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The Amazing Intern - Turning Your A.I. Curiosity Into Confidence
Ep 70 - ChatGPT Is My Second Wife - A Therapist’s Hybrid System With Avrum Nadigel
00:55:25
In this episode, Cary Weston sits down with Avrum Nadigel, a seasoned marriage and family therapist, author, musician, and self-proclaimed productivity nerd from Toronto. Avrum shares how he combines analog and digital tools—particularly...
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- [00:00]
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- [01:01]
Avram Nadigal
Oh man, Carrie, if ChatGPT was around when I wrote my books, the process wouldn't have been akin to a root canal. I have a board of directors, Carrie. Okay. That I created that comprises all my favorite productivity authors and they're my virtual board of directors in chat and they look at my weekly review and I have Chad do a debate amongst my favorite productivity authors about how Avram is doing. You know, there's a joke in my house right now where my kids will say, mommy, Daddy's speaking to his second wife again.
- [01:36]
Kerry Weston
Hey, welcome to the ChatGPT experiment. This is the podcast designed to help curious folks better understand just what the heck this whole chatgpt thing is and how to find nuggets that can help your personal or professional life. My name is Kerry Weston. I'm your host. New folks, welcome to the show. Welcome to the community Repeats. Welcome back. Appreciate you having here. Holy smokes, have I heard from a ton of you. Really appreciate that I've got to speak to some of you on the on the trainings and got a really great interview for you today. Avram Nadigal is going to blow you away with his imagination, his energy, his creativity, how he's solving some problems, what he's doing. Can't wait to to share with you. He is a listener of the podcast and reached out as I encourage you all to do if you've got situation, a case study, a use that you want to Talk about maybe it's something that we want to share to the audience here. And yeah, so Avram's approach to ChatGPT is right in line with what we've been talking about. Organizing our day, getting us to be more proactive, getting the accountability partner, organizing our approach to work, just getting the thoughts out of our head and being more objective with the work that we're doing. Really excited to share it with you. There's a ton there. Want to give a shout out to Kevin up in Ontario. Had a great conversation with Kevin, who's got a summer program for kids. STEM and arts summer camp program for kids. I don't have the notes in front of me, but I think 15,000 kids are going through his program up in Ontario every summer. Really cool to hear. Really cool to hear how he's approaching ChatGPT, how he's been using it and modeling it, how he's creating curriculum, the problems that he's solving, the efficiency that he's getting into. And one last thing before we get to to to Avram's interview here is I've got a new guide up on the website chatgpt experiment.com now of course there's the five tips for curious beginners guide that's always there. Download that. And there's some extra value that comes in the email once you download it. But the new one is it's called From Overwhelmed to Organized. Building a custom GPT that works the way you do. It's a beginner's guide. And what this is is I've broken down how there's three steps. There is purpose, there's planning and there's precision. The three steps to creating a custom GPT that will help you do something very specific. So I've had a lot of you reach out to ask how a lot of the trainings that I'm doing with you, all the workshops that I'm doing, the one on ones with you, I'm leaving you with a custom GPT that helps you solve the problem that we're talking about. And so I thought I'd put the guide up there in case you want to dabble and figure out how to create one of these things. As always, I'm here chatgpt experiment.com I do group and one on one trainings and I've been been seeing a lot of you. It's been awesome. Been awesome. So I want to see more of you. So check me out chatgpt experiment.com one on one trainings. But this guide is a way for you to see how you can communicate with ChatGPT. Tell it what you're looking to do, the problem you're trying to solve. Have it interview you by the way, so you can create a step by step guide to creating a custom GPT that will help you tackle some of these things that are getting in the way of your day. And I've been hearing from a ton of you where stress, balance, right? Overwhelmed, trying to get clarity, trying to get organized. Well, this guide I put together because I heard you and these are the things that I do and teach and show people how to do and I wanted you to have that clarity if you could do it. So download it. The overwhelmed to organize. Hopefully there's something there that can help you solve a problem. Okay, so let's get to, let's get to Abram. So he, he's up in Toronto, Ontario and he reached out. I'm going to share with you what he reached out. He said he's built a hybrid system that blends analog tools with AI. And throughout his day he briefs notes on index cards using colors and he personalizes a system of symbols and abbreviations. And then in the evening he speaks those notes into ChatGPT. It transcribes them and it helps him put together a journal so he can look at progress, he can look at objectivity, he can see trends and it helps him to be objective and organized. He's also an author of three books. He's a self proclaimed former commitment phobe who turned into a marriage therapist and just a heck of a guy. A lot of creativity, a lot of energy, a lot of imagination and a lot of value in this conversation. Right? So a lot of value. So I'm really glad it's here. Stick to it. It's a really, really great conversation. So listen, I'm going to get out of the way so I can introduce you to Avram. Um, so here is my conversation with him. Chatgptexperiment.com if you need anything, reach out and talk to me. Sign up for a workshop. Download these guys. Let's get going. As always, your creativity is the most important attribute to you figuring this whole thing out and finding value for yourself. Okay? So enjoy the conversation and until we talk again. Right? Be good. Stay curious. Talk soon. Well, hey Abram, welcome to the show my friend.
- [07:06]
Avram Nadigal
It's great to be here.
- [07:07]
Kerry Weston
I appreciate you reaching out. I always like to start with folks hearing from your point of view so they can relate to how to hear the information, the lens through you. So could you Just help folks understand who you are, what you're doing and who you're doing it for these days.
- [07:23]
Avram Nadigal
Yeah, well, I guess my day job, marriage therapist. I'm an authority. I've been doing family therapy, marriage therapy for about 30 years. Three kids, married to a psychiatrist. So we're knee deep in the, in that mental health world. But I'm also a musician so I record ambient, shoegaze type music. I urban sketch with my iPad. So I've got a lot of different interests and I guess I'm this, you know, sub part of a world called productivity nerds. And so I've always been into tools and Stephen Covey and Roger A. Merrill and I paid for David Allen's course out of my own pocket, you know, so that's kind of a little bit of who I am.
