She’s Running a Business, Writing a Book, and Getting a PhD—with ChatGPT - Ep.11 Anne-Laure Le Cunff

Teaser I'm doing a PhD writing a book running a business I have a team to manage having to recruit someone and writing the job description admin stuff even Grant proposals so honestly I don't think I would be able to do everything I'm doing at the moment if Chad GPT didn't exist it's saving me so much time and several times a week I'm thanking the creators of Chad GPT for making my current life [Music] possible [Music] hey I want to just take a quick break from this episode to tell you about a podcast you should know about it's hosted by Nathan leben who's actually on this show and did one of the most popular episodes we've ever had about how to use AI as a co-pilot for the Mind Nathan hosts a podcast called the cognitive Revolution where he interviews Builders at the edge of AI and discusses the profound shifts that it will unlock over the next decade he talks to the researchers and entrepreneurs that are shaping This Moment Like Logan Kilpatrick of open AI who I interviewed for the show as well eugia kudia of replica and suel Doshi of playground to listen to the show search for cognitive revolution in your podcast player all right now let's get back to how do you use chat gbt and Laura welcome to the show thanks so much for having me of Introduction course yeah it's so good to have you we've been friends for a while we've been following each other on our internet newsletter productivity Journeys for a while and it's really great to get to sit down for people who don't know you you are a neuroscientist a writer and an entrepreneur you an excellent newsletter and community of which I am a subscriber uh called Nest Labs you're also pursuing a PhD in neuroscience and you're writing a book so you are officially like I think I'm busy you are officially like the busiest person that I've ever met and uh I'm I'm always so impressed with everything you do it's it's so amazing thank you yeah I uh I have lots of different interests so I am a little bit busy at the moment maybe we should start there like um how do you get so much stuff done in a day honestly this is very relevant to this show and I swear I'm not making it up just to make it relevant but I don't How to use ChatGPT to save time think I would be able to do everything I'm doing at the moment if Chad gbt didn't exist um as you know you mentioned I'm doing a PhD writing a book running a business I have a team to manage bunch of things to do and there are so many things that would have taken me hours before and that now take me maybe 10 minutes that adds up right just all of this time that I'm saving um boring stuff sometimes like uh having to recruit someone and writing the job description it gets 80% of the way there by using Chad gbt admin stuff even Grant proposals like sometimes I use it for for that so it's saving me so much time and several times a week I'm thanking the creators of Chad GPT for making my my current life possible that's that's so funny I swear this is not discussed beforehand I didn't I didn't pay you to say that but um it makes me uh it makes me excited to hear that because I I um uh hey I think it's just great that it is furthering your creative life um I think that's like a key thing that I I feel about it that I want to bring to the people who listen to this and so it seems like you feel that too and then B I'm just like excited to see how you use it um because maybe I'll pick up some things that I can use to maybe I'll maybe I'll get a PhD or something you know um so why not why not so maybe we can maybe we can dive in into that maybe we can dive into a little bit of the uh some of your your use cases for it um do you want to do you want to start with um I know you said um one of the things that you use it for is research like talking to research papers and where are you getting the papers from like do you have some sort of like Google alert set up or some some search somewhere that that feeds you the papers yeah so I have an alert that feeds the the papers into my inbox so I receive it other email and I can have a quick look very often from just from the title you can knowe that maybe that has nothing to do with the research that you're doing and if it's relevant then I'll open it download the PDF uh which there are various ways to do I have access to all of them because I have an academic email address but if you don't there are other ways to get access to these PDFs and you can upload it to chat gbt and ask your questions got it that's really cool okay so basically you're getting these papers in your email you're scanning through them you're doing like a first little triage yourself just on the title and then if you're interested you're like okay I'm going to upload so it looks like you have a paper here that you're going to show us what is this paper so this paper I'm just going to demo it with one of my papers that I have published because I didn't ask for permission to another researcher to upload their papers and people can be a little bit worried when it comes to research and rights and redistribution so just for the sake of explaining how it works I'm going to upload one of my papers I am giving myself authorization to use this paper for this show great I love it and so the Tips to breakdown research papers with ChatGPT first thing you want to do is obviously to upload the paper so here I have uploaded the paper as a PDF and then you can ask it a question something I have found which is a bit silly with chat GPT but if you don't tell them to answer the question based on the uploaded PDF sometimes they will just ignore what you've uploaded so when I type the question I always say based on the PDF attached please answer the following question um and in this case we can ask something like what are the key considerations to take into account when implementing a neurop phys oh this is a long word physial measure of cognitive load in ADHD you don't need to necessarily like understand what the question means I'll still explain because it's not that complicated but uh when you want to measure cognitive load which is the mental effort that you put into doing something there are different measures that you could use you could use ey tracking you could use electrography you could use fmri there's lots of different ways of doing it um and you have some considerations that you need to take into account if the participants have ADHD versus if it's just neurotypical participants so that's a question we can ask to this paper which was a review of all of the different measures used in ADHD so before you ask the question um it sounds like uh one of the things you do first is you just review like what is what is in the paper like is it Rel reant to you do you have like a thing that you usually say for that so I always read the abstract before I upload a paper here there's no point uploading something that has nothing to do with my research so I always have a sense that it is at least relevant to my field of research and then the questions I asked allow me to know if it's relevant specifically to my research okay yeah without having to read the entire paper okay yet cool so I press enter and send it chat GPT is reading the document and then we get an answer and it gives you a bullet point list of all of the different considerations to take into account based on the paper and what do you think of these considerations they're actually relevant and they are the ones that are my paper which I can I can tell you now I wouldn't you know necessar be able to tell you if it wasn't mine but because I wrote it I can confirm that this is exactly what's in the paper and it's very helpful because as you can see I get four bullet points instead of I think this paper is 30 pages right so four bullet points with this answer and you know you can you can keep going and you can ask more questions saying am I the only one who's weird but I always say thank you I always thank Chad gbt so I say thank you and uh I say still based on this PDF because sometimes it forgets um how has it tracking been used to measure cognitive load in ADHD and so again it's censoring and it's it's uh yeah telling that people dation fixation patterns psychic movements definitely things that are included in this paper um so it all makes sense so this is great and if obviously um I I know the answer already but if I didn't with this it would be enough for me to at least know that this belongs in the to read pile and not in the I don't care well and and do you use it like one once you're in the middle of reading something do you use it to look things up or sort of do a deeper dive or do you find that you don't need it for that oh no that happens all the time when I'm in How to use ChatGPT to generate explanations tailored to you the middle of reading a paper and sometimes I um I generally don't understand what the author is talking about it's especially true if it's from an adjacent field of research where we're kind of talking about the same things but they don't necessarily use the same words that I do when in cognitive NE science and so I know we're talking about the same thing but I don't understand what you're saying and so what I can do same is uploaded here and ask questions you know you can I really like explain me like I'm five where say explain me like I'm five what is this author saying um or tell me what were the findings what were the limitations um and I can even use it as a translator asking can you translate this in a language that I can understand from my field in cognitive Neuroscience so it can really be used as a kind of translator for research papers as well you're so right this is you're hitting on so many points that I've been I've been talking a lot about on this podcast and writing about a lot and it's so great to see that that you're you feel it too because like the like the key underlying thing that I think is going on here that people might miss is um I think chat gbt is an incredible tool for human coordination allowing humans to work with each other um because we have um basically we have all this knowledge that's all out there and it's there's so much knowledge that like a single human cannot even know what it is like know know even a small percentage