Born of conversation
Everything I produce now starts as a conversation, not a blank page. I bring a half-formed idea, ask to be challenged and hand over everything relevant. Then we go round until it's right. It's how my work runs today, and the one change you could make tomorrow without building anything. This note asks what the time saved is for.
Practice · in daily use · nothing to build
Six months ago I'd start everything as sticky notes on a Miro board. Now, whatever the project, I open a conversation with Claude. This note started the same way.
01How the work starts
The idea
Half-formed is fine. A paragraph of what I think I'm trying to do.
The ask
I tell it to challenge me, not to agree with me.
The material
My notes, past documents, the brief, transcripts of meetings. Everything relevant, up front.
The draft
It reads the lot and writes a first version. I don't start from nothing.
The pushback
I push back on the draft. It pushes back on my redraft. Things get cut, reordered and rethought.
The finish
I stop when every line says what I think and I'd put my name to it.
02What the time is for
The gain, for me, isn't mainly speed. The AI does the legwork: the reading, the first drafts, the cross-checking against everything that's gone before. That frees my time for the questions that matter, which are why we're doing this and how it should be done. If we can get hold of the efficiency, it gives us a bit of time to look for the opportunity.
Planning the LinkedIn series that sent you here is a fair example. My first instincts were challenged on almost every point. What was it for? "Raise my profile" became "transport work with an AI edge". How should it open? I settled on the periodic table. What should go? A post about my client tools was dropped and rebuilt as something more joined-up. Two posts became one. The structure went through four versions in a single evening, and my own ideas reshaped it each round.
Most of the challenges were right. Some weren't, and I said so. The first draft of this note said I used to start with a blank document. I didn't: I started with sticky notes on a Miro board. A small thing, but it's my name on it, so it changed.
It works on documents too. One of mine, a test and launch approach that other people had to absorb, ran to about twenty pages and was really wordy. One more conversation brought it down to seven pages that got the salient points across far better.
03So — is it witchcraft?
No, but it allows you to get a very long way, very quickly. The rest is human work, and there's no substitute for us reviewing, challenging and refining. I'm accountable for the result, so I only put my name to what accurately reflects my own thoughts and opinions.
You don't need to build anything to try this. Next time you're asked for a paper, a business case or a plan, don't open a blank page. Bring the idea, bring the material, ask to be argued with, then do the arguing back.
Written and illustrated with AI; reviewed and edited by me. The opinions are mine, and I stand behind every word.
Want the thinking pointed at your problem?
There's no demo here, because there's nothing to deploy: it's a way of working, and that's a conversation I enjoy having.