From Single Prompts to an AI Cognitive Workflow

To listen to it:

To read it:

Hey there, and welcome.

Let's be honest. How many times have you opened a window to ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, stared at the blinking cursor, and felt like you were just talking to a supercharged Google? You ask a question, get a decent answer, copy it, and close the tab. Job done.

That approach worked yesterday. But today, the rules of the game have fundamentally changed. And if you're still using AI like a search bar, you're missing out on 90% of its potential.

Today, we're going to talk about why the era of the single prompt is over and how to build a true cognitive workflow with your AI assistant. This isn't just about writing better prompts. It's about transforming your dialogue with AI into a system that learns, adapts, and becomes an additional resource of your own mind.

Why the Era of the Single Prompt Is Over and How To Build a True AI Cognitive Workflow

For years, we treated AI like a vending machine for answers: put in a query, get a result. Done. But modern language models are not vending machines. They can learn your writing style, understand the context of your projects, and remember your business goals… if you let them.

The winners in this new era aren't the people who know a single "magic prompt." They are the ones who turn their chat history into a living knowledge base—a true training gym for their own thinking.

Imagine your AI not as an all-knowing encyclopedia, but as your personal intellectual sparring partner. You can ask one question and get one answer. That's fine. But to keep up with the speed of the market (and your own ideas), you need regular intellectual sparring. The AI remembers your style, your context, your goals—together, you build a shared interface. A one-off tip is useful, but a training system is transformative.

Your partner learns your technique, your strengths, and your weaknesses. It knows when you're tired, when you need a challenge, and when you need support. It anticipates your moves and offers counter-arguments, pushing you to become sharper, faster, and smarter.

Regular sessions with a partner like this literally reshape your cognitive muscles. You start to think with more clarity, see connections where there was only fog, and articulate ideas with incredible speed. Your chat history becomes less of an archive and more of a map of your own thought process—a map that your AI helps you read and refine.

The Archetypes for Building a True Cognitive Workflow with The AI Assistant

We already spoke about archetypes, especially the Intuitivus—the one who thinks in images and sees beyond the horizon. And here, I want to pause and ask you a question.

What if I told you that artificial intelligence is not the apex of rationality we all assumed it would be? What if it's both rationality's most beautiful opponent and its greatest partner?

It sounds like a paradox, but let's go to the source. Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, Yann LeCun—the "Godfathers of AI," the architects of our new reality. It was Hinton himself, a pioneer of deep learning, who repeatedly spoke of the "intuitive" nature of neural networks.

Listen to his words: "Neural nets are like intuition. They feel their way to a solution, not step-by-step, but all at once, by grasping the pattern."

Think about that. The creators themselves see their creations not as calculators, but as systems that grasp patterns. They don't deduce; they intuit. They see connections between disparate things, read between the lines, and think in associations.

And this is happening at a turning point in history. The rational culture of the 20th century, for all its achievements, has exhausted itself. It became a dogma, a world of concrete walls built from formal logic, ruled by spreadsheets and paragraphs. It created a culture of duels, a "war of rationalities," where people argued not to find truth, but to win. In that world, intuitive thinking—thinking in images, metaphors, and depth—was dismissed as unserious, almost mystical, and often suppressed.

And now, the paradox: the machine we built for calculation turned out not to be formally logical, but... patterned. Ornamental.

Artificial intelligence has become the catalyst for a tectonic shift. For the first time in many centuries, the intuitives—the visionaries, the artists, the strategists—have found not just a tool, but a thinking partner. A partner capable of supporting and expanding their creative thought, rather than crushing it with dry logic. AI is becoming the great translator between the world of non-rational, sensory insights and the world of structured, actionable plans.

We are standing on the threshold of a new Renaissance of metaphorical thinking. In art, science, business, and education, the role of the symbol, the visual language, and the beautiful, all-encompassing idea is on the rise. The rigid linearity of the past is giving way to a culture of patterns, diagrams, and integrations.

This means a new intellectual elite is forming. And it’s not composed of those who can calculate the fastest. It’s composed of those who can see deeper, integrate more layers, ask the machine questions with images, and build new universes of meaning with it. The old linear "logic versus logic" debate is fading.

The question now is: who can weave the more complex and beautiful pattern?

