My Themes

My Themes is where you pick the three to five content pillars your posts will revolve around. Each theme is a topic you are willing to return to dozens of times across the year, so that recruiters, peers, and your wider network learn what you stand for and remember you for it.

Themes are the spine of every post you write inside Callings.ai. Without them, posts read like scattered status updates. With them, your feed becomes a recognizable point of view that compounds over time.

Why Themes Matter

Three to five themes is the sweet spot: narrow enough that people remember what you talk about, wide enough to cover the breadth of who you are.

Themes give you three things:

• A filter for what to post. If a draft does not anchor to one of your themes, that is a sign to reshape it or skip it.
• A signal for what to ignore. Themes tell you which trends are yours to react to and which ones are noise.
• A pattern your audience can recognize. People remember patterns. Return to the same few topics until your name and those topics become inseparable.

The Card Grid

The page renders your active Writing Themes as a responsive card grid: three columns on wide screens, two on tablets, one on mobile. Each card carries a number badge (1, 2, 3...), the theme title, the description, and three actions: Edit, New post, and a delete button.

• Click anywhere on a card to open the per-theme editor.
• Click "New post" to jump into the New Post wizard with that theme pre-selected.
• Drag a card (after a small movement) to reorder. The new order is saved as you drop.
• Click the delete button for a Popconfirm. Deleting a theme does not retroactively change the tag on posts you have already published.

The first tile in the grid is the New theme affordance: a dashed card that opens the New Theme wizard (described below).

First-Arrival Auto-Seeding

The first time you complete persona generation without any existing themes, Callings.ai silently drafts three starter themes in the background and drops them straight into your grid.

Each starter theme appears as a placeholder card with a spinner and the message "Drafting your theme... this takes about 30 seconds." Once the Lambda finishes, the card swaps in the AI-written title and description and becomes a fully editable card like any other.

You do not need to stay on the page while this is happening. Leave the tab and come back: any themes that finished while you were away will already be populated.

This only fires when your theme list is empty. If you have already saved or kept at least one theme, no auto-seeding happens; every new theme after that is started through the New Theme wizard.

The New Theme Wizard

Clicking "+ New theme" opens a focused 2-step wizard that decides what the AI draft should be anchored to before any writing happens.

Step 1: Pick a starting point

The wizard opens on "What do you want to be known for?" and shows a tile grid of seeds drawn from your profile:

• Your personas appear first, one tile per persona, with the persona title and a short description.
• Your top five skills follow, one tile each.
• A "Something else" tile at the end lets you type a starting point in your own words (up to 140 characters). Use this whenever you want to build a brand in a direction your resume does not yet show, or when nothing in the suggested tiles fits.

Click a tile to select it. The selected tile is highlighted; clicking another tile swaps the selection. When you have made a pick, click Next to advance.

Step 2: Narrow it into a pillar (optional)

Step 2 opens on "Narrow this into a pillar." It shows a recap of the seed you picked (with a Change link if you want to go back) and a single textarea where you can describe the slice you actually want to own. Voice input is supported: tap the mic icon to dictate instead of type.

This field is optional. Leave it blank and the AI will shape the pillar from your seed alone. Fill it in when you have a clear angle in mind: "where I disagree with my peers", "the territory I keep coming back to", "the slice I want to own".

Click Generate theme to submit. The wizard closes and a placeholder card appears in your grid with a spinner. After about thirty seconds the card populates with the AI-drafted title and description, and the per-theme editor opens automatically so you can refine the draft.

Editing a Theme

Editing opens the per-theme editor modal directly: a Ghostwriter chat on the left and a simple Title and Description form on the right. The same modal is what auto-opens at the end of the New Theme wizard, pre-filled with the AI draft.

The chat pane

The chat is grounded in the same signals the initial generation uses: your resume, persona, goals, and brand pillars. It opens with a one-line intro inviting you to give it a topic, audience, or half-formed thought.

The Ghostwriter writes back a fresh draft into the form on the right. You can keep iterating: ask it to sharpen the angle, rewrite for a specific audience, propose a shorter title, or pivot the theme entirely. Each turn updates the form. The chat is ephemeral, so closing the modal clears the conversation; the form values are what actually save.

The 👻 icon next to the chat input opens the Ghostwriter presets: prewritten prompts for common moves like "make it sharper," "rewrite for a founder audience," or "propose three alternative titles."

The form pane

• Theme title: the label that will appear on the card and in post pickers. Aim for something concrete. "Leadership" is too broad; "Leading small product teams through ambiguity" produces specific posts.
• Description: a few sentences in your own voice describing the angle, audience, and why you keep coming back to this topic. The default the AI writes is a starting point, not the final answer. Rewriting it in how you actually talk is one of the highest-leverage edits you can make.

Click Save to commit. Whatever is in the form at save time is what gets stored; the chat is a tool to help you get there, not the source of truth.

Themes for Areas Not Yet on Your Resume

Sometimes you want to build a brand in a direction your past does not yet show. The AI will not propose these on its own since the persona and skill tiles only reflect what you have already documented.

