How To Read Books Fast With AI (And Remember What You Read)

So, a few weeks ago, I saw this tweet

and at first I was pretty upset. But

now, I kind of just feel bad for this

guy. And so, the tweet said, "Reading

books is now a waste of time. AI

reasoning models can distill key

insights and tell you exactly how to

implement them based on everything they

know about you." And as you can see, the

comments weren't that great. Now

there's some truth to what this guy is

saying, but that's because most people

in general don't know how to read and

they don't know how to remember what

they read. And it's not because they're

illiterate or anything, but because they

learned how to read in a Prussian style

education system designed to create

obedient soldiers, compliant citizens

civil servants, and well- behaved

workers. Now, I don't mean for this to

sound like some kind of conspiracy

theory like, "Oh, the Prussian style

education system." Um, but if you want

to learn more about this, go read my new

book, Purpose and Profit. The PDF is

free to download, so you can read that

or buy the paperback. But this school

system did this by focusing on mandatory

attendance, training for teachers

national curriculum and testing

division of students by age, and the

concept of grade levels. Reading to most

people is a performative act. They read

to find specific information for a test

be it a school test or a life test. They

read to show others that they've

accomplished something. Like how people

flex that they've somehow both read and

retained information from 52 books in a

year. They avoid reading difficult books

because if they don't understand it

what's the point? Now, here's the thing.

You don't read to find a specific

answer. That's just stupid. Why would

you waste 8 hours reading a book just to

find a few steps to accomplish something

when you can type a question into

Google, Reddit, or now AI? If you need

to figure out how to be more productive

or start a business, a book is probably

the last place you should look. And

that's if you're actually trying to

learn rather than to feel as if you're

making progress on being productive or

starting the business by reading a book.

Now, if you're trying to get the big

picture to understand things of being

productive or starting a business, then

yeah, a a book is a good place to go.

But I'd still argue that intelligent and

calculated research is still a better

option for that specific use case. But

that doesn't mean reading is irrelevant.

In fact, if you want to become the type

of person who is more productive, owns a

business, or is in good health, not just

a person who knows how to do those

things, that requires behavior change

which requires a fundamental rewiring of

your mind. And that doesn't come from

searching for specific information. Most

people are missing out on the plethora

of life-changing benefits that come from

reading. So, now let's talk about why

smart people read before we talk about

the how. So, first is the elephant in

the room, which is AI. And yes, AI has

all known information ready for you to

access. Emphasis on known. And if we've

learned anything about the rise of AI

it's that even if people have all

information that they could ever want at

the tip of their fingers, they still

don't do anything with the information

or even think to search for the

information. It's never been about how

much you know. It's always been about

knowing how much you don't know. You can

only cook with the ingredients you have.

Now, you can already find all of the

information that you need to make a

million dollars or to build a great

physique or to be in good health. But

even if people knew what to look for

where to look for it, and how to

implement it, they probably wouldn't do

much with their lives because this isn't

an information problem. This is an

identity problem. Your identity is

reflected in your daily choices. And if

you observe most people, they aren't

trying to do anything by their own

desire. They may search for new

information, but it's not to make a

change in their life. It's to feel as if

they are making progress by hoarding

information to sound smart or look

different without actually doing

anything different. They were

conditioned to go to school, get a job

repeat the same day for 45 years, and

hope that one day they can retire happy.

Those are the goals their mind is

automatically trying to achieve. Those

are the goals that filter what

information is noticed as important.

They don't need to use new information

because they don't generate new goals.

They live in a subconscious fear that

they will be cast out from the tribe if

they don't conform. So, they pursue the

goals of others for the entirety of

their life. And that's fine. But you're

watching this because you don't want to

be like them. And that's where the

importance of reading heavily comes into

play. You don't read to find information

that can already be found. You read to

explore the unknown and pursue your

curiosity. You read to discover things

you didn't know before and didn't even

think about searching with Google or

ChatGpt. You read to expand your mind to

places you didn't know were there. You

read to slowly reprogram who you are by

exposing yourself to new ideas that

can't be intentionally searched by an

identity that didn't even think to

search for them. The statement that AI

makes reading irrelevant assumes that

everyone reads because they want to find

information that is already known.

That's also information that everyone

else can find with AI or not. And that

means you're replaceable if you're going

after that information. So, it's not

about what information you have. It's

not even about what you do with that

information. It's about changing your

mind. Because your mind is how you

interact with reality. It's how you make

decisions that lead to a good or bad

life. Your mind doesn't change with a

few key points from a book summary or an

AI generated summary. It changes when

new ideas, actionable or not, fill in

missing pieces, challenge old beliefs

or give you a new angle to view a

situation from. No single person reads a

book and gets the exact same lessons out

of it. Each individual has their own

beliefs goals problem story and

interests that shape how they perceive

the information in the book. Book

summaries have been around for forever.

