ChatGPT for Radical Self-betterment - Ep. 8 with Gena Gorlin

[00:00] I'm working on my 2023 year in review and I gave it five years worth of journal entries and I asked it to please read through the journal. Wow. Okay. Now my life story has been timelined very helpfully. I love this so much. Right? How cool is that? It's like having a personal biographer. Free and instantaneous personal biographer. Well, 20 bucks a month. [00:30] Gino, welcome to the show. [00:32] Thank you, Dan. So happy to be here. Yeah, I'm so happy to have you. So for people who don't know, you are a clinical psychologist at UT Austin. You're also a prolific writer. You write specifically about the psychology of builders. And you've also written a lot of essays for every, the newsletter that I run, you've written like some of the fit, my favorite [00:58] pieces that we've ever published. In particular, you wrote this piece called In Defense of Radical Self-Betterment, which is exactly what you think it is. And it is a massive 7,000 word guide to living and examined, better, flourishing life as an ambitious person. I just, I love your work. Which you helped me give birth to. [01:20] Yeah. So thank you. And there I am already jumping in with my enthusiasm. But yeah. Thank you. No, please jump in. Jump in. For the forum, Dan. [01:28] Of course. Of course. Yeah. I think, um,

[01:32] One of the things I love most about you and your work is... [01:36] First of all, I think that there are just not that many people who are focusing on the psychology builders, particularly people who are as well-versed in all of the psychology literature as you are. And two is I feel like you're able to talk about... [01:55] psychological topics in a way that [02:00] ambitious, busy, creative people can hear. Like you have this combination of depth and rigor [02:10] combined with like not being too woo woo, like you can talk about it and you can talk about the woo stuff in a way that I think makes sense to people who might ordinarily be allergic to woo. And I think a lot of like builder type people are like that. And so it's like really, it's always a pleasure to, um, get to, get to read your work and get to, get to talk to you. Cause I think it's, you have such a rare and unique combination of skills and it's so valuable to people like me and anyone who makes stuff. [02:37] Well, thank you. And thank you for all the work you've inspired since we started collaborating, including that in defense of radical self-betterment monster. How many pages of it that I wouldn't have written that piece and certainly not in the way that I did if you hadn't. [02:56] sort of prompted me in just the right ways and given me that experience. [03:01] really helpful or just feedback and impetus. So thank you. Amazing. It's, it's always fun to get to nerd out about, uh, psychology topics with you. Um, and so that's why I'm, that's why I'm psyched for this, um, this show for, for anyone who's listening that doesn't know or watching that doesn't know, we are also working on a course together. It's called maximize your mind with chat GBT. Um, there'll be a link down in the episode description. Uh, you can check it out, uh, and we'll, we'll be covering a lot of the topics, uh, or at least some of the topics from

[03:31] interested, if you want to learn more, go check that out. But for now, what I want to start with [03:37] is I want to like, we're going to, we're going to get into like how you use ChatGPT, um, in your own life. Um, and, and, and we'll, we'll use it together. We'll do some, we'll do some fun stuff together live. But what I want to start with first is like at a high level, like zooming back out, [03:53] I want you to talk to us about if you're a person who's like ambitious about personal development, you want to improve yourself in a couple of ways, or you just generally want to improve yourself as much as you can and achieve your goals. Um, [04:07] Where do you think ChatGPT fits into that process of personal development or personal growth? [04:13] Yeah. So I think, and by the way, your articles and our conversations have inspired a lot of my thinking on this. So, you know, there might be some overlaps or some repetition here. But I, I feel like what Chachpt does is, you know, as a natural, as a large language model that has access to much of the accumulated knowledge that Chachpt does, is that, you know, that's a natural language model. [04:38] you know, human beings have collected, right, via the internet, it, it, [04:42] is like an external hard drive for our brain, right? In the sense that, [04:47] we have working memory capacity limits, right? That, you know, [04:52] are... [04:53] Always. [04:55] setting a cap, kind of setting a ceiling on just how much we can remember, how much we can bring to bear on our actions at any given moment in time of all the accumulated wisdom and experience and the principles and the heuristics, right, that we individually have collected, but also that everyone before us has collected, you know, that might bear on our current actions. And so

[05:25] relevant insights, helpful perspectives, right? Bias checking, you know, [05:32] kind of heuristics from our own subconscious, now we can also [05:36] call it up from human knowledge as such, right? Like via chat GPT. And so that just has such massive implications for our own, how we introspect that in addition to our journaling, in addition to writing it down for ourselves for later review, we can [05:54] and feed it into chat GPT. And then we can get summaries and then we can get formulations that resonate with us in a way that really it crystallizes, really sums up for us what has been sprawled across pages and pages of self-reflection. [06:24] maybe I might be avoiding something, remind me, [06:27] What would you do if you weren't afraid of feeling ashamed? Was that your example? It's just such an incredible feeling guilty. Thank you. Yeah. And I've been playing with all kinds of different variants of that, which I'm sure we'll get into. But that's just a tiny drop in an anxiety. [06:46] kind of bottomless bucket of new creative ways that we can leverage this [06:53] technology, you know, as it's evolving every day, where we get unexpected, you know, like, we don't think it can do something, and then it does. And so I think it just has to be part of any ambitious person's epistemic hygiene, if you will, right, and sort of self-reflective hygiene, that we, you know, we can now level up our thinking, level up our knowledge work, level up our, you know, our decision making, our introspection by utilizing this massive

[07:23] hand. I love the phrase epistemic hygiene. What does that mean? Good question. I just made it up. So let's see if I can define it here for you on the spot. Yeah. So, you know, just as we have a [07:38] like, [07:39] physical hygiene where we maintain our [07:43] you know, our health and well-being and we attend to our daily needs for, you know, for rest and for for cleanliness and that kind of thing. I think when it comes to the ongoing work that we do to it. [08:00] to grow and to maintain and to call upon our knowledge base. [08:06] like the working knowledge on which we base every decision, every reaction, every aspect of our lives, and the working model that then also colors [08:18] every aspect of our experience because we filter it through our lens of, you know, do I see this as good or bad for me? Do I, you know, do I think this person means well? Do I think this is an opportunity or a threat? Right? Like that working knowledge base that is the map of, [08:33] on which we are always kind of walking and that we're and on which we build our life and based on which we build our life like there's there are lots of different and better and worse strategies that we might use and kind of different levels of intentionality we can bring to how we grow that knowledge base as well as how we interact with it you know and how we call upon

[09:03] So I guess for you, maybe a way to rephrase this, tell me if this is right, is... [09:10] A key way that... [09:13] Um, [09:14] A key thing that leads us through the world is the bundle of knowledge or the model or the map that we have about how the world works and how we should relate to the world and all that kind of stuff. And... [09:27] A key way to improve whatever we want to improve about ourselves, about how we behave, about how we meet our goals, about the goals that we set, all that kind of stuff is... [09:38] to maybe understand what's in that map because a lot of it is like sort of subconscious um what do we what do we know or what do we think we know and then is to um sort of modify that map in different ways intentionally to allow us to to do things differently or think things differently [09:56] Exactly. Yeah, that's really nicely described. Yeah, so that pertains to how we... [10:02] Thank you. [10:02] grow the model. So the last thing you mentioned, like, how do we modify it, but also what do we add to it? And when do we want to add in the sense of like, oh, is this an occasion for more research? Right? Like, is this an occasion for sampling other people's perspectives, sampling, you know, what has been said about this? What examples exist on the internet to guide different ways to approach this situation? Right. As well as then, [10:28] you know am i thinking through all the alternatives that i've already previous you know like that exist in my subconscious you know am i like what are my blind spots what do i tend to forget right with one piece i wrote forever is remember what you know right don't fake it till you make it instead remember what you know it's such a big piece of now that i've coined epistemic hygiene as a term such a big piece of epistemic hygiene is the remembering what we know part right the like

