Axios C-Suite: How to build your second brain in 30 minutes
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Illustration: Lindsey Bailey/Axios
Most CEOs are using AI with amnesia — so it feels like a fancy search engine.
The fastest fix: When you open Claude or ChatGPT, don't default to the generic chat window.
- Navigate to Projects in both apps via the menu on the left.
- Start a new project, name it, then add clear instructions: operate as an extension of your brain, matching your tone, your style, your depth. Tell it you want a thought partner that thinks and writes like you.
Then feed it. The CEO who adds 10 strong documents gets a 10x better clone than the one who types a few prompts.
- Best files to add, ranked by impact: past speeches and presentations, board memos and strategy docs, any writing that captures how you think.
- I loaded a curated set of my columns, memos and TV transcripts. JimGPT was operational in under an hour.
The discipline that makes it stick: Do recurring, high-context work inside this project — not scattered across generic chats.
- Refine it as you go. When it does something right, tell it why and ask it for a rule you can add to the project instructions.
- When it misses, turn that correction into a specific rule for the project. "Don't do X, do Y instead."
- That feedback loop is what turns a one-time experiment into a durable second brain.
The bottom line: Thirty minutes of setup. A thought partner that never sleeps, has no agenda and sounds a lot like you.
Go deeper: I published three AI-focused items for a broader audience this week that'll serve you: super-prompting, AI memory and starting a business.
📈 If you're a CEO or on a CEO's team: Ask to join Jim's new weekly Axios C-Suite newsletter.
