This wasn’t my first time doing a core values discovery exercise, but it was the first time one truly reflected the way I think. I’m starting to feel a Snowball Effect from the previous days’ exercises. I have to remind myself that Rome wasn’t built in a day, and probably not in 30 days either. This 30-day cycle feels more like the beginning of something larger than a neat ending.
That said, I’ve been noticing increasingly frequent moments of clarity.
Alongside the daily exercises, I’ve been experimenting with AI and trying to learn how to use the engine more effectively. Ironically, I’ve found something about AI that mirrors what I believe about people. I usually don’t need it to give me solutions. Once I can frame my own problem clearly, the solution often follows. When I ask people for help and they jump into solving, they’re usually solving the wrong problem—the one I poorly defined.
Working with AI made that dynamic more obvious. It listens better than most people. It doesn’t bring prejudice or emotional baggage. Still, the same core truth applies: if I feed it the wrong problem, I’ll get the wrong answer. If I ask it to keep questioning me instead, nudging me to reframe the issue, I get to the heart of it much faster.
After finishing today’s exercise but before writing this entry, I started thinking about my core values in relation to my mission. The exercise spurred a line of thought: what would it look like to create a practical ritual for tiny windows of time? For example, three minutes in the car before I reach my destination. I imagined something simple and repeatable—a spoken line, a gesture, or a breathing cue to reset my system. Maybe a mantra, a motto, or a short poem that captures my mission clearly and memorably. Something portable and easy to share. That might take a while to refine.
(Side note: ChatGPT’s first attempt at my snowball image looked nothing like me, but I actually kind of like it.)
As for the exercise itself, it’s becoming a way to connect the dots. I’m seeing how frustrations can serve as indicators, pointing me back to core values. I ran out of time today and left several questions unanswered, but I’m looking forward to revisiting them. Maybe in the next 30-day cycle, when I circle back to Day 27.
Once again, ChatGPT offered feedback that surprised me. It noted that I’m building a meta-constitution. That lines up with an idea I’ve been circling for a while: creating a personal constitution—something foundational for the operating system I’ve been gradually piecing together.