What a voice doc is, and how to write a rough one in 20 minutes

A voice document is a page that tells a machine how you talk.

That's all. One page, maybe two. You write it once, you paste it at the top of any AI chat before you ask for anything, and every draft that comes back starts from you instead of from the average of the internet.

I think everybody should have one. Not everybody who buys my software. Everybody. If you use ChatGPT for work emails twice a week, you should have one. It's the best return on twenty minutes I know of in this whole AI business, and I'm about to give you the method, the real one, because keeping it back would make me the guy I complain about.

Five sections. Rough is fine. Rough is better, actually, because a tidied-up voice doc is worthless. The machine needs your fingerprints, not your CV.

Section 1: who I am and who I'm talking to

Two lines. What you do. Then one person, singular, who reads what you write. Not "my customers." One of them, with a name in your head. If you write for a group, pick the one person in it who matters most and write to them.

Section 2: the dials

Answer these fast, first instinct. Casual or formal? Contractions, always or never? Humour, and what kind? Self-deprecating, dry, none? How blunt are you, honestly? Would you tell a customer they're wrong? Exclamation points, yes or no? Mine's never. They read desperate.

Section 3: the ramble

This is the part that does the work. Open the voice memo app on your phone. Talk for five minutes about what you do and what people get wrong about it. Don't plan it. Then talk for two more minutes about a time you had to give somebody bad news. Then one more minute on something you love that has nothing to do with work. Transcribe it. Your phone does this for free now. Paste the transcript in raw. Ums, half sentences, the lot. Do not clean it up. I'll say it again because everyone does it: do not clean it up. The mess is the voice.

Section 4: the never list

Words and phrases you'd never say. Mine has "leverage" on it, and "it's not just X, it's Y," and any sentence with three adjectives in a row. Add "no em dashes" if you want to be able to tell your own writing from the machine's. Then add the guardrails. Anything you're not allowed to claim. Anything you'd be embarrassed to see under your name.

Section 5: go-to phrases

Five or six things you actually say. Not what you wish you said. Ask a friend if you're stuck, they know them better than you do.

Then put this at the top, word for word if you like:

"This is my voice document. Follow it for everything you write in this conversation. Where it conflicts with your default style, this document wins. Before you give me any draft, check it against the never list and fix violations first."

Done. Twenty minutes, and you might never write a two-hour prompt again.

A few things I've learned from building a lot of these

The ramble does more than every typed answer put together. If you only do one section, do that one.

Include the range. Somewhere in there, say the same thing two ways: how you'd pitch it to an old friend you wanted to impress, and how you'd explain it to your grandparents. That gives the machine a top and a floor, and it'll stop making you sound bigger than you are.

Keep it somewhere you own. A text file. Not inside one chat window, not inside one app. It's yours, it should be portable, and you should be able to walk into any AI on earth and paste it.

And revisit it in a month. You'll cringe at one line and you'll be right.

Is this what my software does? Yes, a more thorough version, by asking you the questions out loud, with some things I've learned over the years about what actually gets read layered on top. But the rough one above is honestly most of the value, and it costs you nothing but twenty minutes and a bit of nerve talking to your phone.

So, will you do it? Today, not someday?

Your voice, written down, is the one AI asset nobody can sell you. Go make it.

If you build one and it surprises you, I'd like to hear about it. The form below is how you'd hear from me. The other direction is [email protected].