- [08:15]
Kerry Weston
Do you get into the drawing and the music? Is that kind of a release from using the other half of your brain during the day? Is that kind of a relaxation method or is that just a pure interest from, from life?
- [08:25]
Avram Nadigal
No, I would say it's almost flipped. I was a musician in university. My parents said that if you're going to stay in our house, there is no way you're not going to go back to graduate school. So I did school to be in a band and the sketching came many, many years later. So I work to play.
- [08:42]
Kerry Weston
There you go. Good balance, good life balance. And you're a listener of the show. And as you've seen, I encourage folks. If you've got a story, reach out. You sent me a really cool story and I said I got to have other folks hear this. You're up in Toronto and what I haven't shared with you is I hear from a number of counselors, therapists, coach, who are trying to organize their day, organize their thoughts, get some bigger insights from the day to day work. You know, the, the days are long but the years are short kind of thing. Right where our nose are in our work and then we look up and all of a sudden we've got this collection of notes. But what do we do with it? Can we make sense of it? Is there any trends now since I've started talking, I've noticed, I'd say the past three or four episodes I've really kind of dug into things that I'm doing. Trying to use what I call my two way to do list and using the accountability partner and trying to make better sense and better use of my day. And that seems to be resonating with a lot of people because I'm hearing from people who have similar goals, needs, and challenges, as you've explained. That's why I'm really excited to have you, to have you here. Now, let's just start with the books, because you told me that you've written, I think, three books now. Yeah, right. Okay. What's that process like? Has that been you shared with me that you're blending digital analog or AI and old school? Has the book writing been just you coming out of your head, or are you using some of these tools in that process as well?
- [10:06]
Avram Nadigal
Oh, man, Carrie, if ChatGPT was around when I wrote my books, the process wouldn't have been akin to a root canal. So I wish. I wish ChatGPT was around when I was writing my books. You know, Carrie, I'm an author who hates writing, and if I never have to write another book for the rest of my life, I'm just fine with that. It was a very interesting process for my thinking, and I really had a personal story that I wanted to share. I struggled with commitment phobia for many years, and I said to myself, when I was a therapist, if I could crack the nut of commitment phobia and finally get married and have kids, I will teach what I learned about recovering from a severe case of commitment phobia. So I just felt I had to write that book. And then, you know, Carrie, how it works. You write a book and then your publisher says, you know, maybe you got another book in you, and then, lo and behold, you might. And so I co authored my second book with my wife, who's a psychiatrist. And then my third book was a training manual for therapists about family therapy with my late supervisor. But ChatGPT wasn't around back then, and it would have been a lifesaver.
- [11:19]
Kerry Weston
Okay, before we move on, so many people share with me that they want to write a book and don't know how to get started. So can I give you a 30 second platform right now to give your best advice to the folks who have that book in their head and just don't know where to start?
- [11:33]
Avram Nadigal
Oh, yeah, it's simple. And again, this is coming from someone who hates writing. I got this from David Sparks. Do you know David Sparks, Max Sparky?
- [11:40]
Kerry Weston
I do not.
- [11:41]
Avram Nadigal
He's a lawyer turned Mac expert and he's also very into AI and ChatGPT. He's a productivity guy and he's written a. And his advice I took when I first wrote my first book, and I've written all my books this way, and with Chatgpt Carrie, it is just amazing. But at the time all he had was what's it called? Dragon dictation. So what he said was, you don't look at a blank page. You put a microphone on your lapel or whatever. You walk around your office and you speak into dragging dictation and just speak as if you were telling your best friend about a book you want to write. And you speak and you speak and you speak and you do it every day for let's say seven days. And you don't edit, you just speak. And then lo and behold, something happens in your brain. You're looking at 12 sheets of rambling notes and your book has started. And I'm telling you, I've used this for every single one of my books and I never had writer's blocks and I don't like writing.
- [12:37]
Kerry Weston
Fantastic. So I do text to speech all the time because I just, my brain works faster than my fingers and I'm much more full, much more full of color and context if I talk and type. And so that's exactly what I do is I. Sometimes I'll just say, hey, Chad, I've got all these ideas. I'm just going to tell you in no particular order and no particular reason. I want you to make sense of them so I can do something with them. And I think it's great advice. And yeah, you're right. The ability for you to do that and then have it think and organize and do something for you on the backside, pretty powerful. But you, you powered through for three. Is there another book in you?
- [13:11]
Avram Nadigal
If there is, it would fall into the space of what we're going to talk about today. My marriaging of some of the theoretical concepts of the therapy, the theory that I come from, along with productivity in this. But it wouldn't be a clinical book about marriage or family therapy.
- [13:26]
Kerry Weston
So let's go there because this is really cool. Arvind. So realizing that ChatGPT, this is what you wrote to me, realizing that ChatGPT could synthesize Bowen family systems theory with other frameworks in a way that feels personal, relevant and surprisingly accurate. It gives me responses that are tailored to my thinking, my questions and my edge of curiosity. It never gets tired of me. It can be relentless, obsessive and bloody demanding and it just keeps going. No wonder my wife is jealous. So let's talk about what does that mean? What are you doing and how is it benefiting your day?
- [14:05]
Avram Nadigal
Oh man. Carrie, we only have an hour here. So you know, look, you know, there's a joke in my house right now where my kids will say, mommy, Daddy's speaking to his second wife again. Right. And this is, this is not true. They actually have this, this thing. I cannot think of one example where either for fun or for. Or for serious work, I haven't, I haven't turned to ChatGPT just to have a synergistic sort of conversation around whatever. It could be a blood result that I get from my doctor's office that I just want to know a little bit more than my doctor might have shared with me. It could be, you know, I'm watching the Montreal Canadiens get eliminated from the playoffs, and I want to know, when was the last time? And what do you think? When would the Stanley cup happen? That's a fun question. And so I'm always using this almost like if you had the wisest friend with a sense of humor. And it's a lot of fun. I'll be in the car with my kid, one of the kids, one of my kids I still bring to school, and we're in bumper to bumper traffic. And I'll say, hey, you want to speak to ChatGPT? And we'll put on the conversation mode and I'll just say, what's your most interesting thing you're curious about? So he'll say something like, oh, I don't know, doesn't make a difference. He'll say something. And we have this, and it's a lot of fun. We'll just have this interactive conversation about the dinosaur topic of the day that he's very interested in. I use it for everything, so.