A lot of the greatest books, the most

helpful books, the the books that will

make you millions of dollars are in book

summaries. But that doesn't mean that

people go and read them. And that also

doesn't mean that the people that read

them actually do anything with it. And

it also means that the people that do do

something with it always get results

because the book summaries are missing

what makes it work. And one last point

here is that the obsession over

actionable steps and bulletoint

summaries is just another manifestation

of cheap dopamine and distraction. You

think that you're focused because you

want everything condensed down into a a

set of actionable steps, including my

long videos. That's not going to get you

anywhere. You have swapped brain rot

scrolling on TikTok for brain rot I need

actionable tips on YouTube. Read more

books. Read longer books. Read books

that have nothing to do with what you're

trying to achieve. Read the books that

people wouldn't even think about

summarizing with AI. That's where the

gold is. Now, that's a bit

counterintuitive of a statement because

we're going to learn how to read with AI

in a more impactful way, but we're not

going to do it in a way that summarizes

the book and just spits out actionable

steps. So, let's talk about that. How to

read deeper with AI, which is just

another layer on how you can read in the

first place. It just enhances and

enriches the process more because AI

doesn't have to be this thing that comes

and strips everything of its depth. So a

quote from Aristotle to start. The

purpose of knowledge is action not

knowledge. Smart people read in two

layers. The first layer is consumption.

They soak in the information to the

point of overwhelm and struggling to

understand. Layer two is digestion. They

study deeper, right? To systematically

reflect on what they learn and attempt

to connect the dots together through

action. So those are the two layers. and

understand that these layers, it's not

like you read a book all the way through

once in the first layer consumption and

then read a second time through uh for

digestion. Although you can do that, but

I'd recommend spacing out how often you

read a book uh by like a year, two years

because once you've gained more

experience in life and you come back to

the book that initially changed your

life or didn't mean anything to you, you

actually didn't want to read the book

when you come back to it from a lens of

new experience, you tend to get a lot

more out of it. A good piece of advice

is to read the books that changed your

life over and over again rather than

jumping to a bunch of new and different

books that don't do anything for you.

The first problem is that very few

people read. The second problem is that

when they read, they don't remember any

of it. The third problem is that people

don't like discomfort, so they don't

read difficult books. The fourth problem

is that since people don't increase the

complexity of knowledge they can make

sense of, they aren't able to take on

more challenging situations, the ones

that lead to more than superficial and

short-lived success. They turn 50 years

old with the intellectual maturity of a

15-year-old. Now, AI can't read a book

for you. Sure, it can read the book and

spit out a summary, but it can't read

the book for you. But it can help deepen

your understanding as you read. One

thing I've realized recently, because

with Cortex, with AI, I'm using it a

lot. I'm building solutions with it. I'm

trying to somehow bake it into my

writing process. And the more I do that

the more I realize it just can't write

for me. I don't think it ever will be

able to. Not because it can't write

exceptionally well. It really can. But

because when I read over what it wrote

it's it's just not me. It's not my

ideas. I didn't come up with it. And I

don't like putting things out that I

don't come up with. So that got me

thinking and I was messaging Matt, the

co-founder of Cortex, because we're

trying to figure out, okay, how is AI

actually useful and how do we actually

implement it really well? And we kind of

both came to the conclusion that it's

very useful for learning. It's useful

for getting information for going

through large swaths of information and

giving you what you need. It's

intelligence, right? You have access to

intelligence. That doesn't mean

creativity. That doesn't mean anything

else but intelligence. Intelligence can

aid in those things like creativity

other other other traits, but

intelligence itself is not those things.

So for writing specifically, I found

that AI is very good at giving me

information that can spark the ideas

that I want to come up with. It can

create outlines. It can create potential

posts for social media. It can create

YouTube headlines. It can give me

summaries from information that I can

include while I'm writing like I would

search with Google search. But

ultimately I feel with writing that I

have to come up with the idea that goes

into the writing. But if I come to that

idea from the information connected by

AI, then that's fine and can lead to a

lot better results. I see the

information from AI as a way to trigger

more thoughts and ideas in my head. So

that's kind of sort of how we're going

to use it for learning. So step one

consumption. This is using AI as a

reading partner. Most people read to

memorize as much as possible because

that's how they were trained to read in

school. They don't know any other way.