of it let's say and what Chachi BT is able to do is find the right little bit of knowledge compress it and reformat it and translate it so that you can understand it and use it your context and one of the like really and you know I think thinking of chat gbt as a summarizer is something that we're maybe a little bit familiar with but one of the really um interesting things about what you said that that is that is a nice twist too is that it it translates for you but the thing that people Miss is that it translates from English to English um and what I think chat chbt lets us see is that there are many different versions of English that are spoken by many different subcommunities who all have their own ways of talking about things and the fact that that that we have different versions of English makes it harder for us all to work together and chbt as this like Universal translator um is able to allow Someone Like You who's working in cognitive Neuroscience to like understand the words and conventions of a different community and that's like that's just going to be net beneficial to progress for humans absolutely and uh I love that kind of lateral translation from onefi to another but also you can use it in a more vertical manner where for example um uh you know when you're like a I don't know second year PhD student and you're reading a paper that has been written by a professor in Neuroscience that has been in the field for 15 years they are without even realizing it maybe going to use more draggon and it's going to be a little bit more difficult for you to understand or maybe they're even going to use Concepts that you haven't even studied yet at school and so again you can have a little bit like the explain me like I'm five but you can go like explain me like I'm an undergraduate psychology student or explain me like I'm a product manager at a tech startup or explain me like I'm insert whatever you are what your role is and what your current knowledge is and so that can also be this vertical translation that's filling the gap between the knowledge that you have today and that additional knowledge that is in this paper this article Etc but that a little bit Out Of Reach at the moment right that makes that makes perfect sense it's um I think it's so it's so valuable because previously you might read something and not understand the terms and then end up having to spend like a day like looking up each individual term or like trying to find something that that could fill in the gaps because there's probably something that does fill in the gas but it's really hard to find and chat BT just like does that without really even blinking and yeah I think that's amazing yes um yeah I have another example of this where uh when I submitted a paper for peer review one of the peer reviewers came back and the comment was but what does it mean based on this theory of Dyslexia basically and I had never heard of that theory and if you don't know the theory that comment makes no sense because you're like what do you mean what do I mean in regard to that theory what part of the theory and what you know and I actually copy pasted that comment from the reviewer in chat gbt and chat gbt was like oh the reviewer probably means this because that's the part that a lot of researchers are still debating and you're making a claim here and maybe you should not sound so sure of what you're saying because this is something that is still a topic of debate and see this is an example where what I don't even know what I would have typed in Google to get an answer to this that makes total sense yeah there are so many of these like ungoogleable Google Blind Spot things that it that it sort of fills in I I love that did you just did you copy paste any of its responses back to the reviewer did you did you spend some time thinking about it no because first Chad GPT does sound like Chad GPT so I think anyone would know that even though it is getting a little bit better yeah um and uh and second I didn't upload the entire paper at the time so it was lacking cont text but at least I understood the question and so I could address the feedback whereas before that I was literally staring at that question from the reviewer and had no idea where to start that's great that's great I I love this use case I know you have some more stuff to show us um so if if you're cool with it um I see one of the things you said that you use it for is deep research on online ghosts and I'm very curious to learn what that means yes um it is actually a little bit adjacent to what we just talked about where sometimes you don't even know what to Google um in this case it's different you know what to Google but it's not returning any results and you know that knowledge is has to be somewhere on the internet but somehow it is not part of your circle of your map it's a little bit like um you know when you played like games that based games like Age of Empires or games like these and you can only see the places that you have explored already so you have no idea what's beyond this so it's a bit like that and so those online ghosts they are traces of their existence you know somewhere this information is available but you keep on Googling and you find links but they go nowhere or someone mentions some sort of information that they read somewhere but they didn't link back to the source where they found it and so you can't find the answer to your question and the example that I want to share has nothing to do with Neuroscience so I'm uh I'm French Algerian and I've been trying to reconnect a little bit with the Algerian side of my culture and one of the ways of doing this for me is to learn a little bit more about Algerian Cuisine I've been eating a lot of Algerian food when I was at home as a kid but it was always the same basic stuff and I've discovered as an adult that Algeria actually has a very rich culinary culture with lots of different dishes that I have never heard about and so I'm trying to learn more about them and I'm even trying to make some of them and something I discovered recently is that Algeria consumes a lot of cheese they make and eat a lot of cheese which is funny for me being half French because I thought that was a very French thing but apparently aan people also do this and there was this specific cheese that I found that seemed very interesting and not that complicated to make but it was impossible to find a recipe for it I tried in English I tried in French I could not find anything and I'm going to show you a little bit how I managed to find it and then I published the recipe in English because I wanted to contribute back to the internet even though I don't even know if anyone is going to ever look for it I love that wait like I'm sort of curious um how did you be how did you become informed of this cheese so as to know that you would want to find a recipe for it I was reading an article about Algerian cuisine in general and there was just one paragraph saying and Algeria is one of the biggest producers of cheese in Africa they they love cheese they have so many different ones and I had never heard of that I was never served cheese at home as a kid so it was completely new and that's when I fell into a rabbit hole of figuring out the entire cheese industry in Algeria okay and what is this specific cheese called it's called the camaria CIA yeah and um it's made with goat milk and it's very very simple uh you can make it in a couple of hours and the way you serve it is with honey and some pistachios and tea and no bread you just the cheese like that and is it like um is it sort of like a Chev like is it um very soft or is it harder or what's yeah it's very soft because you don't age it so it's uh yeah it's very soft okay I'm going to uh yeah I'm going to show you and we can I can describe it because I know some people listen the audio only so I initially found about this cheese with a different name take Leveraging ChatGPT to find hidden gems on the internet Merit it has two names because you have Arabic and B bber people in Algeria so you have two languages and uh because it's a cheese that was initially made uh by Berber people from the north of Algeria they call it te marit and uh so as you see what's the recipe to make te marit at home I'm sorry but I wasn't able to find a specific recipe for taken Merit it's very rare that you ask a question to Chad GPT and literally it says it doesn't know um and so then I give it a bit more information I'm like here's what I found on Wikipedia about the cheese right and so I'm like this is the cheese uh I I put it was on the French Wikipedia there's nothing on the English Wikipedia on the French Wikipedia explains a little bit more and then Chad GPT goes thank you for the information uh now that I have this I can tell you these are the ingredients and here are the instructions um but I'm reading the instructions and I'm like that doesn't really make sense and so I asked are you sure you'd make the cheese first then mix it with the lean which is one of the ingredients Chad says you're correct to question that my previous description may not accurately reflect the traditional meth method of making T mer so we have a little bit more back and forth and then I realized that this cheese has another name so I tell Chad GPT I found another name for that cheese kimaria does that help with finding a recipe please have a look in French and in English and so then it looks like it's uh it's finally understanding what I'm talking about so the recipe is starting to make a lot more sense um and it also links to the The Source but then I noticed that it contradicts itself with something it said before so um there's one recipe where there's one ingredient that's mentioned and then there's another recipe where that ingredient doesn't exist so I'm asking CH GPT is so nice with me saying you're absolutely right I apologize for the confusion and updating the recipe again at this point I'm a bit tired so I just check before I go further with this so there's no cooking involved I ask and it says yes there's a there's just a it says it's just heating the milk uh but it's uh there's no actual proper cooking involved um so I'm just going to spare you the entire very long conversation that I'm having but the Breakthrough moment