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How I converted overwhelming inspiration into experience …

After starting my 100-day-writing-challenge in last December (2023), I arrived at a point, where writing, speaking and thinking became friends — my most supportive mental friends!

The missing link was my voice, yes, my voice! I was absolutely not aware of that. By unlocking that hidden tool, that magic instrument my life has changes. x

Many thanks to Silke Fritsche and Laura Joeken, inspiration and guidance from you made me starting this learning journey. And finally also many thanks to the great videos shared by Vinh Giang — based on all the shared insights from you I was able to close the important thinking-producing-rethinking-loop within me. Now I am in track and building a habit out of this.

During the last 100 day I have experienced where my flow came from. Not only from specific conditions. No, control over boundary conditions was not enough. But rather I learned how to stretch the state of flow substantially by doing things smarter, not harder.

It is all about the closed feedback loop! … would be my answer, if you would have asked me about “the one learning” of the last 3 months. And yes, Silke asked several times What was your insight of today’s session? And this is the moment when all this greatness started.

Introducing regular reflection and outlook sessions in my personal life in general — not only after a task or a session — allowed me to move on to another level, at least this is how it feels today.

Here is why:

Besides collaborating with many verry different people in different roles, some facts about me are relevant:

I think a lot.

I love thinking, and explaining, and building and presenting.

I enjoy sketching and mapping complex ideas.

This way I can simplify things in follow-up steps.

And, of cause, I love programming and using smart technology.

Last year, when I started, I was already really clear about the importance and the benefit of all those traits, but the real power lies in between them. It is the integration which makes things worth more than the parts, they consist of.

I started writing, the mind became clear.

I defined an integration goal, and the path became visible.

I practiced every single day, using the writing tools, and the audio tools.

My speaking became more clear and focused, and, best of it all, I connect all the artefacts which appear in my “external memory”. No, not files in a cloud storage — I hate organizing files in any storage — but rather memories and thoughts in an extension of my brain, using cloud storage and smart technology.

This approach is not an explicit technical link between human and machines, like neuralink will be. But rather it is an implicit mental link between thinking human’s using technology with a string focus on improvement and simplification of collaboration.

Let’s go back a step.

Here is what I did not know: I did never use my voice in the right way. It was not even clear to me, that my spoken language is so different from my written language. Wow! What an experience, what an insight!

Just by listening to what I have to say and reflecting on exactly that channel, I could close me inner loop of creativity. The clear thoughts came out of me much smoother, and unclear thoughts, now can be massaged and developed further until they are ready using my continuous loop of assisted self reflection.

And gone is the time when I felt the pressure of missing ideas. All this is a result of daily practice, of playing on my personal instrument — my voice. Finally, this practice became a habit.

I was ablet to integrate all my creative tasks, rather than practicing topic A for one hour, and then topic B for another hour. With my new routines I can do A and B in an integrated overlapping non-disruptive mode. This feels a bit like extending the day by some hours.

What comes next? I want to bring this experience to another level, using my smart assistants. An article from Nicola Ballotta triggered me. He recommends the following seven steps for proficient writing practice:

🎯 Choosing the Topic

✍️ Selecting the Title

💡 Collecting Ideas

📝 Creating an Outline

➕ Expanding the Outline

🔍 Proofreading the Draft

🎨 Enriching My Article

For my next iteration in my 60-day-spring-writing-challenge I will use this advice and puzzle it into my new personal approach.

Ok. I reviewed the 7 steps. Sound reasonable. Before I start, I do some adjustments for my next “self-experiment”.

I have observed in the past, that such a linear flow hurts my brain. But since it has been proven to work, I will build on that. In order to go on I have to answer this question: How can I map this flow to my practice?

If I would knew: How I could have added it to my daily routine, I think I could achieve more.

Here are my first ideas to kick-off my collaboration with my asistants:

🎯 Choosing the Topic

1 # My Assistant creates word clouds, one per week, changing over time. This allows me choosing the topics based on data I derive from my memory.

✍️ Selecting the Title

My Assistant creates some funny titles and I take those to my walk, or I inject them into my brain in the last minutes of a day before sleeping.

💡 Collecting Ideas

Collecting ideas became a daily habit already — Check — Nothing to change.

📝 Creating an Outline

Oh yeah! Creating an outline can be done by an assistant as well. Many people use ChatGPT for this step. But I won’t follow here.

In this step, when we think about it, we talk about the essence of our creative process. The essay should be my personal work, and will be like this, also in the future, when assistants support my work. Using my extended brain for creative chats and mind mapping sessions is a nice idea. But selecting the story line and putting the puzzles together won’t be delegated to the assistants, at least not for now.

➕ Expanding the Outline

And here is some more work for the Assistant. Given my plot, the assistant can go and collect and link material from my memories into that core structure — this can bring more inspiration. A single blog can be extended into a meaningful series, this way.

🔍 Proofreading the Draft

And even more work for assistants — and for a human in the loop.

🎨 Enriching My Article

And now comes the final cut — I am in again. It must be fun to release a great piece of work on a regular basis!

This procedure looks like a promising approach.

I would assume, that this new habbit can turn myselfe into a much more efficient writer because a bunch of my ideation work happens at the right point in time without interruption. Words will flow out of me either by typing or speaking to my assistant — who mindfully handles some of the steps inbetween.

What Adrian Stanek commented on Nicola’s article is exactly what I have experienced:

Finding topics can be hard if you need to. Inspiration often comes during the days when you least expect it. Having a form notebook, to-do app, or voice recorder often helps to save your thoughts.

For me it is the omnipresence of my beloved tools I love to work with. And ideally, the tools will be seamlessly integrated in my personal flow. This is what I expected from technology for a long time already — just now it seams that the time is right.

In my case, the tools are (1) the audio-assitant, linked to my extended brain. And besides that, my journal books and a traditional pen to write my ideas. The pages will be added to my extended brain where the assistants do their work to bring all text and audio in line. First step: all memories are handled in a timely manner, and than, there is knowledge structure on top of it. This way, my thougths became data, digestable by my assistants, which support me with new thoughts. This way I became ready for co-thinking sessions between me and my agents.

Using such a procedure means a lot to me. I do not have to work too hard, but it feels much smarter.

What’s next? My expectation is that I can start reaching to a wider audience. Ok. Why? Because writing is no longer yust for my joy. During my first 100-day-writing-challenge it was true that I wrote for me as the primary audience.

Yeah, I could solve the bootstrap problem! Now, having all the ideas linged up, notes collected and linked to the right place, and drafted passages parked in my extended brain, I am able to do more experiments, and to use my assistants. This probably pushes me to the next level.

What follows is also a bit more of strategic work. The next challenge will guide me towards a goal I work on for a while:

I want to change the way of learning, first how I learn, and next, the way how people who work with me learn.