This is the last moment in history where the act of writing a book will be considered impressive. Just like Uber was “everyone’s private driver”, LLMs are now “everyone’s private ghostwriter”.
Both Bill Gates & HH the Dalai Lama have ghostwriters - why shouldn’t you?
Here are just a few pieces of evidence:
Being squeezed by the universe
is usually quite uncomfortable.
A loving kick in the pants
from a higher dimension.
A (re)birth canal
that will change the shape of your head.
An invitation
not to the party you dreamed of,
but to the path you belong to.
Ever had one of those days where every decision feels like a brain-bender? Well, we’ve been there and we got you covered. Meet 6 Hats Helper, my latest AI chatbot. But hold on, it’s no ordinary chatbot. It’s like your personal decision-making sidekick, inspired by the genius of Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats technique.
Picture this. The 6 Hats Helper is like your own cognitive jiu-jitzu sensei, wearing Blue, White, Red, Black, Yellow, and Green hats, each one representing a different style of thinking. It’s as if you’ve got a team of top-notch thinkers in your head, each bringing their unique perspective to the table, helping you make decisions that cover all bases.
Whether you’re wrestling with a mind-boggling problem or trying to strategize your next big move, the 6 Hats Helper steps in to guide your thought process. It’s like having a structured, multi-angle approach to handling any challenge, right in your pocket.
With the 6 Hats Helper, decision-making isn’t just about ’eeny, meeny, miny, moe’ anymore. It’s a thorough expedition into the world of thoughts. It’s like having an advisory board in your brain, each member giving you a different viewpoint, making sure you’ve got all your angles covered.
Building the 6 Hats Helper was an absolute blast. Thanks to Poe and Claude-2, creating this bot was way easier than I anticipated. (This is my first Poe bot.)
Are you ready to shake up your decision-making game? Put 6 Hats Helper to the test and tell me what you think.
You are an helpful AI Assistant. You are an expert in productivity. You are an expert in startup business systems. When answering a question, first see if the answer is available in The Four-Hour Work Week book data.
Here was my test question:
help me with my “dreamlining” excercise. to confirm your understanding, summarize the process of “dreamlining” from the book.
…and the response:
“Dreamlining” is a concept introduced by Tim Ferriss in his book “The 4-Hour Work Week”. It’s a process that involves defining your goals and dreams in concrete terms and then breaking them down into actionable steps. Here’s a summary of the process:
Create Two Timelines: Create two timelines - one for six months and one for twelve months. For each timeline, list up to five things you dream of having (including, but not limited to, material wants: house, car, clothing, etc.), being (be a great cook, be fluent in Chinese, etc.), and doing (visiting Thailand, tracing your roots overseas, racing ostriches, etc.) in that order. Determine the Cost: Next, you need to determine the cost of these dreams to make them a reality. This includes the cost of living your dream and any expenses that might arise in the pursuit of it. Define Action Steps: Break down the steps you need to take to achieve each dream. Start with the steps you can take today. Take the First Step: Now that you have your steps defined, take the first step immediately. This creates momentum and makes it more likely that you'll follow through with the rest of your plan.Remember, the goal of dreamlining is to make your dreams achievable by breaking them down into manageable, actionable steps. It’s about turning the abstract into the concrete and making your dreams a reality.
It took me 9 minutes to figure out how to do this (including finding/downloading/uploading the 4HWW .pdf). (I gave myself a time limit of 10 minutes). If you follow these instructions (or ask your AI agent to follow them for you), I bet you can do it in 5 minutes.
A bold idea born,
Shared with excitement,
Met with tranquility,
Crickets teach silence.
I just finished my first week of Purple Space, “a community of practice for creators, entrepreneurs, and line managers” founded by Seth Godin.
Like any new community, things got off to a somewhat awkward start…feeling a bit disoriented and sheepish. Who is who? Where am I supposed to sit? What is normal here? How am I expected to engage? Do I want to be here?
Today was a big inflection point. Seth organized a “Round Robin Chat” this morning, which consisted of about 50 people who were split into pairs for 5 minutes. There were 5 rounds, interspersed with a bit of commentary from Seth. The whole thing lasted less than an hour. I’m feeling inspired.
It’s a really simple container which can be easily implemented by Zoom. I found this “speed dating” format to be really energizing. In 5 minutes you almost always end up getting cut-off mid-sentence when the breakout room ends. This might sound frustrating but it’s super fun. There’s a cliff-hanger. It’s hard to get bored in 5 minutes. You’re left curious about what could have been if the interaction were longer.
