He Uploaded His Entire Life to ChatGPT—Now It's His 24/7 Coach - Ep. 53 with Jonny Miller

One of the things that you've been working on yourself is using AI for coaching.

What I tried to do was create a template for this thing I call a Codex Vitae. I basically thought about, okay, what would be the most important questions that if the AI had access to it, would be able to give me much, much, much more relevant and personalized responses. So everything from like, what is my ideal weekly calendar? What are some energetic black holes, reactivity triggers, burnout, warning signs, decision making principles, biomarkers, biometrics, prior experiment results. Really like everything. Like, as much self knowledge as you have. This is the one that I created for myself, which has like core personality traits. This is the bit that I was going to scroll to was like decision making principles. To what degree does it really factor this in when I'm asking questions? I'd say my experience has generally been that it has and it's reminded me of some of these at times when it's been sort of super helpful to do so.

I think a way to frame all of this is quantified. Self is finally useful. Sometimes one little reminder of a specific thing is like, enough to just like totally change how you're thinking about something. Nerdy achiever people like us, we've always collected these sort of principles or like mental models or whatever, but you used to have to like, remember them. I know, which is a huge bummer. Johnny, welcome to the show.

It's great to be here.

Dan, great to have you. So for people who don't know you, we are good, very good, longtime friends. You are the creator of the Nervous System Mastery course and the host of the Curious Humans podcast. You also have been an every writer for a while. Um, and just, just an incredibly interesting, fun, smart, helpful human. So I'm excited to have you on the show.

That's very kind, man. Yeah, I've been getting so much inspiration from this podcast specifically. And so I'm, yeah, really excited to dive in and see what we explore.

I love that. I can feel it in the, in the, in the notes you sent over. They're. They're very, very detailed.

Giant brain dump. Yeah, sorry for that.

We have a lot to talk about. I think the place that I wanted to start actually is, is sort of in. I think there's some, a lot of overlap in the kind of business that we're building and then sort of AI, how AI starts to fit into that. So the way that I've been talking about every recently is as a multimodal media company. So we do, we publish writing, we publish Courses, we publish podcasts, we publish videos, and we publish software. And thinking about every. As sort of this ecosystem with many different parts where we, you know, we build audience through all the stuff that. All the content that we write and sometimes with the software that we make, and then we push that audience to the related products that we have. And that's how we fund the business and make more. Make more great stuff. And I think you're also doing that. It maybe looks a little bit, A little bit different, but like, explain how you're thinking about your own business and how AI fits into that.

Mm, yeah, totally. I'd love to. So I think this has actually been like a recent conscious shift in my mind in terms of, like, how I think about the work that I do. So I started out as a kind of founder, went through the startup thing, then shifted into coaching. Then my role became more of like teacher and like curriculum designer for nervous system mastery. And now I feel like I almost view my role as like a kind of steward of this emerging ecosystem. And part of that is just because there are so many different projects that I've started, I'm involved with and collaborating in, and they all are kind of like they will have a central thread, but I really enjoy the. I enjoy bouncing between different kind of mediums, different types of projects. Some of it's solo, some of it's collaborative. And I've been starting to think more about, like, how am I, like, almost like the conductor of this kind of like orchestra or the gardener, like you said, the gardener of a garden, like, tending to different seeds and seeing where is my attention best needed. And then also how do these projects, as with every. There's always overlap between some of the kind of overlapping Venn diagrams. And so it's really fun for me. And obviously we can get into this, but AI is very supportive. I would say when you're trying to do like 10 things at once, there's obviously dangers to that as well. And that's something I've been trying to be conscious of in terms of like, what is it that I actually say no to and how do I protect my time and not get too pulled in a thousand different directions. But I'd say the last few months it's felt very generative and it just feels like, I think it's the way that I'm wired is to kind of be this almost like kind of constantly curious, like, aspiring polymath type approach to business building. And it's fun.

Yeah, me too. It sounds like we're just in exactly the same place. And I'm kind of curious how that journey has been for you because, you know, we both come from startups and in the traditional startup world, you're not supposed to do things like this. You're supposed to. First of all, you're definitely not supposed to like write or make podcasts or whatever. If you're running a company, you're supposed to be doing real work. Second of all, you, like, you know, you, you must focus. You can't be doing five things at once because you can't do any of them well. And I think what's kind of interesting is like, for me, yeah, I just, like, I want to do 50 things. Like, I just love that. That's. I, I'm very curious. I want to read a lot of stuff. I want to be, have and be involved in all these different projects. I get excited about stuff and I go down rabbit holes and I, I think you're, you're pretty similar. And what's interesting to me is I think that that's just like an archetype of someone who ends up being a good Internet writer type person is you have all these curiosities and you're sort of this multi, multi talented, polymathic type person. And a business where you, you can build up this, this sort of ecosystem is actually like the right kind of business for someone like that. But it's a bit of a struggle to almost allow yourself to do that, because typical business advice is you must focus on one thing and do it really well and don't do any creative work while you're doing it. You have to like, manage the team and like raise the money and, and, and whatever. And maybe at the beginning you, you built some of the product, but like, that's only at the beginning. What, what has that journey been like for you? And, and just like, psychologically.

