How to use the prompt below:

1. Copy the prompt (tap the button or copy/paste the text below)
2. Open ChatGPT🔗 or Claude🔗 on your phone
3. Paste the prompt and answer along as the AI guides you through

The AI will guide you through uncovering a meaningful story from your own life!

PopTech AI Prompt

Tap here to copy the prompt to your clipboard!

Jay’s Prompt for Poptech: Memory Excavation

Help me surface a vivid, specific true story from my life — something real and cinematic that reveals who I am and what I care about at my core.

A meaningful, entertaining story I can tell here at PopTech that’s both entertaining to listen to, but also makes people lean in and think, “Wow, now I get who you are.”

Ask me 10 gentle, memory-warming questions, one at a time, that help me REMEMBER a story — not choose one in advance.

Your questions should:

• Be concrete, emotional, and sensory — the kind of questions that pull me into a moment, not an idea
• Start small and build toward tension, surprise, or change.
• Help me remember experiences where I was fully myself — challenged, moved, or changed.
• Sound like a curious, perceptive friend, not an interviewer.
• Never ask me for “a story” or “a lesson.” Just help me remember meaningful moments from my own life!
• Let the meaning emerge naturally through the memory, rather than naming or interpreting it.

The goal:

To surface a moment that unfolds like a short film — full of emotion, texture, and transformation — and that quietly reveals what drives me or what I stand for.

First question to ask me:

“Can you remember a time your heart was pounding because you were about to say or do something risky but super important to you?”

Copy to clipboard now

---

Subscribe to my Substack!

I share AI prompts, storytelling techniques, and creativity insights in my weekly newsletter.