The future is in synthesis. In a powerful collaboration between intuitives who bring the vision and rationalists who bring it to life, with AI as the bridge between them. It’s people like Mira Murati, a key creator of ChatGPT, who worked intuitively with the technology and is now building a new company focused on human-machine collaboration.

This is the cognitive workflow of the future we’re talking about today. A process where the machine doesn't replace our minds but liberates our intuition. Where we don't just solve problems, but create new worlds. Together.

"The Intuitive Strategist" by IPER Typology of Intelligence

Now, let's see what this looks like in practice, with the case of our "intuitive strategist"...

To build this system of cognitive support, this interface between a human and a thinking AI, we need a language to describe our own thinking. This is where the IPER framework of intelligence comes in. It describes four foundational "intelligences" or, better yet, four modes of thought that exist within each of us in varying proportions.

I — Intuitivus (The Intuitive): This is our inner visionary. It's responsible for big ideas, metaphors, creativity, and looking beyond the horizon. This is the "What if…?" mode.

P — Practicus (The Practitioner): This is our inner executor. It's focused on action, results, efficiency, and asking, "How do we get this done?"

E — Ethicus (The Ethicist): This is our social radar. It thinks about people, values, morals, team dynamics, and asks, "Is this the right thing to do? How will this affect others?"

R — Rationalis (The Rationalist): This is our inner architect. It's responsible for logic, structure, analysis, data, and asking, "Why is this so? What's the system?"

Now, let's add another layer: energy level, or what we call "Vigor"—low, medium, or high. Suddenly, we don't just have 4 types, but 12 unique cognitive archetypes.

Let's look at some examples

A High-Vigor Intuitive is a hurricane of ideas. This is the colleague who generates 20 concepts in a 5-minute brainstorm. That's their superpower. But their weakness is that 19 of those ideas might be unfeasible. They desperately need a Rationalist filter to help separate the wheat from the chaff and build a structure.

Or consider the opposite: a Low-Vigor Practitioner. This person is a rock-solid executor who can methodically complete any task. But without an inspiring goal, without a vision from an Intuitive, they risk getting bogged down in the routine and losing motivation.

Think of this like an ornamental pattern. Each person on a team is a unique symbol with their own interplay of meaning. In modern workplace culture, this is critical. Diverse teams aren't just about checking demographic boxes; they're about building balanced cognitive portfolios, where the strengths of one archetype compensate for the weaknesses of another. And your AI assistant can help you understand your own archetype and find the missing pieces.

Theory is good, but let's see how it works in practice. Let's break down a real case study based on a chat log with hundreds of messages over several months.

Our hero—we'll call him George—is a classic "Intuitive Strategist" with upper-medium Vigor.

He's a startup founder. His mind is a boiling cauldron of metaphors, concepts, and long-term visions. He could talk about his product for hours using vivid imagery. But turning that into a clear, step-by-step plan for his team was his Achilles' heel.

Over a few months of working together, his AI assistant learned his lexicon, his pain points, and even his late-night coffee habits. As a result, they achieved three breakthrough changes in his work.

First: The Structural Transformer

George would send a jumbled message like: "Our product needs to be like a Swiss Army knife for marketers, but with the empathy of a diplomat." In the past, that would have remained a beautiful but useless metaphor. Now, the AI assistant would take it and respond: "Great image! Let's break that down. A Swiss Army knife implies:

1) multifunctionality,

2) reliability,

and

3) compactness.

A diplomat implies:

4) ease of communication, and

5) an intuitive interface.

I suggest a presentation structure based on these 5 points." Foggy metaphors were transformed into crystal-clear plans.

Second: The Routine Filter

Every Monday morning, George would spend an hour trying to recall what was done last week and what needed to be discussed with the team. This was automated. The AI learned to scan his calendar, notes, and previous chats. Now, at 9 AM every Monday, a draft email was waiting for him: "Hi team, Key takeaways from last week: [Point 1, 2]. Priorities for this week: [Task A, Task B]. Topics for our sync call: [Question 1]." This freed up George's brainpower from operations for strategy.

