Oh crap...has my brainstorming process changed forever?

It has. Hey... I finally have an AI-changes-my-work-forever post too!

My “I need to think a bit about things” process has been very predictable for the last many years. When I need to think deeply about something, I block a chunk of time (1.5-2 hours) and space; sometimes this is at work and I move to an empty conference room or put on headphones at my desk - more often this is late at night once most people at home are asleep.

I generally start jotting down notes on paper - either blank A4 papers I grab from the printer or in a notebook. I, almost as a ritual, push my laptop a little bit further away to make space for the paper. The notes and jottings on the paper aren’t really an output, they are a tool to force me to clarify my thoughts and frame my thinking. I generally still have the laptop or my keyboard around set to the side that I use to look up answers to questions I have or research that I want to do as I work.

After that block of time, I generally have something - a kernel of an idea, clarity on a topic or an idea for a new project. It’s never the end though. I’ve known for a long time that I think best when I’m talking to someone about that something in my head - ideally someone that’s builds on the idea or even challenging it. I like to build on other people’s thoughts. I find that’s when my brain fires on all cylinders (ok, I don’t have that many cylinders, but still…. :-) Generally this brainstorming is with colleagues that either walk into my office or I find at their desks or in corridors. It helps me take my thinking forward. Frankly, it energizes me as well.

But this second part is harder to do - finding the right people, finding them at the right time, finding them in the right frame of mind etc. So it doesn’t happen for everything I wish it could.

But a couple of nights ago, I stumbled on to something that has changed how I approach this process forever.

There was something specific I wanted to develop a view on. I knew there was a lot of of information I needed to look up first (read a couple of S1s, research reports, facts that I didn’t know etc.) and then I needed to start framing things for myself.

Now I’ll confess that while I’m a huge fan of using the Search Generative Experience/Bard and ChatGPT in my personal life for simple queries, I’ve been slow to use it for - let’s for a the lack of a better word call it - “PM work”!

I use AI for single transactions - finishing an email, giving me a starting template etc. , but this was different.

I started my process differently. Instead of that blank paper and an empty desk

• I fired up ChatGPT and Bard in 2 windows and kept typing a serious of questions into both (mostly the same questions).

• And unlike my normal interactions - I was having conversations with them. Reading the answers, formulating thoughts, asking them to research things further etc…

• I was still jotting things down on paper - but this time the paper was set off the side and I was pushing my thinking with these tools.

• Sometimes I found myself looking at a bullet point in one of their answers and thinking about it for a couple of mins firing off another new idea.

I’d heard Reid Hoffman talk about this a on a couple of podcasts - how we used it to finish a book, but it’s one thing to hear about it and quite another to feel it. I confess I was skeptical he might be over-selling it a bit, and figured it was just a much more efficient research assistant.

But no… I have never enjoyed the process of thinking about something as much. I’ve never made as much progress on an idea in a night. If it hadn’t been 1am and I knew I needed to get up at 6:30am or so, I might have kept going. It was energizing to think in this way!!

A couple of cautionary notes:

• Both Bard and ChatGPT were often wrong on facts and numbers, e.g. I asked it to pull revenue/earnings for a few things and put them in a table and add a couple of columns of other data, ChatGPT kinda gave up after a point (it’s snapshot wasn’t fresh enough) and Bard very confidently just put out a very impressive but completely wrong table. I would’ve gone in a completely wrong direction if I hadn’t suspected something might be off and double-checked the data.

These a growing pains of course - they will go away. Look up the lawyer that used ChatGPT and got into trouble in court. :-)

But even with these errors, wow - for the first time I didn’t just feel that AI was helping me do a single text-related task well or more efficiently, or giving me the superpower of drawing something that I can’t - it was helping me think and grow - faster and better than I normally would.

It’s an incredibly exhilarating experience. If you’ve had this already (I m

ight be late to this party), congratulations! If you haven’t, give it a shot as part of your thinking process. I’d be super interested to know if it was similarly exhilarating for you!