Day 52: stop typing your hardest decisions into ChatGPT

I think typing ruins hard decisions.

you sit at your desk, type 4 paragraphs about the job offer into ChatGPT, get a pros and cons list back, and then do the whole thing again at 11 pm,

and by Friday the decision is still sitting there.

so take it on a walk instead.

it's 20 minutes and 5 stops with ChatGPT Voice in your earbuds, and you get home with 1 decision made and 1 text sent to a real person.

and yes, an AI founder is about to tell you to go outside lol.

for context, I co-founded Moonshot (YC S26), and we're building an AI you talk to out loud instead of typing to,

and I think most of the time people spend with it will be after work, walking around.

flip one setting first, or this won't work with your phone in your pocket.

in ChatGPT, go to Settings, then Voice, and turn on Background conversations. it keeps the voice chat going with your screen locked (and ChatGPT Voice is on the free plan too, with limits).

when you end the voice chat, a transcript of it shows up in that chat.

then grab these,

open a new chat, paste this in and send it, then tap the Voice icon in that same chat. or just say it out loud at your door.

swap in your decision and keep it to one sentence.

Claude works too, its voice mode is the sound wave icon next to the mic.

but Claude's help page doesn't say whether it keeps going with the screen locked, so test it at the end of your street first.

for the first 6 minutes ChatGPT barely talks.

and the first 4 stops are just minute marks, so you keep walking through them.

stop 1, minute 0, at your door

say the decision in one sentence, out loud, like "I'm deciding whether to take the job in Austin or stay where I am."

if it takes you 3 sentences, ask it to cut yours down to one before you take a step.

stop 2, minutes 1 to 6

this is the yap. say this, then talk until you run out,

say the money part and the part about what people will think, the stuff you'd delete before hitting send if you were typing.

then when it tells you what you rushed past, don't explain it away.

all 5 stops fit on one screenshot you can glance at mid-walk, and further down there are 25 more prompts for when the decision is a job, a move, money or a person.

now it gets to ask the questions you keep dodging.

stop 3, minutes 6 to 11

answer the way you'd answer that friend, out loud, ums included.

and if it asks something generic, say "a real one, like a friend would ask."

you want questions like "what's the first thing you'd miss about your team by week 2?"

if it starts giving a speech, talk over it. ChatGPT's Live voice listens while it talks, so you can cut it off mid-sentence.

stop 4, minutes 11 to 16

notice which part of its argument you want to interrupt, and answer that part out loud before stop 5.

STOP walking for this one. sit on the bench, or stand at the corner.

because in one of Stanford's walking experiments, creative output went up by an average of 60 percent while people walked,

but on the test with one right answer, the people walking did mildly worse than the people sitting down.

and when people sat back down right after a walk, the creative juices kept flowing (Oppezzo and Schwartz, 2014).

stop 5, minutes 16 to 20

then send it, right there, before you walk back in the door.

like "taking the Austin job. can I call you tonight and tell you why?"

or "not moving after all. can I explain at dinner Sunday?"

and if you can't make yourself hit send, go around the block one more time.

the catch: ChatGPT Voice only hears you once you open it.

it wasn't there on Monday when you told Jess you'd have an answer for her by Friday,

or at lunch when your mom said the thing about Austin you're still thinking about.

so a lot of minutes 0 to 6 is you catching it up on your own week.

Jalapeño is the earpiece we're building for that gap, and it's expected early December.

it pairs with your iPhone, and while listening is on, it hears your day. you can pause it any time and delete what it keeps.

so the walk we're building it for sounds more like this,

and if it can't beat the free walk in this guide, we're cooked.

say any of these in place of the stop 3 questions, or whenever the walk stalls.

try it after work, instead of the 20 minutes you'd spend scrolling anyway.

then reply with which one you walked on: a job, a move, money or a person. one word is fine.

and send this to the friend who's been "deciding" since August.

p.s.

if someone's walking with you, tell them it's on. their voice can end up in the transcript too.

ok take care gang. peace.

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