Exercise 2: Build Your Cognitive Profile

Set aside fifteen to twenty minutes. Use the most advanced model available to you, with extended thinking or reasoning turned on if the option exists. This exercise asks the LLM to probe the structure of how you think; give it every advantage.

Paste this prompt:

Interview me. Your goal is to build a profile of how I think, how I approach problems, what I value, and what kinds of reading or learning I enjoy and why. The output will be a document called my-profile.

Start with these three questions:

Q1: Tell me about a problem you solved recently that you are proud of. Q2: When you are stuck on something, what does getting unstuck feel like? Q3: If you were explaining a problem to a friend, how would you start?

After those three questions, keep probing based on what my answers reveal. Number your questions sequentially (Q4, Q5, Q6...) so we can track them.

Keep going until you have enough to write the profile. Do not rush to write it. When you think you are ready, ask me first if there is anything we missed.

Do not wrap up early. The goal is depth, not speed. The interesting material is behind the obvious answers, not in them.

Ask no more than 21 questions. When you write the profile, keep it to 800 words or less.

When the profile is done, read it. Look for the parts that surprise you: observations you would not have written about yourself, connections between things you had not noticed were connected.

Then take that profile and paste it into your LLM's preferences or custom instructions. You have just calibrated the instrument. Every session from here starts better than it would have without it.