These disorders - schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, depression, addiction - they not only steal our time to live, they change who we are.

Many of the projects that we do that appear quite successful, it's actually often the second or third time we've given it a try.

I spend a lot of time going over old conversation summaries. A lot of the old ones are about ideas that ended in failure, the project didn't work. But hey, you know what? That was five years ago, and now computers are faster, or some new information has come along, the world is different. So we're able to reboot the project.

Synthesize new ideas constantly. Never read passively. Annotate, model, think, and synthesize while you read, even when you're reading what you conceive to be introductory stuff. That way, you will always aim towards understanding things at a resolution fine enough for you to be creative.

I often try to think about, What sounds like a bad idea, but if you find the right plan of attack, it's actually a really good idea? I spend a lot of time really trying to systematically tackle problems from different angles.

If we succeed, it makes no sense to keep it only for ourselves.

Work backward from your goal.