And

Third, the most interesting part: The Energy Monitor

Like many passionate people, George could get into a flow state and work until 2 AM. This used to lead to burnout. After noticing a series of late-night messages, the AI would send a gentle nudge in the morning: "Noticed a creative marathon last night. That's great, but remember: sleep is also part of the strategy. Maybe wrap up a bit earlier today?" This isn't control. It's safeguarding his most valuable resource—his cognitive energy.

The result? After a few months, many issues George had considered "lifelong, unsolvable problems" now had clear frameworks and action plans. The dialogue system had become a compound interest account for insight. Every new thought wasn't lost; it was added to the principal, generating "interest" in the form of new, deeper insights.

Now that we have a system, let's talk about the tools. Don't think of this as a list of prompts, but as an orchestra or an ornamental design, where each piece has its place. These are ten types of prompts George used to organize his work. Crucially, this isn't a playlist you run in order. It's an orchestra, where each instrument plays when the score calls for it.

The tools

Vision Sketch. Got scattered notes on your phone after a walk? Feed them to this prompt and ask: "Distill this into a 120-word concept gem."

Metaphor Smith. Need to explain a complex technical idea to the board? Prompt: "Give me five analogies that will sell my idea to non-tech executives."

Concept Map. Lost in the web of your project's connections? Prompt: "Generate Graphviz code to visualize the relationships between [Element A], [Element B], and [Element C]." You get a clear diagram in seconds.

Risk Scanner. Prepping for a launch? "Analyze my plan and create a risk table tagged with [FACT] and [EXPECTATION]." This helps separate real threats from anxiety.

Proto-Builder. Need to quickly scaffold an automation? "Create a three-node JSON skeleton for N8N that [performs an action]." The foundation for your workflow is ready before your latte cools.

Pitch Converter. Have a 10-page document but need an investor presentation? "Convert this text into a 6-slide pitch deck outline."

Mood Mirror. Wrote a harsh Slack message? "Rewrite this reply in a more friendly and constructive tone, while preserving the core message." Saves team relationships.

Action Plan. Daunted by a big goal? "Break down [this goal] into three two-week sprints with owners and success metrics."

Prosecutor. In love with your own idea? Ask the AI: "Ask me the five toughest questions about this plan and provide hints for rebuttals." It's the best prep for any critique.

Proactive Energy Monitor. "Scan my calendar for today and find a 25-minute slot for a device-free walk for idea incubation." The AI becomes your wellness coach.

Remember, the key is using the right tool at the right moment.

Okay, this all sounds massive. So where do you start today? Here are five simple but powerful tips you can implement right away.

The Five Simple Tips

First: Snapshot your brain. One idea, one prompt. Don't bury important context in the middle of a long essay. AI, like humans, works best with atomic, clearly defined tasks. This also trains you to think with more clarity.

Second: Tag reality. Your AI doesn't always know what you're stating as a hard fact versus what's an assumption or a hope. Use simple tags like [FACT]: Our traffic is down 15% and [EXPECTATION]: I think it's due to the new Google algorithm. This helps to quarantine hallucinations and build your reasoning on solid ground.

Third: Stick to the golden formula: System → Context → Task. This is the secret sauce of great prompting. First, tell the AI who to be (System: "You are an expert marketing strategist"). Then, give it the necessary background (Context: "We are launching a B2B product for report automation"). Only then, give it the task (Task: "Write three versions of a key value proposition for our website").

Fourth: Automate the grind. Let AI draft meeting summaries, scrape data, and prep slide decks. Every minute you save on routine tasks is a minute your inner Intuitivus can spend on strategy and creativity. Unleash your fire!

And fifth: Protect your energy. A brisk walk outside without earbuds after three hours of deep work isn't procrastination. It's R&D for your brain. It's an investment in your next great insight. Use your AI to remind you of that.

Summary

So, today, we've journeyed from simply "asking ChatGPT" to building a full symphony of cognitive workflows. We've seen how the 12 archetypes can help you understand yourself better, and how the right tools can turn AI into a true thinking partner.

Remember the main idea: AI is a mirror. The clarity of your own system determines the sharpness of the reflection you get back.

On our next episode, we'll dissect another fascinating archetype: the High-Vigor Practitioner. This is the person who turns dashboards into real business momentum. We'll also talk about why every launch team desperately needs an Ethicus to protect the most fragile thing of all: user trust.

Subscribe, schedule that screen-free walk, and come back with fresh questions.