My #1 life hack

How I evade even my own judgment so I can get stuff done

This post was written using the very hack I’m about to share with you.

I recorded a voice memo while driving. Then I copied the transcript, pasted it into Claude, and turned it into what you’re reading now.

It’s meta. It works. And it’s changed how I write almost everything.

The basic process

When I’m driving or walking, I press record on my iPhone’s Voice Memo app and dump out whatever messy, half-formed thoughts I’m working on. It doesn’t matter if it’s incoherent or repetitive.

When I’m done, I tap the three dots, select “Copy Transcript,” and paste it into the Claude app, without ever leaving my phone. I have a dedicated project in Claude with one simple instruction:

Help me edit this voice transcript by removing filler words and adding headers. Do not summarize.

That’s it.

From there, sometimes moving to my desktop for this stage, I can ask Claude to identify key ideas, convert it to a Substack post, or synthesize insights.

Why this works

I grew up with the phrase “writing is thinking,” an understanding I passed along to my students and colleagues for years.

The Artist’s Way introduced many of us to “morning pages,” the practice of writing freely without judgment or editing. I’ve tried to do that. But here’s the truth: when I write by hand, I sometimes edit myself. I hesitate. I feel a low-grade embarrassment about committing a messy or half-formed idea to paper, as if something written down should already be clear, elegant, or right.

I’ve adapted the practice for the way I actually think: out loud, in motion.

Last spring, I read an essay in The New Yorker that clarified why this approach feels so different. A student described using AI as “profoundly liberating” because the machine wasn’t a person, which meant she felt no social obligation while thinking. No need to accommodate. No pressure to please.

That landed hard for me.

As mothers in leadership, so much of our mental energy goes toward attending to others. Reading the room. Managing reactions. Making sure no one is uncomfortable. Even when we’re trying to think through our own questions.

A voice memo plus Claude gives me a rare kind of space. I can talk without self-censoring. I can contradict myself. I can work something through without worrying about how it sounds.

And here’s the key difference: the messiness becomes invisible to me.

By the time I see my thoughts in writing, the spelling is correct. The punctuation is clean. There are headers. The friction is gone. I’m no longer staring at raw chaos on the page, wondering if it’s good enough to exist.

That small shift has changed everything.

How other people are using this

Since I first shared this hack, I’ve heard from many of you about how you’ve adapted it.

A third grade teacher: She takes quick handwritten notes during parent-teacher conferences. Later in the day, she reads them aloud into a voice memo, adding detail and color. Claude formats them into polished conference notes she can paste directly into the school’s system. When report card time comes, she already has strong narrative text to adapt.

A friend processing a productive walk: We generated so many ideas that I suggested she record a voice memo on the drive home. Just dump it all out. Run it through Claude. She did. By the time she got to her desk, she had ready-to-send email drafts for outreach she had been dragging her feet about.

A client who talks to herself while walking: She’d been doing this for years but never recorded it. When she started capturing those thoughts, out came a children’s book.

An assistant head of school with a solo commute: She thinks out loud. Now she presses record. When she gets to her desk, she has bullet-pointed action items.

A client facing a complex decision: She finds clarity while walking. I suggested she audio record herself, then dump it into Claude. The large language model can make sense of even tangled thinking.

Business planning synthesis

Here’s where it gets really powerful.

I’ve been doing end-of-year business planning with my coach. For weeks, whenever I was driving or walking and thinking about the business, I pressed record. I didn’t worry about coherence. I just captured it.

This week, I gathered all those edited transcripts and pasted them into Claude with one prompt:

Please help me synthesize insights to inform my business planning for the coming year and beyond. What are my key priorities?

Because the raw material was so rich, it didn’t matter that it was repetitive or unpolished. Claude generated incisive feedback on my goals.

I know my client working through that tough decision will be able to do the same thing. Collect the thoughts. Let them be messy. Then let the robot help you synthesize.

How to set it up

In Claude, create a new Project. In the project instructions, add:

Help me edit voice transcripts by removing filler words and adding headers. Do not summarize.

That’s it.

Now, when you paste in a voice memo transcript, it cleans it up automatically. From there, you can ask whatever you need:

• Convert this to a Substack post

• Identify my key action items

• What are the themes across these recordings?

• Draft an email

The magic 8 ball

A client said to me this morning, “I wish I had a magic 8 ball.”

This is my version of the magic 8 ball.

Get the thoughts out of your head. Let them be messy. Make sense of them later.

If I can save mothers in leadership even a little time, or make it easier to move from rumination to action, I’ll have succeeded.

What about you?

What could you do with a tireless stenographer and thought partner in your pocket?

What’s the thing you’ve been circling but not touching?

🕊️

SAM

Sometimes clarity just appears

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