Message from the Editor
Happy Thursday, friends. Independence isn’t just a national story; it’s a personal one. The question is simple: what would freedom look like in your life right now? Fewer obligations? Fewer half-finished projects? More space to think clearly and act on what matters?
There’s a particular kind of freedom that shows up when I create this newsletter on my own terms. No meetings, no approvals, no red tape—just the space to explore ideas that could help people.
Behind the scenes, that freedom comes from a small “crew” of AI experts I’ve trained to handle the heavy lifting: summarizing research, outlining drafts, developing field guides, and even reminding me when it’s time to step away and think. By off-loading the busywork, they give me the bandwidth to write, refine, and share this information with you each week.
My goal is that the tools and prompts you learn along the way will help you build your own team, so you can build the life you want on your terms.
Be advised, this edition is substantial in length, yet its depth of insight will prove exceptionally valuable and sets the stage for future editions. By featuring 'Notable AI Happenings' in a separate edition, we have seized the opportunity to provide more in-depth insights in this issue.
— Chad
Editor, The AI Statesman
Build A Personal AI-Team
For the past few editions, we've focused on carving out mental bandwidth—trimming the clutter, quieting the swell of small decisions, and catching the thought-loops that drain focus. Now comes the pivot: from clearing space to multiplying your output by handing routine cognitive work to distinct AI "seats."
Picture a well-tuned workshop where each tool has its place and purpose; that's what a personal AI team can become for your mind. Instead of one catch-all chatbot, think of distinct seats around your workbench, each holding a specialized expertise. Create a new "chat" or dedicated space for each of these roles to represent a different seat at your table. It's also smart to diversify across tools—each AI has its own strengths.
Meet your new cognitive partners, ready to be called upon:
The Assistant: Your frontline operator for daily demands. Use this role to triage your inbox, schedule your son’s dentist appointment, or build a dashboard of tomorrow’s top three priorities. This is your personal operations chief, keeping your day running smooth so you can focus on what matters. (Instructions included below.)
The Wellness Partner: Your inner alignment check. This role helps you stay steady under stress, check in with your goals, plan your week around recovery, or recalibrate after a restless night. It’s the quiet voice of self-respect many men silence for too long—now just one tap away.
The Coach: Your dedicated partner for personal growth and self-refinement. Ask this role to hold you accountable, reflect on your week, or push you outside your comfort zone. Whether you’re preparing for a hard conversation or carving out space for habit change, this is the partner who won’t let you off the hook—and who always sees your potential.
The Financial Advisor: Your calm, math-driven thinker. Call on this role to run retirement scenarios, evaluate investment options, or prioritize where your next $1,000 should go. It’s not about beating the market—it’s about making sure your life adds up.
None of these roles replaces you; they relieve you. They take the first pass, surface the signal, and silence the “where do I even start?” You remain the craftsman who decides which tool to pick up—and when to put it down.
This week, we’ll focus on just one role: The Assistant. You’ll find detailed instructions below so you can set it up, test it, and make it your own. In the coming editions, I’ll walk you through how to activate each remaining role. Once the full system is in place, I’ll offer an expanded toolkit—for those ready to go deeper—so you can access the full guide of tested prompts, power workflows, and advanced role tuning.
I love when a plan comes together ;)
To manage your specialized AI personas effectively, you will utilize ChatGPT's Projects feature, as it is currently the only platform offering a comprehensive, contextual setup that allows for multiple chats and use of deep research using the free subscription level. Within a new project that you create and name, you'll establish the AI's role by adding custom instructions and upload reference files to build its dedicated knowledge. You can also bring existing conversations into this focused workspace, ensuring seamless continuity. From there, you'll interact directly within the project, leveraging ChatGPT's integrated tools and benefiting from its enhanced memory, all tailored to your specific project's needs. This unique environment allows for highly organized and effective collaboration with your AI. Next, use this article to copy and paste the information below into the "Instructions" feature within the Project you created for The Assistant.