[10:58] fully cemented yet, you know, but like, Oh, I am capable of being articulate in social, in high stakes social situations, you know, but like, it's easy to forget that when feelings run hot. Yeah, totally. That makes a lot of sense. I think that there's, there's two things in there that I really resonate with, which is one is that no matter what you're going through or what your experience is, [11:23] someone has gone through it before and has written about it or talked about it. And I think we tend to forget that. Like we tend to forget, um, [11:31] how much the sum total of human knowledge contains and how universal a lot of experiences that we believe to be like specific to us are, or maybe if they're not explicitly universal, they're like someone has thought about it and someone has gone through it before and, and how valuable it is to bring to bear like that sum total of human knowledge in any given circumstance. Like for some reason, it's so hard when you're going through something to be like, Oh, I want to just figure out like [11:58] who's thought about this and like learn about it um which is i think a key thing that chat gbt is like really good for is like what are the what are the ways to think about this um yeah and then and then the other one you know is like once you have the answers the answers tend to be simple they just like are hard to remember or hard to put into action all the time and i think chat gbt is good at that is like remind you like okay do this little thing you know [12:25] Yeah. Yeah. So on the first point, you're making me realize part of my excitement about chat GPT professionally as an upscaler comes from just a long standing frustration that I have with how fragmented the field of psychology currently is. And I know you've encountered this, too, just like you're trying to figure out, like, what is the best treatment for this common issue?

[12:55] to me that this treatment exists that actually could, you know, really quickly help me and turn my life around. And it's just such, and I say it's frustrating, but it's also like, it's just, [13:04] the default state of affairs in a field that hasn't yet consolidated itself. And chat GPT is so incredibly powerful at allowing you to quickly sample the whole terrain, right? Even in absence of... [13:21] any human, you know, like there's not a good encyclopedia entry that just tells you here are the five major schools of thought that are relevant to this issue. Now go, you know, look up this person for, but like chat CPT can do that for you because you can customize your encyclopedia query, right? You can say like, I'm struggling with this set of symptoms. What are all the major ways that people have addressed this issue? Or like, what are the five big categories of treatments? And it can [13:51] Just like mind blowing. [13:52] Absolutely wild. It's so good. You said something earlier that I just want to clarify really quick because it's a really it's another interesting word, but I don't think you coined this one on this particular podcast. I think it's one that you use a lot, which is the idea of working with upscalers or being an upscaler. What is that? [14:11] Yeah, that's funny because I think it is a term I sort of picked up like from the maybe startup milieu. But what I mean by it is, yeah, it's sort of shorthand for leveling up. [14:25] in whatever domain, you know, in whatever form is relevant. But I think one way I an important role that it serves in my thinking is that

[14:36] It's part of a repertoire of kind of ceiling raising rather than floor raising. [14:41] considerations that I think my field and I think generally our culture kind of humanity tends to neglect that it's easier to think about floor raising problems and to see them and to focus on that you know like kind of the who are the most severely unqualified. [14:59] distressed severely ill members of our society and let's focus on trying to get them you know to limping at least right let's focus on helping them to be less severely impaired or let's you know like what are our biggest deficits let's focus on trying to repair those deficits and it's so easy because those are the the kind of problems that are in our face and that tend to be you know for which we have tools already developed because you know a lot of people aren't struggling with [15:29] try to do what they're doing and maybe that'll help you know or it's sort of like we know what it looks like to get to a kind of average level of functioning and so we already have a clear picture of you know the destination but but what i think actually moves humanity forward and what i think moves us individually forward in the most meaningful ways isn't floor raising it's sort of ceiling raising it's like it's thinking about not okay what are the biggest deficits i need to [15:59] that could be even better, right? Like what are my strengths that I could... [16:03] multiply by really leaning into them right and i think that that's really powerful

[16:09] That makes a lot of sense. There's a couple of different linked points in there that I want to try to summarize or untag a little bit. So I think there's a social level, societally, or just as a field psychology, and then there's the individual level. So as a field, I think what you're saying, psychology, tends to be thinking about how do we take people who are super sick and [16:35] feel okay, which I think you'd agree is like a super important thing. And it's like, it's just, it's like a really big deal. Um, but I think professionally your focus has been, um, given that there's a lot of focus on that, like what, um, [16:50] Is there like what is there to do for helping people who are who are doing good, but like to just get to that, like sort of like next level that we don't even know what that's like. And that's what you mean by by ceiling raising. [17:02] Yeah. And then I think the like. Sorry. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Let me be very clear that I don't I do not think that we should stop worrying about the floor raising problems. Right. The floor raising problems are crucial to be solving for and they're important and they're not, you know, neglectable or we do when we neglect them, we do so at our peril. [17:32] I think at solving some of the floor raising problems. If we were also trying, [17:37] attending to the ceiling raising problems, right? Like how do we even just the fact of, you know, like chat GPT has probably done more and will do more for the most severely affected, you know, mental health sufferers, then

[17:54] that most therapists have been able to do collectively in decades. And it's not for some of the reasons that we're talking about, because it just makes some of the same treatments more accessible and more cheaply and more quickly accessible and more universally, more sort of democratically accessible. And so, yeah, I just think we need to think about them in concert. [18:16] Yeah, that makes total sense. So I think that's sort of like the social point and or the societal point and where you focus career wise. But then there's also really interesting and I think deep and important point that you're making about individuals, which is that as people. [18:31] we tend to [18:33] just because of the way our brains are wired, like be really attuned to what our problems are. [18:39] And either trying to run away from them or like obsessing over them or whatever your flavor of that is. And that, yeah, it's important to like think about and know what problems you have. But like what we tend to neglect when we do that is like, what do you actually want to do? [19:00] Like, what do you want to achieve? Or like, what do you want your life to be like? And that turning our attention to that in an intelligent way is like a really, really big and important component of living a [19:11] good life where you do interesting stuff. And that like our brain sort of naturally draws us to not think about that. And that if we change that, it can really lead to growth in a big way. [19:23] Exactly. Beautifully put. Yeah. I don't know if you remember when we were working on my radical self-betterment piece and sort of going back and forth with edits, which again were so incredibly helpful. And one of the places where I think we kind of had a sticking point and we kind of worked out a flow that we were both happy with, it was where...

[19:44] I first introduced the idea of change targets. You know, I kind of get into the step by step process of radically changing ourselves, which of course is iterative, not literally, you know, stepwise, but, and I, [19:59] mention in the piece again this is probably thanks to your asking for clarification and i'm so glad that this is now in the piece i say intuitively you might think that the place to start is to identify some of your problems or some of your struggles but actually i would like to invite you to first think about what you want and paint a vision of your life and so i think that step is called like like identifying your life vision or the you know something along those lines and [20:29] actually really helped crystallize for me that yeah this is counterintuitive and i actually think it's really important to do [20:35] Right. I love that. So I have, I have one, I think I have one final like framing question and then I'd love to like get into how you use ChatGPT and then get into some, some chats ourselves. So, um, I guess like. [20:49] Just to give people a little bit of background, we've been working together for a while as you've written a few pieces for Every, which has been amazing. [21:00] But we only just started doing this course and, and, [21:03] Part of the way that happened is I was like, I've been thinking about doing a, um, you know, a course at the intersection of Chachi BT in psychology for a while. And I had a couple of different people that I was potentially working on it with. And I, I chatted about it with you just sort of offhand and you were like, Whoa, that sounds really cool. Um, and then, uh,

[21:22] I invited you to New York to just like... [21:25] Let's, I don't know, let's spend a couple of days, see what happens. You know, I'll show you all the different things I've been nerding out on with ChatGPT. And, you know, you bring like a bunch of your psychology knowledge and we'll like mash it together and see like what we what we can do. And I'm just like curious for you, what was that experience like? And like what what did you learn? Like what came out of that for you? [21:45] Yeah. I mean, as you know, and as I raved about in writing and in conversation, it was... [21:54] a really... [21:56] It felt like a groundbreaking experience for me in a few different ways, like personally and professionally. Right. So, I mean... [22:03] Thank you. [22:04] The excitement of just trying this out together, I think just from day one, day one of two, right? But like hour one, when we just sat down and we talked about different ways we could approach this and then decided to just, you know, like, let's just try some stuff. Right. And I think we fed my values clarification prompt right into ChatGPT just to get. [22:27] get rolling with, you know, with a first iteration. And then we started iterating and I just approached it very sincerely, right? Like there were things that had been on my mind. There were things I was feeling and I wanted to see what it could intuit. Right. And, um, [22:43] The combination of feeling really seen both by you and ChatGPT and by the team that we had assembled and being just constantly surprised and delighted by the possibilities and just by all the different options available for nudging it.

