Are You Taking Notes?

I've been privately blogging since University, writing dozens of long entries a year. When I don't have time for that, the notes app gets the brain dump. And I know I’m not alone here. Walking home from nights out, on the commute, pondering before bed. Sometimes these notes evolve into action. More regularly, they collect e-dust in folders never to see the light of day again.

Well now everything changes. I’m here to tell you that your notes app, crammed to the brim with musings, is about to get its time in the limelight. And of course this relates to AI, sorry. 

Notes have been a second brain for people long before AI came along. A physical-ish depository of word spaghetti breaking free from your synapses. Now that depository can actually work to build the brain of your AI assistant. 

You've probably heard the term 'markdown file' by now. If not, maybe 'skills', 'context window', or 'memory'. They all sound confusing but in reality refer to the same simple thing: long bodies of text that train AI to be more valuable. These text files can be as simple as; who you are, what you're doing, and how you generally want things to be done. They're how a generic chatbot turns into something genuinely valuable.

Now despite these files being mega simple to produce and really valuable in the output they create, people don’t make them. Old habits are hard to break and that’s why we all still gravitate towards our notes app. Ramblings that serve no purpose beyond our own brain detangling.

I’m not asking you to stop writing. Writing is an absolute superpower. So often over the years, when I’m overwhelmed and have so much to do, I don’t quite know what to do, writing has been the perfect antidote. In these moments, I’m forced into clarity. But now, two birds can be perfectly struck with one wonderfully perfect stone (that sounds very aggressive):

1) You're writing. Taking time away from consumption and creating something that frees your mind and brings clarity.

2) You're training your AI to become an extended version of you. Some call this a 'second brain'. I'd call it more of a 'training manual'.

Conversations around AI are knackering. The gap between hype and reality widens every day. You can't go online without someone calling you an idiot for not having trained an AI that makes £12.4m for you while you sleep. What's the AI doing to make that £12.4m? Comment 'hack' and I'll send you an AI-generated plan that explains absolutely nothing.

What's lacking is simple stuff that gets you a little bit more value from AI. Closer to the ridiculous promises we're all force-fed by our Silicon Valley overlords. For me, the closest thing I've found to that is just writing markdown files.

Why I think it actually works

AI is, at its core, a parrot with a PhD. Brilliant in a vacuum, useless in your specific universe. When I ask it to write me a marketing strategy cold, I get something that sounds like it was beamed in from a HubSpot blog circa 2019. When I feed it a markdown file describing the product, the audience, the budget, what worked, what flopped, and what my team keeps weirdly bringing up in every meeting? It starts to sound like a genuinely useful colleague. 

I've started to think most people are using AI like they're shouting questions at a stranger on the street. While some feed in every inch of context that’s ever unfolded in their vicinity. The output gap between those two modes is enormous.

A caveat before we go further

There's a much more efficient way to do all of this. Pipe your emails, your work files, your Slack, your meeting transcripts, your calendar into a system that automatically turns the lot into markdown and feeds it to your AI. That's the proper version. That's where this is all heading, and it's a rabbit hole I'll happily go down another day.

But most people aren't going to build that this weekend. What most people can do is open a blank document tonight and start writing. So that's what this is about. The version you can actually start by yourself, today, with no tools, no setup, and no n8n rabbit hole.

What does this mean for marketers?

This is the least daunting way to immediately make your LLM more useful to you. You know the feeling. You ask the AI something, and it answers like it knows you… confident, fluent, and annoyingly wrong. It invents a brand voice you don't have. It recommends a budget you'd never spend. It assumes an audience that isn't yours. It's irritating precisely because you expected it to know more than it possibly could.

This runs true for your personal usage of AI and if you are using it to help you run your business. We all know this pain, and a simple file describing your product, your audience, what's worked and all of your notes and ramblings in one place will help you to create a genuinely valuable colleague.

How to start (a ten-minute, one-time setup)

In ChatGPT, make a "Project" from the sidebar, drop the file in, and every chat inside it can see the file. Claude's the same…click Projects, create one, add your file. Claude just holds more context, so it copes better if you end up with twenty files.

Then keep adding to that same file. The more you feed it, the less your AI sounds like a stranger.

AI is overwhelming, the hype is exhausting, and most people are still shouting questions at a stranger on the street. This is just you, handing that stranger a bit of background and watching them get useful.

Some people may know this already and sorry if thats you, but I think it's increasingly difficult to know where people are at in their AI journeys, so I wanted to share something simple that people can action and have immediate benefit from.

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