was when I asked it to look it up in Arabic which didn't occur to me before because I don't speak Arabic my mom didn't teach it to me and so I just I was sticking to the two languages that I know wait can I ask you a question like um in when it like at this point because it had given you a recipe it had given you a couple different recipes before um it it seemed like the recipe that had just given you was like pretty much right but were you still sort of suspicious like it wasn't quite it wasn't quite quite right yes I could tell that it was hallucinating part of it uh and so it the ingredients sounded right but the order the steps felt a bit wrong and this is why I spare you that entire part but I asked a bunch of questions about how to make other types of cheese and that didn't match it was it would have been a really weird cheese if you did it with these steps not that I know anything about chees well now I know quite a bit after this conversation but at the time I didn't and so I was definitely suspicious that something was wrong with it I was getting closer but that was not the actual recipe and this is when I asked it to check in Arabic and it found a YouTube video which I didn't even know Chad gbt could do this until this conversation so it found the video and uh I watched it you can see a little bit what it looks like so sorry is so funny the [Music] transition so that's the [Music] video and this is something that you just never would have found like how could you you couldn't Google for this really you know no I couldn't Google for it it's in the language I don't even speak I wouldn't even you know I I was already struggling with the name in French and English of that cheese so no idea how to write this in Arabic and again it's a cheese where there's very little information online so there's no way I would have found that video without Chad GPT and the part where I was incredibly lucky here is that the video actually has no voice over and it's all subtitles explaining the steps so what I did is that I used the camera of Google Translate no way to watch the video and translate the subtitles to English oh my God that's amazing that's so cool like were you just taking pictures each for each frame or were you like did you download the video like I don't know how Google camera Works to be honest with you so it's live so I was posing translating with the camera you don't need to take a photo you just need to point your camera at whatever you're looking at and I had chat GPT open in another window and I was just typing things there in the text box but in a very messy way because the next step was to ask CH GPT to clean it up and format it as a normal like recipe instructions um but yes that's what I did with the the Google translate camera that is the best that is so cool I love it can we see what what came out yes so you can see here I say thank you because I still thank CHP I always do that too I I I agree with that as a best practice you never know what's going to happen in the future so always polite um so I say thank you here's the transcript of the video and as you can see it's um it's really just bullet points it's very messy I didn't change anything from the direct translation of the subtitles to what I copy pasted into chat GPT and then I asked it can you clean it up by combining steps removing unnecessary information fix the gramar where needed and fix the spelling of kimaria throughout because I butched it when I was typing it and voila the recipe that I obtained after hours of collaborative work with chat GPT I love this this makes me so happy to see it's such a cool process right like there's this thing that you wanted and the information was out there and you couldn't have found it before it found you the information and then it translated it for you and put it into a format that you can use and then the kicker is you put it back on the internet um like it's now on the internet and now anyone can find it I love that that's such a good story thank you it's uh as I I posted it on Twitter and I was saying I was supposed to write a research paper but I feel like the internet needs this a lot more did you make it how was it I haven't actually bought goat cheese it's a um sorry I'm I haven't actually bought goat milk it's in my fridge and it's my weekend project for this weekend and I ordered everything uh I I have the the solution that you need to to do the fermentation process I even have the I ordered honey from Algeria which arrived a few days ago I'm taking this very seriously import Algerian honey yeah I love that um well if if you do make it this weekend you should definitely send me pictures and we'll put it in the show notes we put links to it in the show notes so that people who are watching this in a couple weeks can uh can see it that'll be great amazing yeah yes um I think like th this kind of reminds me of another like little Soap Box I've been on recently um and you're just doing this so well that I feel like I need to point point it out which is I think people um they use chachy P for something like this they realize that it's sort of like hallucinating a little bit and then they just give up and they're like ah this doesn't work and I think what one thing that people who are good at this do is they're they act like model managers and by model manager I mean you you use a lot of the skills that a manager in like a in like a company would use in order to get chat BT to do the thing that you want or get the result that you want and so the first thing that you do is you have a good sense for um when something doesn't make a lot of sense like you have a little bit of a a six sense for like when the person that you asked to go do something like it comes back and it's like not quite right same thing for chat gbt it's like it's like not quite right right and then instead of throwing up your hands what you do is you kind of like go in a couple different directions to try to like nudge it you know you like ask about other cheeses to like get your own like your own knowledge up to speed in the area and and you can kind kind of trust that and then you kind of like about other things like oh maybe if I ask it about trying to find it in Arabic it will like learn it'll know how to do the right thing and I think that that's a such a smart such a smart way to think about it it's the definitely the best way to get the best out of people that you work with and I think it's also definitely the best way to get the most out of Chachi BT and you can see the results here like this is I like it might seem like a simple thing but this is actually really cool um and I'm really glad you shared it with us thank you yes and it definitely feels like managing someone uh and it's true when you manage someone it's actually always a little dance collaboration you have to listen you have to also help be supportive um so it's uh yeah I never thought about it this way but it's definitely the way it feels working with chat GPT yeah yeah you also have to say thank you and you do that a lot too so um you got to be nice to your chat BT you know um cool well that was great I'm I love that that that was a good online ghost um I yeah I want to let's let's keep going so another thing it seems like you use this for is you say to delegate tasks delegate is to is to delegate tasks that are sort of outside of your circle of competence so like tell me about circle of competence in case people aren't um familiar with that phrase and then tell me like what kinds of tasks you tend to delegate yeah so um the circle of competence was a concept that was developed by waren Buffett and Charlie Munger and uh they used it initially in relation to Investments knowing when making an investment fell inside or outside of their circle of competence which is very helpful for you to know what kind of risk you're taking here being aware of where you're stepping outside of that Circle and taking a bit of a bigger risk and maybe you need to bring some outside opinion to help you make that decision or when you're right in the Bull's Eye of your circle of competence and you have higher chances of knowing what you're doing when it comes to Investments and I find it really helpful in general for work and collaborating with other people just knowing what is my circle of competence what is outside of my circle of competence and it doesn't mean you need to stay in your circle of competence but just being aware of it again and I find that there are lots of tasks that are outside of my circle of competence where I don't feel the need to expand my circle to include those skills I don't feel like that's where I want to spend my time my energy and my creativity and if it's something that's going to be very long term I'm probably going to hire an actual human being to work with me on this project but if it's for a very quick thing that I just want to do right now CH GPT is amazing for this and one example that I wanted to share with you is very recently I attended a workshop with Nate klac and Johnny Miller that was all about YouTube thumbnails and my YouTube thumbnails were so bad so so bad because I made the mistake that a lot of people are making but I would spend so much time researching scripting shooting the video editing it and then five minutes before uploading it to YouTube I would think oh no I forgot about the thumbnail I would put something together very quickly so during that Workshop I wanted to experiment and just do one round of redesigns very quickly and I'll probably in the future work with someone longer term to really create something much better but to me it was a way of understanding the process and fix it in the short ter term I love that um go for it and I was going to ask should I share my chat GPT or do you do you want to say something no no no like I love that I mean I'm I'm really if you can tell I'm like leaning I'm like a little closer to the mic right now because like I need to know this so like I want to know how to make my Youtube thumbnails better so uh this is I'm right there I'm glued to this so let's um let's let's move into the like into how you did it like um you know it sounds like it sounds like you had have chat with chbt about improving your thumbnails like talk to us about how that went yes so the first thing