Hello Reader,

Each week, I share one insight, one prompt, and a short grounding practice to help you grow with AI in alignment, not overwhelm.

This is for conscious entrepreneurs who value substance over shortcuts.

AI Insight That Matters 💡

It Worked on My Machine

A coach in one of my programs asked whether anyone had a ready-made setup for Obsidian, the notes app I run my whole business from. Mine has worked every day for months, so I packaged it as a free download (link further down if you'd like to check it out).

I built the download with Claude Code. Before it went live, we opened it the way a newcomer would get it. Download the file, unzip it, open it as a brand-new vault with none of my history behind it.

Three things broke in the first five minutes.

The daily note wouldn't create, because it needed a folder that has sat in my own vault for so long I'd forgotten it was there. The weekly note came out as a page of raw code, because a switch I flipped months ago is saved on my computer and doesn't travel with the files. And clicking a date in the calendar did nothing at all. My own vault has that same setting. I'd never have known, because my daily notes get made for me and I never click an empty date.

There was a fourth thing, and it was worse. The settings I was about to copy across had one of my private keys inside them! 🙈

Here's what I took from it. What works for you has only ever been tested on you.

My setup running every day told me one thing, that it runs on my computer, held up by months of small fixes I no longer remember making. It told me nothing about what happens when someone else opens it. And a newcomer who hit those three problems wouldn't have blamed my download. They'd have blamed themselves.

This reaches a long way past notes apps. The onboarding steps you send a new client. The process you hand to an assistant. The template you share, the prompt you pass to a colleague. You've run each of them so many times that you can't see what you can't see. A login you already have, a file that's already on your desktop, a thing you know that nobody ever wrote down.

We become unconsciously competent and blind to the simplest steps it took to get us there.

Building with AI makes this easier to miss, because the AI builds inside your world too. It sees your files and your settings, and it tests against them.

Check everything, assume nothing. That was my lesson with AI this week.

“ You can't see what you can't see. — Colin Scotland

AI Prompt That Works ✨

The Clean Start Check

Use this on anything you're about to hand to someone else. The steps you send a new client, a process for your assistant, a template, a set of instructions for a tool. Run it in Claude or ChatGPT. It reads your handover as someone starting with nothing, finds what you forgot they don't have, and gives you a finished version with a short checklist on top that you can send today.

The Prompt:

Try it on the next thing you were going to send with "this should be all you need", and see what the checklist says they needed first.

Grounding Practice ☯

What's Already Holding You

Sit down somewhere you can stay for five minutes. Let your eyes close or rest on the floor.

Feel the chair taking your weight. You didn't ask it to. Feel the floor under your feet, and the ground under the floor.

Now notice your breath. It has been going all morning without you. Let it carry on, and just watch it arrive and leave.

Stay with those two things for a while, the weight being held and the breath being given. If your mind goes to what you have to do next, come back to the chair.

Before you get up, ask one question and don't answer it. What else has been holding me today that I haven't noticed?

Take three slow breaths, and stand up gently.

Personal Note ❤️‍🔥

By the time you read this, I'm not at my desk. I've taken today off.

On Monday, I wrote two things at the top of my plan for the week. Keep the mornings for meditation and exercise. Take Friday off. It was a full week of teaching and speaking, with three sessback-to-back back yesterday, and those two lines were the only part of the plan that weren't work.

Here's the bit I noticed afterward. I gave myself the Friday because I'd worked the Saturday before. I'd written it down as a trade, a day owed for a day spent. Nobody asked me to account for it. I'm the only one keeping that ledger.

Seneca calls rest food. I don't make myself earn lunch.

I'd like to tell you I've stopped keeping the ledger, but I haven't. I still look for a reason before I let myself have the day.

Do you do this too? If you rest without having to earn it first, I'd love to know how you got there.

🎬 Go Deeper

Here’s the setup from this week’s letter, with the three fixes in it. The settings and plugins I use in Obsidian every day, and a free starter vault you can download and start typing in.

Read: Obsidian Setup for Beginners​

On YouTube

Step-by-step walkthroughs and tactical implementation for conscious AI integration.

Thanks for being here. If this resonates, share it with someone who would benefit from hearing this.

Reply and let me know what landed. 🙏

Colin

P.S. I'm currently launching the next cohort of my AI for Coaches Mentorship with my friends at Coaching.com. If you're a coach who's curious about how to amplify your impact with AI, come along to one of the free masterclasses I am running to learn more. i'd love to see you there.