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How To Learn Anything 10x Faster Than Anyone

Dan Koe44:40Added Aug 31, 2026

Capture any idea, find proven ideas, and publish to all platforms: https://eden.so/go/learn-to-writeThe creators bootcamp - learn to write and what to write ...

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Contributed by 刘嘉琪

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  1. Why do you want to remember everything?

  2. 00:00If you need to remember it, it's not important. If it's important, you will remember it. For some reason, it's
  3. 00:07become an obsession to just remember everything you read. There are videos on YouTube with millions of views. It is a
  4. 00:14very popular and viral topic. And nothing against the people that I'm flashing on the screen. I'm friends with
  5. 00:20quite a few of them. But it seems like people feel like if they don't retain the knowledge from what they read,
  6. 00:25they're a failure or they wasted their time when that's not the point of reading at all. Why would you want to
  7. 00:30memorize every word of a book in the first place? I know why. You want to sound smart. It's an unconscious status
  8. 00:37symbol for you. You want to impress others with your articulation and intelligence, but you don't realize that
  9. 00:42sounding smart comes from understanding, not memorization. And understanding requires a much different approach to
  10. 00:49learning. It also doesn't help that schools tested you on your ability to memorize. You studied for hours just so
  11. 00:55you could pencil in the right answer when that's not how life works at all. I get it. You want to acquire knowledge so
  12. 01:01that you can make better decisions and work yourself into a more advantageous life situation with more money and power
  13. 01:07so you don't have to worry about your day-to-day survival. Everyone wants that, but memorizing facts is the least
  14. 01:13effective way to get there. So that's what we're here to talk about. how to actually learn, not just memorize things
  15. 01:21so that you can acquire knowledge. And that knowledge can be used to create a better future for yourself. That's why
  16. 01:26you acquire knowledge in the first place. After we talk about how to actually learn things really fast or
  17. 01:32master any skill really fast, we're going to talk about why your notetaking system and your bookmarks and the
  18. 01:39information you love to collect and hoard in your second brain or the sex doll for mental [ __ ] We're
  19. 01:45going to talk about how those are largely useless. Now, speaking of a second brain, we've actually been building one for quite a long time. It's
  20. 01:51called Eden. Some of you guys know it, but we just added a library feature, a reader feature, so you can click the
  21. 01:58link to this video, add it to Eden, and read and highlight the transcript so that those highlights are saved. And you
  22. 02:04can pull in Kindle highlights, Xbookmarks, sniped highlights, and have them all in one place. But the
  23. 02:09difference is that you're not maintaining this and organizing it because we organize it for you. You'll understand why this is important later,
  24. 02:16but I'm just leaving that here in case you want to actually try it. And of course, it has the best outlier tool on
  25. 02:21the market. So, you can find outliers or high-erforming ideas if you're a creator on any platform. And then you can
  26. 02:27schedule and publish to any platform or do that all from the Claude MCP if you use Claude. So, I'll leave it at that.
  27. 02:33But, if you're a creative or creator and you aren't using Eden yet, I don't know what you're doing. I don't know why you
  28. 02:39would willingly get less results by not using Eden. All right, let's talk about how to actually learn anything fast. And