I did was to give a very very detailed How to create awesome YouTube thumbnails with ChatGPT brief to chat GPT and I asked it to be a YouTube thumel strategist I literally said you are a YouTube thumbnail strategist and your role is to help me come up with a short design brief for a YouTube video thumbnail based on the transcript I will provide please make sure that you follow these two pillars and as I mentioned I am not good at making thumbnails so for this pillars I didn't make them up myself I followed this amazing YouTube Creator she's called Aran alter and recently she published a YouTube video and an infographic that explains how how to design great YouTube thumbnails and she spent hours like hours and hours like hundreds of hours I can't remember how many hours but it was a very long time she said watching a lot of different videos the corresponding thumbnails from successful creators seeing what works and what doesn't and she distilled it in that content that she shared with everyone for free so I pr if you're listening to this thank you so much um what I did is that I took those pillars that she shared and I used them as the basis to craft the brief for chat GPT and the two main ones were first to create a curiosity Gap so that's showing the gap between what we currently know and what we want to know and the second one is using scroll Stoppers um so there's are like bright colors large numbers danger movement money emotion faces Etc and Aon said to be careful and to not use too many of them because that can delete your brand and and so after I provided this I said after reading the transcript please provide me with the following first content what's in there what's the main focal point Etc second composition what are the elements placed how will the teril direct attention and to what and third contrast how will the thumbnail pop and this can be Luminosity contrast saturation contrast a hue contrast and in addition I said please do not suggest using people and characters in the thumbnails and please do not be verbos because I tried it a little bit before and it was giving me very long answers it was really hard to know what to design exactly so I wanted to really be to the point and tell me here's what you need to design and why do you not want to use people so I didn't want to have to spend a lot of time taking photos of myself to then design the thumbnail I wanted to go with something very simp simple and skateable and I noticed that other channels were doing really well without showing the face of the person actually recording the videos and once I noticed that I was like oh that's great and that also means that I don't have to take a terrible photo of myself five minutes before uploading the YouTube video and it always looks like crap instead I can design something nice that looks consistent and uh and it's just a lot easier feel like to hire a designer in the future and tell them here are the brand guidelines you don't need me you don't need me to take 10 different photos that's that was way cool I love it and uh okay so it sounds like chachy BT wrote you back and and asked for the brief exactly so it said absolutely I'm ready to help you create a design a design Reef based on new transcript and so what I did after that is simply copy paste the script um so uh this one was a video YouTube video I recorded about free floating anxiety which is when you're feeling anxious for no particular reason you don't know where it's coming from and so I just copy pasted the script which I'm scrolling through now so we don't have to read it and then chat gbt replies and that's what's amazing is that it's really following my instructions it's giving me the brief using those three different sections a the content B the composition C the contrast and and it's giving me the main focal point the supporting elements and it's telling me to use different types of contrasts and it's explaining how this design should create a curiosity gap for the the viewer this is amazing like the fact that I could get this brief based on just pasting the transcript I was absolutely amazed I love that that's so cool I I feel like I need this have you you should make this into a custom gbt Oh Yes actually I mean I would I would ask ailin to do it or ask her for her permission because a lot of the reason why this is working so well is because there was a lot of research done into what is important to include in the brief it was fast for me to create this prompt because I leveraged her research but I think it does point to the fact that when you want to save a lot of time like this for something you're going to do a lot of times repetitive task it is worth it investing in crafting a really good prompt at the beginning and in this case I wouldn't have been able to do it if I didn't have existing material to leverage that makes a lot of sense yeah I mean definitely the specificity of your prompt is going to make all the difference you sort of like you get out what you put in with hbt if you put in something smart you're going to get something smart back if you put in something dumb it's not going to be that smart usually um or it'll at least be it'll be generic I'll say that um yeah and um um and I'm curious so in this chat like it was that is the output there was that enough for you to keep going or like was that enough for you to go build a thumbnail or did you keep going in the chat that was enough I just used that and then I used canva and I used it as you can see the next one I say thank you this is great now please write a brief for this transcript and I just moved on to the next one and I did that for all of my thumbnails that's awesome really every time it was enough I didn't follow through the letter exactly what it said there were times where I was like actually I don't think we need those two different elements so I'm just going to have one but it was really enough every time to give me inspiration and for me to design this um I'm going to show you very quickly so you can also have it on the screen but just showing the result I want to see yeah show us show us your channel yeah I not subscribed to you I need to subscribe right now I don't post very often okay um I should post more often but I'm just going to post this because this is auto start and so it's going to be noisy you don't need to hear me sing I started this video by singing you don't need to hear this that's Brave I just subscribed especially with my voice so yeah you can see the result here and uh I don't think I would have been able to come up with those original ideas for each thumbnail in 90 minutes because all of this only took me 90 minutes to create all of those different thumbnails and I really like them for something that I created so quickly I I think they're really good um and and yeah I think it um it sort of goes to show when you have a smart prompt for chat GPT for Creative work it can get you this starting point where yeah you're not taking the idea like totally wholesale but you have a starting point and so you can like tweak it in your own little you can editorialize it like a manager would you can you can be the editor and say I don't really want this but like this General concept isn't enough and sometimes the like the general concept finding that is the thing that takes the most time and then once you have it it's really just like s sort of tweaking and and doing the actual work um and I think that's you know when you when you talk about chbt saving you a lot of time this seems like a really prime example if this only took you 90 minutes how long would it have taken you to come up with that that General concept it's like a that's a real work block where you're like I have to sit down no one can bother me I have to like think all of this through and it's really nice that you don't have to do that exactly and it's uh being a YouTube thumbnail designer is a full-time job and I know that an actual human being at this stage would be able to do a better job than what I did but I I talked to several YouTube thumnail designers to understand how they work and 90 minutes would probably be the time that they use just to brainstorm a few ideas for one thumbnail right right yeah um so that's another I think that's I think you're making a good point like um the AI stuff right now is good but it's not like generally going to be like Elite at at some of this stuff but it will be good enough where especially for people like if you're if you don't have a lot of time or you're sort of at the beginning like you're at the beginning of doing a particular skill it can like uplevel you like if you're becoming a developer and you're not a good developer it can like let you code when you wouldn't be able to code ordinarily or if you're you haven't really designed thumbnails before it can like help you get to like a pretty good level of thumbnail design pretty quickly but yeah to be like an expert that's that's a totally different level of investment that I think most of these tools aren't they're not just going to get you there automatically uh you still need to be like a skilled human to do that absolutely but still like to your point there are so many people who are running businesses where they don't necessarily also have the ability to hire people for everything that needs to be done in the business and so not everyone is going to hire a YouTube thumbnail designer if they're starting a YouTube channel and similarly not everyone is going to be able to hire a developer to do little fixes on their website as a small business and for this chat gbd is amazing that's great I love it um so I know uh before we we're gonna we're going to do a little exploration together but I know before we um before we do that you had we had one more uh chat GPT demo to show me I think specifically you use it to write and I think that that's going to be a thing that a a lot of people watching this are going to want to know because you're such an excellent writer and you're also so prolific um like talk to us about how you use chat chaty BT for writing and um so so talk to us about how you use chat GPT for writing and yeah show us show us how you use it in your process yeah um I don't know if you're familiar with the quote from grr that says that most writers are either Architects