But here's the thing. You don't read to

remember every single sentence in a

book. You read to change how you view

the world by adding a few nodes to the

web of ideas that compose your mind

helping you see situations in a new

more complex and meaningful light. I

forget what the actual quote is by

Richard Fineman I think but uh he he

mentioned somehow that that physics

deepens his appreciation and the meaning

of nature around him because he

understands a deeper layer of how it

works. So so many people by not

understanding the complexity of a thing

sure you can find uh appreciation of

something like a plant but when you

understand its inner workings then it

starts to deepen your appreciation for

it and that can happen for so many other

domains in life for literally any topic

or domain of knowledge. Okay. So we're

going to read digitally here. So the

first step to this is going to library

and being able to download the PDFs of

books. Now, this sucks because one

Amazon is getting more uh constrained

with Kindle. They're not allowing you to

download books, and it was very

difficult to use those digitally in the

first place. And with physical books

you can't really have AI digest those

things because you can't reference the

information that's in the actual book.

So, my advice here is use something like

Z Library or their Telegram bot. I'll

leave a description for how to actually

install that in the description, but be

able to download the PDF of whatever it

is that you are using. I would recommend

you go and purchase the PDF, I mean the

paperback if you decide to download the

PDF just to support the author

themselves. This is a catch22. This

probably isn't a smart thing to do, but

I would recommend just supporting the

author when you can if you download

their PDF. Okay. So, we're going to hop

inside of Cortex or you can use any

other AI tool that can reference uh

PDFs, but we're going to go to learn.

We're going to go to be my reading

companion. And then you're going to

replace all of this text with you. You

can follow this along if you'd like to

if you already have a PDF inside of your

library. But we're just going to say uh

what was it? Help me

understand this as I read it. And then

you're going to drag in uh the actual

PDF that you're trying to reference. So

you can drag it in here or you can drag

it in to the entire workspace and it

will create uh a PDF with it. And once

it's added to your library, you can

reference it with at. But we're just

going to say this for now. Uh send it.

You can also use different AI models.

Um, I'll use Gemini Flash here just

because it can handle larger amounts of

information and it's a lot faster just

for the sake of uh tutorial. All right.

So, what this did is it first spat out

some clarifications, some concepts

inside the book, etc., etc. And what you

do inside of this chat is you just come

back to it as you're reading. So, it

says here, please feel free to share

your thoughts, notes, or anything else

that comes to mind. Also feel free to

send your own notes in the chat. It said

that twice. Okay. But as you're reading

whenever you reach a point where you

lack understanding or you want to dive

deeper, you can just type it in here or

you can copy paste from the actual PDF.

Purpose and profit PDF. Open that here.

Start reading. I can read it here if I'd

like, but I can go to the specific part

of it and I can just say, "Hey, I'm

having trouble understanding the concept

of deep generalism or whatever it is."

You just ask your question. You take

notes inside of here. You send it each

time. And then all inside of this chat

you'll have this long context window of

you conversing back and forth with the

book itself. And this just helps give

you a deeper understanding of the book

as you read it. Now, I want to just give

you a few tips on reading in general. If

it doesn't interest you, you probably

won't learn anything, so you can drop

it. You're not in a race to finish the

book. In fact, the slower the better.

So, take a year or two to finish if you

need to. And you can put it down or pick

it up anywhere in between. We don't need

to have this rigid structure because

that's just not how digesting or

consuming information in your mind

works, right? If you hit an idea that is

very important to you, you may not want

to continue reading because all of the

the information after that idea that you

want to retain and think about and

digest and talk to AI about. If you keep

going past that, the information may

take over and you may forget about it

completely when you don't want to do

that. And then you don't take anything

from the book. If you take one idea from

the book, one life-changing idea from

the book, that is worth all the time it

took to actually get that idea. The next

tip is that you can read multiple books

at a time. I often have three books in

an audio book that I bounce between, and

you'd be surprised how many connections

you make between them, especially if

they're on similar topics. I remember I

was reading a book on systems thinking

and flow and evolutionary psychology and

then I was listening to something on

spiral dynamics and just in between I

don't have to read a full chapter. I

don't I can just sit down and read a

book. I have these books like spread out

throughout my house. So whenever I'm

bored I just pick it up, read for 10

minutes. I get something out of it. I go

on a walk. I munch on it. I put on

another book. Boom. I'm getting all of

these ideas. I don't like reading

linearly. So that's just something for

you to try. and it may make you enjoy

reading that much more because you don't

feel like you have to commit to an

entire book when 80% of it isn't

something you really care about. So for

the consumption layer of reading, you're

trying to focus on just getting to an

idea that really makes you want to stop

and think and then you transition to

digestion and you turn off if you're

listening to an audiobook, turn it off.

