Tag Archives: Productivity

Apple, Development, Productivity

How I Use Voice and AI to Turn Messy Thoughts Into Clear Plans

When I was a teenager, I got really into philosophy. I’d sit at my desk with blank paper (this was before smartphones), scribbling down every half-baked thought about existence and consciousness. Whatever rabbit hole I’d fallen into that week.

I realized that brainstorming on paper forced me to actually think. All those “profound” ideas bouncing around my head? Half of them were nonsense after I’d written them down. The other half started making more sense than I expected.

But I kept trying to organize my thoughts while brainstorming, which defeated the whole purpose. I needed that messy exploration phase, but the structure kept getting in the way.

So I started talking through ideas out loud. I could work through ideas while biking or driving, no structure needed. Just raw thoughts. No stopping to fix sentences, no fiddling with formatting.

Problem was, what do I do with 30 minutes of rambling? Record, listen back and take notes? Those recordings just sat there, full of a few good ideas I never actually used.

Then transcription and AI came along.

Now I can have the same stream-of-consciousness voice sessions, dump the transcript into Claude or ChatGPT, and get a structured plan back. Talk freely, get organized output.

How I Actually Do It

Here’s what I do when I need to work through something:

  1. Hit record and brain dump: Apple’s voice recorder, a few minutes but sometimes as long as 1 hour. Start with the problem, then just go. Questions, angles, contradictions, all of it.
  2. Let it wander: I start talking about some ideas and often end up somewhere unexpected. Ideas build on each other. What starts as chaos usually ends with clarity.
  3. Feed the transcript to AI: Apple transcribes it, I give it to Claude or ChatGPT. The AI follows my rambling and pulls out what matters.
  4. Quick cleanup: Sometimes I’ll record myself reviewing the output with changes. Or just make a few quick edits. Usually minimal.

Team Brainstorming Gets Crazy Good

This gets even better with teams. Record a team brainstorming session (with permission, obviously). Not for meeting notes, but for AI to turn the raw thoughts into a comprehensive plan.

Weird thing happens when everyone knows AI will form the first draft of the plan: people actually explain their thinking. We spell out assumptions. We say why we’re making decisions. Someone will literally say “Hey AI, make sure you catch this part…” and we all laugh, but then we realize we should be this clear all the time.

No one’s frantically taking notes. No one’s trying to remember who said what. We just talk, explore tangents, disagree, figure things out. The AI sorts it out later.

Where It Gets Wild: Voice-to-Code

Real example: On an open source project recently, we were discussing background processing in iOS. Background tasks? Silent push? Background fetch? Everyone’s got ideas, no one actually knows. Usually this ends with “let’s spike on it” and one week later, we’ve explored one or two of the concepts, we’re already committed to the first or second idea and not really sure.

This time we recorded the whole messy discussion. All our dumb questions: How often does BGAppRefreshTask actually fire? What’s the real time limit? Does anything work when the app’s killed?

Fed the transcript to Claude asking for a demo app covering everything we discussed plus anything we missed. The idea was to create a demo that confirms assumptions. We really don’t care what the AI’s opinion is of how things may work – give us something real we can confirm it with.

An hour later we had a working sample app. Each tab demonstrating a different approach with detailed event logging in the UI. We install it, we watch what actually happens.

After a few hours experimenting with the app and reading the code, we understood how these APIs actually work, their limitations, and which approach made sense.

Why This Works so Well

I get clarity this way that doesn’t happen otherwise. Talking forces me to think linearly but lets ideas evolve. AI adds structure without killing the exploration.

Might work if you:

  • Get ideas while walking or driving
  • Find talking easier than writing
  • Edit while writing kills your flow
  • Need to explore without committing

Productivity

New Month’s Resolution

I’m skeptical of New Year’s resolutions, at least in the traditional way they are framed. The statistics are bleak; only 8% of people stick with their resolutions. I think a year is just too long.

