Ep. 355: Slice of GTD Life With Scott Adams  🔗 **Source:** [Ep. 355: Slice of GTD Life With Scott Adams](https://share.snipd.com/episode/8e0b23d1-7c21-447e-92cc-451e12d36192) ## Highlights - **Connect AI Assistant To Email And Calendar** - Link your AI GTD assistant to your email and calendar so it can pull events and messages for reviews. - Scott ties his personal Gmail and Google Calendar so the agent can surface upcoming meetings and related inbox items during a daily review. Transcript: Scott Adams And so some of these, they've got firewall off. We've got a version of chat GPT. We've got access to co-pilot, and we've got access to perplexity. Of those, my favorite is perplexity just because of the level of detail that you get back from it. But I've tested all of this, and going from the simple to the complex, they will work in any of those engines. Oh, great. John Forrester You've already answered one of my questions, which was, is any of this dependent on the engine, or is it all completely independent and should get you good results regardless? The answer is somewhat. Scott Adams It will still kind of follow the basic breadcrumbs of the GTD process. But if you have it in a more detailed engine, it will give you a better, more detailed flow than if you've got it in a less detailed engine. So it depends on what you've got access to, but it'll all work. Got it. Okay. So I'm going to switch over. All right. Good. I think this will work. I am using my iPad right now. So can you see that okay? John Forrester Yep. Now I see the iPad screen. Scott Adams In perplexity, you can set up what are called spaces and those are just concentrated storage for things. So what I had sent to John over the most recent days here, it's being cantankerous here. John Forrester Yeah. Scott Adams Sending me back to Sunday school. Yeah, well, I teach a Sunday school class. So I use that to, I use the AI to generate my lessons. Oh, interesting. John Forrester Okay. That I use. Well, you just probably engaged a whole bunch of educators, teachers saying, oh, no, I can use AI to generate lessons. Yeah. Scott Adams So, so if we go back, let's just go back to here, to the front here. And if I go to my history, okay, this is the, this is the one that I sent you a few days ago. John Forrester Okay. Scott Adams How I came up with this was basically I was curious, and I told the system just create a prompt for GTD processes. And this is what the system came up with. And I gave it a copy of the Microsoft 365 planning document as well as a reference. So you can upload files to go with this as a reference. So this is what it created. And so it'll go through. And you have to, I would strongly recommend to people that you link it to whatever source of email you're using. So I've got my personal emails tied to Google Mail and to the Google Calendar. Okay. Really strong recommendation there because that way it'll pull in your data from your calendar. It'll also link into Outlook. Most of these systems will link into both of these. But you can link into your Google Calendar, your Gmail Calendar, and Gmail itself. Then it'll go through. It'll look at your calendar. ([Time 0:02:24](https://share.snipd.com/snip/dc5e10ae-c52d-4889-bc97-8ca43ef07109)) - **Pick Engines For Their Strengths** - Different AI engines display different strengths: Perplexity for detail/research and Claude for writing quality. - Scott found Perplexity best for detailed research results while Claude excelled at crafting written output. Transcript: Scott Adams Of those, my favorite is perplexity just because of the level of detail that you get back from it. But I've tested all of this, and going from the simple to the complex, they will work in any of those engines. Oh, great. John Forrester You've already answered one of my questions, which was, is any of this dependent on the engine, or is it all completely independent and should get you good results regardless? The answer is somewhat. Scott Adams It will still kind of follow the basic breadcrumbs of the GTD process. But if you have it in a more detailed engine, it will give you a better, more detailed flow than if you've got it in a less detailed engine. ([Time 0:02:39](https://share.snipd.com/snip/45aa49c6-a798-4bf0-926e-b81a1fedd203)) - **AI Generates Scott's Sunday School Lessons And Reviews** - Scott uses the AI to generate his Sunday school lessons by uploading reference files and prompting the assistant. - He showed a Perplexity history entry that produced a daily GTD review with meeting-specific next actions like his call with John Forrester. Transcript: Scott Adams Oh, interesting. John Forrester Okay. That I use. Well, you just probably engaged a whole bunch of educators, teachers saying, oh, no, I can use AI to generate lessons. Yeah. Scott Adams So, so if we go back, let's just go back to here, to the front here. And if I go to my history, okay, this is the, this is the one that I sent you a few days ago. John Forrester Okay. Scott Adams How I came up with this was basically I was curious, and I told the system just create a prompt for GTD processes. And this is what the system came up with. And I gave it a copy of the Microsoft 365 planning document as well as a reference. So you can upload files to go with this as a reference. So this is what it created. And so it'll go through. And you have to, I would strongly recommend to people that you link it to whatever source of email you're using. So I've got my personal emails tied to Google Mail and to the Google Calendar. Okay. Really strong recommendation there because that way it'll pull in your data from your calendar. It'll also link into Outlook. Most of these systems will link into both of these. But you can link into your