Put your bookmark in the actual book

that you're reading. Start talking to AI

with it. Start thinking deeper. Start

questioning it. Start taking notes.

Really sit and think about the idea.

That will aid you so much more than

continuing reading to because you feel

like you have to finish it when you

don't. So talking about layer two, which

is digestion. We're going to use AI for

reflection and exploration. So we use

this first AI chat to take notes and

understand concepts deeper. that allows

you to keep going through the book while

maintaining clarity. Right? You don't

want to continue going through the book

if you don't understand what the book

said. Now, the thing with digestion is

that fully digesting a book's ideas

takes much longer than reading the book

over a weekend. Some ideas even take

years to make sense of. There have been

many times in my life where the insight

didn't strike until I had enough

experience for it to click. And that's

just it. Most people remember very

little of what they read because they

don't see how it applies to their life.

They can't integrate the lessons in a

way where they don't need to remember

every sentence of the book because it

reflects in their daily actions. Listen

to that part again. You don't need to

memorize lines if it's a deep part of

who you are. So for the digestion layer

of reading, we have a few options. The

first is to explore connections of a

topic to deepen your understanding of

it. Because as a reminder, the purpose

for reading is behavior change through

identity change. When you spot the

connections that lead to the book's

lessons clicking in your head, that's

when positive behavior change happens.

All right, so we are back inside of

Cortex and we're going to go to this new

AI workflow that I recently added

because it was missing is make sense of

a topic or idea. And the purpose of this

is to give you a bunch of different

connections and how it relates to your

life, how what you can do, how you can

integrate it into your life through

actionable steps. So here I'm just going

to say I want to explore uh the concept

of deep

generalism from at purpose

and profit

uh from the sources. We'll just go to

the PDF and how it relates to my life.

And again I'm going to use Gemini Flash

but you can use any of them especially

even the new ones GPT 4.1 Gro 3. We just

added those. Uh but any of these Claude

actually I'll use Claude. I like Claude

better. I I don't know why I have this

thing with Claude. So now what it does

here when I ask this question is it asks

me five clarifying questions. So what

aspects of deep generalism particularly

resonated? How do you describe your

current approach to learning and

developing skills? What are some of your

primary life goals? Do you feel any

tension between specialization and

generalism? What specific challenges do

you face? So I'll fill this out and then

we'll come back and I have a few more

tips. So I put in my answers to the

questions and then it spits out the

topic exploration which gives a brief

overview of what deep generalism is from

that chapter in the book purpose and

profit. And then the cool thing is that

it goes over personal connection. So it

it helps you ground what could be this

abstract idea into what you can

potentially do with your life based on

that thing or how you can integrate it

into your life. So, education, freedom

digital creation potential cuz I said my

goal was becoming an internet writer or

creator. Uh, AI proof career path. Your

intuition about AI making specialization

risky is wellounded. Pure specialists in

coding, writing or graphic design are

already seeing aspects of their work

automated. The human advantage will be

in connecting diverse knowledge and

providing coherent vision. They're

pretty cool. Uh, entrepreneurial

advantage. The tension of choice. Your

struggle with choosing one thing isn't

indecisiveness. It's recognition that

artificial constraints don't serve your

goals. Cool. Success doesn't require

complete specialization. And then

practical in integration. So developing

T-shaped knowledge, which is cool. I

don't think I ever I don't think I even

brought up the concept of T-shaped

which means uh you have breadth across

many domains and then you go deep into

two to three areas as it says here

which is pretty cool. synthesis

projects, project-based learning, build

a learning system, find generalist

mentors, habit integration, daily

connection cross-disciplinary really

cool. I I feel like you should go

through this and do this yourself, of

course, on whatever it is that you're

reading so you understand how to

integrate that idea you love into your

life so it becomes a part of you. Now

what this does is this adds a completely

new layer to learning that is rarely

taught or talked about. even further

you can save a response from the last AI

chat as a document and reference it in

this new chat to help make sense of it.

So, what we mean by that is if I go back

to my chats, I go back to the reading

companion and I take my notes in here, I

ask questions, I can save any of its

responses as a document here, new

document, and just name this like notes.

Name it whatever you want. But then if

we go back to the exploring a specific

concept inside of learn and make sense

of a concept of idea I can just say I

want to explore at

notes and that contains the document

that you want to reference right there.

I don't know why it isn't entering right

now but whatever it it works right or I

can add it here. Let's see uh notes.

