Your Portrait: Help the Coach Understand What Works for You
Contents
Imagine an expert in a room: they may know a great deal, but they only know about you what you tell them.
Your Portrait gives each breakdown a personal starting point. The more relevant context you provide, the less the coach has to rely on generic assumptions.
The same task, two different Portraits
The Chinese demonstration compares two people asking Coach W to plan a run:
- A 19-year-old interested in programming, fitness and martial arts, currently building muscle and wanting stronger legs.
- A 27-year-old who enjoys Bach and Beethoven, has some ADHD-related difficulties and is learning about investing.
The first plan goes straight to strength goals and uses familiar references from the person’s interests. The second lowers the threshold for leaving home, including a step as small as standing outside for 30 seconds, and uses investment analogies.
The tips differ too: refining a workout like debugging a program, or treating exercise as an investment in future health and beginning with favourite music.
Community member @心电观测仪 shared a more personal example. After learning from her Portrait that her daughter mattered deeply to her, the coach connected tidying the room to making life more comfortable for them both. A relevant reason can matter more than generic encouragement.
How to write your Portrait
Use Portrait Assistant
Open Portrait Assistant from your profile page. It breaks the blank page into smaller questions and explains why each answer helps the coach.
Use the community template
Community member @逆风 suggested this structure. Replace the blanks with what matters to you:
I am ___ (occupation, year or subject), living in ___ (city or usual environment), and currently ___ (current situation).
I am good at ___, but struggle with ___.
My physical and everyday circumstances: ___ (routine, sleep, ADHD-related difficulties or other relevant details).
I enjoy ___ (interests, music or people I admire). I prefer learning and acting by ___, and dislike ___ (for example, lectures or oversized steps).
My long-term goal is ___. My concrete goal for the next two weeks is ___.
Add the small habits too
Keep updating your Portrait when you notice something the coach would benefit from knowing: you drink water before bed, need the curtains shut to sleep, or put worn clothes straight in the laundry basket.
These details help a bedtime or weekend plan follow the way you actually move through your day.
Advanced uses
1. Coach Overrides
You might want the minister coach to address you as an empress without having Miss S do the same. Coach Overrides let you provide context or settings for one coach rather than putting everything in the global Portrait.
2. Expand the space available
If your Portrait outgrows its default character allowance, use Coffee Beans earned from tasks to redeem a Portrait expansion in the Grocery Store on your profile page.
3. Split the work between Portrait and LoreBook
| Feature | When it is included | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Portrait | Every task | Who you are: preferences, recurring barriers, habits and long-term goals |
| LoreBook | When a matching card is triggered, including automatic triggers you enable | How a specific thing works: a workout, Saturday routine or packing list |
Keep recurring personal context in the Portrait, and detailed procedures in LoreBook cards. For the underlying system, read how PlanCoach manages context.