One Goal, Twelve Projects: How I’m Turning AI Into a Life OS

Most people use AI like a search engine with a personality.

Type a question. Get an answer. Forget it. Repeat.

That’s fine for trivia and small tasks. It’s terrible for changing your life.

If you have a big goal—retire early, switch careers, build a business, slow travel, write a book, whatever—you don’t just have one problem. You have 12 different kinds of problems spread across money, work, health, logistics, psychology, family, and more.

What I’ve been building (and what you can steal) is a way to turn AI into a structured support system for that kind of goal:

You pick a big, long-term outcome.
You break it into the domains that actually decide whether it happens.
You make one AI “Project” per domain, each with clear instructions.
Later, you match each Project with a Custom GPT (or Claude persona, etc.) that thinks in the right way for that domain.

My own example goal is slow travel with my two youngest kids, but this structure works for:

Changing careers
Building a company
Homesteading
Deep creative work (book, game, series)
FIRE/retirement planning
Any “this will take years and touches everything” target

Below is how my 12-project system is set up—and how you can adapt it for your own thing.

Projects vs Custom GPTs (why both?)

You don’t have to use Custom GPTs yet, but it helps to understand the split:

Projects = workspaces / containers
- Chats, files, notes, decisions, instructions
- All about one domain (money, health, parenting, etc.)
Custom GPTs (or Claude personas) = brains
- How the AI thinks in that domain
- Tone, priorities, guardrails, default assumptions

Right now, I’ve fully defined the Projects.
Next step is one Custom GPT per Project.

You can do the same: projects first, personalities later.

Step 1: Start with any big goal

Don’t copy my goal. Use yours.

Examples:

“Work part-time by 55 without blowing up my finances.”
“Transition from my current career to [new field] in 4 years.”
“Build a portable business so I can live anywhere.”
“Retire in place and spend most of my time on X and Y.”

Then ask:

“What are the 6–12 domains that actually decide if this happens?”

That’s where Projects come from.

I’ll show you my 12, then you map them to your own.

The 12 Projects (one life, split into modules)

My north star is slow travel, but read these as patterns you can adapt.

1. Slow Travel – The North Star / Life Design

Pattern: The “main goal” project.

What it does (for me):

Turns “someday I’ll travel with my kids” into concrete timelines, regions, and pace.
Designs daily/weekly routines on the road: work, school, rest, exploration.
Deals with contingencies: illness, burnout, money shocks, pauses.

If your goal isn’t travel, this is still your central project:

“New Career – Design & Transition”
“Book – Concept to Finished Manuscript”
“Business – From Idea to First $X/month”

Everything else serves this one.

2. Finance – Runway, Risk, and Tradeoffs

Pattern: “Can I afford this, and when?”

For me, this holds:

Investments and allocation (yes, including individual stocks).
Social Security and pension decisions.
Runway modeling: different departure dates, budgets, regions.
Safety buffers and worst-case thinking.

For you, this might be:

Pay off debt vs invest?
How much cash runway do I need for a career jump?
How much is “enough” to retire / go part-time?

The AI here is your runway architect, not your lottery ticket picker.

3. Domain Names – Side Hustle & Future Income

Pattern: “My main side income engine.”

This project is about my domain investing business:

What kinds of names I buy.
Pricing, selling, dropping.
Negotiation and buyer communication.
Keeping it manageable while working and later while traveling.

For you, this might be:

Freelance consulting
Etsy/shop
SaaS idea
Rental properties

If you have any meaningful side income or business, it probably deserves its own Project.

4. School – Work Maintenance Only

Pattern: “Keep the day job stable, don’t let it colonize my life.”

Here I keep:

Admin expectations, evaluations, deadlines.
Low-drama planning and grading systems.
Parent/admin email templates.
Boundaries around extra duties and “opportunities” that don’t serve the main goal.

For you, this is your current job if you plan to leave or downshift eventually:

“Job – Income Maintenance Only”
“Current Role – Stability & Exit Timing”

The mindset: solid B+ performance, low variance, low drama.

5. New Course – Creative Autonomy

Pattern: “Meaningful work that keeps me sane.”

This project is not about cash. It’s about:

Designing a course I actually want to teach,
On my terms,
That I can reuse in different contexts (school, my kids, maybe online someday).

For you, this might be:

A book you want to write
A workshop you want to run
A research project
A creative series

Not everything has to be monetized. Some projects exist to keep your head from burning out while you grind the instrumental stuff.

6. Worldschooling Design – Life Education

Pattern: “How the kids learn inside the new life.”

This is my kids’ learning plan during travel:

Subjects, projects, and experiences I want them to have.
How to use local culture, online resources, and our own work.
Rough academic structure, not rigid schooling.

For you, this might be:

“Kids – Education Plan Through Career Change”
“Homeschool System”
“Skills I Need for My New Life” (if the learner is you, not kids)

The template is: learning system aligned with the big goal.

7. Parenting – Travel-Ready Kids

Pattern: “Family dynamics that won’t implode under the new plan.”