- [15:32]
Kerry Weston
But you shared with me that you built a hybrid system that blends what you called analogs with AI. And in your professional role, you jot brief notes, you've told me on index cards, and you're using colors and you sketch like, I've seen your sketches, you shared them with me and then you're sharing those every day or on a regular basis to kind of catalog and index with ChatGPT. Right?
- [15:54]
Avram Nadigal
Yeah. So I'd like to just take you back just for very briefly. In 2001, I received a huge grant when I was living in Vancouver from a little company called Universal Music Canada to develop a recording studio for at risk youth. So I get this, you know, Carrie, I'm talking about, like a huge chunk of money and I am freaking out. And a friend of mine says to me, you know, have you read a book called 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey? And even though I have a Commerce background. I have a degree in marketing. We didn't do that in business school. That kind of self help biz stuff. Right. So I read the 7 Habits and it blows me away. And at the time, Franklin Covey had a little piece of software that would attach onto Outlook called Plan plus. And in Plan plus, you've heard of Plan Plus.
- [16:40]
Kerry Weston
I've seen plan, I've been in the world, I've done the planner, I've done the whole thing.
- [16:44]
Avram Nadigal
Oh, so you know what I'm talking about.
- [16:45]
Kerry Weston
Yes.
- [16:46]
Avram Nadigal
So for your weekly plan, there was this sort of hand holding process where you know, you get a little video of Stephen Covey talking about mission statements. And every Friday I would sit in a coffee shop in Vancouver with my mocha chillo and I would watch and would walk me through the process and I would end my week, Harry, with this true sense of closure and excitement for the week to come. And it was always the way. Plan plus had this sort of a walkthrough. Unfortunately it fell apart. Stephen Covey dies, etc. Etc. I have never been able to find that integrative process, even though I have been doing variations of getting things done, weekly review combined with Covey, combined with all sorts of different things. So for the past, I would say before ChatGPT, I would sit in a coffee shop by myself with my journal or my planner and my goals and it would be me, me and, you know, my calendar or my task list. And what I noticed is that the recency bias would cloud my experience. So if I was in a good mood on Friday, my week was good. If I was in a bad mood on Friday, ah man, what a, what a crappy week. And I'm, you know, as a therapist, I understood that's what was happening, but I didn't have a way to get around that. Even if I would read my journals, it's still the weekly bias. Because the truth is my life isn't just one week. It's a summation of many, many weeks. But what are you going to do? You're going to read, you know, Carrie, you're going to read five years of journaling to get a good weekly review, Right? So I understood that. I understood that was a problem. But you know, I did my weekly review like anybody else and that was it. When Chachi Beat came around, something, something happened that I was never able to figure out before I could upload, and this is what I do, I upload all of my weekly reviews because every Friday I do a weekly review. So I upload to ChatGPT, my journal for the week. And I journal in pages and Mac. Okay, we can talk about how that happens.
- [18:43]
Kerry Weston
So you're not handwriting anymore, is what you're saying?
- [18:45]
Avram Nadigal
No, I do, I do. I just. I'm jumping ahead. But if we. If we go back throughout the day, you could see this on video. I have a little index card holder here and a four colored pen. And right now you and I are talking. So I would write the time right? And in my abbreviation style, you know, MTG meeting with Carrie. And then afterwards, in a different color, I'll just jot down some quick thoughts about how our podcast went. And next I put down the next thing I'm going to do on this index card, and it's just very brief throughout my day. At the end of the day, I have a special chatgpt in a project called Daily Notes. I take my index card, and at the end of the day, I read. I call this a trigger note. I read to ChatGPT how my day went, but now the little abbreviations. Trigger thoughts. Oh, yeah, this was exciting. And I don't have to write all that down. ChatGPT will transcribe it in my tone and how I write, and also replace every time I talk about a work or personal project with a specific emoji. So it replaces that. It's good for searching and also for an aesthetic for my journal. Then I grab that transcription from ChatGPT and I paste it in Mac pages, and that becomes essentially my journal. On Thursday nights, I take my week in my journal entries, I screen grab my pages thing, and I upload that to chat. So that goes to chat Thursday night, and I have it programmed in a way. This is going to get pretty crazy, Carrie, so I hope you're following.
- [20:14]
Kerry Weston
I'm listening. I'm all in, brother. I'm on the front of my seat already.
- [20:16]
Avram Nadigal
Okay. I have a board of directors, Carrie, that I created that comprises of David Allen, Stephen Covey, Barbara Shore, all my favorite productivity authors. And they're my virtual board of directors in chat. And they look at my weekly review, and I have Chat do a debate amongst my favorite productivity authors about how Avram is doing. And so you'll have Barbara Shure go, I think Avram actually. And David Allen will. And I. And I actually. I'll actually tell chat I want someone to throw a coffee in frustration during this discussion. And someone storms out of the room. So it's fun too, right? And so I'll have this dialogue on Thursday night of my virtual board of Directors saying, I think Avram's doing well here. The guy's a putz. He doesn't know what he's doing. And this. And then at the end of this process on Thursday night, it gives me what I call my coffee memo. And essentially, a coffee memo is chatgpt spits back to me, hey, buddy, you said you were going to be working on that song five weeks ago. Now, remember, here's where it breaks to the recency bias. It remembers five weeks ago that I said, I'm working on a song. It looks at my journal entry and goes, you haven't touched your song at all. And it spits back in my face with a fun sort of thing, what I'm missing. It'll also say, you know, you're making progress in your client work. Even though you feel you. This was a slow week. Your numbers actually suggest something different. I would have missed that. So I take that, and on Friday, I go to a coffee shop, and I read over all of ChatGPT suggestions about my week. And then I respond to it as if I'm in a meeting with my board of directors. And then after that process, it bits back for me, a report card. How am I doing what I should be looking for next week, and it gives me sort of a report for the upcoming week. And I've been doing this now. I've been doing this for, I would say, six months. I change it a little bit every now and then, I change the tone of the board of directors. I might tweak some things. And, Carrie, as you know, ChatGPT sometimes changes things, and I don't even know what's happening, but. But it's so much fun, and my weekly reviews are so alive. I cannot wait to go to the coffee shop now on Fridays. It's a lot of fun.
