too?

Stop rushing for a while, and consider whether the tasks you are doing are the right ones. If not, how could you change, delegate, or automate them?

Do you feel confident with your current direction? If you have doubts, experiment by reevaluating your path using Ikigai principles.

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