Let’s consider the resolution to go to the gym 5 days a week. Things will be going well the first few days or weeks. But suppose your new gym rat friends let you know your plan is flawed. They suggest you should only train 4 days per week. What would this change mean for the resolution? Are you compromising if you cut back a day? Or let’s assume you have a minor injury, requiring a few weeks of rest. Is it game over now that you took some time off?

Whenever you start something new, you need to make many adjustments. A rigid plan made during the holidays probably isn’t going to hold up for the year. Your brain was likely in a planning fog anyways from too many cookies and bad holiday films.

As an alternative, let’s consider monthly resolutions. Basically these work just like New Year’s resolutions. Add a calendar reminder once a month to select some important goals. Work hard to stick with this plan for the next 4 weeks. When the new month arrives, it’s time to celebrate your success and think about what can be improved. You can either roll-over your same strategy into the new month or make adjustments from what you learned, or scrap it entirely and do something else.

I experimented with the monthly resolutions this month. As I write this I’m excited to conduct a post-mortem on the last month and incorporate the learnings into my January goals.

Uncategorized

Productivity Resolutions

Productivity is one of my favorite discussion points. Not because I’m an expert (far from it) but rather I’m constantly learning and it affects nearly every aspect of life. I was drawn to the Get Things Done methodology years ago and more recently inspired by a book called Deep Work. There is a firehose of information out there but only so many changes I can make at once. I’ve reflected on some of my core habits and decided it is time for concrete adjustments. Here is a list of my productivity resolutions for the new year which I hope can help you too.

1. Multi-day Project Focus

I previously split up each day to work on several different projects. I’d spend two hours on project A, two hours on project B, …, and rinse and repeat tomorrow. I relied on my Apple Watch timer to tell me when it was time to move to the next project. While touching every active project daily is satisfying, the practice breaks momentum and hinders engagement.

Instead, I plan to work on a single project for several consecutive days, until it is finished. I’ve experimented the last few weeks and the results have been promising. I’ve been more engaged and even caught myself working well past my usual quit time. Additionally, I was thinking more clearly and creatively about the task under focus. Interruptions occurred but I was quick to mitigate the impact on my current project.

2. Define “Done” For Everything

Business projects often have a clear deliverable that will mark its completion: “Email the proposal” or “Publish the blog post”. But personal projects can be more open-ended: “Learn C++” or “Learn how to cook”. The realm of self-development and learning can fall in this trap easily which may only be defined by improving a personal quality. This can lead to aimless experimentation and wandering. These projects tend to outlive everything else on my to-do list.

For the new year, I won’t plan to work on something if I haven’t defined what it means to complete it.  Rather than “Learn C++”, try “Release an iOS app that uses C++”. Or instead of “Learn how to cook”, I could “Cook a great meal for my parents” (Mom and Dad: this is an example only).

I recently wanted to learn about Apple Shortcuts. My technique was to make something useful for myself. This was a step in the right direction but it was hard to know when I was done. I decided to define “done” as releasing a post about the experience and sharing the Shortcut. Hitting the “Publish” button and uploading the Shortcut was a small victory and gave me permission to move onto other projects.

3. Face the Unfinished

The early stages of a new project are exciting. The possibilities are wide as you plan for the future. But once the scope is defined and the plan is established, the excitement may dissipate. I’ve been guilty of chasing the initial high on personal projects before. These abandoned efforts are mentally draining. A nagging, half-finished initiative decreases my motivation to conquer new goals.

In 2019, I plan to revisit my unfinished, important work before starting something new. I’ll define a deliverable if one didn’t exist (see #2). Then I’ll singly focus on it until complete (#1).  I mentioned the thrill of starting a new project but that is no comparison to the satisfaction of finishing it.  

Summary

These productivity changes will be experimental for me and I’m sure there will be complications to consider. I’ll report back on the experiences. What productivity strategies work best for you?