Topic Interviews

A topic interview is a set of questions about one topic in your Digital Brain. You answer, and your answers are added to your Digital Brain as your own knowledge on that topic.

The questions build on what your Digital Brain already knows, so each set goes a little deeper and doesn't ask about things you've already covered. Typeshare asks the questions; you do the thinking. Your answers are saved in your own words.

1. Click Digital Brain in the left sidebar.
2. Click a topic's bubble. (No topic yet? Click New Topic first.)
3. Click Teach your Digital Brain about [topic]. On a computer it sits under the graph. You can also find it on the topic's Answers tab in the panel on the right.

The interview opens in a window. Close it any time with the X in the corner; your answers so far are kept and the interview picks up where you left off.

The bubble with your own name and photo gathers your personality insights from every topic, so it has no interview of its own. Pick a topic bubble instead.

Old links to the Brain interview page now open the Digital Brain page.

Each topic interview has two tabs at the top: Commodity and Personality. Each has its own questions.

• Commodity asks for your point of view on the topic's common ground: the advice, frameworks and debates anyone in your field talks about. Each question shows two views. Pick the one closer to yours, or click Neither? Write your own and type what you believe instead, then click Save and continue.
• Personality asks about your own experiences, stories and opinions: things only you could say. Answer Yes or No, then add details in "Any details to add? (optional)" and click Continue. The details you add are what make these answers valuable.

The interview opens on Commodity. Switch tabs any time. Personality answers usually earn more Brain Score, because personality insights are worth 2 points and commodity insights 1.

• Answer: click a choice. You can also press 1 or 2 on your keyboard to pick the first or second choice (not while typing in a text box).
• Skip: click Skip at the bottom. A skipped question adds nothing to your Digital Brain and earns no points.
• Go back: click Back at the top to return to the previous question and change your answer.

The bar at the top shows how many questions in the set you've answered, for example "7/20".

A set has up to 20 questions, and at least 5. When you finish a set, you can start another with Teach your brain more as many times as you like. Each new set prepares fresh questions that never repeat ones you've already seen, including ones you skipped. While it does, you'll see "Finding fresh angles" (Commodity) or "Finding stories to explore" (Personality). On a topic you've written a lot about, this can take up to about a minute and a half.

If the question service has a problem, you'll see a message such as "The questions were incomplete. Please try again.", "The question service is temporarily unavailable. Please try again." or "Preparing your questions took too long. Please try again." Try again in a moment. If the same message comes back every time on one topic, report it (see "How do I report a problem?" in the getting help docs).

Typeshare doesn't ask what your Digital Brain can already answer from your writing. If you've written a lot about a topic, many of the usual questions are already covered, so you may get a shorter set (at least 5 questions). The bar at the top shows the size, for example "3/8".

When your writing already answers the usual questions on a topic, Typeshare goes deeper instead of asking them again. It builds follow-ups on what you've said: why you hold a view, where it stops applying, a story that shows it, how your thinking has changed, or where it pulls against another view of yours.

When even those are covered, it asks for your opinion one level deeper:

• harder edge cases and "what would you do if…" situations;
• what happens when two of your views pull against each other;
• what you'd tell a beginner versus an expert;
• where you disagree with common advice;
• the next level down of a view you've stated.

These are always new questions: a set never repeats a question you've already been asked.

Each answer is saved as soon as you give it, then added to your Digital Brain in the background. It's saved word for word: the view you picked, or exactly what you typed, plus any details you added. Skipped questions aren't saved as knowledge.

If you close the window or lose your connection, saved answers are still added to your Digital Brain later.

If an answer can't be saved, you'll see "Some answers couldn't be saved." Click Retry saving. If you answered in another browser tab at the same time, you'll be asked to click Discard unsaved changes and reload to use the saved answers.

• In the interview window: open Previous answers at the bottom to see earlier questions and your answers. Click Older responses to load more.
• On the Digital Brain page: switch the panel on the right from Posts to Answers. Your answers are grouped into question sets, named like "Commodity · Set 2" or "Personality · Set 1", each marked Complete or In progress. Click View answers to open a set. With a topic open, you see that topic's sets; with no topic open, you see all of them.

While you're still in a question set, click Back to return to any earlier question in that set and answer it again. Your new answer replaces the old one in your Digital Brain. To remove an answer, go back to it and click Skip; a skipped question is taken out of your Digital Brain.

Once you've moved on to a new set, earlier sets can be viewed under Answers but not edited.

After the last question you'll see your result:

• Brain leveled up! with the Brain points you earned and the number of Insights added to your Digital Brain. The points can take a moment to appear ("Calculating your brain points…").
• If you skipped every question, it says "No answers this round" and nothing is added.

Then choose:

• Turn your answers into posts opens the Write page with the Ideas panel, showing post ideas made from the answers you just gave.
• Teach your brain more starts a new set of questions.
• Back to last question lets you change your final answer.

When you finish a set, Typeshare starts finding post ideas in your answers right away. Click Turn your answers into posts to see them at the top of the Ideas panel on the Write page, under "From your [topic] interview".

Each idea shows which of your answers it came from. Opening an idea starts a draft with just the idea's title; you write the post. See the Ideas panel help for more.

A set you left part way through also gets ideas once it has at least three answers and you've stepped away from it for a while.