Transform your Thoughts into Words: Leveraging AI to Elevate Content Creation

Are you're facing writer's block? Do you find verbalizing your thoughts is easier? Consider leveraging this approach to help you craft high-quality content (posts/articles or anything creative).

The process below outlines how you can seamlessly transform your thoughts into a well-structured and insightful document. This employs a combination of tools like automatic subtitle generation, and the capabilities of OpenAI/ChatGPT (including summarization, theme extraction, and organization). I've been thoroughly impressed with the results and have received positive feedback about this process as well.

Step 1: Capturing your thoughts

Getting your thoughts down is a breeze when you tap into the magic of the iPhone's voice memo recorder. Seriously, this nifty tool turns those random "a-ha" moments into actual ideas you can work with. The best part? You can do this literally anywhere, even when you're stuck in traffic or out and about.

But here's a cool trick to kick it up a notch: imagine you're chatting with a buddy and explaining your thoughts to them. That's the vibe you want when you're recording. It's like having a virtual brainstorming session with yourself, and it really helps fine-tune your ideas.

Now, just a heads-up: while this technique rocks, it's important to be a responsible recorder. You wouldn't want to spill the beans on anything confidential, cross any legal lines, or weird people out with your recordings. So, keep it legit, respect privacy, and stay within the bounds of what's cool in society. That way, you'll be riding the wave of creativity without causing any unintended ripples.

Step 2. Converting Audio to Text

Moving from Audio to Text is where the real magic happens. So, you've got your brilliant ideas captured using the iPhone's voice memo recorder, right? Now, let's transform those spoken gems into written gold. One awesome way to do this is by enlisting the help of tools like OpenAI's whisper (or the quicker version, faster-whisper). These tools work their AI wizardry, taking your recorded voice and turning it into neat, organized text. It's like having your own personal transcription guru at your service, making sure none of your genius thoughts get lost in translation.

But hold on, there's another nifty trick up our sleeve. You can also take that audio clip and toss it onto YouTube. Yep, you heard right. Once it's up there, YouTube's automatic subtitle fairy works its charm and, voilà, you've got your words in black and white. It might sound like magic, but it's just good ol' technology doing its thing.

Now, remember, no matter which path you choose, always keep your content and any confidential or sensitive stuff in check. These methods are a fantastic way to give voice to your thoughts, but it's still your responsibility to make sure everything's above board and legit.

Step 3. Subtitles to Block of Text

What you have now is in SRT (SubRip) format with time codes and line breaks. Use regular expressions to extract just the text.

Find: ^[0-9]+\n.*-->.*\n(.*)\n\n
Replace: \1          

This typically will get rid of the excess markers and streamlines your content into a clean block of text.

You can also use any of the SRT to TXT tools.

Step 4. Generate Summaries Using Open AI/ChatGPT:

Get ChatGPT to summarize the logical blocks of text into 5-10 bullet points at a time.

I use a prompt something like

Please help me convert the following block of text into 5-10 concise and logical bullet points that capture the main ideas and key takeaways: <text>

Step 5. Theme Extraction from the Bullets

In this stage, I input the generated bullet points back into ChatGPT, directing it to identify overarching themes from the points. Depending on the volume of bullet points, this process might need to be iterated a few times. Afterward, I proceed to manually consolidate and refine these extracted themes, ensuring a coherent and comprehensive representation.

I use a prompt something like

Please analyze the following bullets points and extract overarching themes or common threads that encapsulate the main ideas and concepts: <raw paste of 40-50 bullets>

Depending on how many bullets you have, you may need to repeat this in multiple batches with 50 bullets at a time.

After this, I typically edit/restructure the themes that closely aligns with what I was looking for.

Step 6. Reorganizing the Bullets Under these Themes

This is a bit of cheeky step, where you can get ChatGPT to take in bullets again, and bucket them under the themes.

Please use the provided set of predefined themes to reorganize the following bullets under their respective categories. Ensure each bullet aligns with the appropriate theme for a coherent and organized structure. <themes> <list of bullets>

Step 7: Generating the Content for each Theme:

ChatGPT often does a pretty good job of expanding bullets within a theme into good quality content. You can provide suggestions on the structure and tone.

Sample Prompt:

Transform the provided list of bullets into a cohesive narrative document that flows logically and engagingly. Incorporate smooth transitions between points and expand upon each bullet to create a comprehensive and insightful piece.

Step 8: Add your Personal Finishing Touches

In the final stage, add your unique touch to the work. Infuse your personality, insights, and style into the content, elevating it beyond a mere collection of ideas. Review themes and bullet points, incorporating anecdotes and examples that resonate with you. Craft transitions for seamless flow and align the language with your voice. Ensure the piece reflects your vision, making it an authentic expression of your creativity. This step brings your work to life, turning it into a genuine masterpiece that bears your personal mark.

I've applied this method with consistent success on multiple occasions.

FWIW, the very steps I've outlined were followed in crafting this article :) Originally shared in one-on-one discussions, I found that putting it into a post format was a more effective means of capturing and sharing this process.