[23:13] if you remember, I mean, I didn't even have a, this is so embarrassing, but I'm going to say it, but I didn't have a paid subscription at the point where we started our two day. [23:24] I think that was like the first thing I said to you was like, you must pay for this. What are you doing, Gina? Yeah. And so I realized, okay, this isn't like, I am not equipped. And I mean, I was on the wait list at that point. Cause I think like a week earlier, I had finally tried [23:43] too many people trying to upgrade all at once. And so I was just kind of waiting and maybe Chad GPT heard my cries. But that evening between day one and two, I got my invitation. And so I got the upgrade. And so even I mean, it was such a like now it feels like ancient history. [24:03] Like I didn't have, you know, GPT-4 with all of its, you know, like with the ability to create our own custom bots and just like to search the internet in real time. Like all the things that now are part of my epistemic hygiene, like just weren't even in my repertoire at all prior to that day that you and I sat down together. It's just wild. It was just like really a turning point for me. [24:33] do with its help. So at that level, it was just really groundbreaking. And as you know, it was also just for me personally, and I feel like worth acknowledging just an experience of a collaboration

[24:45] gone right, partly through the kind of like, very common experience that I've had. And most of my attempted collaborations were like, we're kind of like trying to both impose our own agendas on this that aren't exactly aligned. But like, we don't fully we haven't fully surfaced the ways that they're not aligned. And like, we're both excited about something, but it's not quite the same thing. And like, it's really easy for one or the other of us to sort of get the wind blown out of our [25:15] how it goes to try to collaborate with people. And that's kind of the default experience. And then we actually sat down and talked about it. [25:23] prompted, I believe, by you. And I believe at least like in some way influenced positively by chat GPT somewhere along, along the line, because like, you know, usually this is my move. Usually I'm the one to say, you know, let's sit down and have a really open, honest conversation, but you beat me to it, Dan, and that I will forever respect you for. And it was awesome, because, you know, at that point, you know, as you know, having been there, [25:53] jointly kind of like what where there was excitement really kind of flowing you know for both of us and what kind of how we could mutually contribute to each other's sort of visions and it just got a lot more grounded at that point in you know what would become our course right and that that we could deliver pretty soon after that initial brainstorm process and I just feel like

[26:16] Now I also have a template for [26:19] really effective, joyful collaboration. So thank you for that. [26:24] Thank you. I mean, thanks for doing the discussion with me. It's nice that my thousands of hours of therapy and I don't know how many thousands of dollars of therapy somehow paid off. But beating a literal therapist to the punch at an open and honest conversation, I think, you know, therapy works, people. Yeah. I feel like that's got to be like the holy grail, right? You unlocked that top level. Yeah. I need some badge or something. [26:54] for that. It's really pretty awesome. [26:58] Yeah, I had a similar thing. It was such a great, great experience and I felt so much energy and I'd love to show people like some of the things that we talked about and came up with while we were there. So I think the first... [27:12] The first place I want to go is to just really zoom in on like, how are you using this in your own life to do the epistemic hygiene or to update that world map or... [27:24] uh, you know, to understand yourself better, all that kind of stuff. Like, I know you have one, one thing in particular that you want to talk about. Uh, you want to, you want to start with that? [27:32] Sure. Yeah, let's take a look. Can you see? I can see it. So why don't we start at the [27:42] Tell us about [27:44] what you're doing here. It looks like a year in review type thing. Tell us about like what

[27:51] you know, what your year in review practice is, what your goals are for it, and then why you decided to use ChatGPT for it. [27:57] Sure. Yeah. So for many, many years, I've had a personal tradition of talking [28:05] doing a year in review and, you know, intention setting, I don't really call them resolutions anymore, if only because it's, you know, gotten so cliche as to be meaningless, but a kind of planning and strategic, you know, intention setting process for the new year, I do this around the end of every year or the start of, you know, the new one. And, you know, [28:27] It's evolved for me, like the kind of structure of it has evolved. And the focus has evolved to the point where I found myself this year, given just a lot of rapid changes in my life, all happy and positive, you know. [28:42] I'm now two babies in, having been one baby in with the last year in review. I've moved cities, I've married, I've got a job that I love and spending more time than ever on. [28:55] kind of my, the parts of my work that are kind of really self-directed rather than just my kind of faculty research. [29:08] And I've just come a long way in a lot of my self-reflections over the years. And so... [29:13] I sat down for my year in review and I just wasn't sure how to go about it. Like, do I really need to do this detailed narrative review of my year? It kind of feels like, you know, I had jotted some things down in bullet point form. And I thought, you know, yeah, this, I feel like this kind of covers it, but this can't be the whole story. Like there's gotta be, you know, depths to be mined in terms of insight. And, and similarly, you know, like I had goals for the coming year, but they felt kind of,

[29:40] kind of loose and, you know, like not necessarily as... [29:47] top-down, kind of strategic and hierarchical in terms of my OKRs and vision and mission and so on, as I thought maybe would be optimal. So I just thought, you know what, maybe ChatGPT can help me [30:06] sort this through and can even just help me decide on the structure. [30:09] And I've generally been on the premise of, you know, when I'm not sure what to do, is there some way to source ChatGPT, right? So this was such a moment. And so I started out. I just want to pause you there because I think there's a lot of interesting stuff to unpack really quick. So one is, that's a really good flag, is in your head when you don't know what to do about something or you don't know where to start. [30:33] the first thing you do is go to ChatGPT. [30:35] Yeah. Or one of the first things, or at least it's sort of, again, it's like part of that menu of, of resources to consult or to consider, right? Just like I think, okay, is, you know, is there some perspective to be gotten from my husband, my best friend, you know, from kind of my informal advisory board? Are there books to read, you know, so now, similarly, I'm going to be a little bit more. [30:58] What can ChatGPT help me with here? Yeah, exactly. So, yeah. [31:04] Was there more? I think that's interesting because I think people tend to believe that they need to like... [31:10] know what they want out of it before they go to chat gpt and i think um they don't realize that just being confused is a great place to start yeah i've found that those have been some of my most helpful conversations with chat gpt yeah let's see what you can let's see what you got for me here yeah totally yeah um the other thing that i noticed about this aside from just starting with being confused is um

[31:35] is you... [31:36] put in a Notion page. So tell us what's on that Notion and... Yeah. [31:42] Tell us why you did that. Yeah, so here's what happened. Yeah, so first of all, you taught me this trick of if I want to give ChatGPT a much longer set of text to read, but I don't want to publish it on my sub stack for everybody to read, I can publish it as a Notion page. So I've really been utilizing that trick. [32:12] limitation or workaround, but then I also figure out some way around it or I can just figure out, [32:19] gain more utility, more facility with the tech. And so the first thing I did was I asked ChatGPT, I told ChatGPT I'm working on my 2023 year in review and intention setting for the coming year, and I'm having trouble figuring out how best to proceed with it. And I gave it a link to an Ocean [32:41] the five years worth of my previous year in review journal entries all copy pasted just back to back to back and i told it that you know that's what it is and i asked it to please read through the journal including my laundry list of highlights so far from you know 2024 and then suggest some ways to organize my thoughts from there just again wanted to see what it would come up with