or gardeners okay so but but tell us in case in case some people who are listening don't know um so some writers are Architects which means that they need an outline they need a plan they need to have a good idea of where they're going with the story before they start writing whereas some other writers are gardeners where the story is unfolding and emerging as they go as they right they have no idea they're almost following the characters and discovering the story as it happens and I'm definitely more of a gardener but Chad gbt helps me turn into an architect in the last phases of writing to really structure it in a way that can be shared with other people so I'm going to walk you through very quickly it's an article I actually wrote today and that's going to be in the newsletter tomorrow wow so yes it's uh it's h on the website people don't necessar know it but I tend to publish the article a little bit before the news letterer comes out but nobody checks so they wait for the article to come into to come in their inbox so what happens usually when I start being interested in something is that I start collecting a lot of little breadcrumbs that I D I add into my note taking system in Rome so something I was recently interested in is the concept that it's a phrase I created it didn't exist before but curiosity attractors so those ideas those creative projects those questions that are always on the back of your mind and you keep on coming back to you and you know it's not the most urgent thing you know it's not the most aligned thing when it comes to your current work but you know you know that at some point in your life you will have to tackle this thing you will have to work on this you will have to find an answer to that question and you keep on circling looping around those ideas and those concept and and those questions and they're always there they're always there um I love I love that I am you're describing my whole life basically um it's just me circling around a particular curiosity attractor and then being like okay I've I've sucked everything I can out of that like now I'm going to go on to another one or or or debating like oh I I really really want to like write or think about this thing but I should be thinking about this thing like what should I what should I do um so very often when I'm curious this is a bit meta but when I'm curious about an idea I post about it on Twitter just to see if other people are interested in it but also if people have things to recommend maybe maybe actually this is something that someone else has already written about and I didn't know about it so I like to do a quick little sanity check on Twitter so I did that for this and I posted I want to write an article about what I think can be best described as curiosity attractors ideas we try to shake but keep coming back to diffuse obsessions creative projects we know we just have to pursue one day and I added a little image which was actually created with Chad GPT of how I visualize a curiosity attractor and so it's like this uh bunch of spirals that are keep on coming back and keep folding onto each other and all attracted to one Center and the answers showed that first people were really interested in the topic and nobody apparently had written about it before so it was something that was worth exploring for me it's great this is um I I love this and it's um it's sort of a little content creator hack is rather than like stay in your lab and like spend a year working on an idea you can just like push out like little little things here and there to like see what what the reactions are what you might be missing or whatever like you can really engage in the world in this like in this really nice way and even if you don't get a Rea if you don't get a reaction like that's totally fine you can still work on it if you like it maybe there's a different way to position it or phraser or whatever um but I think people tend to be quite precious they're like oh I came up with this amazing term curiosity tractors like I have to like go write my magnum opus and I really think um I like I love your your move to just be like cool I'm just going to throw it out there we'll see what happens you know um and then the response is great and now you can go write that with a lot of confidence that people are going to be into it yeah exactly and even the questions that people ask me on that tweet very often help feed my creativity for writing the article itself so it's a it's a virtu cycle really I ask a question I get answers it gives me more questions and and this becomes a source of inspiration for writing the article itself I love that so tell me f first like how are are you so this is in Rome um like what what how are you organizing like if you have an idea like this how are you organizing all the different like little threads that go into this idea what is the screen I'm seeing so as I mentioned I'm a gardener so organizing not my forth day so there's there's really no organization it's just that whenever I stumble upon something that I feel like is relevant this idea I will add it to Rome and I will just tag it with the corresponding name in this case cuity attractors what it does is that this then creates a page called curiosity attractors where all of those breadcrumbs that I have collected over the days you can see here this is over the course of several days they're all collected together on that one page so I don't need to be organized Rome is organized for me basically got it that's that's awesome yeah okay so so that's what we're looking at we're looking at all the things you tag with with curiosity okay cool and so exactly so those are all the little notes that I took over the course of a few days and then what I do is that on the same page I will take all of these little notes and I will try to put together an outline what you're seeing here is the exact same content that you saw at the bottom those are the same breadcrumbs I just move them around under three sections introduction body and conclusion that that's it at this stage I'm really just trying to organize those ideas to see if there's any coherent manner of presenting them once I have this what I do is that I export this Incorporating ChatGPT into your writing process outline and I upload it into chat GPT and I ask it I'm saying I'm writing an article about what I'm calling City tractors I explain what it is and then I say I have attached a rough outline please wear your editor's hat what aspects do you think I'm missing please be detailed and refer to research from theoretical Concepts and or empirical evidence and psychology psychology twice I don't know why I wrote it twice just emphasizing psychology yes exactly very important and cognitive neuros science when relevant so here somehow it had a little problem reading the document I uploaded it so here's what I get back from chat GPT so chat GPT comes back and uh I also like how it's very often complimenting me even though I didn't ask for it so before giving me the feedback it always tells me that this is a solid foundation and this is great really good ideas in there but you're missing those things and here we have eight different aspects of curiosity that chpt is mentioning that I should maybe include in my article what's interesting for me here and this is why you will notice that the prompt here is a lot shorter than the one I had for the thumbnail brief is that I'm aiming for a broad answer I'm just trying to see if I didn't miss anything so I don't want to be too specific and this is why we have a very long list here and to me there are actually quite a few things that are not relevant because I'm not writing an article about curiosity in general I'm writing an article about curiosity attractor so here the neuroscientific basis of curiosity for example I don't think is relevant for this article I have actually written about this in the past and I don't think this belongs in this one um psychological safety also not quite sure the two ones that really caught my eye here are curiosity and creativity and the Practical implications for education and lifelong learning so these are things that I didn't have in my outline that I think are actually quite important and relevant so what I do is that at this stage I start working from Google doc because I'm going to start writing and I add the suggestions that Chad GPT has given me yeah in my outline that's really cool that's I love that so you're kind of using it as a little bit of a developmental editor in the um in the in the sort of outlining stage of your draft to make sure to help you look around corners and make sure you're not missing something make sure you don't have any blind spots or arguments that you're missing I think that's really great I I've never I don't think I've really seen that before I think that yeah I love it yeah and that's also why I insist in the prompt to only give me advice based on psychology twice again in cognitive Neuroscience because I actually don't use chat GPT to find papers because it's still at the stage where it also hallucinates papers a lot they usually don't exist when it recommends a research paper but it's very good at research fields and areas and theories in general and then I can go and read the research myself but it can point at different angles and perspectives and and type of research that again is outside of my field and I would have not necessarily thought about so again like you can see the social aspect for example would be more from sociology I wouldn't really know about this because I'm really focused on Psychology and Neuroscience on my side so it's it's very helpful to have someone look at the gaps and just list them that makes perfect sense do you once you're like into the actual writing process do you use it at at that point at all or is it really only for outlining I use it sometimes to again if I read a paper I don't really understand what it's saying I'll still have those conversations with Chad GPT um I also sometimes have just silly translation questions you know English is not my first language so sometimes I still struggle with words so I'm just going to show you one from today I'm asking well I'm talking to it in French but to chase the brass ring and what does that mean in English um