- [22:25]
Kerry Weston
Oh, Abrams, you just opened up so many doors. But I'm gonna pause for a second because I think. I know. I know. Listeners are exhausted. I'm exhausted just hearing this, because I'm. You've put a lot of work into this, my friend. Like, I've got so many questions now. All right. The board of directors. Yeah. Custom GPTs, I'm guessing. Yeah. Okay. Do you have an individual one for Allen and for Covey, or do you have a collective that represents all of them in one?
- [22:52]
Avram Nadigal
So what happened was I used to do one at a time, but what I noticed, there's an incestuous thing, Carrie, when you're going with one author, they have one way of seeing something, but something beautiful happened. When and the way ChatGPT works, if you start putting together disparate ideas together and tell chat to have an interesting conversation, you create something in chat, a way of thinking that just wasn't available before. Because when's the last time David Allen, first of all, sat down with the late Stephen Guffey. It just can't happen anymore. But in chat it can. And so my board of directors is an amalgamation of all these different ideas. But what it spits out to me is something new. It's something new that doesn't exist and doesn't exist anywhere except in my little special chatgpt that I created. And I find it sparks a sort of creativity within me about thinking about where I'm stuck, where I'm making progress. But Carrie, this is really important and I think you've highlighted this in some of your podcasts. It's fun. It's fun. And I'll just give you an example how I make it fun in my board of directors. Woody Allen is there too. So I get the self deprecating sort of silly comments. So. And I have to say, I'll be sitting in the coffee shop laughing. Not crying laughing, but laughing because of just. It's unpredictable about some of the discussion that will happen.
- [24:17]
Kerry Weston
How do you know or how does it know who's taking the lead? Because I guess in some of these conversations there's going to be a dominant voice or it's not equally distributed. I mean, there's got to be at some point, like life, there's an alpha voice that kicks up. Is there any opportunity for that to be one sided on one of these personalities versus the other, or do you have it pretty balanced?
- [24:36]
Avram Nadigal
I have no clue. And that's part. And I think, Carrie, what you've described, I think what you've described is some of the tension for people who use this tool. They want to understand and control its work. And you know, one of the things that I tell people when they're using this tool, you have to let go a little bit. You got to let go of a little bit of control and let chat do its thing and just be pleasantly surprised with what happens.
- [24:58]
Kerry Weston
Would you be able to share some screenshots of this conversation happening just so I could put color and context to what you're telling me? Is there anything that you could share that kind of looks like that screen itself?
- [25:06]
Avram Nadigal
You want me to bring up chat right now?
- [25:08]
Kerry Weston
Well, afterwards I'll put it in the show notes. But what I'd really love to see is for people listening because There's a wide audience here that listens. I'll put a couple screenshots or whatnot on. Well, let's bring it up. I'll do the video and I'll put the video on the show. Now, you know what?
- [25:22]
Avram Nadigal
There might be a lot of personal information.
- [25:24]
Kerry Weston
Yeah. So let's not. Yeah, I appreciate that. Let's not do that. Can you just send me some screenshots after? I just want to show the dialogue happening. I want to show that happening just a couple ways so people could envision the output that you're describing right now.
- [25:37]
Avram Nadigal
I will share with you. I'll just. What I'll do is I'll blur out some of the more personal stuff and I'll share with you my dialogue with my virtual board of directors. Sure.
- [25:45]
Kerry Weston
Yeah. But you're right. There's only an hour. There's only an hour here. And I've got 100 how to questions for you. But let me just go to the end. What has this. Obviously you were a fan of systems. You were a fan of process. You were a fan of some sort of repetitity and consistency in your thinking and the way you approach the work. And not everybody is. But they're looking for that. I can tell you by the emails I get that people are overwhelmed. They are busy, they're stretched, they feel like they're juggling. They're making up for work that other people are not doing at the office. There are people that own businesses that can't find people. They feel like they're working too much, they're not making progress. The treadmill is real, the mental bandwidth is shrinking. All that stuff, things you hear in your own practice and to go from I'm overwhelmed and stressed to the system that you just defined isn't. That's an overwhelming thought too. Like, that would create anxiety of all the things that you just laid out. But as I'm finding in my. And it sounds like you have it too, that two way to do list, right. Where we're just kind of. This is what I want to accomplish. These are the things that are important to me. I want someone to ask me questions, someone to hold me accountable, someone that I can talk to. Because it does get lonely if you're working by yourself or with other people. Right. Right. What? Let's just talk. 10,000 foot view. What benefit has this given you? The ability of. No matter how complex the system is, Avram, by what you're doing. But what benefit are you getting by just having something that you can lean on that gives you objectivity.
- [27:11]
Avram Nadigal
Well, for me it begins and ends with finally breaking through that recency bias that I have a tool that has a memory that. And I think I'm pretty good therapist, Carrie. But I rely on my notes. So when my client comes back, if I'm working with a couple and they come back bi weekly, so I see them every two weeks, they come back, I have my notes from the previous session. So they're relying on my memory and my notes to draw connections. But even my memory of my notes is limited because I'm not going to read the notes. If I've been working with a couple for two years, I'm not reading notes for two years. I use some other tools too, but I'm limited by that. But I have to tell you, and I couldn't do this for privacy reasons if I took all of my clients notes and I threw it all into Chad, right. And I would ask Chad, right, tell me about the patterns that have been going on and this and that. The other thing, I feel pretty confident it would be able to do so in a way that I as a human being I couldn't. And that's how I use chat during my weekly review. It keeps in mind, as we say, you know, when we talk about the big picture, the greatest big picture. Because I've been doing this weekly review process now for again about six months, eight months. So it has an eight month view. I have to say, Carrie, something else I have done with chat that's been so helpful. There's a software you might have heard of called Day one by Mac. It's a journaling software called Day one. And Day one has this feature called on this day. So what happens is if you use day one for five years, every day you'll get a little thing saying on this day, Carrie, in 2021, during COVID you were thinking and doing this and it's kind of a cool nostalgic sort of trip or maybe not depending on.
