Tool 70 · Develop yourself
Nobody starts from nothing. Work out what you are actually carrying.
A guided 18 to 22 minute conversation using ChatGPT. Free, no account, nothing to sign up to.
01
Copy
Take the TAIU prompt.
02
Paste
Open ChatGPT.
03
Talk
One question at a time.
Copies the TAIU prompt. Paste it into ChatGPT.
You don't need ChatGPT Plus. The free version is fine.
Some of it is an asset and some of it is weight.
It can be too early to move. That is a finding, not a failure.
What you'll explore
A note from Mark
I've started again more than once. New countries, new businesses, new roles where nobody knew who I was.
The thing nobody tells you is that you're never starting from zero. You take the relationships, the judgement, the scar tissue and the reputation with you.
You also take some things you'd be better off putting down.
The work is knowing which is which, before you commit to anything.
What you'll get
01
What survives
02
What has gone
03
Fixed and open
04
The first move
+
Your TAIU handover — a portable summary of everything the conversation established.
What now?
01 · Save it
What survives.
02 · Test it
Write the list of what survives before you write anything else.
What I would do
Establish the practical position before anything else.
List what survives, specifically, before discussing anything new.
Say plainly what has gone rather than softening it.
Separate what is fixed for now from what is actually open.
Make one first move, or wait if it is too early.
Test it
What have you still got that the old life gave you?
What are you carrying that is not worth the weight?
What is genuinely fixed for now?
The alternative
The usual reading is that everything must change. Often less has ended than it feels like, and the useful work is smaller and duller than reinvention. The reverse also happens. Somebody insists that most of the old life carries forward when the evidence says the relationships, the standing or the market have gone with it, and rebuilding on that assumption costs another year.
Think about this
Take this to Ask Mark
Interpretation, not another copy-and-paste exercise.
Take this to Ask Mark →Finished the exercise?
Tell us whether it helped and what you discovered. It takes less than a minute.
Next tool
If the question is what to bring forward
Further thinking
Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes
William Bridges
Working Identity
Herminia Ibarra
Effectuation: Elements of Entrepreneurial Expertise
Saras Sarasvathy
Book
William Bridges
Bridges separates change, which is the external event, from transition, which is the slower internal business of letting go of who you were while it happens. His most useful claim is that the empty middle stretch is not a failure to move on. It is the part of the process where the next thing actually gets worked out, and rushing it usually produces a decision you reverse later.
Book
Herminia Ibarra
Ibarra followed people through major career and identity change and found that almost none of them thought their way to an answer first. They acted first, in small reversible experiments, and their sense of who they were caught up afterwards. It is the strongest available argument against sitting still until you feel certain.
Article
Saras Sarasvathy
Expert founders were found to start from what they already have, who they know and what they can afford to lose, rather than from a goal and a plan. It reframes starting something as a question about available means rather than about vision.
Book
George Bonanno
Bonanno's data shows that resilience is the most common response to loss, and that prescribed emotional processing can sometimes make things worse. It is a corrective to the assumption that an unremarkable account of a difficult event must be avoidance, and it is the reason nobody should be pushed to describe the worst part.