Connected information
I bring together data exports, information from my phone, recordings, photographs, documents, and AI conversations. Connecting them gives each question the context of my wider work and helps me put the information to use.
Personal data and AI
Walmart and Amazon exports, Google Takeout, and the information I create through everyday work and projects.
Walmart and Amazon purchase data
I use my Walmart and Amazon data exports as sources for AI. The useful information is in the purchase history: the products, dates, quantities, prices, and related order details.
My Amazon export includes item-level fields such as ASIN, product name, order date, quantity, condition, price, and shipment status. That lets me work with a record of the product and the purchase together. A merchant name on a bank transaction provides a different level of detail.
Product and ASINOrder dateQuantityPriceShipment status
Field types from my Amazon order-history export. No individual purchase records are displayed here.
What I use the context for
This is part of my personal data and planning work. AI helps me work through records, ask more specific questions, and connect purchase information with the products and projects it relates to. The source matters: an order, a receipt, a shipment, and a payment describe different parts of the same purchase.
Google Takeout
Google Takeout is another part of my source base. It brings account information into an archive I can retain and use alongside my other records.
For the photo work, capture dates and metadata help place images in context. I am developing ways to associate photographs with recordings and related project material, so that a day’s observations can be revisited together. An image and a recording may relate to the same event, but that connection still needs to be checked.
Information I generate myself
My own recordings, photographs, notes, questions, feedback, and AI conversations create another body of data. Some capture something I have done; others preserve how an idea developed or why I made a decision.
I use that record as context for the next piece of work. A technical question can lead into a lesson. Equipment research can become a preliminary bill of materials. A website recording can identify a change to a particular page.
The sources and examples shown here describe part of that work. They do not represent everything I generate or use.
Tools and workflow
Voice recordings
Samsung Voice Recorder preserves an explanation or observation while it is fresh. Transcripts make the detail easier to find, compare, and connect with a project.
AI conversations
Earlier conversations contain decisions, questions, revisions, and research. Bringing them forward gives a new task context beyond the latest prompt.
Documents and applications
Documents, spreadsheets, and small applications hold the results. Their value comes from the purchase records, research, observations, and other information behind them.
Read the record according to what it can establish
A purchase record is strongest when used to answer a purchase question. It may establish that a particular item was ordered on a date, but it does not explain how long the item stayed in use or whether it solved the problem behind the purchase. An ownership story needs the later experience alongside that initial record.
The distinction helps when several sources describe the same item differently. An order, shipment entry, replacement-part purchase and spoken recollection may be related without being duplicates. I want to retain the useful differences rather than turn them into a single confident summary. That makes the information more valuable for both planning and writing: I can see the transaction, the experience and the unanswered question without treating one as proof of the others.