11:30 · Chat · find the pain
Find the pain
Chat is where we go looking. Diverge across everyday pains, then converge on exactly one.
Three steps
- 01Diverge: list the small pains in your week — the ten-minute annoyances.
- 02Converge: pick the one that sits in the Pain Killer sweet spot.
- 03Capture it as a pain card. Do not let the AI solve it yet.
The sweet spot
Small
One task, not a programme.
Frequent
It comes back every week.
Patterned
It looks roughly the same each time.
Low value
Nobody grows from doing it.
AI-plausible
Language, structure, retrieval — not physical, not political.
Yours
You can change it without asking permission.
The prompt
I want to find one small, recurring pain in my own work — not solve it yet. Interview me, one question at a time, until we have named a task that is small, frequent, patterned, low value and mine to change. Then write it back as: task title, why it hurts, estimated minutes per week. Do not propose a solution.
Need a nudge?
- What did you do twice this week that felt identical both times?
- Where does your calendar leak ten minutes at a time?
- What would you happily never do again, and nobody would miss?
AI must not solve the pain yet. This block only names it. Solving too early is how we end up with a clever answer to the wrong question.
A sharp pain is worth more than a clever prompt.
Your pain card
Keep it non-sensitive — no customer names, no confidential detail. Nothing appears publicly until JJ releases it.
Is this pain sharp enough to design against?
What you leave with
One sharp pain, owned by you, worth building a helper for.