Thinking in Public
I created a daily motivator based on my bank of ideas. It is called El Jefe and it works on Telegram.
It is a private bot that only talks to me. It sends a picture of me through the day with one line under it, and when I write back it answers like a friend who remembers what I told it.
Here is how it got there.
The first version asked me work questions each day and tracked my progress. I kept simplifying it, with fewer questions every time.
Then it became a journal. Prompts, a short grounding exercise, and each finished day logged to a sheet.
I replaced the questions with images. Five a day, each with one line and no greeting. The lines came from a list of affirmations.
Chat came next. It keeps a thread, asks for my plan in the morning, reviews the day with me at night, and saves facts from what I say.
Now there are modes I switch between, and the default sends my own bank rules word for word. It also asks me a check-in question pulled from the bank three mornings a week.
Telegram lets anyone register a bot by messaging an account called BotFather, which hands back a token. The Telegram bot documentation calls bots small applications that run inside Telegram, says the platform is free, and says it hosts more than 10 million of them. The same page says you need some programming skill to build one. An AI coding tool can write that part for you.
A bot on the app you already open every day needs no new habit. The message shows up where your other messages are.
Pick one thing you want to hear every day. Write down twenty lines you want to read back to yourself, from a book, a friend or your own rules. That list is the start of a bank. Have the bot send one line a day at a time you choose.
That is version one. Each step in the list above began as something small like this. Add a reply when you want a reply. Add memory when you want memory.
It will probably change again.