[33:11] was very helpful. So, you know, it told me upon reviewing my journal entries, here are some kind of significant life changes you're experiencing and grappling with. And, um, [33:22] And then it categorized some of the different challenges. So it was, it was really good, but it was good with respect to probably the first fifth of that Monster Notion page, because I saw the themes that it was highlighting for me were themes that were relevant in 2018. It's like reflecting on significant changes, like my move in with Matt, who's now my husband, you know, but whom I had just moved in with in 2018, the transition to a tenure track faculty job, [33:53] writing about goals and challenges, understanding motivation and effort, long-term strategic planning. And some of these things are perennial themes for me, and some of them were really time-specific in a way that made them less applicable. And then it gave me some suggestions for moving forward, which, again, are helpful but out of date. And I really wanted to get, if possible, the fully informed and fully updated ideas [34:20] brainstorm, you know, from JetGPT. [34:23] that takes into account everything that I've at least written about in those years in review since 2018. So I basically asked it to brainstorm with me, how do we get around your limitation here that you can only read, you know, so far into this massive document I've shared. [34:38] And it told me the last line it was able to read in the document. And so then I...

[34:46] Asked it whether I could maybe share smaller excerpts and it said I could. And it kind of gave me a little bit more context for how to do that. Once you've organized your journal into smaller segmented pages, you can share the links to those pages and then I can access and review each one separately. And this should enable a thorough review of your journal. So then I did that. I want to stop you right there really quick. I want to stop you right there, which is like, this is another thing where it's like, you're noticing a problem. [35:14] And I think what a lot of people do when they use ChatGPT is they notice a problem. Like, you know, for example, it only gives you the first fifth of the journal entries. And then they sort of throw up their hands and they're like, ah, like this isn't, [35:27] This isn't working. And then they go, they just close it and forget about it. But what you did is you were like, well, here's the problem. You told it to ChatGPT. You were like, here's the problem. Here's maybe a solution that could work. But like, what do you think? And you co-created a solution together with ChatGPT that would work. And I think that's such a valuable way to think about using this tool is when you encounter a problem, tell it about the problem. You can bring solutions if you want, or you can ask it what it thinks, and you'll probably find a way around it. [35:56] Exactly. Yeah. And every time I have tried that general approach, maybe not every time, but in general, it's just been such a pleasant surprise, you know, how far it can get in brainstorming solutions with me. Yeah, I don't want to say every time, because definitely, you know, there have been some disappointments. I don't want to be Pollyanna-ish about it. But even in the case of the disappointments, it's sort of like, this is a current limitation, right?

[36:22] you know, on my, like, on my access or my compute power or whatever. And it's clearly like, okay, well, I'm going to try back in a week, you know, or try back in a month. So anyway, yeah, exactly. So together, we found a workaround, and I went ahead and separated that monster document with, you know, five years worth of year end reviews into eight separate, shorter documents. [36:52] just the day and then, you know, created links to share with ChatGPT. And then I gave it the full set of links, which I mean, one thing I love about ChatGPT is I never have to worry that like, oh, it's gonna be so annoyed, like it's gonna be rolling its eyes at just how obnoxious my long list of links is like, who does this? Well, it doesn't mind. It has infinite patience, you know, and like, what's the worst case scenario just doesn't give me anything helpful. Right. And [37:22] So that's just, yeah, a really nice side benefit. So I gave it this list of links and I said, I actually didn't even give it much instruction yet. I thought I'd have to then go back and say, okay, now you have all eight links. Like, please do the thing where you review them and then help me figure out kind of where to go from here for this latest year in review. But I didn't have to say any of that because it remembered everything. [37:45] its task. And so having looked at those eight links, it picked right up where we had left off. And it told me, you know, after thoroughly reviewing your journal entries from 2018 to 2024, it is evident that your journey has been marked by significant personal and professional developments, challenges, and introspections. True enough. And then here's a synthesized overview incorporating key elements from each year. This was really cool. And get like, I didn't even

[38:15] and [38:16] That's so cool. Really neat to see like, wow. Okay. Now my life story has been timelined very helpfully, you know, at least for these five years worth. Um, I love this so much. Right. How cool is that? It's like having a personal biographer. Seriously. That's exactly what it's like. I mean, a free and instantaneous personal biographer. [38:40] Right. Well, 20 bucks a month, but. Oh, good point. I did. Right. Now that I have, in fact, upgraded. But, you know, previously personal biographers were pretty expensive. So. True. And it's like 20 is a deal. Right. It's in addition to being a, you know, a ghostwriter and a, you know, an encyclopedia. And like you're paying for a lot of different would be subscriptions with that 20 bucks. Right. [39:10] Yeah. So yeah, so it gave me this amazing summary per year of the major themes and the kind of review methods of, you know, that featured in each of those years in review. So for 2018, I mean, this was just... [39:28] Really... [39:29] Again, like both... [39:31] I felt... [39:33] um seen but in a way like or mirrored right like i had that stage of my life mirrored back to me in this crystallized form where i could kind of experience it and feel my feelings about it in one fell swoop you know like when something is really summed up for you um and it helped me to put it in the broader context so like it reminded me you know that i navigated major life changes like moving in with matt coping with the loss of my mother starting a tenure track faculty job

[40:03] the idea of overcoming people mode, which was a super helpful reminder. Cause then of course I was like, Ooh, I could really use that again now because I haven't really been, you know, fully leveraging that insight for context. Overcoming people mode was a person, a part of my personal journey where I kind of realized that sometimes instead of just thinking first personally about like, what do I think? Or what do I want to do? I was basically like, [40:29] like engaging in these mental debates between different people who might have views on the matter and trying to like either mentally you know convince someone that this is what i should do or that i shouldn't have to do it or you know like basically performing inside my own head for other people's benefit and like thereby never really reaching my own like fully personal conclusion you know never accessing like but what do i [40:54] what do I actually want? Like, what do I actually believe here? So I kind of coined people mode just for myself as a shorthand to check for with, you know, in my journaling, like, Hey, how, you know, have you been in people mode lately? Or like, have you really been kind of intentionally first personal? So it kind of reminded me of that super helpful. And then, yeah, [41:16] Yeah. And it reminded me that I was then to reevaluating how I approach my year in review. So this is kind of an ongoing theme. [41:25] where I questioned the utility of the previous monthly reviews, which I didn't always stick with anyway, you know, and where I really reflected on the need for a more dynamic review process where, you know, it's more of a kind of as needed. I've returned to my journal when there's something to think through, but like I do remember to return to it. So I was trying to figure out kind of how to strike that balance. And then the focus on writing and communication, which again is perennial. I explored different methods to enhance my writing. Oops. Sorry.

[41:55] I just left. Yeah. Different methods to enhance my writing skills. I see it was going to take me to the journal itself, I guess. Oh, that's interesting. Oh, to the Notion page. Right. That makes sense. Anyway. And so it did the same thing for 2019, for 2020, 2022, 23. And then for my 2024 in progress portion, which was brief because I really just jotted down a few bullet points before asking for ChatShapT's help. [42:25] had already [42:26] done kind of the major themes of the year and then it gave me some suggestions for organizing my thoughts going forward and this was where the real action started you know the real work started that i really was able to um to thought partner with chat gpt on so you know it suggested identifying overarching yearly themes and patterns it suggested posing some reflective questions [42:56] utilizing smart goals, which I'm very familiar with, balancing personal and professional goals, continued learning and adaptation, and then a plan for regular review. So all of that so far was, okay, yeah, no, that's a list of plausible things that I might do. I don't necessarily want to go down the checklist, but maybe I can just ask ChatGPT about some of the major themes that it suggested I divide this into based on what it already knows. [43:22] So like, let's see how much work I can get it to do for me, in effect. And then I will kind of, you know, take what it gives me as a draft and sort of build on it.

