Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Reflective journal entries using GPT-4 and Obsidian that demand less willpower., published by Solenoid Entity on April 15, 2023 on LessWrong.

Something I've wanted to do for years, but can't make myself do consistently because I'm bad at forming new habits and seem to have a limited reservoir of willpower that is generally depleted by the end of the day:

Write a short journal entry at the end of every day, summarizing the day and reflecting on it.

Put this in Obsidian, and identify key concepts and make them back-links.

Enjoy as, over several years of consistent writing, the map of my life unfolds through the graph in Obsidian. Maybe this generates helpful insights, shows me patterns. Mostly it's just useful as a resource.

It's a lot of effort to be detailed and reflective, and it's a lot of effort to add the back-links.

The solution:

Rather than having to create a detailed, reflective entry from whole cloth, I can just write some short, abbreviated, incoherent mumbled paragraph, like a surly teenager at family dinner, and then ask ChatGPT to ask more questions to flesh out the story.

This works shockingly well.

It's surprisingly easy to write detailed answers to specific QUESTIONS about your day. It's like a good listener, it can draw you out with its insightful questions.

Then you can ask it to mark all the key words, names, etc, with double square brackets.

The end result isn't perfect but it's pretty good, and much, much better than I would ever do all by myself. It takes less than half the time and virtually no willpower.

Here's what I prompted ChatGPT today (That diary entry is roughly the level of writing I'm capable of at the end of the day.)

Ask me 10 questions about the following diary entry, aiming to 'flesh it out' with extra details. If there are inconsistencies or missing information/context, you can ask for clarification or further information. Your aim is to ask questions that help make this a more complete and coherent account of the day. Some of the questions should relate to the theme of 'gratitude', and help provide more context and identify things to be grateful about in the text. Here's the text:Woke up early for no reason, lay in bed for 20 minutes thinking, then got up, said goodbye to Xena, headed off at around 7am for the train up to Waitara. Ended up missing the stupid thing because I was waiting on the wrong platform like an idiot. Still got to coffee in time with Adele, which was a relief since I've been an unreliable friend recently.

Good coffee with her, turns out the guy who owns the cafe knows her as a regular and she doesn't even have to order, he just brings her french toast as soon as he sees her sit down. Anyway we talked about her new startup, then I left and caught up with my friend who's building a paperclip-optimising machine, which sounds stressful for him tbh, but his new girlfriend is nice, they seem like a good match. Got the late train over to Emu Plains and finally got to see my parents. Hopefully cook something nice with Mum tomorrow before she goes to line-dancing club.

Response:

My continuation:

1. She's my friend from a long time ago, but she's been super busy with her job as a warrior princess and doesn't have much time for friends. I was there the night before to have dinner and drinks because she finally got a week off work, ended up having more drinks than planned. Her couch was not very comfortable which is probably why I woke up early. 2. Really annoyed with myself, it was such an avoidable mistake. Honestly, it was pretty positive because I was only 10 minutes late, and Adele was running late anyway. I was able to find a good alternative train route using the app, so it worked out ok. 3. We try to have a phone call every couple of weeks, but it's hard because her life is so unpredictable what with the record d...