Goofy worse-is-better notion from a recent patron essay: you could in principal hire someone to follow you around all day, sit in on your meetings, read what you're reading, listen as you think aloud—and write memory prompts for everything which seems important.
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Similar principal to "why not just hire a postdoc tutor if you can afford to?"
(n.b. I've not tried this!)
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If they can write good memory prompts is that the best use of their time for you?
I might be overestimating the task of writing prompts but would they feel “off”? Perhaps at least a period where you and they calibrate.
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There’s a “don’t be weird” bias and then you also have to find someone you trust
Then again, a lot of people have secretaries, ea’s, and virtual assistants…
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Some CEOs have something like this. At one point Amazon had a job known as Bezos's “shadow”. (Not sure if they went all the way to writing memory prompts though)
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How do they decide what seems important? Some might be good judges of this, others terrible
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Some VPs I know have PhD level assistants who do very similar work: a mix of sparring partner and extra memory!
The compile target is PowerPoint slides though (sigh).
Having someone like this on your side is extremely valuable for someone playing on many fronts.
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