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As Warren Buffett says, build a company that idiots could run because eventually they will. So this is what you want. Basically a performance machine that idiots can run.

[About defining your environment] Your environment is made up of other groups that directly influence what you do, such as customers, vendors, and competitors.

And then another good physics tool is thinking about things in the limit. If you take a particular thing and you scale it to a very large number or to a very small number, how do things change? Both in number of things you manufacture, something like that, and then in time. Yeah, let's say, take an example of manufacturing, which I think is just a very underrated problem. Like I said, it's much harder to take an advanced technology part and bring it into volume manufacturing, than it is to design it in the first place. More is magnitude. So let's say you're trying to figure out, why is this part or product expensive? Is it because of something fundamentally foolish that we're doing? Or is it because our volume is too low? And so then you say, okay, well what if our volume was a million units a year? Is it still expensive? That's what I'm radical, thinking about things to the limit. If it's too expensive at a million units a year, then volume is not the reason why your thing is expensive. There's something fundamental about the design. And then you then can focus on the reducing complexity or something like that in the design. Gotta change the design to, change the part to be something that is not fundamentally expensive.

Figure out what gives you new ideas, and make sure you incorporate that into your routine. For me this is talking to people, tweeting, writing in my notebook, long conversations with friends (especially late night or while walking). For other people this is showering, baths, long walks, runs, etc. Make sure you “harvest” these ideas too, i.e. write them down somewhere so they don’t get lost.

Highs that don’t lead to subsequent lows: • Meditation, gratitude, prayer, journaling, unconditional love. • Yoga, exercise, play, nature walks. • Creating art, reading for fun, singing, poetry. • Practicing a craft, pursuing curiosity, work done for its own sake, flow.

[How to maintain effectiveness in meetings?] The supervisor should keep things on track, with the subordinates bearing the brunt of working the issues.

So basically what you are doing when building a company is building an engine. At first you have a drawing on a white board and you are architecting it, and it looks especially clean, beautiful, and pretty. But when you actually start translating it to practice it actually starts looking more like this and you're holding it together with duct tape. It takes a lot of effort from people to hold it together, that's why people work 80-100 hours a week. It's that heroic effort to keep this thing together because you don't actually, yet, have polished metal in place. Eventually you want to construct a very high performance machine. A machine that almost nobody really has to worry about every hour, every minute.

The oxygen mask rule: ‘you can’t help your company if you’re not able to perform at your best. Create routines to stay physically, emotionally, and mentally fit. Take vacations.

[Think Weeks are] CPU time. It's time that you get to think about things... When you write down these things to think about, that's like the code, you know, when will low interest rates end? Why sin't the clinic working better? Okay, the private sector is good at this, do they have capacity? How many cities is this going to get into? Have we done the safety tests? Have we really underestimated this? What is in human sewage? Then you think, okay, do I need to read some books about that? Who do I need to talk about that? And, some things I just say to myself I need to think.

[Why does Intel promote egalitarianism?] In our business we have to mix knowledge-power people with position-power people daily, and together they make decisions that could affect us for years to come. Status symbols do not promote the flow of ideas, facts, and points of view.