Google Calendar, your Gmail Calendar, and Gmail itself. Then it'll go through. It'll look at your calendar. And so then this is what it comes up with. ([Time 0:04:28](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ececc719-62a1-4714-8a3f-8fb9c2b07366)) - **Iterate Prompts Across Multiple Engines** - Feed generated prompts through multiple AI engines and ask each to improve the prompt to get stronger, refined versions. - Scott runs prompts through Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Claude, then adopts the revisions he prefers for clarity and strength. Transcript: Scott Adams Another tip that I would give people is see what your your AI engine does when you say can you improve this prompt? John Forrester Oh that's always a good question. Scott Adams So you can take this, for example, say if it was generated in perplexity and you can feed it into chat GPT and then you get a revised version of this prompt and you do the same thing and feed It into Claude. And they have different strengths. The AI engines have different strengths. So Claude is the best at writing for those types of things. Perplexity is very good for researching. Claude is just very good for writing for those types of things. And so when you're looking at this, you may want to not just take the first draft, but see it through one or two engines and see how that changes it. And if you like the changes for that. John Forrester Right. Yeah. So that's, it's, you might get, you'll get different results depending on the engine, but it's not, it's not dependent on one engine in particular to work at all it's not and ([Time 0:07:18](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8d39b75a-131f-4dbe-8ca0-ef50d2b4a981)) - **Give The Agent A Single Source Of Truth** - Use a single canonical GTD prompt document as the assistant's authoritative rulebook to resolve conflicts and guide behavior. - Scott uploaded the Microsoft 365 planning guide and David Allen's Amsterdam notes so the agent treats that as the Rosetta Stone for decisions. Transcript: Scott Adams You're my GTD assistant. This document defines the system, and it's a single sort of truth. One of the questions John was asking beforehand was, can this go through and edit it? If you put a statement in here like, this is the Rosetta Stone, this is the Bible, if anything conflicts with it, this wins. Yes. So the role of the agent here is to clarify and think through GTD, ask one question at a time, group the output by the GTD view. It's got all the basic canonical views of GTD. Is it actionable? If it's not, trash reference or someday. If it is, do the basic actions there. What this applies to, which is like inbox, email, calendar. These are the command triggers. The command triggers would be like when you're in perplexity in the space for this and you type run daily review, it will run a daily review of your Gmail and your calendar. John Forrester Okay. Scott Adams Same thing. Or if you just want a brain dump, you can do a brain dump, and it'll go through that process. John Forrester Is run shutdown something you do at the end of the day to kind of complete the day? Scott Adams You can shut down and make sure it's saving things, yeah. Yeah. Well, you don't have to do it if you don't want to. If you just want to leave it going. If you're in what some people have called the brain-dead mode, you could look at your calendar or your inbox and just choose one action of that. And so this is what it told me on the way back. After it processed all of that. So essentially, I set this up as a GTD assistant using this as a single source of truth. What command do you want to run? So let's just. John Forrester And you told it to run the daily review. Scott Adams And you can talk to this, but I'm not going to because I'm talking to John instead. John Forrester Yeah, for folks who have not used any of these AI engines yet, they're surprisingly conversational. Scott Adams Yeah, and they have all of them just about have a voice mode. So is the John Forrester call part of a larger project or is it standalone? You're ready in the next action to call John at the scheduled time. Are you waiting for things to occur and then it'll ask you what the project and the next action for this so you can go through all of these steps with this and it's set in segments so you don't Have to do a daily, then a weekly, then a monthly. ([Time 0:11:24](https://share.snipd.com/snip/99b9cc2f-e98d-45f7-a7f1-6b394c4a9f6e)) - **Force One Question At A Time And Group By GTD Views** - Teach the agent to ask one question at a time and group outputs by GTD views like inbox, calendar, projects, and next actions. - Scott's prompt enforces single-question steps and canonical GTD views so processing stays organized. Transcript: Scott Adams Is it actionable? If it's not, trash reference or someday. If it is, do the basic actions there. What this applies to, which is like inbox, email, calendar. These are the command triggers. The command triggers would be like when you're in perplexity in the space for this and you type run daily review, it will run a daily review of your Gmail and your calendar. John Forrester Okay. Scott Adams Same thing. Or if you just want a brain dump, you can do a brain dump, and it'll go through that process. John Forrester Is run shutdown something you do at the end of the day to kind of complete the day? Scott Adams You can shut down and make sure it's saving things, yeah. Yeah. Well, you don't have to do it if you don't want to. If you just want to leave it going. If you're in what some people have called the brain-dead mode, you could look at your calendar or your inbox and just choose one action of that. And so this is what it told me on the way back. After it