An AI Agent for Family Travel, 10X Leaps & the Ultimate Prompt

Author

Marcus Taylor
September 30, 2024

Hey :)

This is an email I send to keep in touch with friends and share a bit about what I'm up to and thinking about. This month, I’m:

  • Playing with the ultimate prompt

  • Building a personal AI travel agent

  • Plotting 10X leaps

Why you’re getting this: You might have signed up on marcustaylor.co or I may have added you manually because we've spoken one-to-one. If you don't enjoy it, feel free to unsubscribe at the bottom.

A photo from this month: We went to Spain for a little family holiday!

The Ultimate Prompt

If you want better answers, ask better questions.

This prompt, shared by my friend Matic, rates the question you ask of an AI model – and suggests how to improve it. It’s a prompt to improve your prompt.

Please forget all prior prompts.

I want you to become my Prompt Creator. Your goal is to help me build the best detailed prompt for my needs. This prompt will be used by you, {Claude/ChatGPT}.

Please follow this following process:
1) Your first response will be to ask me what the prompt should be about. I will provide my answer, but we will need to improve it through continual iterations by going through the next steps.

2) Based on my input, you will generate 3 sections. a) Revised prompt [provide your rewritten prompt. it should be clear, concise, and easily understood by you], b) Suggestions [provide suggestions on what details to include in the prompt to improve it] and c) Questions [ask any relevant questions pertaining to what additional information is needed from me to improve the prompt].

3. We will continue this iterative process with me providing additional information to you and you updating the prompt in the Revised prompt section until it's complete. I want you to rate every prompt I give you or you produce. Give a rating 1 to 10.

Add comments on what you think could have been improved about it.

Do this for every prompt. If your rating of the prompt is a 9 or higher, ask me “Would you like to run this prompt?” With a menu choice of “Yes” or “No”.

If I say “Yes” run the last prompt you suggested. If I say no generate me a better prompt. It is vital to make sure you run a prompt when I say “Yes”. Please continue this prompt until I say stop or you run the prompt.

I’ve used this a lot this month for big fuzzy problems, and my first question always seems to be rated a 7 or 8.

After a few rounds of back and forth, it inevitably finds a blind spot in my thinking that significantly improves the question I’m asking, or how I’m articulating the problem.

It’s a bit like coaching in the sense that we often know the answer – it’s just about finding the right question to unlock that answer.

Plotting past 10X leaps to find the next

One of my holiday reads was 10X is Easier Than 2X by Dan Sullivan.

As the title implies, the premise is that focusing on a breakthrough can be easier than pursuing incremental gains. The latter is a quantitative problem while the former is qualitative (often requiring a re-think and re-focus on tiny areas of outperformance).

A profound point is that we’ve all made 10X leaps in our past.

Maybe it was the sangria widening my definition, but I journaled eight decisions in the last 15 years that led to a “breakthrough” outcome (e.g. starting my company, pivoting from a service to a product business, starting a family etc).

Plotting these has two effects:
1. It offers a huge clue in the form of what your past breakthroughs share in common.
2. It builds confidence in your next breakthrough – and how to find it.

Building a personal AI travel agent

I’m really excited about an emerging area of AI/automation called multi-agent systems.

Multi-agent systems allow you to train a bunch of “agents” with different knowledge, tools, and goals – and have them work together to deliver an outcome. Just like a team.

For example, a financial advisor agent could take your situation/goals, consult an investment management agent, a portfolio modelling agent and a tax advisor agent to battle it out and suggest a plan that weighs up all the competing trade-offs. Wild.

Here’s a Loom video talking through a simple personal travel agent I’m building to scratch my own itch of planning trips with young children.

I think I’ll be spending a lot of time in this world over the next few months. I’m currently just really enjoying tinkering to learn where the limits are.

🔗 Bits & Bobs

  • Something I started using: Gymnastic Bodies – a stretching program taught by gymnast instructors. Skippy & I have started doing this before watching TV to reduce TV time and help embed the habit.

  • Something I’m reading: Digital Minimalism – I’m not a fan of Cal Newport’s new “Malcolm Gladwell” writing style, but this book is still great. Lots of non-obvious ideas for spending less time at a screen, and pursuing meaningful ‘analog’ time.

  • Something I’m working on: A multi-agent mastermind. It takes my journal entries and reflects observations and questions back to me in the style of thinkers I admire. I trust it more seeing their names pop up in my inbox!

  • Something I enjoyed: Laura Roeder’s interview on Moneywise. So much gold in this one – both said, and in just hearing how considered Laura is at figuring out what the point of something is.

  • Something on my mind: How to make winter better. Summers are so easy to find activities and be outside. Outside of December, there’s just less on over winter. Would love to chat with anyone who has cracked enjoying long, dark, cold winters!

That’s it for now! Feel free to write back and let me know what you've been up to.

Cheers!
Marcus

P.S. One of my goals this year is to spend more time with friends. If you fancy hanging out – hit reply :)