[43:30] And then... [43:31] The really fun part ensued. So I asked it, I just started asking you questions that I would ask myself. [43:37] So are there any major themes you anticipate emerging for me in the coming year, given the patterns you see in my entries to date? [43:44] Thank you. [43:45] And these are some of the themes [43:47] that pulled out in terms of [43:49] you know, things to anticipate as important areas. [43:52] This is mostly pretty spot on. [43:55] So, you know, deepening professional impact, my ongoing focus on expanding my coaching practice, especially with founders and innovators, which suggests a continued drive to enhance my professional influence. It put it at the top and that is where it goes, which is notable, you know, and probably it's drawing on whatever I had written in that brief little beginning. [44:14] a bit of reflection in the 2024 section, but still, that was a pretty impressive inference. Content creation and thought leadership... [44:24] Like, you know, continuing to grow my substech newsletter and related collaborations, which includes our collaboration, by the way, continuing to develop as a thought leader, potentially exploring new platforms or formats, balancing personal and professional life. [44:40] continued growth and self-reflection, leveraging technology and innovation, since I did mention that, you know, I've discovered the power of ChatGPT and want to continue incorporating it creatively in my life and work. And then expanding networks and collaborations, which I'm really glad that it included here because it's one that... [44:58] It has a kind of spotty role in my thinking about what to prioritize and kind of my strategizing for my professional growth. These themes align with your ongoing journey of personal and professional development, reflecting a balance between introversion, innovation, innovation and impact.

[45:17] So then I asked it. I just want to stop there. I mean, yeah, I just I want to stop there because like what we've seen so far, which I think is so cool is you have all these journal entries. [45:28] It writes this like timeline, this like personal biography year by year of all the stuff. And then it gives you like a perspective, like list of themes and focuses for like what you think you're going to be doing this year in a way that makes you feel seen. [45:58] see it on a page. If you scroll down to where those themes were, [46:05] Thank you. [46:07] Or the, yeah. Uh, yeah. Major themes like, you know, um, yeah. [46:13] you know, deepening, deepening professional impact or content creation and thought leadership, like those things are, are simple. [46:21] But [46:21] Again, it's those simple truths that you need to be reminded of that, that when they're reflected back to you, they really help you to align yourself and, um, get your feet under you to like move in a particular direction. And I think Chachi PT is so good at that. Like so many people just don't have anyone in their life who can reflect this kind of thing back to them and, and can really be honest with them. And I love, I love it for that. And I love this use case.

[46:51] I mean, this connects to our broader theme, you know, that you and I are really iterating on, which is the power of ChatGPT for psychological development, right, broadly. I mean, and for me thinking about, like, what of my work can I start to outsource to ChatGPT? Like the fact, you know, what you just mentioned, that many people don't have someone in their lives who functions in this way, right, as a mirror, as a kind of condenser, summarizer, reminder of here's, like, here are the big themes I'm hearing, right, in what you're working on. [47:21] what's important to you. And like, up until this point, either you had to, you know, hire people or invest in a coach or a therapist and hope that, you know, they're good or, you know, or put a strain on friendships that, you know, would otherwise be spent doing other things like that. You don't, you don't have to do that anymore. Right. And now everyone who, I mean, I think even the free version could do this much, right. In terms of like, you copy paste a bunch of [47:51] back a really nice summary right of kind of one of the big themes like you [47:57] You don't need a person anymore to do this. And that's revolutionary, right? Anyway, so just kind of building on that. [48:05] Yeah. For me, often, you know, like I'm someone who, you know, I, in fact, I do have people for that. And also, it's what I do, right, professionally. And so like, I could have gotten this far, it's still really neat to be able to outsource some of it to chat GPT and have it do some of that heavy lifting for me. But what I really do,

[48:23] try to do like when I'm really trying to [48:26] like milk the most value I can from it is I try to push it. Like I try to get it to go beyond the simple summaries and like really, you know, can you tell me something I don't know basically. Right. And so I started asking it questions in that spirit of like, [48:43] Let me see what it can tell me that I don't know or what it can put on my radar that I would otherwise just, you know, kind of be blind to. Yeah. [48:52] So I started asking, you know, what do you think might be different about this year compared to prior years? And I like I didn't have an answer off the top of my head. So I wanted to see what, you know, what it might suggest. And its suggestions included increasing. This was actually a really like this. I almost tweeted because it was just like. [49:09] I hope this is true. I'm now very invested in Chachapiti being a good forecaster because it would be really nice for this to happen. But it said, increasing clarity and direction that given your ongoing introspection and strategic planning, you're likely to approach this year with more clarity and purpose, especially in balancing personal and professional goals. Please let that be true. Higher profile clientele, your goal to recruit high profile founders and [49:39] difference. [49:40] Please let that be true. It's sort of like reading my like if it's a fortune teller, you know, it's definitely kind of giving me the bang for my buck, even if just from the standpoint of like self-fulfilling prophecy, you know.

[49:53] Like even if it's just a placebo, like now I'm going to be trying to manifest this version of my year. [50:01] Super helpful. It's so cool for that. I think I told you, I've been doing something sort of similar where, especially if I have to make a big decision, what I'll do, especially like decisions that are like one way doors where it's like you can't, it's really hard to undo. [50:23] Thank you. [50:24] I want you to... [50:26] pretend to be me and I want you to base your pretending on these entries. [50:32] and I want you to write a journal entry as me, uh, if I choose option a in the future, if I choose option a, and then I want you to write another journal entry in the future, if I choose option B, and then I get to compare the entries to see like what it thinks I would feel if I did a or B or what it thinks would happen if I did a or B and like, it's so good. And, and I don't know who, who knows if it's like, like, I don't want to get into whether [51:02] good for is when you read a journal entry written by like a perspective you, having made a decision or not made a decision. [51:12] you can tell what feels right and what feels not right and what feels like you want and what feels like you don't want. And so it like it creates this new way for you to like look at the decision. And it's really, really clarifying. I love that technique.

[51:27] That is genius. It's the coin flip tactic, but on steroids, right? Because you know the really low-tech version of this technique. [51:39] but which still gets you some mileage is pretend, flip a coin, look at what the decision is based on just, you know, heads, I go with A, right tails, I go with B. And then notice whether you feel disappointed or relieved, right? Just like that immediate introspective feedback of just like, am I happy that this is now the future? You know, to give yourself that input of like, where are you leaning at least? But what you're talking about is the much, much richer projection. [52:09] like [52:09] This is an LLM. So the whole thing it does is that it predicts what someone might say, right? Like based on everything they've said to date. It's like that's its talent. That's its specialty. It's like here's how you might be talking in a version of the future where all the things you've just told me are true and have come to pass. Like [52:32] Who better to give you the best possible simulation of that future you than an LLM trained on you? It just strikes me as such a brilliant use of this technology. So once again, kudos. [52:48] I'm definitely going to be trying that. So yeah, that's awesome. But yeah, so this is kind of, you know, my... [52:53] somewhat less creative version of a future based projection from chat GPT for me to just kind of like

[53:01] take on is, okay, yeah, like I want to, I want these to come true. And so I'm going to be pushing to realize that, right, who ultimately is gonna have the most agency over [53:15] realizing this future, right? If not me anyway. And then there's greater integration of personal values, which was really important for me to read, that my evolving understanding of the builder's mindset may lead to a more integrated approach to personal and professional decisions reflecting deeper alignment with my values. [53:30] Hooray again. And the Builder's Mindset is a framework you came up with. Correct. Yeah. And I should mention for disclosure. So I'm using my I'm using a version of ChatGPT that has custom instructions. [53:42] to kind of refer to my builder's mindset framework and basically talk to me like, what did I, I think the exact instructions are like, talk to me like you're a busy founder who doesn't have time for, [53:57] like BS and just gives it to me straight. But also like keeping in mind that I'm working toward these personal development goals, you know, like I want to embody the builder's mindset rather than, you know, falling into kind of my tendencies to either care too much about, you know, status or impression management, or sort of like making excuses, like falling into [54:27] my own agency. So I kind of gave it some instructions. It has some of that context for like how I think about the...

