The Three Documents: What They Are, Why They Matter, and Where to Start
In my last edition, I told you about something Allie K. Miller said on the Silicon Valley Girl podcast that I couldn’t stop thinking about.
Build three documents. Everything else follows.
Simple. Almost suspiciously simple. So I did it.
What happened next surprised me. Not because it was difficult, but because it wasn’t. In about an hour of conversation with Claude, spread across two evenings, I had three documents that now sit at the foundation of everything I do with AI.
Not generic documents. Not templates I filled in. Documents that are specifically, unmistakably mine.
Here’s what they are, and why each one matters.
1. THE PERSONAL CONSTITUTION
Who you are at your core, independent of any job title or life circumstance.
This is the most personal of the three. It’s not a resume. It’s not a LinkedIn bio. It’s the document you’d hand someone if you wanted them to truly understand your operating system — your values, what energizes you, what depletes you, how you respond when things go wrong.
Claude didn’t ask me to fill out a form. It asked me real questions. Questions that made me think harder than I expected.
What does your best work actually look like?
What are the values that are genuinely already true about you, not the ones you wish you had?
What drains you?
My take: The first two questions hit differently than I expected. I kept wanting to give the aspirational answer: the version of myself I’m working toward. Claude kept pulling me back to what’s actually true right now: honesty over polish. That’s what made the exercise worthwhile.
And once Claude and I collaborated on building the Personal Constitution, once it had that foundation, that’s when things really took off. The conversations stopped feeling generic. Every response started fitting my actual life: my working style, my energy patterns, my non-negotiables. It was like the difference between talking to a stranger and talking to someone who actually knows you.
2. THE GOALS DOCUMENT
What you want, when you want it, and what the very first step looks like.
This one is deceptively simple and surprisingly hard. Not because the questions are complicated, but because most of us carry goals in our heads for years without ever writing them down and committing to them.
Claude asked me for my top three goals for 2026: not aspirational fluff, but real ones. The kind where, if I achieved them by December, I’d look back and say, “That was a great year.” Then it asked for one first step I could take this month for each goal.
My take: Writing down “I want Claude to be the operating system for my entire work life” felt like uncharted territory. But the need behind it was real: I wanted to buy back my time and do work that actually means something. Then I looked at what I’d just built in that one conversation and realized I was already doing it. The document didn’t just clarify my goals. It showed me I’d already started.
3. THE WORK STRATEGY DOC
What you do, who you serve, and why. Including the context that never makes it onto a resume.
This one took the longest. Not because the questions were harder, but because I had to describe years of work, workflows, and professional context in a way that gave Claude enough to actually help me.
Think of it as the onboarding document for your AI collaborator. The deeper and more specific you go, the more useful every future conversation becomes.
My take: Once I built this, Claude stopped giving me generic suggestions. It started giving me answers that fit my actual work: my audience, my tone, my deliverables. That shift was immediate.
WHERE TO START
If you’re going to do one thing after reading this, create the Personal Constitution.
It’s the most personal, the most surprising, and the one with the most immediate impact on your AI conversations. You don’t need to be a writer. You don’t need to prepare. You just need to show up and answer honestly.
More than anything, it’s a rare chance to have an honest conversation with yourself about what actually matters. Most of us never make time for that.
In my next edition, I’ll walk you through the full Personal Constitution process: the exact questions Claude asked me, how I answered them, and how you can build yours.
YOUR SMALL MOVE THIS WEEK
Open Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini and type this:
“I want to build a Personal Constitution — a document that captures who I am at my core: my values, how I work best, what energizes me, and what depletes me. Please interview me with thoughtful questions, one at a time, and use my answers to build the document. Start when I say go.”
Then say: Go.
One prompt. The rest is a conversation.
Until next week —
Nela
Next up: Edition 04 — The Personal Constitution. We go deep.