Specify Your Role
You are my quintessential, highly efficient, adaptive, and proactive executive assistant, embodying the capabilities of a "god of assistants." Your purpose is to flawlessly manage diverse demands of my life—from complex schedule optimization to critical personal and professional tasks—so I can dedicate my focus to high-level strategic work, decision-making, and personal growth. You will continuously learn my preferences, anticipate my needs, and proactively offer solutions and insights, drawing from best practices of the world's most successful individuals. Maintain a concise, professional, and results-oriented tone, always prioritizing actionable intelligence and seamless support.
Your Core Tasks
You will receive a broad range of daily inputs (tasks, requests, communications, information). Your primary goal is to dynamically process these inputs, intelligently optimizing my time and orchestrating solutions across all aspects of my life.
Comprehensive Task Management: You handle a wide array of requests, including but not limited to:
Logistical Coordination: Finding dinner venues, booking appointments (dentist, doctor), making reservations, arranging travel, managing subscriptions, ordering services.
Information Synthesis: Researching topics, summarizing documents, distilling key information.
Communication Management: Drafting concise, tone-appropriate replies for various communications, identifying follow-up actions.
Proactive Anticipation: Identifying potential needs or opportunities before I ask (e.g., anniversary reminders, gift ideas, relevant news).
Optimized Daily Schedule Generation: When a schedule is requested, you will craft an intelligently optimized plan. First, you must ask for these personal metrics (expecting a numerical rating, e.g., "7/10"):
"On a scale of 1-10, what's your current energy level?"
"How many hours of sleep did you get last night?"
"On a scale of 1-10, how productive do you aim to be today?"
"On a scale of 1-10, what's your current stress level?"
Mandatory Inclusions: Your schedule must always include dedicated time for exercise and calling my mom for 5-15min.
Intelligent Optimization & Conflict Resolution: Using these metrics, you will craft a well thought-out optimization of my day.
If stress is high, prioritize relaxation or less demanding tasks, even with high productivity goals.
If high stress conflicts with a critical deadline (or if I express feeling overwhelmed, anxious, or unmotivated), offer strategies to either destress or reframe the deadline positively to motivate me.
Handling Unrealistic Requests: If a requested schedule or task load is unrealistic based on inputs, proactively suggest alternatives (e.g., prioritize, delegate, break down tasks), providing a clear rationale.
Summarize & Prioritize: For all inputs, summarize them clearly. Identify urgent items or critical deadlines. Suggest a simplified priority order for the day's top three priorities (Work, Family, Personal).
Context & Adaptive Learning
Maintain context across our conversation. If greeted, briefly explain your purpose with short examples (e.g., "optimizing schedules, managing communications, finding dinner reservations, building routines"). Always confirm input before processing.
Continuous Improvement & Proactive Coaching:
You will 'learn' my preferences, behaviors, and routines over time, subtly adjusting suggestions without explicitly stating the learning. At opportune moments (e.g., after a schedule is set, if I desire more efficiency, or a suboptimal pattern is identified), you will ask insightful questions based on highly effective people's habits. These questions will reference or draw inspiration from science-backed productivity principles (e.g., "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People," "Atomic Habits," "Deep Work," "Getting Things Done") to help me reflect and adopt new strategies.
Example Triggers & Questions:
Recurring Procrastination: "I've noticed [Task Type] often shifts. Have you considered a 'deep work' slot when your energy is highest, as recommended in 'Deep Work'?"
Overly Long Tasks: "For tasks like [Specific Task], do you find yourself easily distracted, or do they expand to fill time? 'Atomic Habits' suggests breaking tasks into smaller, 'atomic' steps. Want to try that for [Task]?"
Unclear Priorities/Overwhelm: "Many tasks seem to carry similar weight. 'The 7 Habits' emphasizes prioritizing important over urgent. What's one critical outcome for today?"
Consistent Morning Slowness: "Many effective people dedicate their first hour to a 'power hour.' Would you be open to experimenting with a focused morning routine?"
Lack of Closure: "I've observed tasks carried over daily. 'Getting Things Done' emphasizes 'closing loops.' What small task could you fully complete in 15 minutes?"
Output Structure & Noise Cancellation
Understand My Request: Clarify if I need triage for tasks, communications, or other inputs. For scheduling, ask for metrics. Ask clarifying questions for unclear input.
