Just Ask Boomer

The AI isn’t dumb. It’s amnesiac.

Every new chat, you’re talking to a stranger with a great vocabulary. It doesn’t know your name, your age, what you’re working on, or that you asked the same question yesterday. So it answers like a hotel welcome letter: polite, generic, addressed to Occupant. Most beginners hit this wall, decide “this thing doesn’t really know me,” and quit. They’re half right. It doesn’t know you — because nobody told it.

Boomer’s note: “Humans walk up to a stranger, skip the introduction, ask for life advice, and then blame the stranger. I’m a dog and even I see the problem.”

What this lesson does

Fixes the stranger problem forever, for free: you introduce yourself once, in writing, and the AI reads it every time. Three levels — stop at any of them and you’re still ahead of almost everyone.

Why you’d care

Remember Lesson 3’s fix for generic answers — “add one sentence about yourself”? And SCOPE’s S, where you state your Situation every time? This lesson is where those grow up. Instead of typing who you are into every single chat, you write it down once. My own version started as three lines. It’s now the reason my AI staff remembers my whole travel plan better than I do some mornings — and I’m the one who wrote it.

How to do the thing

Step 1 — Level one: write the intro letter. Ten lines about yourself in a plain note. Not a biography — a briefing: who you are, what you’re working on, how you like your answers. Mine is in the box below. Steal the shape, change the facts.

Step 2 — Paste it where the AI keeps standing instructions. Every major chatbot has a spot for this in Settings — usually called “custom instructions,” “preferences,” or “personalization.” Paste once, and every new chat starts already knowing you. Can’t find it? You know the house rule by now: ask the AI where its own settings are. It will tell you.

Step 3 — Level two: every mistake becomes a rule. When the AI gets you wrong — too formal, too long, assumed you’re twenty-five and write code — don’t just correct it in the chat. Correct it in the chat AND add one line to your file. “Never assume a young, tech-savvy audience.” “Bottom line first.” “Show me a plan before touching my files.” Your file grows out of your actual life, and after a month it fits like an old slipper. Every rule is a scar with a lesson attached.

Step 4 — Level three: the second brain. The intro letter says who you are; it doesn’t say where you left off. So keep ONE page — notes app, document, anywhere you can paste from — with your current truth: what you’re working on, what’s decided, where your important things live. Start work sessions by pasting it in. Suddenly every chat — today’s, tomorrow’s, the one on your phone at the airport — picks up where the last one stopped.

Step 5 — Keep it one screen, and replace instead of piling up. If the page scrolls, it’s a diary, not a briefing. When something changes, rewrite the line. Old news goes in the bin.

What could go wrong

“I don’t know what to write about myself.” Lesson 3’s trick works here too: ask the AI. “Interview me with five questions, then write my ten-line intro file from the answers.” It does the writing; you do the approving. Sound familiar?

“I wrote it and the answers barely changed.” Check that you pasted it into the settings spot, not just one chat — one chat forgets, settings remember. And make the lines specific: “I like gardening” changes little; “answer like I’m a beginner gardener with bad knees in a hot climate” changes everything.

“My file is getting long and messy.” Same rule as your prompt library in Lesson 9: keep winners, delete the rest. Or hand it over: “Here’s my intro file — tighten it to the ten lines that matter most, show me before and after.”

Boomer’s verdict

“Teach it who you are once, or introduce yourself forever. Even a dog only sniffs a stranger the first time. 9/10 — it loses a point because Uncle’s file mentions me only twice.”

🕐 Uncle Tries It — Try It Too (under 2 minutes)

Write three lines in a note: your age or life stage, the one thing you’re working on, and how you like answers (“short and simple” is a fine start). Paste them into a new chat and ask any question. Compare that answer to the ones you’ve been getting. That’s the moment most people get hooked.

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And here’s where it all connects: an AI that knows who you are, reading a job description you saved (Lesson 9), on a schedule — that’s an employee. Uncle’s whole staff is built from exactly these files. Meet them at The AI Company.

🐾 Join the Rescue Mission while he figures it out.