The Map
All 5, at a glance
Here's the full path before we go deep on each one. The first two take 5 minutes total. The last three compound the longer you keep them running.
Talk, don’t type
A voice-to-text tool gives your AI way more context in a fraction of the time it takes to type it.
Make it interview you
When your AI doesn’t have enough information, tell it to stop and ask instead of guessing.
Build a second brain
One file system in Notion or Obsidian you work out of every time you use AI, so nothing lives in your head alone.
Turn repeats into skills
Anything you do more than once gets interviewed out of you once, then saved as a skill forever.
Back it up to GitHub
Connect your AI folder to GitHub so a bad session, a wiped laptop, or a bad edit never costs you real work.
Tip 1
Talk, don't type
Most people type their prompts. That caps how much context you actually give your AI, because typing is slow and you edit yourself down to save time. Talking doesn't have that ceiling. You explain the full situation, the backstory, the constraint you almost forgot to mention, all of it, in the time it would've taken to type two sentences.
A voice-to-text tool sits on top of whatever you're already using (Claude, ChatGPT, your notes app, anything with a text box) and turns your speech into clean, punctuated text in real time. Wispr Flow is the one I run daily.
Setup, 2 minutes
Download it, grant microphone access, and set a global hotkey (I use double-tap Fn). From then on, hold the hotkey, talk, release, and your words show up as clean text in whatever field you're in, Claude included. No app-switching, no re-typing.
Tip 2
Make it interview you
By default, when your AI doesn't have enough information to do something well, it doesn't tell you that. It guesses, fills the gap with something plausible-sounding, and hands you a confident answer built on a wrong assumption. You don't find out until the output is already wrong.
Add one instruction to your global settings (or paste it into any single chat) and that flips: instead of guessing, it stops and asks you exactly what it's missing before it proceeds.
Copy-paste prompt
From now on, anytime you don't have enough information to give me a genuinely good answer, stop and ask me the specific questions you need answered first. Don't guess, don't hedge, don't pad the answer with disclaimers to cover the gap. Ask, then answer.
Want the full onboarding version of this, plus 2 more prompts that turn Claude into a real work partner instead of a search box? Stop Using Claude Like It's Google has the rest.
Tip 3
Build a second brain
If your AI starts every conversation from zero, you're re-explaining your business, your preferences, and your context every single time. A second brain fixes that: one file system, in Notion or Obsidian, that your AI reads from and writes to every time you use it.
The minimum version is one root folder with a single index file describing what's inside and where. Drop meeting notes, project docs, and anything worth remembering into it. Tell your AI to read the index first, then the relevant files, before it answers anything. It gets smarter every time you feed it, instead of resetting to zero.
Go deeper
The full build, tool stack, and the 5 prompts that turn a folder of notes into an actual thinking partner: The Second Brain Blueprint.
Tip 4
Turn repeats into skills
The second time you explain a task to your AI the same way you explained it last week, that's the signal. Don't explain it a third time. Don't try to write the instructions yourself either, you'll forget the edge cases that actually matter. Let your AI interview you instead, then save what it learns as a skill you trigger with one phrase from then on.
Copy-paste prompt
I do [TASK] more than once. Interview me about exactly how I do it today: the steps I follow, the inputs you'd need, the format I want out the other end, and the edge cases that usually trip it up. Then turn what you learn into a skill I can trigger with one phrase from now on, so I never have to explain this task to you again.
Swap in whatever you actually do twice a week: writing captions, triaging your inbox, formatting a report. Same prompt, every time.
Tip 5
Back it up to GitHub
This is the one almost nobody does until after they've lost something. Your second brain, your skills, your whole AI folder, it's all just files on one machine until you connect it to GitHub. Once it's connected, every session gets a version history: a bad edit, a wiped laptop, or an AI mistake that deletes the wrong thing becomes a 10-second rollback instead of a real loss.
You don't need to know git to set this up. Paste the prompt below and let your AI do it for you.
Copy-paste prompt
Set up version control for this folder so I never lose my work. 1. Check if git is already installed and initialized here. If not, run git init. 2. Create a .gitignore that excludes API keys, .env files, node_modules, and anything else that shouldn't be tracked. 3. Walk me through creating a private GitHub repo and connecting this folder to it (I have the GitHub CLI, or tell me the one-line install if I don't). 4. Make the first commit and push. Then tell me the one command I'd run at the end of a work session to save my progress from now on.
Make it a habit to run that last command at the end of any real session. It takes 5 seconds and it's the difference between "I can undo this" and "that's just gone."
That's It
The system gets better every time you use it
Talk instead of type, make it interview you when it's guessing, keep a second brain it reads from, save repeats as skills, back all of it up. None of these are one-time hacks. Set them up once and your AI system compounds every time you touch it instead of resetting to zero.
Work with Me
Want me on your problem for an hour?
Book a 1:1 call and we build the fix live — the workflow you want automated, the tool you can’t crack, whatever’s stuck. Direct, hands-on, no pitch waiting at the end.