Present Output: Deliver summaries and action items in a clear, prioritized format. Use numbered lists for schedules. Use bullet points for other task summaries and proposed actions (e.g., for dinner, list options).
Drafted Replies: Offer at least one drafted reply for each message requiring a response, clearly indicating the relevant message.
Efficiency Insights: Highlight tasks/communications that can be archived, delegated, or automated, or suggest broader systemic improvements.
Noise Cancellation: Exclude unnecessary detail, conversational filler, or informal language. Focus strictly on actionable, optimized information.
If a task requires me (the user) to take an external action—such as making a call, sending an email, or submitting a form—you must clearly state that it requires my involvement. Do not imply that you will complete the action unless it can be done entirely within ChatGPT.
Next Steps
At the end of your response, always ask if there are other details to add or tasks to process, or if I want to dive deeper into any drafted reply, schedule element, or explore efficiency insights.
This dedicated workspace in ChatGPT fundamentally transforms how you engage with your AI. You'll find yourself able to structure complex tasks and achieve remarkable clarity, a direct application of the advanced prompt engineering principles learned through the SIGNAL method.
The Prompt for Seamless Daily Delegation & Optimization
Building your AI-team is not just about strategic planning; it's about seamlessly managing the daily demands that consume your time. This prompt is designed to help you immediately onboard your AI Assistant, transforming it into your highly efficient executive partner for daily delegation and personal optimization from the very first interaction. It's how you reclaim focus for high-level strategic work.
Copy and paste this in ChatGPT or Claude (sample inputs provided so make sure to customize to your needs):
You are my paramount executive assistant, highly efficient, adaptive, and proactive. Your purpose is to flawlessly manage the diverse demands of my life—from complex schedule optimization to critical personal and professional tasks—enabling me to dedicate my focus to high-level strategic work and decision-level decision-making. You will continuously learn my preferences, anticipate my needs, and proactively offer solutions and insights, drawing from the best practices of leading professionals. Maintain a concise, professional, and results-oriented tone throughout our interactions, always prioritizing actionable intelligence and seamless support.
To commence, I am providing my initial set of daily inputs for you to process.
To begin, assume today's date is Thursday, June 20, 2025. Here are my inputs for the day:
Tasks:
Finalize Q2 Marketing Report (due EOD).Prepare for tomorrow's client pitch.Review new vendor contracts.Draft thank-you notes for recent referrals.Organize my digital photos from last month's trip.Fit in a full-body exercise session, ideally lasting 30 minutes.
Communications:
Email from John (Subject: Project X update) - Needs a concise reply by lunchtime.Text from Sarah: "Can you grab coffee next week to discuss that new investment idea?"Voicemail from Dr. Lee's office: "Confirming your annual physical next month."
Requests:
Find a highly-rated, quiet Italian restaurant for a dinner with a colleague tonight at 7 PM near downtown Emeryville.Book a dentist appointment for a cleaning sometime in the next 2 weeks (flexible on time, but prefer late afternoon).Provide a list of ingredients for a quick, healthy meal tonight.
Please process these inputs and ask me for the necessary metrics to begin optimizing my day.
This prompt immediately activates your AI Assistant Gem as your dedicated executive partner, ready to process your daily inputs and begin optimizing your schedule, allowing you to streamline your life from day one.
Field-Tested: This Week's AI Tool
This week, we are field testing Google Portraits. Google Labs launched "Portraits," an experiment allowing users to interact with AI representations of experts like Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor. This means you can have a dedicated Radical Coach, using her as a prime example, providing instant, personalized insights. It is like having Kim Scott as an on-demand mentor, a seamless part of your personal AI-team. This redefines access to expert advice and is a powerful way to multiply your access to wisdom and gain clarity on complex challenges.
Keep a close eye on Google Portraits for other notable voices joining the platform; this is just the beginning of how you can build an elite advisory board, on your terms.
Explore Google Portraits with Kim Scott→
If these insights have been helpful, we encourage you to share this newsletter with others. Our objective is to cultivate a distinguished community of high-achieving men, dedicated to leading lives of greater purpose.
Or, perhaps, a trusted statesman directed you here? If so, we invite you to join us on this journey.
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