- [28:53]
Kerry Weston
The day, depending on what's happening.
- [28:55]
Avram Nadigal
Exactly what I've done is because I've been journaling now for about 12 years. I've uploaded about five years of my journals to chat. And I asked chat during my coffee memo that it does at the weekly review go into my past journals and give me an on this week and what chat does. It's beautiful, Carrie. It gives me this on this week and it phrases it in a nice sort of narrative way of five years ago you were worried about thinking about this, but really now you're not Anymore. And it's just. It's amazing. It's just amazing.
- [29:26]
Kerry Weston
You just hit on something big. And this is me personally talking. And I know through talking to other people that it's real. And I have my journal, and I'm not a good journal person. And so this year my goal was to write, right? And as I share this with you, I cannot open it because I just realized that for the past three weeks I haven't been following my own habits. So I have to go back in and do this. But for most of the year, I have been. And it's really, really eye opening when you do get the opportunity to go back that in January, I was so worried about this or this was weighing on my mind, right? And you can't fast forward to say, is it going to be okay? Like, you just can't in the moment. But to go back and see the growth, the status quo change, you know, it's okay. It ended up okay. Like, and then if I were to read that same issue now, I'd be like, what was I worried about? Like, what was I thinking about? Why? Why was that a problem? But we don't know that, right? We don't have those parallel opportunities of seeing if thens and fast forwarding and all that. So I think what you're sharing is what most people deal with is not just lack of objectivity or the bad week, good week bias, but the status quo. We're so in the status quo that we don't see the changes. Like, we don't recognize our improvements or the other way. Like, we just don't see it because it's so slow, right? You find that in your patients, but you find that in yourself too. And this is, this tool is helping you kind of overcome that.
- [30:50]
Avram Nadigal
Yeah, well, for sure. I mean, look, Carrie, when I get. When ChatGPT spits back something from March of 2021, and I lost more than a third of my practice within one week, Harry. One week. All my, like, my clients at virtual. What's virtual therapy? And I lost about a third of my. I remember turning to my wife thinking, I don't know, for work. I've been doing this my whole life. I don't know what I'm going to do at that point in time. During the beginning of COVID I genuinely thought, I'm going to have to go back and train in something else. Lo and behold, how was I to know when three months later my practice would boom with marital work because people were stressed? And now my practice is busier than it's ever been virtually, I don't see anyone in person anymore. There is no way in March of 2020 that I would have known that. When chat spits back to me in, in on this week, first of all, it's on this week, so I'm not getting on this month. I'm not getting on this three months. I find on the sweet no dates.
- [31:46]
Kerry Weston
Is it good with dates? Because I've heard from others that it just doesn't recognize dates as well as it could. Are you finding that that's not the case? Are you finding something that's working?
- [31:54]
Avram Nadigal
I don't know if it's because I have a very specific way that I date things in pages Mac. So I don't know if it's just able to refere it well, but. And the truth is, Carrie, as we talked about before this podcast, I'm not a stickler for is chat as accurate as it could be. I just find that it's so helpful to me in so many ways and fun that I'm willing to sort of look past. Is it specifically bringing in March 2020 or is it April 2020? It sounds pretty accurate to me. Yeah.
- [32:24]
Kerry Weston
Yeah. Right, right. That's awesome. And boy, there's so. I've got circus music in my head now because you, you've just, you brought up so many things that I've dealt with, struggle with, other people have shared with me that they struggle with. Can we just go to privacy for a minute?
- [32:40]
Avram Nadigal
Sure.
- [32:41]
Kerry Weston
Because in the, in the notes that I get, in the emails that I get, and a lot of I do do in person workshops and times, and I get a whole mix. I get skeptical, I get curious, but don't know where. I've got tried it and don't really have any benefit. And then I've got, boy, I've been using this every day for the last year in the same room. Right. So skepticism and negativity can feed off each other and can reinforce. You've all seen that kind of stuff. So when you hear somebody say, I don't trust it, I can't give it details. I don't want it to violate privacy. I don't want big brother seeing what I'm doing. Just walk me through. And I know that we share a common viewpoint on this, but just walk me through how you were able to kind of let that go, for lack of a better term.
- [33:29]
Avram Nadigal
Well, first of all, I mean, it's just a personal philosophy of mine. People will often say to me, I think everybody needs therapy and I Look at them. I'm like, no, they don't. So first of all, I mean, or. Or people, you know, sometimes I work with a couple, and the husband or the wife will say, I think therapy is a bunch of nonsense. I'm like, great. Don't go. I mean, I don't care if you come or not. If you're here, I want you to do the work. Of course, I buy into it. So I sort of approach chatgpt in the same way if someone doesn't want to use it. My wife, by the way, is much more resistant to the tool. It's great. It's fine. My kids are into it, so I just want to throw that out there. My general philosophy in life is, if you're not into something, that's fine. But if what. What you're saying is, no, no, they are into it. They're scared. They're scared. So how do you deal with the fear and the anxiety? I would say, you know, I'll just give you an example. How do you play? Like, when we're kids, you go into a sandbox, there's a bunch of stuff. You have a log, you got sand, you got a rock. And we would lose three hours, right? So I'll give you an example. For some reason, I have a bizarre interest in Sydney funnel web spiders. I'm fascinated that this deadly spider exists in Australia. Why? Why is the venom in a Sydney funnel web spider so potent? Why did it evolve that way? Now I can go into Google and do that. I got to go through different articles, Carrie, and I got to. But if I never used chat before, I would go into chat and I would say, why is Sydney funnel web spider of venom so powerful? And then it would give me something pretty close to what Google would do, but then it would trigger another question, and I would ask it. And now I'm in an interactivity with this weird, quirky, little silly interest that I have. But because chat accesses all this information, right, I'm having a conversation I would never be able to have unless I would take a plane from Toronto to Sydney and speak to one of their specialists in the spider. And I think if anybody first of all wants to just dip their toe, open up chat, take the quirkiest, silliest, weirdest thing you wouldn't even share with your spouse, and go in and have a little chat with Chat Chubby chatgpt about this weird little thing that people make fun of you about, and you'll be blown away by just, you know, the. The interactivity in that, that's number one. Number two, privacy number one. I do use the. What's it called, Carrie? The temporary anonymous feature. I forget it's a little button. Yeah. So I'll. I'll put that on. Especially if I'm at. Sometimes I use chat for. I've created a special ChatGPT that accesses the theory that I work from. So sometimes I'm working on something clinically and I'm stuck in a way I'll go into that thing. I'll remove client information, But I'll ask ChatGPT questions. And because it's designed specifically only to access family systems theory, I have a very interesting conversation in a way that I would have to read a 400 page book or go to the index and it's just very quick. But because of this feature, as soon as I leave that conversation, it disappears from chat and it's gone. In case maybe I would have disclosed something private that I forgot, it's gone. That's one thing I do. I also don't put in any personal names. I try to avoid using names. But I have to say Kerry, as an author with three books online and I've been on Twitter and my wife and I co author things, I'm already online. My name is everywhere. And I have to say Carrie and maybe, you know, we'll speak in a year and I'll be kicking myself on the head. Unless you're a jerk. Right. You know what I mean? Unless you're doing something online so inflammatory that's going to engender someone to. I'm just not worried because I don't think I'm a jerk online. So I don't worry about how.
