Where was I?

I lose ideas all the time. Sometimes it's in the middle of a sentence, and sometimes it's walking into another room. Usually it's mildly frustrating, but every now and then it becomes profoundly painful, and you realize why things like ADHD are disabilities.

I've been in meetings where I feel foolish because I couldn't remember something. I've been in debates with friends where I feel frustrated that I can't make my point well, because I can't keep track of my ideas. Nothing has cost me any more than embarrassment, but it induces anxiety when I do have big events where I have to speak or answer questions, like my dissertation defense.

Practice helps, but your brain has limits

To get ready for my defense, I practiced talking to people about my dissertation. I took lots of notes. I practiced my presentation for hours. I did well.

That's not practical for every situation, though. Practice works for the things you can get to know well. Your brain only has so much room, so it helps to save it for the most important things. Keeping your information saved and organized means you're not relying on your limited recall.

One chat for each thread

The things I've offloaded to ai don't necessarily save me time. What it gives me is organization. It lets me pick up different threads of thought.

For example, right now I have a chat that's about organizing my desk. I did some of the organization steps, but I have more steps to do, and when I'm ready to pick that thread up again, I can go back to that chat and say, "OK, what's the next thing I can do to clean up?"

I've been trying to get my dog into a doggy daycare and boarding facility, but that's a challenge for many reasons. I have an open chat where I'm keeping track of my thoughts on what's important to me, what places I've evaluated, what my criteria for evaluation are, and where I might try next.

I have another chat open that's walking me through how to repair some damage one of my dogs did to my desk chair. I work on that project a little bit, and when other things take me away, it's fine, because the next step is already queued up for me in that chat. I don't have to remember, "Oh, where was I?" The executive function of getting started on a task has been reduced, and I'm more likely to be able to finish that task.

Tell it once

All my stuff is named after comics. My AirPods are Ned, my iPads are Oracle, and Tony Stark had an assistant named Friday, so my assistant is friday. It's Claude, plus a folder of notes about me that it reads before it answers.

Here's what that looked like with my closet this week. I took a picture of it, opened a new chat, and said:

It was a good start, but it didn't know anything about me yet, like the two baskets under my bathroom vanity where most of my clothes already go. So I asked it to learn.

It asked me what I'd tried, where each thing broke, and why clothes end up on the floor. Then it saved my answers in a closet section of my notes.

I also added one more thing I wanted it to remember.

A desire path is the worn shortcut people make across the grass where the sidewalk doesn't go. A lot of people have desire paths in their homes, especially people with ADHD. They have a tendency to drop things on flat surfaces, or put them into bins, or maybe just piles. You start to feel guilt and shame around not being able to keep your space neat and tidy, when really it is OK for you to just change your environment to work better for you.

To see whether that worked, I closed that chat, opened a brand-new one, and sent the exact same message with the same picture.

Here's what's in my friday folder:

• README.md, the map, so a new chat knows where to look
• context, who I am and how to work with me
• style, how I write
• domains, one file for each thing I'm carrying, like home.md for the dogs, the laundry, and the bedroom closet
• research, what I've read and gathered

My friday folder is where the second chat found the plan.

Where was I?

Being able to actually go back and read what you wrote helps in picking the thread of a thought or project back up again. For people who struggle with executive functioning, that can mean a task feels less daunting, because you can literally find the thread and ask, "Where was I?"

Telling friday about my closet took a little bit of upfront effort. That effort means the next step is already queued up for me, and I don't have to remember, "Oh, where was I?" My brain only has so much room, and now I get to save it for the most important things.

Try it tonight

Start with the magic wand question. If you had a magic wand, what's one thing you would change about your life as it stands today?

Make a new folder on your computer for that one thing. In the Claude desktop app, click Project or folder under the chat box, choose Add folder, and pick that folder. Tell it what you've already tried, and then say what I said: "Interview me about my habits and history for this problem, and put it in a place that a future chat would pick up on it." When it's done, ask it to save what it learned in that folder, in a file called CLAUDE.md. Every new chat you start in that folder reads that file first, so you only have to explain once.

If you want an assistant that knows you across everything you're juggling, the way friday knows me, I'm teaching how to build one on Nov 20.

Build your own

On Fri, Nov 20, from 10 to 11 am Pacific, I'm teaching a live hour on building your own ai assistant on your Mac, with Claude. It's $75, and you'll need a paid Claude plan. Go to studiowlabs.com/assistant to learn more.