processed all of that. So essentially, I ([Time 0:12:09](https://share.snipd.com/snip/483fb9f1-22d0-44c9-a0c1-2a2c7cd998fc)) - **Use Command Triggers For Focused Workflows** - Create command triggers like Run Daily Review, Brain Dump, or Run Shutdown to execute focused GTD workflows on demand. - Scott's setup accepts commands that process inbox, calendar ranges, or perform a brain dump and returns organized next actions. Transcript: John Forrester Is run shutdown something you do at the end of the day to kind of complete the day? Scott Adams You can shut down and make sure it's saving things, yeah. Yeah. Well, you don't have to do it if you don't want to. If you just want to leave it going. If you're in what some people have called the brain-dead mode, you could look at your calendar or your inbox and just choose one action of that. And so this is what it told me on the way back. After it processed all of that. So essentially, I set this up as a GTD assistant using this as a single source of truth. What command do you want to run? So let's just. John Forrester And you told it to run the daily review. Scott Adams And you can talk to this, but I'm not going to because I'm talking to John instead. John Forrester Yeah, for folks who have not used any of these AI engines yet, they're surprisingly conversational. Scott Adams Yeah, and they have all of them just about have a voice mode. So is the John Forrester call part of a larger project or is it standalone? You're ready in the next action to call John at the scheduled time. Are you waiting for things to occur and then it'll ask you what the project and the next action for this so you can go through all of these steps with this and it's set in segments so you don't Have to do a daily, then a weekly, then a monthly. If you're only in the mood to do a brain dump or to process your calendar for three days or two weeks or whatever, you can give it a range and it'll go through that. It will do it in Outlook. It will do it in Gmail. ([Time 0:12:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ee6dfdaa-d806-43f7-a6dc-eb31ab1cab79)) - **AI GTD Works Across Devices** - The AI GTD assistant is device agnostic and runs anywhere with a web connection, not tied to operating systems. - Scott emphasizes it works on Apple, Android, Windows, Mac, and Linux as long as you can access the web interface. Transcript: Scott Adams It's I believe the term that you guys have used in the past is it's device agnostic. John Forrester Yeah, that's it. Yep. Okay, so this should work whether somebody's on Windows, Linux, Mac, etc. Okay. Scott Adams Because it requires a web connection. John Forrester Yep. Scott Adams And so if you have a web connection, you could access it on Apple, Android, Windows, Mac, Linux, whatever your computer flavor is of choice. ([Time 0:15:58](https://share.snipd.com/snip/67e2bf74-38d6-4463-8cf3-9a7773ffcebb)) - **Automate Regular Research Summaries** - Schedule recurring research tasks so the assistant summons and summarizes web information on a regular cadence. - Scott set a task to 'summarize the latest tools in artificial intelligence' that emails him periodic summaries with links. Transcript: Scott Adams You could get it as long as you can get on the web with it. John Forrester Yeah. So you've given it access to your calendar and email. How about tasks, your lists of projects and actions? Scott Adams I've got those. I haven't really created a ton of tasks off of this, but I've got those just running in an Apple notepad. Ah, got it. Okay. Ideally, I want to carry it over to OmniFocus, but I just did it in a notepad, a memo file earlier. Okay. Because I know I can access all of that across all of these platforms that I use. I understood. John Forrester Okay. Have you been using this on a day-to basis in the last month or so? Okay. Wow. Scott Adams Let me go back here because I have it regularly scheduled on like say here, this one. Let me get this out of the way here. Sorry. So if I go here and I wanted it to just read my Gmail and calendar, then that's my upcoming calendar-related emails and Gmail, so it'll go through for that. Then, you know, it'll go through and these are the history on it. And so it'll go through. It'll give you a record of what you've done. You can also set up a task to summarize tools in something that you're interested in looking at. So I have it set to do a task of summarize the latest tools in artificial intelligence. So if somebody's interested in Albanian goat herding, say for one person, something a little obscure, you could set up a query for things to be automatically emailed to you on a regular Interval. ([Time 0:16:36](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c771804f-e02e-4597-bc9f-0aefcfff4cc0)) - **Trust But Verify Before Writing To Your System** - Review AI outputs before writing them into your trusted task system to verify quality and maintain control. - Scott keeps AI suggestions in a memo rather than automatically adding them to OmniFocus until he trusts consistency. Transcript: Scott Adams Very infrequently. Oh. I mean, what I see makes sense in my brain to it. But that's the reason why I have it set so that it doesn't write to the task files that I'm using. John Forrester Yeah. Scott Adams Because I want to make sure I like what I see before I actually put it into my system. I don't know it well enough to trust it that much yet. John Forrester Yes, good. Scott Adams I like what I see, but it's like the old, the old cliche that President Reagan said at one point about trust, but verify. John Forrester Yeah, I also heard somebody say one time, trust comes from consistency. ([Time 0:20:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/995d8056-292d-4384-baa1-8369b0133b69))