[54:36] this like approach to my life and to my work and then what I'm working on broadly. [54:44] Um, yeah, so, and it's pulling that in together with, cause I don't think I even mentioned the builder's mindset in the journal. So like it's integrating that, you know, from my custom instructions with what it's read in my journals and then leveraging technological advances, which makes sense. And, you know, here we are. [55:03] in this very moment. [55:04] Talking about how to leverage ChatGPT for psychological growth. Okay, so I'm living out this part of my year so far. And then adjusting to family dynamics, given my growing family and changes in my personal life, which I'd mentioned a few important changes, obviously the baby, but also my partner, Matt, had just stepped away from the day-to-day operations, you know, at his startup. [55:34] dynamic because he'll sometimes be helping me with stuff. And so then that, you know, [55:38] sort of creates more enmeshment between kind of work and personal life. And there would be a lot to adapt to there. [55:49] And then, yeah, so then I asked it. Now I'm really trying to kind of push for the insights that I wouldn't be able to reach on my own, like for it to kind of. [56:03] give me the meaty stuff. And so I asked it, what are my blind spots likely to be in the coming year?

[56:10] and it was interesting. So the first set of blind spots it gave me [56:15] We're kind of all on the side of you'll be kind of shooting too high. You'll be working too much. And by the way, these are all very real things. [56:24] you know, risks and very real failure conditions for me to, to, to be cognizant of and paying attention to, you know, managing my expectations. Like maybe like I might overcommit by the way, absolutely. That is like, it should be the top item because that is my, you know, number one sort of [56:42] like [56:42] Achilles heel is that I overcommit and, you know, end up not fully... [56:49] What is it? Being a jack of all trades, master of nuts. So that is always a risk. Balancing innovation with feasibility. Fair enough, right? Like where our [56:57] I might veer off into... [57:01] um, [57:02] new and exciting directions, but where I just don't know what I'm doing or, you know, where I might not be able to measure my impact as much, maintaining personal wellness. [57:13] work-life balance issue and then managing expectations. [57:18] where I set overly ambitious goals that might not align with current realities or resources. [57:22] All totally fair and very helpful for it to surface. [57:28] And you will see how later I kind of push it to also maybe give me the, you know, like, [57:34] fill out the other side of the puzzle, you know, or the other side of the picture. Like, is it just that I'll be too ambitious? [57:39] Or is there any way that I might not be ambitious enough? Or the wrong kind of ambitious.

[57:45] So, yeah, the next thing I asked it was, what would you suggest as the highest leverage goals and intentions for me to set in the coming year? Which was very helpful. This was probably one of the most helpful questions. [57:55] Um, just like that. It gave me a ranking because this is what I'm worst at. You know, everything feels equally important all the time. And so I always feel guilty about all the things I'm not working on at this moment because. [58:08] can't be working on everything at once, you know, and it's really easy for me to get distracted and to feel like, no, no, I need to be writing another article, even though actually, whatever I'm doing to... [58:18] either... [58:20] like really optimize the coaching experience for a client or to find, you know, [58:24] the next really high profile client. Like that is actually my, you know, that's the top of my funnel. So yeah, so this was really helpful. The fact that it rank ordered them and that they, [58:37] even just the kind of the way that it, [58:40] I summarized some of these goals and consolidated them, like thought leadership consolidation was incredibly helpful for me because I hadn't put that label on a bunch of the related things I do that all kind of fit under that heading. So that was really helpful. But again, I wanted it to tell me. [58:58] what I'm not seeing. And so then I asked what goals maybe I shouldn't be setting for the coming year, you know, in the spirit of being able to say no to things, etc. And here again, okay, so don't be too ambitious, was one of the themes diversifying into unfamiliar areas as a kind of danger zone.

[59:16] And it has a point for sure on all of these, um, neglecting work-life balance. But it's also doesn't feel like you, which is interesting. Like, I feel like that's not really what you want or what a lot of people want. Like, tell me about that. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so, so we'll skip over cause I kind of like prompted it on a few of the specific things that I might, you know, choose to focus or focus on or deprioritize. And then, you know, and I asked it about, um, [59:43] kind of how to manage the fact that Matt is now between jobs and will be helping me. And again, it sort of gave me some standard ways that, you know, we might struggle with like boundaries and, you know, defining clear roles, things like that. Things that I again kind of asked it in a different way, like what might I lose sight of in the coming year? [1:00:05] And here again, it's like, okay, so the top one is importance of self-care. [1:00:11] The next one, which is very important, is value. All of these are very important. The value of honest self-reflection, the balance and work-life dynamics, and then staying true to my core mission. [1:00:22] And so at this point, because the theme keeps coming up that like, [1:00:26] So you, Chad GPT, are very focused on making sure I don't overextend myself, making sure that, you know, I'm not being like too ambitious. And I, Gina, am all about maximizing ambition, right? So I wanted to kind of probe it at this point or prompt it. I said, I don't actually like the phrase work-life balance. [1:00:43] What insights have I in fact articulated about this in my journal? And what's my distinct perspective on it, if you can tell? So I'm kind of giving it the feedback that you just mentioned that like, this doesn't really sound like me.

[1:00:55] Yeah. And so then it really kind of leveled up, if you will. It said, based on your journal entries, you know, your perspective on work life balance seems to lean more toward an integrated approach, where work and personal life are not in competition, but rather complement and enhance each other, you emphasize living intentionally, etc. So this is much better. And I said, that sounds right. So then I asked, okay, so how am I specifically likely to mess up on this in the coming year, given my stated approach to it? [1:01:25] And then it got more helpful. It said, given your approach to integrating work and personal life, potential pitfalls include... [1:01:33] Blurring boundaries, true enough. Without clear boundaries, work could intrude into personal life or personal concerns could distract from work focus, which is truer than it even knows. [1:01:43] It even knows, you know, because this especially comes up with, you know, like I always as an extrovert who is an external processor, I always want to be telling my partner and my friends the stories of like what my clients tell me, which obviously I can't do. And so I'm always like. [1:02:01] I am... [1:02:03] de-identifying like crazy. I'm changing, you know, the details, but always feeling myself kind of at the edge of like, [1:02:12] Okay, would this person know I'm talking about them if they were behind me at a cafe, you know, which is like the state of the kind of criterion I learned in grad school. And most of the time I can say no, but like some of the time, you know, like it gets really hard sometimes to really kind of hold myself fully accountable. And this is like a reminder to me kind of like, yeah.