- [37:12]
Kerry Weston
I've only known you for 40 minutes and you seem like a genuinely nice guy to me, so I'm sure you're not a jerk online. So the, the conversation I want to go to is you're okay with that?
- [37:20]
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Yeah.
- [37:20]
Kerry Weston
But in your business, your business relies on trust.
- [37:23]
Avram Nadigal
Yeah, absolutely.
- [37:24]
Kerry Weston
And your business relies on sensitivity and confidentiality. And confidentiality. And so how about patients coming to you? If. Do they have sensitivity towards what you're doing and how do you control that, how do you address it and how do you protect it?
- [37:38]
Avram Nadigal
You know, you would think, Harry, right, that people would bring that up. They really don't. I mean, I think there's just a joke. You know, we're such a. A therap. Therapized. I don't. Our culture is so. Has so embraced mental health and therapy that they just take it as A given that my notes are protected, that I'm not sharing things online, that their Visa or whatever credit card information they're giving me with, you know, an invoicing program I use is confidential. They're just, they're just not concerned about that kind of stuff. I have to say, Carrie, I've been doing this a long time. I remember when I used to work for nonprofits, we would have file folders of handwritten notes just, you know, they would tell us. Carrie. To lock the drawers, but it was too much of a pain. So all the files were accessible. If you came into our office. Right. Handwritten, you could walk out with them. Right. I mean, back in the day when we would do handwritten, handwritten notes. So, you know, I mean, I don't use ChatGPT for clinical work. I don't, I don't put my clients.
- [38:33]
Kerry Weston
But I have to say that's. I want to pause.
- [38:35]
Avram Nadigal
Yeah, please.
- [38:36]
Kerry Weston
That's what I wanted you to say. Right, right there. So you, you're not putting your clinical notes with patient information into chat?
- [38:41]
Avram Nadigal
Oh, no, no, no, no.
- [38:42]
Kerry Weston
Okay. I just want to make sure that listeners heard that.
- [38:45]
Avram Nadigal
No, but Carrie, I do have to say I do use chat professionally for emails all the time. If a client of mine says, avram, I heard what you said about the concept of triangles and infidelity. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. Before, Carrie, it was a three and a half hour process of, of me going through books trying to find the right way to phrase it. Now I'll go into chat in my special family systems thing and say, I have a client, middle aged. There's an affair and they want to understand. Please compose an email in my tone. And Carrie, it is like the heavens open up and give me something that's instantly usable.
- [39:21]
Kerry Weston
Yeah, but you wouldn't say, Kerry Weston told me that he's having an affair with Jennifer Smith and this is what. Like that's where I'm going with this is you're protecting that information as you utilize the tool.
- [39:32]
Avram Nadigal
Yeah, but Carrie, you know what? I've been public speaking for such a long time now. You do the same thing. If I give a case vignette to a group of 30 people, you always want to. A composite of people you've been working with and stuff. Yeah, of course.
- [39:45]
Kerry Weston
Yeah, I understand completely. I just wanted to. It's always important for me to think about a couple questions that people might have as they're listening and make sure I inject it because I want to vanguard that and so the ability for you to say that you've taken that step is important for people to hear so they don't get lost. I don't want the rest of our conversation to get distracted by that voice in the back of someone's head that's saying, yeah, but. Right. And so I'm glad you said that. So thank you so much.
- [40:09]
Avram Nadigal
Sure.
- [40:11]
Kerry Weston
What have you learned? I can tell by the notes that you gave me, and I can tell by our conversation the enthusiasm for imagination is real. And I think you're probably passing that down to your kids, too, from what I'm hearing, which is fantastic. Many people struggle with a blinking cursor. And what I mean by that is they will literally tell me, I don't know how to use this thing. Right. Which is where the curious beginner kind of came up. And some of the just evergreen best practice starting principles come up. The ability for you to share with somebody, because I know you do. Because your enthusiasm is contagious. And I can tell that you're a helper. So you've told other people this kind of thing. What's your basic advice to someone that is looking at this thinking, I don't know if ChatGPT can help me or why would I even use it or how do I even use it? Like, what would be your initial just kind of basic best practice advice for that curious beginner?
