Be a Neighborhood Lunatic
Talking to yourself used to get you institutionalized. Now, it just gets you a content strategy. Welcome to the era of the productive madman.
TL;DR: Writing is the slowest way to think. Speaking is the fastest. This is the exact workflow I use to capture high-level strategy while walking my neighborhood, using nothing but a standard Android phone and an AI filter to clean up the mess.
The Neighborhood Lunatic
Every morning, I walk the streets of the Costa del Sol.
I wear a headset. I speak loudly. I wave my hands. To my Spanish neighbors, I look like I am arguing with a ghost. To the tourists, I look like a busy executive on a conference call.
They are both wrong. I am writing my next three newsletters.
The “55” side of the protocol knows that sitting at a desk kills creativity. Blood needs to move. But the “35” side knows that audio recordings are usually a trap. We record 20 minutes of rambling, promise to listen to it later, and never do.
Audio is a data graveyard unless you have a refinery.
The Low-Tech Capture
You do not need a $400 dictaphone. You do not need a subscription app.
The Gear:
Standard Android Phone.
Standard Voice Recorder App (Free).
Wired or Bluetooth Headset (The microphone quality matters more than the app).
I hit record. I start walking. I don’t try to be coherent. I ramble. I jump from business strategy to grocery lists to philosophical debates. I capture the “shower thoughts” that usually vanish by the time you dry off.
The High-Tech Refinery
This is where the magic happens.
If I had to transcribe these files myself, I would never do it. Instead, I dump the raw audio file directly into the AI (Gemini, Claude or ChatGPT).
I don’t ask for a transcript. Transcripts are boring. I ask for extraction.
The Prompt Logic: “Listen to this audio. Ignore the filler, the pauses, and the heavy breathing. Extract the three strongest content ideas. Format them as bullet points. Save the rest as ‘discard’.”
In seconds, my 30-minute rambling walk becomes a tight, structured list of viable ideas.
The Google Drive Vault
The final step is placement. An idea is useless if it lives in a chat window. It needs a home. I take the cleaned output and drop it into a specific folder in Google Drive: “The Incubator.”
When I sit down on Monday morning to write, I don’t stare at a blank page. I open The Incubator. The heavy lifting was done while I was getting my steps in. The “writing” is assembly, not excavation.
Steal My Workflow (Free)
I believe this habit is so critical for mental health and productivity that I am not gatekeeping the basics. I have compiled the Voice-to-Vault Workflow IMAGE.
It includes:
The exact audio settings I use.
The 3 specific “Refinery Prompts” I use to clean the audio.
The folder structure for “The Incubator.”
It is free for everyone. No paywall.
The Deep Dive: Automating the Machine
I’m testing a Zero-Touch version of this workflow right now. The goal is simple: finish recording, and without opening the AI app, the structured notes automatically populate my to-do list.
If it works, VIP subscribers will get the protocol first. If it doesn’t, you’ll hear about that too. I’m building the infrastructure in real time, and the paid tier is where the operational blueprints live.
What is your version of “arguing with ghosts” that looks crazy to outsiders but actually works for your productivity?
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Why the Free Tier is Still an Unfair Advantage
Listen, I know subscription fatigue is real.
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Not for nothing, this is one of my favorite post I have made on Substack to date!
-Mark VengaDragon | Let’s Go! VENGA!