Yeah, adds there. So just do that. Now

the second point for the digestion layer

is using knowledge for action not

knowledge as Aristotle said because most

people don't need more motivation. They

need more clarity. You already have

goals and ambitions but you never pursue

them because point A where you are and

point B where you want to be need a

bridge of smaller goals and actions you

can take to trek between the two. And

without the clarity bridge anxiety and

overwhelm start to seep in. Now, many of

you are familiar with the simple life

reset planner that I've given out

before, which was like a a template that

breaks down your average day, your

anti-vision, your vision, your hierarchy

of goals, your priority tasks, and then

it gives you like a planner every day.

Now, you can still go through that and

do that. And when you sign up for

Cortex, that's automatically put inside

of your workspace. But the problem with

templates, especially when they're like

contemplative templates, is that most

people just get stuck because it's a

blank page. It's difficult for people to

guess what they want out of life and

what their goals should be because

that's in the future. So the best thing

you can do in my opinion is to get the

at least get the first iteration of your

vision and goals out on paper so that

then you have an anchor so when you go

about life you can decide okay yes I do

want this I don't want this and you can

refine it with time. So what I did is I

turned this into a the life reset map

inside of Cortex. So, all you do is you

press this, you press enter. It's going

to take maybe 10 minutes of interview

questions. And once you're done with

those interview questions, it will spit

out a message that you can then add as a

document to keep this inside of your

cortex. And whenever you want to

reference this and something else that

pertains to planning or your goals, you

can just type at my life reset map and

it will pull the information from this.

So, it starts with my vision statement

and you can read through this as we go

through it if you'd like, but then it

breaks that down into a hierarchy of

goals based on career, location

relationships lifestyle living

situation, personal growth, etc., etc.

based on my vision and what I told it.

It gives me a skill and knowledge

development plan. So, basic digital

creation skills, self-management for

independent work with different

resources and books to read. So if you

don't know what to read for all the

steps we talked about previously, this

is a good way to come up with those

personal growth skills, my daily

structure. So it gives me a potential

way to uh a potential routine to start

and then it has an implementation

strategy that works up uh to more

difficulty, which is awesome. And then

has accountability methods, next steps

so on so forth. And then you can go

through the be my clarity coach next if

you need help with this which this is

actually fun. We'll go be my clarity

coach my ideal life vision. Uh I'm just

going to say we already have all of

this. So I'm going to say break down at

my life reset map and guide me through

it. And what this should do is give me a

challenge at the end of this output. So

it gives me some recommendations, a

challenge, reflection, and then I can

refer to this every single day. So, I

can refer to the reading partner when

I'm reading something to take notes, and

I can refer to this clarity coach to

help guide me, and I can ask questions

or overcome procrastination or limiting

beliefs as I act on my day. Now, step

three in the digestion layer is to

synthesize the ideas with writing to

reflect on what you learn. The reason

behind this is the Fineman technique

which is a learning method popularized

by physicist Richard Fineman. And in

short, it's about deeply understanding a

concept by explaining it in simple terms

as if you were teaching it to someone

with no prior knowledge. So you choose a

concept. So you select the topic you

want to understand. You teach it. You

explain the concept in simple language

as if you were teaching it to a child.

You identify gaps. So when you struggle

to explain something clearly, identify

the areas where understanding is weak.

and then you review and simplify. So you

go back to the source material, relearn

the concepts, and then try explaining

them again in even simpler terms. Now

the best way to do this is to write

because I'm assuming you are studying

something because you are one deeply

interested in it and two want to

integrate it as some part of your life.

Now, you can do this inside of the

reading partner chat or just inside of a

document or a note or whatever it may

be. But this becomes so much more

powerful when you teach in public, when

you have feedback, when it's tied to

your work. So when you teach what you

know in public, aka writing on the

internet or social media, because that's

the new media, that's how you build any

form of audience or distribution for any

type of creative work or work in general

that you want to do independently. You

open up the possibility for a few things

there. The first is that you learn much

much faster because you have a forcing

function for understanding. Two is you

attract an audience of people with

similar interests and these people are

your network and future customers. The

third is that you build leverage going

into a future of job replacement. The

creator economy is one area that is

proving to not be replaced even though

everyone screams there will be an

overabundance of content. Now, we've

talked about this before in plenty of

videos, so go watch those, the oneperson

business playlist and other things. And

because of that, I'll spare you the

description here, but I just wanted to

present that as an option. So, writing

to reflect on what you learn. You can do

it in private inside of your chats that

we went over for the reading companion

or you do it in public if you'd like to.

So, I hope that was helpful. I hope it

helps you read deeper and organize your

life in a better way. If you want to try

out Cortex or you want to get the

two-hour writer course or the oneperson

business launchpad or read my latest

book for free with the PDF, you can find

all those links in the description. With

that, I'll see you in the next video.

Bye.