[1:02:30] Don't blur that boundary, especially like when I'm giving advice or just informally like, you know, serving as a sounding board for friends or for people in my family, for people close to me. And then it's like, wait, am I wearing my therapist hat or am I wearing, you know, my friend hat? So this is super relevant. And then over integration, this was a kind of interesting one. [1:03:00] known to do and could do again. And so I [1:03:04] The over-integration one, I wasn't sure what to make of. This was new to me as a concept. What is over-integrated? How could you be over-integrated? And so I asked it if it could give me a specific example. [1:03:16] and it suggested a way this could happen where in discussions with my husband, Matt, if they frequently and predominantly revolve around work-related strategies or client management, it could overshadow personal non-work related conversations and interactions. This could lead to a scenario where most of our experiences and dialogues are work-centric. [1:03:36] Yeah, maybe. Like this was something that at least like it really probed some, [1:03:42] valuable reflection on something that I just wouldn't have thought to reflect on otherwise, which is super helpful. And then I asked, you know, kind of about high leverage activities to be engaging in specifically toward the goal of selective client expansion. So here I kind of got more tactical with like, okay, let's follow up some of the broad goals and broad themes. Right. Just like I use it as a kind of organizational tool at this point, just to help me

[1:04:08] But kind of categorize and operationalize, you know, kind of in what order should I be doing these things and kind of where to put my focus, which again was incredibly helpful. But yeah. [1:04:21] I love that. I think there's a lot of really, really smart things. And to sort of like, sort of zoom out, because we're heading towards the end of the episode. And I want to sum up a little bit of what I've seen, because I think there's so much smart stuff in here. But one thing is you're starting off with a ton of information, like all these journal entries. [1:04:42] You then kind of like, [1:04:45] how to do the personal biography, like a little bit of a summary. Then you had to take from that summary themes. And then you started asking like very specific questions about how [1:04:54] okay, like what am I, what might, what might I be missing or what things should I push on or all that kind of stuff, which I think is really cool. I love asking for, you know, what am I missing? All that kind of stuff. Um, but what's really important here at this point is you asked it what you might be missing, um, or what you might, [1:05:13] not do or I can't remember the exact formulation, but [1:05:16] um, it gave you an answer that wasn't really like you. Like it was like, you know, you shouldn't necessarily be too ambitious or overextend yourself. And, and your whole vibe is like, be as ambitious as you want to be, um, be more ambitious. Uh, we're raising the ceiling here. And, um, and rather than be like, Oh, chat GPT is not working or whatever. You just got more specific and you were kind of like,

[1:05:39] look at the writing that I do about, about ambition and use that as a guide to talking about this topic with me. And it got much better. Like, [1:05:48] I think that's the thing that people often miss about ChatGPT is it's not one thing. It has a default personality that it will adopt if you don't give it instructions. But if you're specific about what you want, it will totally change how it treats you and what it says. And that can make all the difference in whether or not it's helpful. [1:06:06] Exactly. Yeah. I mean, just to zoom back out to this whole process that we've been talking about and what ChatGPT is doing for me here. [1:06:18] I mentioned I'm an external processor, right? I mentioned how I always need to be talking through things with people. And I know you and I journal partly as a scaffold for that kind of external processing, right? To get things out of our heads on paper where we can dialogue with them, where we can hear them and see them for ourselves. To have a tool that actually talks to us, that actually can not only [1:06:42] you know, summarize, but can build upon, can question, can consolidate, connect dots between all these different things that have been swimming around in our heads. [1:06:56] It's so groundbreaking. [1:06:59] just from the standpoint of us being able to do what we do, [1:07:04] Do you know what I mean? Like, it was really funny when I first talked to the audio chat GPT,

[1:07:10] And Matt was there to witness this, that just the hilarity of it. I initially, like, you know, I picked my voice, the British lady version, you know, and she... [1:07:21] said hello to me for the first time, you know, in her very friendly way. What would you like to talk about? And I froze up. Like my social anxiety kicked in. And I found myself like in that moment feeling all the feelings of like, Oh my gosh, I need to make a good first impression. She's gonna think I'm so banal and stupid. And I was like, what the heck? Like I'd already anthropomorphized her. I'd already imbued her. [1:07:44] With all of these human qualities that [1:07:47] make her so valuable to me, even just from the standpoint of like now as therapists, we can do exposure therapy. We can do I literally had an exposure exercise. [1:07:58] just like foisted upon me by right my first contact with voice GPT and the fact that [1:08:05] Like... [1:08:06] But we can actually [1:08:09] outsource, you know, some therapists might be threatened by this, right? Like you had that amazing tweet about how your therapist was kind of freaked out to discover how much chat GPT could do for you now. Yeah. Right. Like. [1:08:23] But the more I reflect on it, the fact that so much of what we do can actually be done by the client themselves when empowered with this tool. To me, like, this is why I became a therapist. This is why I love and care about the human mind, because to me, what this is demonstrating is like,

[1:08:42] just how much we can accomplish with... [1:08:46] the kinds of tools that we ourselves have invented to aid and to multiply our agency. [1:08:56] Yeah, these are common factors. It doesn't take a separate organic intelligence to... [1:09:03] teach us how to be our better selves. It takes us [1:09:07] dialoguing with ourselves and accessing the world of information and the world of internal, you know, insight and experience that we already have at our fingertips. And so I just I couldn't be more excited. [1:09:20] You know, about what the future holds with the stigmality. That's amazing. I love that. That's such a, that's such a good way to put it. And I think it's so, it's so smart. Like one, I think one of the things you're saying is coaches and therapists, like all great, all, all amazing stuff. But, um, [1:09:37] accessibility [1:09:39] and cost. And there's all this stuff where it's like, I can't, [1:09:42] I would love to talk to my therapist all day, but like I can't, and he doesn't want, he doesn't really want that either. Um, but I can talk to, I can talk to chat GPT all day. But like as a therapist, like I've had the thought many times, like I wish I could send a clone of me home with that. Do you know what I mean? And like, yeah, now I kind of can like, that's a win-win, you know? That's amazing. We all want this for you. It's totally incredible. And, and it's, it's, it's

[1:10:12] Therapists are amazing. Some therapists are terrible. Um, but like therapists only have a certain number of hours in the day. Um, it'd be great if I could interact with the best therapist instead of whoever I happen to find for my particular issue. Cause it's like, I don't think there's like one there, one therapist or one coach that's like just the best. It's like fit between you and you and the, and who you're working with. But, um, but yeah, we can, we can just, we can distribute that beyond the hours in the day that that person has, has to offer. I think [1:10:42] saying is like forget about the therapist um it's also just about like what you as a human are bringing to it um like these tools are incredible mirrors and they give back to you what you put in and um [1:11:00] And if you put in a lot of time and effort and you put in yourself, they will reflect that self back to you in a way that can lead to growth. And that's like incredibly powerful. [1:11:09] Exactly. Yeah, I mean, so even just coming back to where ChatGPT and I landed at the end of this exchange that we've been reviewing, [1:11:19] I asked it to now summarize and consolidate everything we've talked about. [1:11:23] And the fact of the matter is, like, nothing here is new or surprising per se, right? All of this, either I have... [1:11:33] told it and it summarized for me or it and I arrived at collaboratively, right? In terms of like now it's work personal integration, right? Instead of just work life balance, like, but having,

[1:11:45] this consolidated... [1:11:48] - List. [1:11:49] Like for all that people might be down on ChatGPT for, you know, well, it doesn't give you anything new. It just, you know, regurgitates what's on the Internet or just regurgitates. [1:12:01] Do you know how powerful that is? Like if all it did were regurgitate... [1:12:07] But like in a way that was really coherent and that was fresh and that was really like systematically drawing on the sum of both what you've inputted to it and what it knows from the Internet. [1:12:20] Like, show me a human who can consistently do that. Well, it's just such an incredible source of, you know, we talked about remembering what, you know, right? [1:12:33] Remind me, Chad GPT, what was it I was on about at the beginning of this chat when I was mentioning this, you know, issue that I've now kind of gotten distracted from? And how did that connect to this thing we're now talking like? [1:12:45] It can do that for me. Yeah. Yeah. [1:12:48] I love it. And it's so true. You know, it's like people can like look at magic and be like, well, it's just XYZ or it's like the human body, like really all it does is it like... [1:13:00] sucks in O2 and like expels CO2. Like, that's not a big deal. And it's like, no, that's amazing. Like freaking, yes, you try to synthesize a living organism that spontaneous, you know, that generates energy from the atmosphere and like,

