I’m a bit confused here, isn’t reflecting on, integrating, and writing down these thoughts the primary benefit of keeping a daily diary in the first place?
Asking GPT-4 to do these steps doesn’t seem to offer the same benefits.
GPT-4 has a very large degree of freedom in choosing what questions to ask, and how they’re worded.
So phrasing it one way or another will prompt different thoughts from you. And GPT-4, not you, is selecting those parameters.
You would need to specify a very narrow range of possibilities, or the exact question for it to ask to avoid this, which would seem to be about as much effort as just doing it entirely yourself.
Totally agreed. I do morning pages which I find to be invaluable as a source of deep, personal reflection.
I think the above has its use in the sense of keeping a diary entry of each day that you could come back to to read and remember what happened. Not necessarily for deep personal reflection, but more to suss out the details on an otherwise sparser entry for a “What happened today?” type of diary.
I’m a bit confused here, isn’t reflecting on, integrating, and writing down these thoughts the primary benefit of keeping a daily diary in the first place?
Asking GPT-4 to do these steps doesn’t seem to offer the same benefits.
I’m writing the original paragraph, and answering a bunch of questions designed to prompt me to reflect.
They might not be your reflections though?
GPT-4 has a very large degree of freedom in choosing what questions to ask, and how they’re worded.
So phrasing it one way or another will prompt different thoughts from you. And GPT-4, not you, is selecting those parameters.
You would need to specify a very narrow range of possibilities, or the exact question for it to ask to avoid this, which would seem to be about as much effort as just doing it entirely yourself.
EDIT: Changed wording a bit.
How is this different than reflecting on your day with a close friend who asks you questions about it?
Not much of a difference, in your example the close friend would also have influenced the answers with the questions they select.
Some people are fine with that because they trust the close friend.
Others aren’t and diary writing would be an exclusively solitary activity for the reasons above.
Totally agreed. I do morning pages which I find to be invaluable as a source of deep, personal reflection.
I think the above has its use in the sense of keeping a diary entry of each day that you could come back to to read and remember what happened. Not necessarily for deep personal reflection, but more to suss out the details on an otherwise sparser entry for a “What happened today?” type of diary.