My head is always full of things I want to do. A blog. Apps. Videos. The list keeps growing, and because it keeps growing, I can never work out which one to pick up first.
Maybe you know that state too. I lived in it for a long time.
What changed was talking it through with my AI partner Kuro (Claude). Today I want to write down what that actually feels like: the experience of your head quietly sorting itself out while you do nothing but talk.
The problem is not the plan. It is making the plan
A while back I wrote about building an idea inventory and a task plan table together with Kuro. You dump every idea in your head onto the page, then arrange it into a table. Doing that clears your mind to a surprising degree.
But if I am honest, there is a catch. The act of making the plan table is a chore in itself.
Open Excel. Set up the columns. Type in one row, then the next row. Add some color so it is readable. None of it is hard, but all of it is friction, and friction is exactly what makes me put a thing off until tomorrow.
Working with AI, that whole layer of chore disappears.
All I do is talk
When I update my plan table now, what I actually do is embarrassingly simple. Whatever occurs to me, I say to Kuro out loud.
Say an app idea pops into my head. I will just come out with something like: “I think it would be handy if it had this feature — could we build that? Add it to the plan table, and make the priority fairly high.”
That is the whole input. Kuro takes it, says something along the lines of:
Sounds good.
Then it adds a new row to the plan table, tidies up how the item is written, and reflects the priority I asked for. I did not open Excel once. I talked.
The gap between building a table with your hands and building one with your mouth is enormous. Talking is the same as chatting with someone. There is nothing to brace yourself for.
The interesting part: ideas arrive while you are talking
And here is the discovery that surprised me most.
While I am sorting out the plan with AI, new ideas keep bubbling up in the middle of it.
The app idea I added to my plan table is a good example. It came to me while I was in the middle of a completely different task. Then, sitting with the plan table open and going back and forth with Kuro — “let’s raise this one’s priority,” “this one can wait” — my head starts moving on its own, and out comes the next thought: “actually, wouldn’t it be useful if it also did this?”
I do not think that happens when it is just me staring down a spreadsheet. It happens because there is someone on the other side and we are playing catch with words. That loosens something, and the ideas start rolling out.
AI turns into a brainstorming partner — the person you need for idea sessions that never get going when you are alone.
Once it is written down, the order becomes obvious
There is one more effect worth naming. When you write the plan out and decide on goals, the priorities rise to the surface by themselves.
In my case it came out as “the blog is where I put my effort first” and “for apps, start with the ones I can build quickly.” That order was floating around vaguely in my head before, but it only became sharp while I was talking with Kuro and turning it into a table.
Putting a number on the goal — a target of so many monthly pageviews, for instance — sharpens it further. Once the number exists, “so the thing to do right now is this one” stops being a guess.
Your head stacks things up in the order they occurred to you, which is no order at all. Get all of it outside with AI and rearrange it, and the pile splits cleanly into two: what I really do now, and what I do someday.
What I would take away from this
- A plan table organizes your head, but making one by hand is tedious enough that it gets postponed.
- With AI you can just talk, and whatever occurred to you becomes a line in the plan.
- New ideas turn up while you are in the middle of sorting things out by talking.
- AI becomes the brainstorming partner you never have when working alone.
- Write it out, set the goals, and the priorities appear on their own.
If you are the kind of person who cannot move because there is too much you want to do, I would really like you to try saying all of it to an AI once. While you are talking, the tangled thread comes undone — faster than you would believe. And if you are not good with computers, that is fine. Talking is something anyone can do.
As a first step in clearing your head, it is worth reading the earlier piece on building an idea inventory with AI alongside this one. If you would rather see what that looks like on a single page, I also wrote about getting thirty ideas onto one sheet.