Worldschooling is academics; this is everything else:

Emotional readiness for change and uncertainty.
Routines, boundaries, screens, chores, sleep.
Independence skills and safety.
Handling conflict and sibling dynamics.

If your big goal affects your family (it probably does), you want a place to:

Think through how to prepare them,
Design routines and rules that will survive the change,
Deal with “is this fair to them?” in a structured way.

8. Health – Capacity to Live the Plan

Pattern: “Keep the machine running.”

This project is for:

Sleep, nutrition, stress, meds, labs.
Health conversations with doctors.
Travel-specific health prep.

The question: “What does ‘healthy enough for my goal’ look like for me at my age and condition?”

For any goal that runs 5–20 years into the future, health isn’t optional. It’s infrastructure.

9. Fitness – Strength, Mobility, Durability

Pattern: “Train for the life you actually want, not Instagram.”

Here I track:

Simple strength work: pushing, pulling, squatting, hinging, carrying.
Walking/cardio capacity.
Basic mobility and joint care.
Travel-compatible routines.

For your goal, the ask is:

“What does my body need to reliably do for this life to feel good?”

Then you train for that, not for vibes.

10. Leaders in 15 – Creative Hobby & Network

Pattern: “Low-load hobby that makes today better and might help the future.”

This is a short video interview series I run at school:

Guests record short answers.
Students participate.
We post it simply.

It:

Makes my workday more enjoyable.
Teaches students things.
Slowly builds a network of interesting adults.

For you, this might be:

A podcast
A small newsletter
A local meetup you run
An art series

Key constraints:

Fun, low overhead, not a secret second job.
Asymmetric upside: a single connection or opportunity makes it worth it.

11. House – Home Base & Exit-Ready

Pattern: “Home as asset and logistics, not endless project.”

Here I manage:

The house’s age, systems, and condition.
Maintenance that prevents value loss or inspection nightmares.
Light value-add improvements that help sale/rent.
A simple exit checklist to avoid a manic last year of repairs.

For you, this might be:

“Home Base – Maintenance & Exit Plan”
Or an equivalent: car, homestead, studio—whatever physical base your plan depends on.

12. Self – Mindset & Execution

Pattern: “Get your head straight enough that the other 11 actually happen.”

This is the meta-project. But it has a job:

Spot and name patterns that block action (avoidance, overwhelm, doomscrolling, perfectionism).
Work on deeper beliefs that obviously affect decisions (money stories, fear of leaving, identity conflicts).
Store reusable scripts, reframes, and rules that help you re-orient when you drift.

The rule that keeps it from swallowing everything:

Everything in this project must either:

unblock a specific other project,

rewire a belief that clearly affects execution, or

create a mental asset (script/rule/reframe) you will actually use.

This is where you collect the “unfucking your thinking” work with a purpose.

How to use this if you’re new to AI

If all of this feels huge, don’t copy the whole 12-stack.

You could start with just 3–4 Projects:

Main Goal (e.g., “Career Switch – Design & Plan”)
Money (e.g., “Finances – Runway & Risk”)
Body (e.g., “Health/Fitness – Capacity”)
Self (e.g., “Self – Mindset & Execution”)

For each:

Create a Project.
Write simple instructions:
- what it’s for,
- what belongs,
- what doesn’t,
- how you want AI to think and respond.
Start routing your conversations and files to the right Project.

That alone will make AI feel less like a toy and more like an actual support system.

How to use this if you already use AI a lot

If you’ve been using ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc. heavily, this is your “stop blending everything into one giant mess” moment.

What you can do:

Make Projects for your real domains, not just topics:
- “Business – Strategy & Offers”
- “Business – Ops & Systems”
- “Personal – Health & Fitness”
- “Family – Logistics & Parenting”
- “Self – Mindset & Execution”
Move or recreate useful threads into the right Projects.
(Or at least start new ones there.)
Give each Project explicit instructions like I’ve done above.
You’ll be shocked how much better the AI behaves when it knows its job.
Later, build Custom GPTs / personas that are bound to those instructions.
- A “Runway Planner” brain for Finance.
- A “Work Maintenance” brain for the job.
- A “Durable Body” brain for Fitness.
- A “No-Bullshit Coach” brain for Self – Mindset & Execution.

Then you stop asking “What can AI do?” and start asking:

“What jobs in my life need a thinking partner—and which project should that live in?”

The point of all this

This isn’t about being organized for its own sake.

It’s about:

Taking one big, long-term goal,
Admitting it touches a bunch of different domains,
Giving each domain a home and a brain,
And making it much easier to keep moving in the right direction when life gets noisy.

For me, that north star is slow travel with my kids.

For you, it might be something completely different.

The structure still works:

One big goal.
A small number of Projects that actually matter.
Explicit instructions for each.
Later, custom AI “personalities” for each domain.

AI goes from “a clever chat” to “a modular system that helps me build the life I actually want.”

That’s the whole game.

Our Old Dad