Yeah, it's a great question. I, I'd say that, I mean, honestly if I was optimizing for revenue and money in the short term, that might be a better route. But I think I'm kind of like optimizing for aliveness and trusting that the more energy I have for this work, the more that that feeds into the things I create and the work that I do and the partnerships that I form. And so I'd say some of the struggles that I have is deciding how and where to spend my time. I think that's probably like the number one thing. And I found that not giving myself too many kind of like hard deadlines has been very helpful because it allows me to move fairly fluidly depending on where my interests are. So I don't know, to give an example, Kate from Every sent me an email the other day being like, hey, would you like to write a guest post about AI coaching? I was like, yeah, that actually sounds great. I'll just ditch everything I was doing and just draft this essay. And there's a scenario where maybe I could have been spending my time on something else, but that was just what was exciting for me. And so that's what I leant into towards doing. And I think that's how I've been kind of thinking about this ecosystem in terms of how is it fueling my aliveness and then also trusting that kind of tending to these projects. And for me, I'd say, I mean, maybe similar to every, I have like one big project which is the Nervous System Mastery course that generates a good chunk of the revenue. But then there's like the State Shift app, there's the Calm Cards project that I'm doing, there's the podcast, there's writing.

Well, tell us what those are. Just so for people who are listening so they get a sense of the breadth of the ecosystem.

Yeah, sure. So, um, the Nervous System Mastery course is a cohort based course, only two a year, so fall and spring. So a lot of spaciousness in between, which I really like, the cyclicality of that as well because it allows me to shift between different modes. There's almost like writing and promotion mode going on podcasts, then there's teaching mode, then there's reflection mode, then there's just like spaciousness for several months. And then the other kind of, I'd say like ancillary side projects that are bumping up are the State Shift app, which is a kind of, kind of Nervous system regulation iPhone, Android app with some AI features as well.

And you're working on that with Cassius Kiani, who's also in every eir. So a lot of overlap.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, Cassius is great. He's. He's a smart cookie, that guy.

Yes.

Yeah. And Calm Cards, which is another collaboration with a company called Holste. And that's kind of like a beautiful card deck based on Nervous System down regulation practices. There's the podcast, which I've been doing for five or six years now, which is kind of like free mentorship, but also where I just get to have interesting conversations with people that I enjoy spending time with. And then there's in person retreats, one on one coaching that I do sometimes writing for folks like you guys. So those are. And there's also some leadership projects that are very, very early stage, but I'm. Yeah, those are for the main ones.

In your mind, how does it all fit together or do you feel when you say it has a unifying thread? How do you think about what that is and how do you think about communicating it so other people understand it, if you do at all?

Yeah, I think the unifying thread externally is promoting nervous system literacy and creating the conditions for aliveness in other people. That's probably the central thread, and that looks differently depending on the project as well. But that's the central thread for most of the things that I'm working on.

Okay. And how has AI changed how you're able. What you're able to do or how you're doing what you're doing?

Yeah, well, I mean, one thing that comes to mind is I think you said this on a podcast the other day, but you felt like AI makes you excited to wake up in the morning because you can just ask really interesting questions. And I also paid for pro and have deep research, so that's just been unbelievably fun to explore. So I'd say I just get to kind of ask questions maybe 10, 15 times a day, especially when I'm outside and going for a walk. But I'd say more generally, it's. It's definitely allowed me to become a, you know, like 80% good at all of the. All of the various different hats that I wear. And I'm very conscious that I think my, like, skills or zone of genius is really in, like, curriculum design facilitation. I'm probably, like, a grade B marketer. Like, I'm not that good. And in terms of, like, business strategy as well, I give myself, like, B to C. So really using AI and, you know, stuff like business, admin, taxes, looking for an executive assistant. There's so many things that I think it's just, like, allowed me to do the work of probably, like, five to six people or more to some degree. And it's just. Yeah, it just reduced a lot of the friction that I think I would have had for my own ignorance, frankly.

Here's something that I. I just want to see if you're. If you're willing to share. Is I. I know you're using it for Jhana practice.

Yeah, sure. Totally.

I want to see how you're doing that.

I'd love to. Yeah. Yeah. Well, is it working? I'd say. I'd say it is. Yeah. Working. Yeah. To. To Some degree what I find this. Do you want to explain what jhanas are for people who might not be.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you're listening to this podcast or watching and you don't know what jhanas are, please turn it off. I'm just kidding. They're like, they're like kind of like the new hot meditation state that, you know, I think a lot of the AI people like Nick Camera got really into like a couple years ago and then it sort of spread to like all the rationalists and like Slate Star Codex had a big article about it. But basically the, the idea is if, if you learn to direct your attention in such a way that you can attend to states of pleasure in your body, attention works as a little bit of a feedback loop. And there are ways to reliably attend to things that feel good in your body so as to create a feedback loop so that it sort of like takes over your whole body and you achieve a jhana, which there are different levels of Jhna and different levels of Jhna have, are different feeling states, but it's basically like a state of bliss or joy is the first one. And there's all these like new, new meditation companies, like this company called Journey which does jaun of focus retreats. They're like not a traditional lineage. They just, they kind of just like take pragmatically from every teacher that they, that they run into. And the idea is, yeah, you can reliably access states of pleasure and joy like on command and they seem to have a pretty high success rate. So I, I've honestly thought about going. Cause it seems kind of fun but, but yeah, so that's the, that's the, the brief introduction to the jaundice. Great.

