Giving AI Your Context
At some point the abstract becomes practical. You have done the reflection. You know your State A and your State Z with real clarity. Now the question is: how do you actually get that information into AI so it can work with it? The answer is deceptively simple. You write it down, and you give it access.
There is a discipline emerging around this that I think of as context engineering: the practice of deliberately structuring and curating the information you give AI so that it can actually be useful to you. In a world where everyone has access to the same AI models, the edge is not the tool. The edge is the context you feed it. Two people using the same model will get radically different results based on how well each one has documented their reality.
Write down State A and State Z. Explicitly, for AI. This is not a journal entry or a goal-setting exercise in the traditional sense, though it can feel like that. It is an operational file. The more specific you can make it, the better. And then beyond just those two descriptions, you want to give AI access to the things that reflect your actual current state as continuously as possible. That could mean giving it access to your bank accounts and spending habits. Your contacts and the meeting notes you have with them. Your location patterns. Your net worth. The people you are closest with. If all of this is in one folder, that is great for AI. If it has to be three folders, that still works. What does not work is having it scattered across 100 places with no coherent structure.
I want to be honest about the fact that this level of data sharing requires trust and thoughtfulness. You are not giving this to a random stranger. You are giving it to a system you are deliberately building to serve you. The more context you give it, the more useful it becomes. The less context, the more generic its outputs. That tradeoff is always in play.
One of the most effective techniques I have seen for building this context is surprisingly simple: let AI interview you. Instead of staring at a blank document trying to write your State A from scratch, open a conversation and tell AI to ask you questions until it fully understands your situation. A friend of mine spent six hours in a single session having AI interview him about his worldview, his first principles, and the framework through which he wanted all future answers filtered. Another person I know does 40 to 60 minute interview sessions regularly, just letting AI go deeper and deeper with follow-up questions. What comes out the other end is remarkably thorough, because AI is relentless about asking the next question you would not have thought to answer on your own.
There is an added benefit to this approach. When AI helps you extract and write your context, it produces documents in a format that AI can easily interpret later. You minimize the translation gap. The system that wrote your context is the same kind of system that will read it later. That matters more than people realize.
The practical move here is to start building what I think of as your personal context file. State A, State Z, and a living document of the key facts about your life and business that would help a smart advisor help you. Think of it as an onboarding document for your AI, the same way you would onboard a new chief of staff. The investment in building it pays off every time you use it.
Key Takeaway
Giving AI your real context, written down in a structured way with access to the key data about your life and work, is what transforms it from a generic assistant into a genuine strategic partner.