so in English it's uh to chase an objective that you care a lot about to the point of maybe forgetting about other priorities in your life right and so you're asking it in French to translate a English idiom for you so that you can understand how to use it in English but you just asked it you happen to ask it in French because I I tried in English on Google first I typed what does to chase the brass rang mean and all of the explanations in English didn't make sense to me either like what Chase what and the explanation I just gave you I think is pretty clear but that wasn't what I was reading on and so I reverted back to my native tongue it is and it's interesting because it's it's saying in French here that there's no exact equivalent for this expression in French so it just gave me similar ones but it was enough for me to understand what it meant got it that makes a lot of sense this actually reminds me there's um we I asked people on Twitter what do they want to know and I think there's a couple relevant Twitter questions for you if we can just answer them in a sort of Rapidfire way um yeah let's do it so Rapid fire questions from X the first one is um Alex Alex exom I think his name is Alex exom asked how do you know when to use Chachi BT versus another AI writing tool and I think the underlying premise of the question is that there's a lot of different tools out there for writing with AI like we at every we actually incubated a tool called Lex um but there's there's a bunch of them and I'm C and I think Alex is curious and I am too um do you just use chbt do do you use others and how do you think of about how they fit into your workflow yes um sometimes Chad GPT is struggling to give me good answers and I don't know why is that because it varies throughout a week sometimes I on Monday it can give me really good answers and then on Tuesday for very similar work it's not doing great and have actually no idea what's going on with that and so when it's in a bad mood like this I I switch to clo AI which is also great and I I really like using as well I pay for both uh so I have the pro version for both and clo AI actually tends to hallucinate research a little bit less than chat GPT so if it's really research focused um I will sometimes double check with clo AI um and it's it happens also that I use the same prompt in both and I'll just use the answer that makes the most sense but somehow for more casual conversations when I'm trying to understand something or if I don't find the answer I need on Google my first instinct will always be to open chat GPT that makes sense yeah I use I also use chat GPT as my first line of defense but I I also use I use cloud for writing and I also find it's good for reflecting on text like if you give it to some text and you're like what do you think like what are the patterns in here all that kind of stuff it's really good for that yes I I really like it and um it's uh it the tone sometimes it's a bit better it sounds a little bit less like AI I feel like yeah I can um so yeah I like I like both of them and I alternate I don't have a very rigid rule when it comes to this okay that makes sense um and then uh last last writing related Twitter question um Cersei asks and this is a good one you you'll be happy about this how are you always so interesting did you change your approach to not taking with AI thank you for the first part I guess I uh I get I read a lot and I just uh write about what I read so I I think that's probably why I share about lots of different topics and uh in terms of AI yes definitely my entire creative process has changed I just showed you how it was helping me explore different aspects see the gaps that I may be missing even at the outlining stage but there are even questions sometimes where I think in the past just thinking about how I would get the answer felt like such an impossible mountain to climb that I would just park those questions to the maybe one day I'll figure out this thing and now I can just type it in chat GPT and it doesn't even I'll have the the full complete answer but I can have a little bit of an answer very quickly and so I feel like for someone like me who's very curious about lots of different things it's been really magical to have access to this and to be able to get all of these answers so quickly I feel you I've been reflecting on that a lot for myself because I'm the same way like I'm super curious I always have questions about things I always want to ask stuff and then I'm also just reflecting on it for like my nephew for example he's like one and a half and um he's not old enough to ask questions um I mean at least verbally like he can ask questions questions in other ways um but he'll be old enough to ask questions soon and kids like ask a lot of questions and a lot of them are like really unanswerable and um I'm just I've been thinking about him because I'm like what will it be like to grow up in a world where every question is answerable um and I think I think like the internet and Google like it did it got a lot of questions but there's still a lot that's like not really answerable but chat BT is like it's just a totally new new level and I'm just so curious what that does to our our minds when it's like yeah everything is like we can find the answer pretty much as long as someone as long as long as one human knows it we can pretty much get a good answer um it' be really interesting to see what that generation does yeah absolutely I'm very curious too I I think it's already the case and we've seen this Evolution already in the past few decades but I think it's a really good thing also that we're going to keep on relying less and less and less on root memory and we're going to use our brain power for creativity instead and that's going to be a really good impact I think totally totally um so this is great I want to make sure we get to to our little our explore section so the next step is for me to write it and I'm obviously not going to do this live on the show but I write in Google doc so you can see the final article here in Google doc and uh I use my normal process where I will write and I will look up research paper and I will talk to chat GPT to have conversations with these papers so I can supplement my thinking here this is very close to the outline that I co-created with Chad GPT there's not much that has changed here the last step before I consider this draft finished is that I uploaded back into chat GPT and then I asked it again if I'm missing anything and if there's anything that I can do to improve the ity the flow or the accessibility of the argument and I ask it very explicitly to include a bullet point list of suggestions for improvements keeping it very specific to this draft rather than General things that are helpful when writing an article that's really great I I love that um I think it's uh it's really I I guess like for me so at every like I have an editor who who looks at my stuff do you have do you have a human editor or you are you just kind of going back and forth with chat g chat gbt on this stuff no I have a human I love that sorry I have a human editor for my book but I don't have one for anything that I publish on Nest laabs or on the newsletter yeah no that makes a lot of sense and like it's really nice if you're not if you don't have that resource like just having an extra pair of eyes even if it's chbt seems like it makes a huge difference just in Comfort level you're like I don't I want to make sure that there's everything I can do to make this good is is done you know exactly absolutely so I go through the the com the feedback that chbt is giving me uh and then I go back to the draft and uh I will I will sometimes make a few changes and then voila this is on n's website and this is the live article that's it that is so cool I love that process I mean I'm a fellow Gardener um like I can't it's really hard for me to outline something have to just like go write it um and I I found something similar where chbt like I can take a bunch of notes and like throw it in then it writes a little bit of an outline and I can kind of see the piece and I think having that as a resource to become a little bit more like an architect is nice because I actually think Architects are a little can be a little bit more productive because you spend less time like mandering around through like Corners that don't really work in your writing um and they also tend to be the writing tends to be tighter um so even like for like fiction for example I think uh like JK Rowling her her plots her structure is like super tight because she's such a she's such a um an architect whereas like uh George RR Martin like his are so all over the place in Meandering that he can't even finish them because he's a he's a gardener like us um and so he maybe he needs to put his latest novel into chat gbt and see if uh see if it can help him get an outline um but I think adding yeah adding that is like a little skill if you're the kind of person whose brain is is a little bit more organic and and and um spontaneous like ours is to like uh to put a little bit more structure around it can like help you get the best of both worlds because there's a lot of good stuff about being a gardener um so yeah I think it's really smart you're using it in that way exactly and again I really like truly believe that it's not fixed like you don't have to be a gardener all the time or to be an architect all the time and if you tend to be one it's always nice to see what you can learn and use and leverage from the other mode of creating totally cool uh well thank you so much for showing us that that's that's very special I think people are going to love that so we are about to enter the exploration section of this show and uh what I like to do in this in this part of the in this part of the show is uh just go on a little journey together to see what what we can use chat gbt for to find stuff out about ourselves about the world and maybe about how chat gbt works that we might not have expected so uh as part of this segment you shared with us a meditation log you've been keeping recently and we're going to see what we can get out of that log so as is just a starting point like tell us about this log um why you kept it and like what's in it um yeah so