To add a forward-looking theme, click + New theme to open the wizard, pick the "Something else" tile and type the angle in your own words, then optionally describe the slice you want to own in Step 2. The AI drafts the first version from your text; refine the title and description in the editor once the draft lands. Start posting under it even when early angles feel rough: the first few posts teach you what your real angle is, and the description gets sharper as you go.

The three-to-five rule still applies. If you already have five themes and want to add a sixth, consider pruning. A new theme that overlaps with an existing one is usually a sign the existing description needs sharpening, not that you need another row.

Themes as a Learning Loop

A theme list is not a fixed contract. It is a working hypothesis you refine by using it.

The temptation when you first see your generated themes is to spend an hour perfecting them before writing your first post. Resist it. The best refinement happens after the writing, not before:

• A theme that produces three boring drafts in a row is too broad. Sharpen it.
• A theme you keep wanting to post under but cannot articulate is signaling something. Sit with it and rewrite the description.
• A theme you have not touched in a quarter probably is not yours. Delete or replace.
• A theme whose description is generic ("AI in product") is usually one that needs to be reframed in a stance ("Why product teams should slow down on AI features"). The chat is good at this kind of rewrite if you ask.

Plan to revisit your themes every quarter or so. Five minutes of pruning beats a year of drift.

Themes for Teams and Organizations

Posting under an organizational hat is the other side of personal branding. Founders, executives, marketing leads, and team members who write on behalf of a company face a different problem: how to speak about the same organization in their own voice without sounding like one corporate account broadcast across many handles.

Themes solve this cleanly. The pattern:

• Create a shared organizational theme (for example, "Talking about our product" or "Our take on the industry"). The label and description capture the agreed positioning: who the audience is, how the offering is described, what stance the team wants to project.
• Each contributor adds that shared theme to their own theme list. Same name, same description, side by side with their personal themes.
• Everyone writes against the shared theme in their own voice. The Ghostwriter mixes the shared description with each contributor's persona, resume, and brand pillars, so the resulting posts stay aligned on positioning while sounding distinctly like the person who wrote them.

The result is a coherent organizational story told through many real human voices instead of a single corporate handle. Readers can tell the difference, and the difference matters.

Launching a Post from a Theme

Each theme card has a primary New post button. Clicking it opens the New Post wizard with that theme already locked in on step 1, so you only have to confirm the idea and the intent/format. See Create New Post for the full walkthrough.

Tips & Best Practices

• Aim for three to five. Fewer than three makes you sound one-note. More than five dilutes the brand. If you find yourself at seven, merge two pairs that overlap and delete the one that no longer fits.
• Make labels concrete. "Leadership" is too broad. "Leading small product teams through ambiguity" is a theme that produces specific posts.
• Write the description in your voice. The default descriptions are written by the AI to sound clean and balanced. Replace them with how you actually talk. Your future drafts will pick up the cadence.
• Treat the auto-seeded starters as a starting line, not a verdict. The three themes drafted on your first arrival are an opening hand. Delete the ones that do not feel like you, then keep what works and rewrite the descriptions in your own voice.
• Pick the right seed in the wizard. A persona seed produces themes about who you are; a skill seed produces themes about what you do; "Something else" produces themes about where you want to go. Choose the seed that matches the angle you want before adding any aspect text.
• Revisit quarterly. Themes drift as careers evolve, and a fifteen-minute audit keeps the list honest.
• Do not chase trends with new themes. Trends belong inside a theme, not as themes of their own.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How many themes should I have? A: Three to five. Three is a strong floor, five is a soft ceiling. The narrower the list, the more memorable the brand.

Q: Can I change my themes after I have already published posts? A: Yes. Editing or deleting a theme does not retroactively change the theme tag on posts you have already published. Existing posts keep the tag they had when they were created.

Q: What happens to my posts if I delete a theme? A: Posts that were tagged with the deleted theme keep their tag for historical purposes, but the theme will no longer appear as a selectable pillar for new posts. You can re-tag those posts to a different theme from the post's Write stage.

Q: Where did the global theme editor with undo / redo go? A: Themes are now created one at a time through the New Theme wizard and edited one at a time in a focused modal, instead of all at once in a tree view. Each card opens its own editor with its own chat thread. Reordering is done by dragging cards in the grid; create and delete are inline on each card.

Q: How do I start a fresh theme when the suggested tiles do not fit? A: Open the wizard and pick the "Something else" tile. Type the angle you actually want to write about in your own words, optionally add an aspect in Step 2, and the AI will draft a title and description from that. You can then keep iterating in the editor's Ghostwriter chat.

Q: Why does the AI suggest themes I would never write about? A: The AI reads your profile literally and can miss the difference between credentials and convictions. Delete what does not feel like you, then open the wizard again, pick "Something else", and describe in one sentence what you actually want to be known for; the next draft will be grounded in that instead of your resume signals.

Related Topics

• My Calling Posts Overview
• Create New Post
• Personal Branding

Themes are the part of publishing that pays off slowly and then all at once. The first ten posts under a focused theme feel like shouting into the void. By the fiftieth, your name and the topic are starting to travel together. Pick the few topics you are willing to own, then come back to them again and again.