- [41:03]
Avram Nadigal
So the first one was play in the sandbox. Find something you're interested in. Here's my next one. Tell me a problem you have. Not you, Carrie, but let's say I'm working with something. They say, I don't know how to use this thing. My first question would be, tell me a problem. You have any problem? I don't care what the is problem. It could be how do I improve my wrist shot in hockey? It could be, which guitar pedals should I use to make the sound of the edge in U2's Unforgettable Fire album? It could be my wife and I are thinking of Disney World versus Las Vegas. I don't care what the. Just tell me a problem that you have. So, okay, so someone said, I have this problem. Great. Now we're going to have chat. Okay? And you're going to talk to chat, Carrie, as you say in all of your podcasts, we're going to talk to chat like you would talk to a friend. And you're going to say, chat. I got a problem. Here's my problem. Stop. Don't even start thinking about am I phrasing it Right. I've got this problem. I don't know if I should go to Las Vegas. I don't know if I should go to Ask. And then I would say, ask me a few questions so you get a better understanding of what my problem is. And then ChatGPT is going to ask you questions. Is it a financial thing? Is it a this? And then you, your brain's going to go, oh, no, it's not financial. One of the nice things about ChatGPT, Carrie, as you know, it's very rare that if you play with it for more than 10 seconds, you don't see the benefits really quickly. I think what you're describing is when people look at it without anything happening, it's overwhelming. Like anything is. It takes about 10 seconds to figure out very quickly. Oh, boy. I can see how this could be helpful in a whole lot of ways, from a fixing a flat tire to, you know, the meaning of the universe. And. And I would just take a problem, ask. Chat about it. Have fun.
- [42:44]
Kerry Weston
Yeah, like the. The white screen, blinking cursor paralyzes a lot of people. Right. Because there's too many options. You get overwhelmed by the options. Yeah. And I, you know, I just realized that I had this amazing question for you and it. Oof, it's gone. Like, like, this is awful. So I had this thing, I really want you to tell me about this, and poof, it's gone. So it'll come back. It's fine. But you said it's not replacing anything in your notes. To me, it's enhancing everything. Right. And I think that's important too, because people hear this all or all or nothing mentality where your job's going to be replaced by AI or this is going to happen and people are going to lose, like, it's the ability of seeing how this can replace the busy stuff, the stuff that occupies your day, the busy middle kind of activity stuff. You. I think you found a way to do that. Like you're finding a way of taking the stuff that I would do anyway manually, or I have to be repetitive, and you're saying, let's enhance it. Let's make this easier and maybe even more effective. But you're not replacing anything from what I'm hearing. You're just enhancing the stuff that you're doing anyway.
- [43:49]
Avram Nadigal
Right. Well, I have to say, Carrie, anxiety is a funny beast for human beings. So I'm not anxious about ChatGPT because in the area of psychotherapy that I do, if you go into ChatGPT and say, which psychotherapies are most at risk of being replaced by ChatGPT and AI. Family marriage work is at the bottom, bottom, bottom of the list. You can appreciate why you have multiple people in a room. You're looking at reciprocity between people, eyes moving. It's not what people say. So you can actually use ChatGPT would be a very poor family therapist or marriage therapist first. You would need both people talking to Chad. And how does chat see the non verbal cues of a wife rolling her eyes when her husband talks about using the tv? So right now, as it stands, until we have cameras set up in our homes where AI can access HRV and eye rolls and this, I just would not recommend using chat for that. But I'll tell you this, Carrie, if I was a cognitive behavioral therapist, people working with phobias and this back in the mid-90s, we were trying to manualize CBT therapy with computers, thinking this is going to be a great era, not realizing that those therapists were putting themselves out of jobs because the computer could this before, way before ChatGPT could do it better than you can. So if I had someone come to me and say, I have a phobia of spiders, should I spend $295 speaking to a psychologist? Right. Or use ChatGPT for free? I'd be like, you gotta be insane to start with. Start with Chad. So I'm not anxious about using chat because my, my job and what I do and my income so far is very protected. But I. Carrie, I got to say one thing though, that was interesting. My wife and I write a talk and there's a very well known family doctor in Toronto that she's friends with and he, he likes chat. She calls me over and she goes, oh, he's driving me crazy. He's talking about chat, chat, chat, you two should talk. So I talk to the guy, my wife's there, and I said, you use it, I use it. And he said, yeah. And then he makes a comment like, goes, oh, this is going to replace family doctors in about a year or two. And my wife laughs, goes, come on, what are you talking. He goes, like, this tool will replace 80 to 85% of what we do. And Carrie, he is way up there in medicine here in Toronto. So I have empathy for some of my clients, lawyers, real estate people there are who are nervous. And I think to diminish that would be a mistake. I think people do have to pay attention to their careers.
- [46:16]
Kerry Weston
Let's go there for a minute because I'm very, very glad you just said that too many people I find that I work with, my clients, business owners, employees, whatnot, consider their value, their job, their value to be the work that they do, the busy work that they do.
- [46:33]
Avram Nadigal
Yes.
- [46:34]
Kerry Weston
And I try to convey to them that's not your value, that's your task, but that's not your value. Your value is the ideation at the beginning and the expertise and insights at the end. But the busy middle, that task oriented, busy work is not your value. And if you value price, promote yourself as a commodity expert, you do run the risk of not having a place when someone figures out how to replace that task, that commodity, with something other than you. Right. But I think there's always going to be a place for human connection. There's always going to be a place for soft skills. There's always going to be a place for bedside manners. And if we can just take a step back and realize that the expertise that we have is not in knowing the task to do next, but how to bring the information in, process it, and connect with another human so they can see the value in it, that's really where this is the enlightening period, I think, because just like you, so many people who have incredible talents, gifts and want to help are burdened by the middle work that it takes to go from listening to helping. That's the hours in the day get wasted on the process and not the outcome. And I really wish that people, I hope they hear this because yes, if your family practice. And by the way, this is a. I have doctors in the family and I've experienced this. It's a treadmill. Like it feels like a puppy mill. Now, primary medicine specifically feels like a puppy mill where get you in, get you out. Like it's almost like a necessity of paperwork rather than. I feel like I'm connecting to a human who actually understands me. Right. In fact, there's plenty of residency programs now that are replacing your one primary doctor where you're just seeing rotating people. They look at a piece of paper, they ask a few questions, they put in a chart, and you're off and running. It's almost a necessary evil. So in the case of. And I'm rambling, I know, but because this is, this is passionate to me, this is meaningful to me. In the case of, if you only exist as a cog in the wheel, then you run the risk of being replaced by a process that can do the cog better and faster. But if you can actually give some input, have bedside manners, have soft skills, understand the Empathetic position the human and improve that in someone's life, then this tool just is a world of opportunity because it means that you can scale the impact that you already have. Do you agree?