I have been for the past few years conducting little experiments whenever I'm curious about something I will just give it a try and see if it works for me or not that's how I started Nest laabs actually when I decided I would I was going to write 100 articles goal in 100 weekdays that's how I started my YouTube channel where I said I was going to publish one video every week for six months and this latest experiment was to meditate for 15 minutes every day for 15 days and it started because I heard myself saying on a call to someone that I really sucked at meditation that I was really bad at it that it was not for me and that it just didn't work and there was really no point in trying and this was such a blatant massive demonstration of fixed mindset that as like oh wait I have to do something about this is this is this true is this true that I can't learn how to meditate so I made this little pack to do this 15 for 15 and something that I've always found very helpful is to learn in public so I created this Google doc and every day I wrote my notes about my experiences of that day what it felt like my questions Etc and I posted it in my newsletter and as you can see here lots of people added comments shared ideas I and really guided me through this journey for 15 days so I could learn about how to meditate what worked what didn't for me and also just reassuring me when I felt like I was really bad at it and telling me no that's normal it's completely normal to get this rected and just keep showing up every day I love that this is um this is sort of the same the same theme as um as putting out the the Curiosity tractors on Twitter like you're just so good at being like I'm going to do this in public I'm going to I'm going to be experimental I'm going to I'm going to let the world like bounce off me and and that will help me be better and I can even see like Johnny Miller who's like a huge expert on some of this stuff is like popping into this dock being like you should do some breath work of course Johnny Miller would say you should do some breath work but um yes but I I think it's really great um and I'm curious like your own Reflections having done this 15 minutes per day for 15 minutes like what did you get out of it where did you end up so I finished this particular experiment about a week ago and I'm still meditating every morning and I think this will be part of my routine moving forward which I really was skeptical about before I started but after 15 days I have seen how it's been impacting my life in a very positive way it doesn't take a lot of time it's very easy and I still feel like I have a lot to learn but I don't need the accountability of the public document anymore to keep going and I'm also very grateful for all of the feedback that I received because there are many things that I think again would have taken me so long to figure out and one thing that Chad gbt is great out is answering questions but I didn't even know what questions to ask here and so just typing up my notes and having people adding comments was really I feel like a great way to dip my toes and to explore meditation without any pressure of having a specific outcome that's really interesting yeah that makes a lot of sense and in terms of like positive effects like what would you pick as being um a couple of the the the main positive effects you've been seeing uh one of the main ones has nothing to do with work but um after the Christmas holiday I was having really bad sugar Cravings really really bad I think it's because of all of the sugar that I ate during the holidays but uh it was really hard to resist and uh since I started meditating my sugar Cravings are gone they're just gone and I know it must be that because that's the only thing I changed inter in my life and I can sometimes think about oh maybe I want something sugary but it's almost as if I can observe the thought that I want something sugary instead of being that thought and just creating that distance between me and the thought has been really helpful and is just a thought now it's not a craving it's very different the feeling is very different so that's one thing and then another one is in terms of creativity just having that space to not think about anything well I mean not really because I do think about a lot of things when I meditate and I try to bring my attention back to this like expanded awareness but it's so some of those meditation sessions to be honest felt more like a mini brainstorming session because I came out of it with like three different ideas for NLS and uh you know even um there's one of the I wrote about it in my in my notes but at some point while meditating I found a solution for a problem that had been banging my head on uh in the lab for weeks and it was just this aha moment while meditating and I know that's not what meditation is for yeah exact it's great I'm not complaining at all great that's awesome I love that um so I want to see like what we can find with this like let's see what's hidden in here we have some we have some of your Reflections we'll see if it can it can give out like some of the reflections that you've already taken away and maybe there are some other things that are hidden in here that that we don't know about so what I'm going to do is I'm going to copy it and you I could have exported it to PDF and I think that would have been fine but I think this is short enough that it'll fit in in in the context window for chat I just did um an experiment where I meditated uh once a day for 15 minutes um for 15 days and I kept a log the log is below um I want to bring in a few experts to um help me find interesting patterns and learnings about myself um from the log can you read the log and then recommend some experts that would have interesting insights for me uh about about what's uh contained in it so and then I'll say log and then I'm Surfacing useful insights from Anne-Laure’s meditation journal just going to paste and go let's see what it does um so pasted pasted the log and it's saying based on the detailed log you provided several types of people could offer valuable insights into your meditation practice one a meditation teacher or mindfulness coach a professional in this field could help you refine your Technique explore different meditation Styles and understand the nuances of your experience two cognitive neuroscientists or psychologist specializing mindfulness given your numerous aha moments in the impact of meditation on your creativity a cognitive neuroscientist or psychologist could provide insights into how meditation is affecting your brain function three physiologist or physical therapist considering your physical reactions during meditation such as pH fidgeting itches and numbness you could you experience a physiologist or expert could a physiologist or physical phical therapist could offer advice on posture ergonomics and techniques to minimize discomfort it keeps going a behavioral psychologist or habit information expert a spiritual adviser a teacher from a specific meditation tradition or a therapist with a focus on emotional processing do you have uh any thought on a particular kind of um person that you'd like to uh analyze your uh your log wa the one that was so surprising to me was the physiologist that is so interesting because all of the other ones have to do with the mind the behavioral psychologist the cognitive neuroscientist the mindfulness teacher but this one is about the body and I find this fascinating how I haven't really thought about this but I imagine that your posture has a big impact on how you experience your meditation sessions and this is something I haven't been paying too much attention to but I definitely felt a lot of physical discomfort sometimes where I just was like you know my leg going numb and just feeling like fidgeting and being itchy Etc so that was that's surprising I would have not thought about this one H okay so you want to talk to a physiologist I think I'm going to try and figure out if is there any physiologist that wouldn't think that this is a really word request no Chachi Chachi BT will'll do it let's do it so oh amazing uh you are an expert physiologist um specializing I don't think I spelled that right um specializing in uh mindfulness uh or with a let's say with a particular interest in mindfulness with a particular interest um interest in and experience with mindfulness and all sorts of meditation practice practices um I am a meditator uh who just did did an experiment where I um uh sat uh every day for 15 minutes for 15 days and I kept a log um as an expert physiologist I want um you to read my log and give me a detailed summary of um everything you notice um of of everything you noticed be specific detailed um organized and uh don't leave anything out um be direct okay here's my log and we're just gonna say send and we'll see what happens okay your meditation log presents a detailed introspective journey through 15 consecutive days of meditation demonstrating a progression in your practice self-awareness as introspection um here's a structured summary of your observations okay interesting so it's giving me um it's giving me a summary of your own experience rather than its experience as a um as a med as a physiologist and so I think it's possible that because the log is so long it sort of forgot who who who it's pretending to be um and so uh I am going to redo this um and we'll see if we can make it better see if it works all right several key observation about the physiological and and cognitive responses to your meditation practice emerge these observations are categorize under several themes for clarity and directness physical Sensations okay so it's it's saying things that we've we've we know initially uh discomfort and itchiness initially you experience physical discomfort and itchiness common for beginners as they become more aware of their body bily Sensations during meditation over time you learn to either give into these sensation like scratching an itch or focus on them until they dissipated indicating an increasing ability to manage discomfort through attention redirection body awareness you notice various sensations of heaviness groundedness and sometimes discomfort in specific areas EG back pain these observations suggest