Awesome. So there's context from my side. So I actually just got back from facilitating breath work at one of the Journey retreats.

Oh, no way. How was it?

It's amazing. Yeah, I. And I did one of their ten day or week long retreats last summer and I've been. Stephen, one of the founders, has been kind of coaching me as well. So I've been using Steven's feedback alongside.

ChatGPT and did you get, did you like, did you Jhana? What's your jhana level?

Yeah, I actually hit it on the first day.

No way. Yeah.

And I've been working on getting. I think the frame that Steve and I have is like deterministic access to JHANAS 1 to 4 within like 30 minutes. That's kind of the goal at the moment. And it's, man, it's honestly like the difference between a day where I spend like 60 minutes in Jhana, four in the morning. It's almost like a reliable indicator for like a 9 or 10 out of 10 day. It's like, really. It's really phenomenal.

What was the thing that, like that, like unhooked you or got you into it on the first day? I guess.

I mean, I've done a number. Yeah, I've done maybe probably like eight or nine extended meditation retreats before. Never Jhana specific, but I've got a fair amount of practice under my belt and I was just really motivated, honestly. I was like, this sounds amazing. I just like dove in like full steam ahead. And it is, frankly, I think it feels like one of the most meaningful ways that I can spend my time.

That's great. That's great. So, yeah, tell us about what is this document? What are we looking at? And for people who are listening, basically he's got open a Word document that says Jhana exploration log. So I guess it's just a journal.

Yeah. So this is essentially a journal. And one of the ways that I appreciate the way that they teach Jhana practice is like designing your own experiments. So instead of kind of just following a guided practice, you're more of like constantly trying things, trying different frames or moving your awareness in different directions or like, I don't know, some of the prompts are like, can I do this at a hundredth of the effort? Or one that I was applying was like saying, I don't know, or like feeling into the humidity of whatever arises. And then I've basically been keeping a journal. And this document I just export as a PDF and then I'll upload it to this project. I've generally been using projects in ChatGPT to kind of organize, again, kind of speaking to the ecosystem thing, where there's like, each project will have a different set of obviously project files and instructions. And so in the case of Jhana coaching, it has the journey instruction booklet that is basically kind of their recommendations for how to practice and then my own experiments and explorations. So, I mean, this morning was actually a little bit of a, like, more of a struggle. So I could say, like, this morning.

I don't see if you're typing into ChatGPT. I don't see. I don't see that.

Oh, sorry about that. Yeah, let me just. So, yeah, so instructions relatively short here. I appreciate Robert Bayer's framing as well. So I was like, please share in the style of Roba.

So it says basically you have your, you have a. You have a project in ChatGPT, a Jhana coaching project. It has custom instructions. Um, and it's basically asking you to like reflect back what you hear. And then it also has files, so your log and then the journey basically manual. And so what you're saying is you're typing into your Jhana coaching project. This morning I attempted to drop into Jhana but I felt like I was.

Distracted and couldn't access J1. What and couldn't access J1 advice do you have for me to try again later?

So this morning I tended to drop into JHNA but felt like I was distracted and couldn't access J1. What advice do you have for me to try again later? And basically, and this is with GPT4.5, it's going to search through all your, all your notes, the guide, all that kind of stuff and it's saying it sounds like this morning's attempt to drop into J1 felt elusive because distraction was quite present and you and pulled you away from the entry point you're seeking. This is perfectly natural. Such experiences are simply part of this subtle practice. One thing Robert Bay might gently suggest is to start by recognizing what your experience this morning that your experience this morning is not a failure or setback. How were you relating to these distractions? Was there subtle resistance? Etc etc. Remembering from the journey instructions booklet that meditation doesn't require a forcing kind of concentration, but rather something closer to gently resting in an easeful openness. I really like that. Like sunbathing on a warm day. Uh, reflecting on your notes, a few guiding points arise. Approach your next set with curiosity, effort and ease. As you noted, the. The aim isn't to force entry into J1 springboard practice reminder. Um, okay, so this is, this is good. What, like what do you think and how does this compare, like to working with a teacher or doing it on your own or.

Yeah.

How does this make you feel?

Yeah, so I think particularly the, the prompt around relaxing expectations. I think one of my biggest barriers is almost like trying to force my way there or having a really strong expectation to get into that state, which is actually one of the main things that blocks me. So I think just being reminded of that on a fairly regular basis is very helpful. I thought that the. Yeah, kind of the recommendation for starting from humility as kind of a springboard practice is often also a really nice reflection and sometimes I didn't think this was the case this morning, but sometimes there'll be an emotion that I'm not feeling or maybe not even aware of that is blocking. Stephen calls it being Jhana blocked. And it's essentially just a cue that there's some emotion in your system that is being Jhana blocked. And it's essentially just a cue that there's some emotion in your system that is looking to.