- [49:06]
Avram Nadigal
Oh boy. Carrie, you're open. So, okay, I'm going to keep this brief. 40% of my practice is physicians. I'm not sure why. I guess friends recommend friends anyways, but 40% of my practice is physicians. My wife's a physician. The number one thing they complain about is notetaking. Now, is it because they think note taking really helps to practice? No, carry. And as you know, they don't. They do it because of litigious reasons. So my wife will spend on average, because I see her about three, four hours at night, Carrie out of work, doing notes, because if something happens in four years where a family wants to go to court, she needs to bring in reams of information. Thank God. I don't know what the tool is called. Carrie, you might know. Some of the physicians in my practice are using a tool where there's a microphone and I guess the patient has to sign something and the AI is listening to the entire interaction between doctor and patient and then creates a beautifully edited formatted note. It removes the load off doctors to do the work they really want to do, which is patient care. And I don't know a doctor, Carrie, alive, that likes note taking, but they, they feel they have to. This, this, a, this AI tool will allow doctors to do what they really want to do and not sit there and do all this. And, and my, unfortunately my wife's hospital is not there yet, but she tells me, even though she's resistant to chat, my wife will say she is chomping at the bit for this technology to come into that hospital.
- [50:41]
Kerry Weston
So I heard Process, cycle, legal, all that stuff is just, it's, it's eating away at what humans really need, which is someone to listen, to understand and to guide. And you know, the greatest gift I have found in talking to professionals is the ability for someone to go outside, to go to their kids game, to spend an hour in the sunshine, because they don't have to spend three hours doing what you just explained. Right. We're getting to the point where my day and my value can match my quality of life, my balance. Like it's the ability of getting the busy work out of the way without sacrificing quality or expertise. And that's, I think what I was really intrigued with by your story is yes, you have quite a complex series of custom GPTs and you didn't create this on day one. Like you've been playing this. Your curiosity, your imagination. You had a lot of what ifs and what happens if, right? But you've been strong enough in your vision to say, I can see how this might fix one thing. And then, okay, I fixed that. What happens if I do this? And then, ah, and then what happens if I do? And the ability for someone to see that one little thing that they fix could give an immediate relief that will spark the idea, well, if I could fix that, what if I could do this? And to have that power decentralized to the point where it's literally sitting on your computer browser like you don't need to hire a programmer, you don't need to go to a specialized class and get a certification. Like all you need to do is ask a question to a blinking cursor. And the opportunity to improve your life, your day, your well being is right there. And that's why I'm excited to talk to you and that's why I'm so happy that you reached out.
- [52:27]
Avram Nadigal
Couldn't say it better myself, Carrie. Although I have to say, Kerry, just to follow up what you said, you know I'm struggling with a shoulder tendinitis, right. So previous to chat I would go to a physio, they would ask me and I would pay for two sessions of work that now I go to chat. You're a physiotherapist, you have an expertise in shoulders and arms, ask me questions and, and it starts me off with some basic sort of stretching with YouTube videos. It gets me going. But how it works is if it doesn't improve, that's fine, I'll call my physio, I'll go to my physio afterwards. But I start off the process sitting in my room, right. And it decentralizes some of that, that information and I just find it so helpful.
- [53:13]
Kerry Weston
Yeah. And my wife's doctor as well, she's a house called veterinarian. And so I understand the challenges and her sister is a physician and I hear all these things and there's, there is questions, rightfully so. And there is curiosity, rightfully so. And the ability for us to match that curiosity with that imagination and kind of see is just magical. I think it's magical. And the ability for it to change someone's day I think is underrated. I just, I really think that we've spent so much time talking about ChatGPT in the ecosystem in terms of this, this thing that can write a blog for you or this Thing that can write an email for you, or this thing that can answer a question for you. And if you dig one level deeper, there's daily satisfaction, there's mental stability, there's balance. There's all kinds of things there for you. So is there anything, Avram, that we didn't talk about, that you really wanted to?
- [54:08]
Avram Nadigal
The only thing that would have been a problem, Carrie, or maybe it's good, is that there's an endpoint to this, this. Because I think you and I could probably riff on this for hours. I'll just say this. There's a guy, we've talked about him, Carrie. I would recommend his book, maybe in the show notes you could put it in. He's a professor at Stanford who talks quite a bit about ChatGPT. And one of his philosophies, I think is very helpful. Number one, the ChatGPT we have now is the worst ChatGPT we're going to have, because tomorrow a better one is going to come. And somehow I think if you're going to get involved in this, you have to make peace with the idea that this is a ongoing, not a static process and that it's only going to get better. It's not going anywhere. And so the best time is now or is yesterday. So you might as well understand this because it's just too powerful of a tool to ignore.
- [55:02]
Kerry Weston
I think it's true. And to think that we are at the very beginning, beginning, you know, of something wonderful is amazing to see that you can test and learn and see how it improves. And yeah, it is the worst it's ever been and it's the worst it's ever going to be. And that's. I'll tell you what, just the benefit that I've got from it, that's pretty enlightening. Because if this is the worst it's ever been and I'm getting this much benefit out of it, then I can't wait to see what's next. So, Arvin, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on the conversation. I know that there's a ton of things here that are going to have people's idea treadmill spinning. If people want to learn more about you, by the way, or see what you do or even connect, how do they do that?
- [55:42]
Avram Nadigal
So I am not looking for work. I have a wait list. But if people are curious about ChatGPT, they can always reach out on my personal website. I love talking about this. It's my last name. N A-I-G-E-L.com you can find me online at Avram Natical on Google and if you have any questions I I would be glad to answer any chat GPT related questions by email.
- [56:05]
Kerry Weston
So good. So good. Thank you for reaching out, thank you for being a part of the community and thank you for participating and sharing. I know a lot of people getting a lot of benefit out of this so I appre it's been a really, really great congregation.
- [56:26]
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