[1:13:19] Turns it into, you know, a beating heart like what? Yeah. And this feels like, you know, we haven't quite learned how to synthesize actual life. But like, wow, somehow we've managed to kind of synthesize a very important thing. [1:13:35] and very, you know, hard to simulate process. [1:13:39] of life. Yeah, totally. And who knows what the future holds. Yeah, and I think like you're saying, like, [1:13:47] Um, [1:13:48] It is true that it's not really... [1:13:51] coming up with like totally new stuff. Um, it might be new to you, but like probably not new in terms of like the collective brain of humanity. Um, but like we said earlier, this, the answers you're looking for are often pretty simple. Um, it's just like finding the answer is sometimes hard and then remembering it is, is really hard. And that's what these tools are. That's what these tools are good for. And that's, that's really, it sounds like that's a lot of what you're using it for. And it's really, really cool to see. [1:14:19] And just, I think... [1:14:22] The... [1:14:23] Just to kind of come back to this notion of like... [1:14:26] an anthropomorphized other, you know, who's really our self reflected, you know, there's therapy research that a lot of therapists don't, [1:14:37] attend to and may not actually love to hear about, which is like how much of the [1:14:43] efficacy of therapy [1:14:45] actually [1:14:46] can be accounted for just by the patient. [1:14:49] Like variability in treatment outcomes explained by, you know, you plug in all these different variables, the specific treatment method, the therapist orientation, the number of years of the therapist experience, the socioeconomic, like all these different things, the diagnoses. And of all those variables, the one that one of the variables that come like that swamps all the rest in terms of explanatory outcomes.

[1:15:11] you know, statistical kind of variants. [1:15:13] is just who the patient is. That's it. It's like this patient versus that patient versus the other patient. The patient is making their own therapy. Like do different patients experience me very differently. And I, and I know because I can see how, wow, I like, that's a mode that I was in for this patient where I'm way more talkative than with this other patient where I'm like, right, really reflective and thoughtful, you know, like the patients are shaping me. And now it's like, we have that variable isolated. Right. [1:15:41] Right. Like you design your therapist, you design it, you tell it how talkative or how, you know, reflective to be. You tell it what orientation to adopt. [1:15:53] But it's still like an interaction with a kind of with another you. And I think psychologically, you know, that gets us to like, how does that interact with our attachment styles, with our sense of self, with our sense of, you know, belongingness versus isolation? Like, I get unblocked from writing by just having ChatGPT ask me, [1:16:17] questions about the topic that I would like to write about. And it's wild what a different mode it puts me in. So I just feel like I feel like I couldn't emphasize enough just... [1:16:26] the value of having a [1:16:29] like an agent, right? Like, or a pseudo agent. It doesn't, it turns out that it doesn't actually even have to be alive for us to be able to, [1:16:38] like externalize that part of ourselves and like,

[1:16:42] relate to it in a new way. [1:16:44] I love that. You just you honestly just like [1:16:48] psychology nerd sniped me because, um, and I, I wish, I wish we had more time. Um, but, um, because one of the things you said that I think, um, you made a lot of points in there that I think are really interesting, but one of the things you said that makes me really curious is that the, the main variable and treatment outcomes for therapy is like who the patient is. And, um, my, like the soundbite that I know is that the main outcome is like the therapeutic alliance or the main thing that affects the therapeutic alignment alliance. Is that the [1:17:18] or is it different and how are they related in your mind? [1:17:21] So it's different. And the one you always hear about, the one that's gotten the most press, so to speak, both within the field and outside the field is the Alliance. [1:17:29] Like when we think common factors of therapy... [1:17:32] that seem to cut across orientations, the alliance is the first thing that comes to mind. But this is actually a separate variable that is separately entered into the regression equation. [1:17:43] Just like, who is the patient? [1:17:46] There's also a separate variable, which is who is the therapist. And that also turns out to explain a great deal of variance. So in addition to like, how warm and trusting is the working relationship between you, which is crucial. [1:17:58] There's also just like how is each individual person contributing across different dyads, meaning like you might have different relationships with these different five patients, but... [1:18:09] Or as the patient, you know, you've seen five therapists and some of them you had better relationships with, some worse, but like you as the patient managed to get something out of every single thing.

[1:18:19] therapist that another patient hasn't figured out how to get out of those same therapists. Does that make sense? So it's like a distinct variable. That's really interesting. It reminds me of... [1:18:30] I'm reading this book right now called I Am Thou by Martin Buber. Do you know him? I've heard tell, but I haven't read it. Maybe I should put it on my list. [1:18:41] You should definitely put it on your list. It's super hard to read. He's really mystical and esoteric. I first was gifted it when I was at the end of high school and I picked it up and looked at it and I was like... [1:18:51] This is terrible, I can't read this. But somehow as I've gotten older and more woo-woo, I've been like, oh, this is great. But like, I think one of the underlying points that he's making, which I think is like really special and interesting, and it's exactly I think what you're saying, if I'm interpreting you correctly, is... [1:19:10] The I that I am. [1:19:13] uh, arises as I relate to someone else and that, or something else. And so who you are changes in a lot of ways based on the relationship that's currently happening and the way that you're, you're approaching that relationship. And so if you, if you believe that that's true, then it would make a lot of sense that like, uh, [1:19:33] but like how you are in the therapy room is going to be different from patient to patients. And there's not really like, obviously there's some common things, but like, um, who you are and your effectiveness and all that kind of stuff is going to, is going to change drastically in a way that like, when you're talking about, I don't know, like, uh, the effectiveness of, uh, a knee surgeon, it might not be as, as different for a knee surgeon who, what the knee is. It's like, that's just, it's a knee. I would suspect not and hope not, right? Like, I hope it's not that

[1:20:03] And so there's a lot in what you're saying today. [1:20:07] The... [1:20:07] resonates in terms of, and I, you know, I've heard different variants of that idea, that kind of the ways, and I think there's a lot to it, the ways that we enter into different modes, or there are kind of different versions of, you know, we sort of have different versions of ourselves, depending on kind of what gets brought out in a given interaction or a given environment. And I think, [1:20:27] By default, that's just definitely true. [1:20:31] Because I think we start out compartmentalized. We kind of get activated into different modes by different circumstances and with different people. And, you know, these things don't get integrated by default. But I think a big... [1:20:44] goal of therapy and I think a big goal of our own [1:20:47] growth and psychological aspiration as individuals is to seek integration. [1:20:55] Right. It's I think a lot of what you and I will be helping people with in our course. Right. Like [1:21:00] learning about who you are, kind of clarifying, crystallizing, like what is actually important to you, all things considered, and what are all these different parts, including the neglected parts, and how do you want them to feature in the life that you're building and how you spend your time and what you prioritize and what is non-negotiable and what is more, you know, what can you be, what can you trade off so that we can actually be the like overarching architects

[1:21:30] discover and consult with and ultimately put into dialogue and somehow, you know, like weave together all these different compartmentalized parts. And I think having a chat GPT to talk to. [1:21:43] And to kind of like... [1:21:45] park some of those selves on and then dialogue with them so that we can understand them better as the I that is relating to this version of me. [1:21:55] Right. It's such a tremendous tool. [1:21:58] for posturing that integration. [1:22:00] I love that. That is beautiful. I think we should leave it there. And for anyone who's listening, and if you vibed with that, we're doing a course. It's called Maximize Your Mind with ChatGPT. The link is below. You should come hang out with us in the course and learn how to do that integration process that Gina was talking about. And yeah, I would love to have you back. We should definitely do this again. Thank you so much for taking the time. This is an amazing conversation. [1:22:29] It is always a pleasure, Dan. [1:22:31] To be continued, no doubt. [1:22:34] Bye. [1:22:35] Thank you.