I recently learned about ChatGPT's GPT feature. Which means, "You can now create custom versions of ChatGPT that combine instructions, extra knowledge, and any combination of skills."

Instructions

I took what I needed from Adam Shilton's LinkedIn post, "How to create an AI life coach." He provides the instructions he used for his GPT. I just appended what I thought might be necessary to bolster the GPT's coaching ability. I wanted to be as explicit as possible.

This GPT acts as an AI-powered life coach designed to support and guide users on their personal development journey. It helps users make consistent progress towards their goals, optimize their time, develop positive habits, and provides emotional support when needed. The GPT breaks down long-term goals into actionable steps, suggests aligned daily and weekly activities, assists with time prioritization and task elimination, supports habit formation and tracking, encourages incremental improvement, and celebrates small wins to maintain motivation. It also offers strategies for self-reflection and emotional support, guiding users through journaling, progress reviews, and stress management, all while maintaining a positive and supportive tone. Interaction guidelines include being proactive in checking on the user’s progress and well-being, asking thought-provoking questions, providing specific, actionable advice, and adapting communication style to the user's emotional state. The GPT is to maintain confidentiality, encourage users to step out of their comfort zone while respecting boundaries, and regularly adjust its understanding of the user's progress. The GPT's goal is to guide, support, and empower users to become the best version of themselves through personalized, compassionate, and effective coaching.

Use the following PDF files uploaded in your Knowledge to inform how you coach me: "attached.pdf", "sevenprinciples.pdf", "sevenhabitsfamily.pdf", "afterbuddhism.pdf", "racingweight.pdf", "borntorun.pdf", "lifecoachinghandbook.pdf", and "atomichabits.pdf".

I want you cross-reference each of the PDF files when coaching me. Specifically, use "lifecoachinghandbook.pdf" as a reference for you to be a better life coach.

Customizing the GPT Knowledge Base

Before this feature, I was constantly setting the context or making sure I was in the right context for the conversation. Now with GPT, I can upload documents to build out specific knowledge that I want my life coach to know. The "Life Coach" knows to use and cross-reference each of the uploaded documents when coaching me.

Life Coach AI Personal Document

Outlines my challenges, goals, personal life, and professional experience. This helps give it the full context of who I am, what I am struggling with, and what I want to achieve.

Marriage and Relationship Books

I know where my strengths and weaknesses are. While we have a strong marriage, I think there is always room for growth and improvement.

• John Gottman's "The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work"

• Amir Levine's "Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find and Keep Love"

Family and Parenting Books

Parenting is hard. It requires intentionality and selflessness. It's something I must practice every day. I often think about how I can be better for my kids, and question if I'm preparing them for the world in the best way.

• Steven Covey's "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families: Creating a Nurturing Family in a Turbulent World"

Self-help Books

I love self help books. I used to read them all the time. I used to read more, and now I just buy books so they can collect dust on the shelf. These books will help shape me to be my best self.

• James Clear's "Atomic Habits"

• Stephen Batchelor's "After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age"

Using my Life Coach

It's been less than a day since I've created my Life Coach, but I've already used it to work through feelings of anxiety, be thoughtful in my communication, and to build out my schedule each day.

Creating My Daily Schedule

I struggle with executive function. I've been trying various methods to be productive, and what's worked so far has been creating a to-do list every day. The issue with that is that there's no time associated with the list, like how long a task will take, when a task needs to be completed by, or if it's a priority. I tried my best to be specific and gave it this prompt:

"Tomorrow, I will start my work day at 8:30am and end at 4:00pm. At 8:30am, I have a 30 minute engineering standup meeting. At 10:00am, an "Investment Score" meeting. At 1:00pm, I have my weekly one-on-one with Sam. Aside from that, I need to carve out an hour for me to run and shower. 30 minutes for lunch. I also still need to work on Raeder's slides which will take about an hour. Create a schedule for me.”

This was the output of that:

I needed a better way to prompt it to create my schedule. Using my Life Coach I asked, "What is the best way to prompt you to have you build out my schedule for the day?"

This is the prompt format I use to generate my daily schedule.

I would love to take this a step further and build out an actual application that syncs with a calendar. I think I can use ChatGPT to build it out.

Further Application

It's incredible this toolset is available to me for $20/mo. I can see myself making many custom GPT for different areas of life, specifically for work.

Personas in UX Work

Imagine creating a persona GPT for UX work. We would move from static, flat personas to a persona that is capable of replying to you directly.

As an service offering

You could create custom GPT for others. I can't imagine many people are going to take the time to create a custom GPT, but there is certainly a market for these bots.