an enhanced body awareness allowing you to feel more in tune with your physical Sensations which is a key aspect of mindfulness practice movement and posture your adjustments in posture hand positions and even slight movements indicate a sear for comfort and stability during meditation this adaptive behavior is crucial as it shows an understanding that physical Comfort can support deeper meditation States then it goes into some stuff about cognitive emotional processing environmental awareness noise sensitivity your initial heightened awareness of background noise is followed by the ability to incorporate or disregard these as part of the meditation experience illustrates an Adaptive responses to the environment adaptability and and experimentation um so it's it's noticing a bunch of a bunch of stuff around there um it it notes your um your back pain and your numb leg um during during these um sessions um and so I think so I think it's giving it's it seems like it's giving actually a pretty good summary of like of of your journey um I'm curious like does that how does that strike you do you think it's getting it right and then do you have any questions for IT um about uh any anything related to your body or your body awareness during this practice this is super interesting to me because it's really talking about all of these uh different bodily Sensations that I had as something positive it's really framing it as something good me becoming more aware of my body when I was really annoyed with this and I wanted to get rid of them so just that reframing already is very helpful that being said I would like to feel more comfortable so it would be great to ask if there are any ways for me to feel more comfortable in my body while I okay cool I would like to feel more comfortable in my sessions oh I got to say thank you got to be nice to your Chachi BT um I would like to feel more comfortable during my sessions as an expert um physiologist um do you have any suggestions based on my log for how I could adjust my posture or otherwise um or environment let's say uh or otherwise in order to um be more comfortable see what it says given the insights from your meditation log there are several tailored suggestions that enhance your comfort during meditation sessions these recommendations focus on adjusting your physical environment posture and approach to ensure a more conducive setting for your practice okay so it's saying things like uh adjusting your physical environment so noise management um consider using soft background sounds or white noise to mask external disruptions um alternatively earplugs um two is um your seating arrangements so like it's telling you to experiment with different seating positions if you're sitting on if sitting on the carpet causes dis discomfort you might try medit meditation C cushion or zafu to elevate your hips and allow your legs to rest comfortably a meditation bench or chair can also be Alternatives especially to alleviate back pain or discomfort temperature control ensure the room is at a comfortable temperature feeling too warm or too cold can distract from your meditation um the next section is enhancing your posture aim for a posture that allows your spine to be straight yet relaxed this alignment supports alertness while minimizing strain if you're sitting on the floor a slight forward tilt of the pelvis achiev by sitting on the forward edge of a cushion can help maintain this natural curvature if on a chair your feet should be flat on the ground with your back supported hand position you also mentioned experimenting with hand positions snail hands and prayer hands continue to use whichever hand position feels most natural uncomfortable hands resting gently on your lap or knees can also reduce strain on your shoulders and neck head and neck keep your head balc comfortably so your neck isn't straining a slight chin tuck can help achieve a natural alignment of the head over the spine um and and then it says adjusting your approach movement accepted acceptance allowing yourself to adjust your posture scratch and itch without judgment can increase Comfort time of day you also noted that um difference in your meditation experience based on the time of day you might find it best benefit IAL to meditate when you're naturally more relaxed or alert duration and frequency um premeditation routine engaging in a brief routine before sitting can signal to your body it's time to meditate and help ease into the session and then exploration of styles given your varied experiences continue to explore different meditation Styles I'm curious uh what what you make of these are they good yeah this is really good uh it's funny because I actually hadn't looked at all into getting a cushion because I thought it was more decorative I guess I don't I didn't even question it I I didn't even yeah it which sounds very silly now but now that I'm listening to this I'm like oh there's actually a real reason why people use those cussions and the Tilted forward position of the pelvis that it's describing actually does sound helpful so I think first I'm going to get a cussion to experiment with this and uh there were a few things that were interesting as well with the noise because my flat is very noisy I live in London I don't I don't have double glazed Windows um so I will try the air plugs as well to see if that helps but lots of great suggestions actually and it all makes sense based on my log and even mentioned the two hand positions that I mentioned because I call them snail hands it's not a real term it's just me explaining what they look like and the prayer hands and so the fact that we referred back to this it's so nice to have feedback based on my actual experiences rather than just random tips that you would find on Google isn't it isn't it sort of wonderful like CU it's I think there's two interesting things to me here one is I love the like uh which expert should I should I ask question because because sometimes you don't know like what what you don't know and you may not have realized that you wanted to ask a physiologist or you had these kinds of questions and it's so it found the expert for you and then the tips that it's giving you they're not necessarily like super groundbreaking like they're they are basic meditation tips in in a certain way but they're so they're very tailored for you and I think sometimes um you know I've talked about this before in this podcast like sometimes the answers that you need or the tips that you need they're they're simple but they're like hard to remember or they're hard to know that that's what you need and just having that that resource that that can proactively be like here's what you should do it just like clicks in your head and you're like of course I should have I should use a cushion or of course I should use earplugs but like for whatever reason that wouldn't occur to you in your day-to-day life and it's like so valuable just to have this little engine to to like give you those simple tips that you didn't know you needed um I I just love seeing stuff like this and uh also in addition to this even though the advice is simple I think this is such a perfect illustration and a perfect use case because when it comes to meditation so I'm a complete beginner I started three weeks ago right and there is a lot of simple advice out there but there is a lot of it and it's very hard actually for someone who's just getting started to know what is important uh what is optional what is actually going to make a difference and as you said it's because all of these are very simple things but it's a thousand of them I can't Implement everything there are lots of different schools of thought when it comes to meditation as well that recommend completely different things say a mantra don't say a mantra sit on a chair sit on the ground do this do that and so what he's doing here is yes it's simple but it's for me and it's answering my needs and not just giving me a general answer which makes it very powerful totally and and I I think it's also worth noting the reason it's able to do that is because you gathered the data for it um and I think people that have these like journaling or note-taking practices have a real leg up here because um chat gbt gets so much better if you have more information to give it to like to work off of and so like you wouldn't be in a position to get this kind of advice if you hadn't taken the time to as you're going through this record things you're thinking and feeling I think people that I think people underrate how important and how useful it is to like have that data to feed into into something like this oh absolutely I journal every day I take a lot of notes and uh I think for a lot of people who already do this it's uh unlocking so many possibilities Based on data that they have already collected throughout the years and I hope that for people who don't already have either a journaling or note taking practice that it's going to be an encouragement to get started with it and just start taking little notes to be able to unlock that kind of really powerful features that you can Implement in your work and in your life totally totally I I love it um this was a this is a wonderful wonderful episode I really appreciate you coming on and showing us all the ways that use chat gbt doing this Exploration with me I'm leaving feeling just excited and inspired um and I cannot wait for your book to come out um and I really appreciate you spending the time to chat with me today thanks Dan that was amazing I learned so much so thank you so much oh my gosh folks you absolutely positively have to smash that like button and subscribe to how do you use chat GPT why because this show is the epitome of Awesomeness it's like finding a treasure chest in your backyard but instead of gold it's filled with pure unadulterated knowledge bombs about chat GPT every episode is a roller coaster of emotions insights and laughter that will leave you on the edge of your seat craving for more it's not just a show it's a journey into the future with Dan shipper as the captain of the spaceship so do yourself a favor hit like smash subscribe and strap in for the ride of your life and now without any further Ado let me just say Dan I'm absolutely hopelessly in love with you