The Anti-Slop Workflow

Kia ora friend.

Quick one today, but I reckon it's one of the most important things I can share with you right now.

So here's the rub… AI can't give you leverage on thoughts you never had. It only amplifies what's already there. Which means if you bring nothing of yourself to it — no real thinking, no taste, no lived experience — it hands you back the average of the internet. Fast, fluent, and completely forgettable. Slop.

And let's be honest, we can all smell slop from a mile away now. The tidy little hook. The post that sounds like every other post. The second someone clocks it, they're gone.

The stuff that actually lands isn't more AI. It's more you, run through AI. And the order matters more than anything: create first, then amplify.

So before you open a single chat, here's the workflow I use. Five moves.

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1. Drop into yourself first

Real ideas don't come from a screen, friend. They come from a settled nervous system.

So before you make anything, get out of the doing-brain and back into your body:

• Take three slow breaths. Longer on the exhale. Let your shoulders drop.
• Move a bit. A walk, a stretch, a shake-out. Motion has a funny way of unlocking thought.
• Then just sit with no input. No phone, no feed. Give your mind some room to wander.

I know, I know… sounds a bit woo. But it's not. A calm, unhurried mind comes up with original stuff. A frazzled one reaches for the nearest cliché — which, surprise surprise, is exactly what the AI will hand you back if you start there.

Make the time on purpose. Even ten minutes. Let the ideas come from your heart and your head, not your notifications.

2. Get crystal clear on who you're actually talking to

Generic happens when you're talking to "everyone." But you're not. You're talking to one person.

So picture them. And make it real and sensory:

• Where are they sitting when they see this? What's the light like?
• What are they tired of? What have they already tried that didn't work?
• What do they secretly want, but probably wouldn't say out loud?

Feel into the human on the other side. When you can actually feel them, your words change — they get specific, warm, real. And that's the bit AI genuinely can't do for you. It can only amplify the clarity you bring it.

3. Get clear on what you don't want

Here's a little secret: taste is mostly just a list of nos.

So before you create, name what you're not:

• The words you'd never use (the hype, the "game-changer," the "let that sink in").
• The tone that makes you cringe.
• The version of this that everyone else has already made a hundred times.

Knowing what you don't want is half of your voice, honestly. It's also the fastest way to steer an AI — left to its own devices, it'll drift straight back to the average.

4. Speak in your actual voice

This one's the big unlock: stop typing, start talking.

You write in "presentation voice." But you speak in your real one — looser, messier, truer. So use it:

• Go for a walk. Somewhere with trees, or water, or sky.
• Open a voice memo and just talk. Ramble. Say the idea three different ways. Don't edit yourself.
• Transcribe it — and do it locally and privately. On iPhone (12 or newer) the built-in dictation runs right on your device, or grab SuperWhisper. Your words never leave your phone.
• Now hand that transcript to your AI. Not "write me a post about X" — but "here's how I actually talk and think about this. Help me shape it."

Now the AI is amplifying you. Your cadence, your phrases, your lived experience. It's building with you, not instead of you.

5. Teach your AI who you actually are

This is the one most people skip, and it's a shame, because it changes everything.

Do it once and you turn a generic tool into a little brain for how you create — context you can carry into every session so nothing you make gets flattened into the average.

Paste the prompt below into a fresh chat and just be honest with it. Even better, answer out loud and transcribe it (see step 4). Let it interview you properly:

You're going to help me create with AI in a way that amplifies my voice instead of replacing it. But first you need to actually understand me — not a surface-level version, the real thing.
So before we make anything, interview me. Here's how I want you to run it:
• Ask one question at a time, and wait for my answer before the next. No walls of questions.
• Be a curious friend, not a form. React to what I say. If an answer is interesting, half-formed, or a bit contradictory, follow the thread and dig deeper before you move on.
• Draw out my original thinking. Gently push past my generic first answer to the specific, lived, slightly-uncomfortable truth underneath. Ask things like "why?", "what do you actually mean by that?", and "give me a real example."
• Reflect back as we go. Every few answers, mirror what you're hearing — the patterns, the through-lines, the phrases I keep reaching for — and check you've got me right.
Work through these areas, roughly in this order, but follow my energy and go where it's alive:
• Who I am and the work I'm really here to do — the story that actually got me here, not the tidy LinkedIn version.
• What I genuinely believe about my topic — my strong opinions, what I'd argue for, and what I think most people get wrong.
• Who I'm for — one real person, and what they're feeling, fearing, and secretly wanting.
• My natural voice — how I really talk, the words and rhythms that are mine, the things I'd never say, and the tone that feels like me.
• What lights me up creatively and what drains me — where I do my best thinking, and the conditions that flatten it.
• Where my best ideas tend to come from — the moments, places, people, and experiences that spark them.
• My unfair advantage — the lens only I have, from my own life, that nobody else could copy.
When we're done, write me two things, in my own voice:
1) A short "creative profile" — who I am, who I'm for, what I believe, and how I sound — that I can paste at the start of any future session so you always build with me and never flatten me into the average.
2) The handful of most original, true, distinctly-mine ideas or angles that came up — the ones worth turning into content.
Then ask me which one we make first.

Save the profile it writes you. Drop it in at the start of every session. That's your mini-brain — the thing that keeps everything you make sounding like you, and helps your own original thoughts actually shine through instead of getting sanded down into sameness.

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So that's it, friend. Drop in. Get clear. Know your nos. Speak true. Then let AI amplify.

Create first. Let the machine do the rest.

If this was useful, forward it to a mate who's drowning in AI slop.

Stay human, Billy buildwithbilly.ai