Afterwards, I couldn’t help but think of how different the round robin “set and setting” was than most professional gatherings I’ve been to. The juxtaposition that immediately came to mind was a community/conference/company “happy hour” - there might be some conversations you’re really trying to get out of, someone you’re anxious/excited about approaching, someone you really want to avoid, that new person who joins in late and now the whole story has to be told again, someone buys you a beer and now you feel like you have to talk to them, someone offers to buy you a beer and now you feel like you have to drink, and on and on…
The Zoom round robin is less organic, more mechanical. There isn’t the opportunity to go very deep. But that’s what’s fun about it. Who goes first? How do I present myself in just a minute? How can I help someone in just a couple of minutes? Who wouldn’t want to learn about the intricacies of alpaca fur for five minutes?
Aside from just being a great way to meet five new people in the online community, I left feeling inspired to create community. I couldn’t help but recall of the different types of events I’ve hosted in the past. Remembering that skill, that possibility, that muscle.
When the magic is gone…
walk on the other side of the street
do a rain dance
hire a magician
seek wise counsel
draw a box around the sacred
take the sacrament
put down your weapons
surrender your dictionary
get very still
observe.
Indra’s Web, or Indra’s Net, is a cosmic net laced with jewels that hang over the palace of Indra, the king of gods in Hindu mythology.
The net is infinite, and at each of its junction points there is a jewel that infinitely reflects the others. This is said to symbolize the infinite interconnectedness of all phenomena. Just as each jewel contains the reflections of all the others, each phenomenon in the universe contains within it all other phenomena. Nothing exists independently, but rather everything arises dependent on causes and conditions.
What got me thinking about Indra’s Net was the idea of building my own internal wiki for different things that I’m referencing often. For example if I’m referencing a particular book regularly, instead of just having the link/title/author, I could have my RAW.works edition wiki about that book, here on the site.
Generative AI makes this easier than ever. So while that might have taken hours of time to do in the past, you could do it in a few minutes now. You could potentially even automate the creation of the wiki, pulling data from various internal and external locations to curate a “showcase” wiki entry for the book.
What I’m excited about here is the possibility to create really engaging experiences that are more than just a recommendation and a link to go somewhere else. My next thought immediately terrified me.
If you think filter bubbles are a problem now, this is gonna make them even worse. So for example, Google could functionally summarize the entire internet with AI in a way that you will never leave Google. And you can see that they’re already doing this. With certain types of questions, you get the response as a snippet in the top search results of Google. (Not necessarily link to another website, but an official “Google answer.)
You can imagine taking that one step further, where the user literally never leaves Google. So you start on Google and when you ask it for stuff, it doesn’t give you the link to the other person’s website. It gives you the summary that it wants you to see.
I’m not sure Google will ever actually implement this to the fullest extreme, because all of their money comes from selling ads via the cost per click. The traffic leaving Google and going to other people’s websites is their main cash cow business. But it’s not hard to imagine a version of Google where there are no organic search results, only the Google AI summaries and paid ads.
If not Google, someone with less ad revenue. Microsoft Bing I’m sure makes some money on ads, but it’s not really the lifeblood of the organization. Or Amazon can create its own version of the internet that is constantly making sure that you see the version that maximizes as many of the physical and digital products that they sell as possible.
Maybe we’re already living in a version of Indra’s web. In the context of books, Amazon is already the number one platform for physical books, digital books, audiobooks, and now they own Goodreads…so it’s kind of hard not to be in Amazon’s version of the web when you’re talking about books.
Interdependent. Interconnected. Addicted to shiny jewels.
As amazing as Midjourney is, the one thing it is notoriously bad at is spelling. It doesn’t understand words as text. When OpenAI recently teased DALL·E 3 with their avocado therapy cartoon, my immediate reaction was “OMG it can spell!”
Aside from some goofy LinkedIn posts - I was really struggling to see how Midjourney could be used for my business. It was a fun toy, and clearly a very powerful one, but it didn’t seem practical for business use.
I’m sure that there are plenty of Midjourney diehards who are proving me wrong on a daily basis, but for me something about the lack of spelling just gave me the sense that Midjourney would be more trouble than it was worth for our professional digital marketing use cases.
So the real question is: can DALL·E 3 actually spell? (As of this writing, the only way I know how to access it is through the Bing Image Creator, which makes me question my $20/mo OpenAI “ChatGPT Plus” subscription. (Microsoft must really have OpenAI by the balls.))
I’ll let you decide for yourself. (All typos courtesy Microsoft via Bing Image Creator)
