How I Use AI To Learn 10x Faster

There is one fundamental law as a creator, writer, business owner, or really anybody attempting to achieve an ambitious goal:

Experiment until something works, then double down on it (while continuing to experiment).

By all measures, that’s how you achieve what you are trying to achieve.

But things are changing.

The way we learn, act, and thus achieve big goals is shifting because the technology available to us is rapidly changing.

Yes, I’m talking about AI.

No, I’m not talking about having AI do everything for you.

I want to show you how I’ve been using AI to learn faster, move faster, and thus achieve more (with higher quality) in less time.

I hope that you see the power in this, because these are the types of shortcuts that are only possible today.

Here’s the general process:

1. Understand what you want to achieve
2. Find an outstanding example of it
3. Have AI break how and why it works
4. Now that the context of the AI is constrained:
5. Use it as a coach / thought partner as you work toward your goal

By all measures, I believe this is the most accessible and powerful way to use AI.

I’ve tried having AI do things for me just by asking, and we all know that doesn’t work very well.

I’ve tried (and still incorporate in my process) more complex and technical methods for having AI create prototypes of an end product with extensive context given.

But for those who simply want to incorporate AI into their work without giving up the entirety of their creativity or agency, this is the way.

This way, we’re creating a simulation by our own design rather than treating AI as some intelligent entity, which most often it’s not.

Don’t think of LLMs as entities but as simulators. For example, when exploring a topic, don’t ask:

“What do you think about xyz”?

There is no “you”. Next time try:

“What would be a good group of people to explore xyz? What would they say?”

The LLM can channel/simulate many perspectives but it hasn’t “thought about” xyz for a while and over time and formed its own opinions in the way we’re used to. If you force it via the use of “you”, it will give you something by adopting a personality embedding vector implied by the statistics of its finetuning data and then simulate that. It’s fine to do, but there is a lot less mystique to it than I find people naively attribute to “asking an AI”.

– Andrej Karpathy

We’re taking this a step further by going to the “group of people” and getting the information from them directly, then giving that to the AI to work with.

Example 1) For Those Who Already Have Great Work

Let’s use the example of writing a newsletter, because it’s relevant to Substack.

If you have written plenty of newsletters (or social posts, YouTube scripts, etc), then you probably have a few that have done much better than the others.

As a writer, you must iterate. You must take what works and incorporate it in future pieces.

So, take one of your best newsletters and paste this into a chat:

I want you to break down the exact structure of this newsletter so that I can replicate it with other topics or ideas. Mainly, break down macro structure, the structure of each section, the psychological tactics used to hold attention, and the core types of ideas that compose it. Make this comprehensive, include examples from the newsletter, and act as if you are teaching me how to replicate it.

[paste your newsletter here]

This will, in essence, create a detailed and example-driven template from your best work.

Now, if you have different types of newsletters, you can do this with all of them, save the outputs somewhere safe, and use any of them for the next step.

In this chat, you can do any of the following:

• Give it a topic you want to write about plus all of the ideas you want to include and have it structure all of that into an outline
• Paste in a newsletter you are currently writing and ask it to grade any of the sections (hook, sections, etc)
• Have it brainstorm multiple paths you can take for continuing to write each section

The beauty in this is that you are talking to an unconscious version of yourself.

You wrote the initial newsletter that the AI turned into a template. Now you are brainstorming with that template to bring the best parts of yourself into more of your writing.

It’s worth mentioning that this doesn’t only apply to newsletters, of course.

You can do this for any type of content or goal.

But if you’re trying to do something you’ve never done before, this next example will help.

Example 2) For Beginners Who Want To Learn Faster

If you have never done what you are trying to achieve, you need to find another source that has.

There are two ways to go about this.

The first is just like we already did, except this time you have AI break down someone else’s work.

So, if I wanted to write a newsletter, I could find one that I want to emulate, and use the same prompt from above to have AI turn it into a template/guide.

Now, you can ask it to guide you through the writing process, ask questions for how to improve, or have it teach you why certain things worked. This is like creating your own course on demand.

If I wanted to write a persuasive landing page, I could find one that I really like and do the same thing.

So, even if I’m not a copywriter, I can write copy that will get me much better results than if I weren’t to do it this way, and I would cut through the noise and learn exactly what I need to learn, because I’m learning as I’m building. Everything is directly applicable, and nothing goes to waste.

The second way of doing this is by just asking the AI, because sometimes you can’t find a good example that you want to emulate.

As an example for copywriting (for landing pages so that they can convert better), I have been doing this more and more.

Personally, I’ll write the first draft of the landing page.

Then, I’ll start an AI chat by constraining the context down to be an expert copywriter. Not just telling the AI to be an expert copywriter.

I’ll say something like this:

Create a detailed guide on direct response marketing, offer creation, and product development using the principles from Eugene Schwartz, Alex Hormozi, and Steve Jobs. This should be comprehensive and thorough.

That should be enough to start you off on the right track.

And if you have PDFs of books from those people, you can plug those in as well.

Now, I can paste what I’ve written for my landing page into AI and ask for feedback or iterations on specific sections.

• I can ask it to give me 3 other headline variations
• I can ask it to tell me why my lead or offer introduction doesn’t work
• I can have it teach me about how to write a great CTA then grade me on mine

And if you don’t have a landing page that you’ve already written, you can ask the AI to guide you through writing it step by step, from crafting your customer avatar to writing the headline, the subheadline, then lead, and so on.

I’ve found this to be much more enlightening than just having the AI do it all for me, because I learn how to do it in the process, and I am still largely the one creating the end result, because I am still refining it according to my taste.