The Part I Can't Hand Over

I've been trying to teach a machine to write like me.

Over the last few weeks I've been building this thing called 'a second brain'.

Basically, it's a bunch of folders on my computer that holds my body of work, knows my writing style, my products, the people I serve, old podcast conversations etc etc.

It even has a document that tries to pin down how I write using 'rules'. It aims to learn my voice so it can replicate my voice in emails like this one.

So far it's not doing great cause I'm rewriting most of the sentences but it does help me with the ideation and structuring of the email so that's something I guess.

The idea is ... I feed it my writing, it learns the patterns, and eventually it drafts a newsletter that (hopefully) sounds like me so I don't have to sit here every week starting from scratch.

That's the dream anyway but we're not there yet.

Every time it gets something wrong, I tell it.

If I read a line or a phrase I'd never use I tell it and it writes itself a new rule which it files away in the second brain, so it doesn't make the same mistake twice.

Over time the second brain gets smarter ... and it has.

The thing is, it's smarter because I keep turning up to tell it when it's talking rubbish.

Which is a strange kind of automation.

I set out to take myself out of the writing.

But what I've actually built is a thing that only works when I tell it that it's gone off track.

I know my voice, and my business well enough to catch it when it drifts and it relies on me to be the guardrail.

The judgment is the part I can't hand over.

Maybe that's obvious to you but it wasn't to me until I went through this somewhat infuriating process of overseeing and refining.

Sometimes I wonder, is this just a very expensive way to feel productive?

A few things I've learned:

• The machine is good at the parts that follow rules. The rhythm, the structure, the tidy sentence. What it can't reach is the bit people are actually PAYING me for ... and that's mostly judgement.
• Every correction I make gets encoded and kept so the mistakes are worth slowing down for because that's how the second brain learns and gets better with each iteration.
• I used to think automating the boring stuff so I can do less ... but I now realise it's more about buying back time for the work only I can do (exercise judgement).

The reason I'm doing any of this is so I can spend less time at my desk and more time in a room with actual people.

I recently signed up to a directors' institute, walked in, and shook a few hands.

People looked mildly alarmed that a human being was talking to them (I guess people are expecting to be greeted by robots now).

I loved it.

And that's the version of the business I'm trying to build. Where people connect with people.

Let the machine handle the tidy sentences so we can go and be people.

What's the one task you'd hand to a machine tomorrow if you could? Hit reply and tell me.

I read every one.

Ciao for now,

Ash