  29. How to actually learn anything fast

  30. 02:46I'm going to start with a previous tweet of mine because it summarizes it quite well. Learning comes from struggle, not
  31. 02:52memorization. Start the project. No, don't watch 20 tutorials beforehand. Let it expose the gaps in your knowledge.
  32. 03:00Try to figure it out. Search for the answer when your mind is most likely to remember it. Publish the project, then
  33. 03:06repeat for life. Most people have no idea how to learn because most people have no idea what the learning process
  34. 03:13is. The reason that most learning fails is because there's no negative feedback
  35. 03:18loop. You can think of it like this. If you don't have the goal of getting in shape, and I'm talking a deep
  36. 03:23intrinsically generated goal, not a superficial goal you're pursuing to fit in like a New Year's resolution, then a
  37. 03:29night of heavy drinking and partying won't register as a problem or negative feedback because it doesn't impact your
  38. 03:37non-existent goal of performing on your morning run or gym session the next day. You can go to work just fine with a
  39. 03:42hangover because you don't give a [ __ ] about how well you do at your job. That's only one example, but it applies
  40. 03:48to every single area of your life. To business, to relationships, to health, like we just talked about. If I have the
  41. 03:55goal of hitting a PR in the gym, a bench press PR, or running a marathon, do you think I'm going to go out and drink? Do
  42. 04:01you think I'm going to go out and do degenerative activities? Maybe I will if I'm not actually serious about the goal.
  43. 04:08But if I do, then it's going to impact my ability to hit the goal. And if that goal really means a lot to you and you
  44. 04:15do go out and party and drink anyways, which I'm not completely against, but to illustrate a point, if you do those
  45. 04:20things, your training is going to suffer and you aren't going to hit your goals as fast as you would or at all. And if
  46. 04:27you really value that area of your life, health, you're eventually going to realize, man, I need to stop doing this.
  47. 04:34That's called learning. Learning is a cybernetic process. Cybernetics sounds
  48. 04:39like something related to cyborgs, but it stems from the Greek word kubernetes, I believe, meaning steersman or
  49. 04:46helmsman, the person who steers the ship. The word cybernetics was chosen because the helmsman is the perfect
  50. 04:52image of a feedback system. The helmsman doesn't just point the ship in a direction once. He constantly reads the
  51. 04:59current state like the wind, the waves, or the heading, and then he compares it against the intended course and adjusts.
  52. 05:05In other words, the process of trial and error. And so few people have the direction that allows them to notice
  53. 05:12errors in their life. Cybernetics illustrates the properties of intelligent systems. There's a reference
  54. 05:18signal or the goal. So the system holds a target state. There's the sensor or perception. So the system reads its
  55. 05:25current state. There's the comparator or the gap between where you are and where you want to be. So the system computes
  56. 05:32the difference between target and current state. And the difference is the error signal. Then there's the actuator
  57. 05:38or the behavior. So the system acts to reduce the error. And you can see this
  58. 05:43all around you. Cybernetics is more of a frame of how to view reality. It's a frame you can put on to course correct
  59. 05:50in a better direction. When you look at a thermostat, it turns on the heat when it gets too cold because it notices when
  60. 05:57it's too cold, the error signal, and then course corrects. And that's one small that's not a very intelligent
  61. 06:03system. You can also think of how your pancreas secretes insulin when blood sugar rises. Your body is one system
  62. 06:10composed of so many different intelligent systems. And that exposes the issue here very well. When most
  63. 06:15people try to learn something new, they focus on content. They hoard material and try to absorb it with space
  64. 06:21repetition or flashcards or courses and learning the fundamentals. They assume learning is an input process. And now
  65. 06:28I'm not saying that those things are bad. I'm not saying that space repetition doesn't work or that courses are bad. I love courses. I take them all
  66. 06:35the time because I like to learn things. But in reality, learning is an output process because output demands input.
  67. 06:43We're going to talk about in a future video intellectual obesity and how it's kind of become a crisis or an epidemic.
  68. 06:49But you can think of information and food as the same thing. Information is food for your mind. If you're eating too
  69. 06:55much food and you're not exercising, you're not putting out energy. you're not using the food or shuttling it to
  70. 07:00muscle growth or whatever your goals are. The same thing applies to the mind. Just consuming, consuming, consuming.
  71. 07:07Even if it's self-improvement, like that's no better than just consuming brain rot if you're not doing anything
  72. 07:14with it because it's making you mentally obese. I'm not trying to attack you personally because I was the same way.
  73. 07:20But a lot of people think that, ooh, I'm scrolling self-improvement content rather than brain rot, so I'm better
  74. 07:25than the people that are scrolling the brain rot. when you're doing the exact same thing, you're still getting the cheap dopamine hit. And honestly, it
  75. 07:32could be worse because you're just getting a false sense of progress. So, a goal creates the error signal. The error
  76. 07:39signal creates the filter. The filter creates relevance. So, whether it's useful because most people fill their
  77. 07:45mind with noise and things they will never use. And then the relevance creates retention. I've talked about
  78. 07:51this many times before, but think of a person who has been deeply conditioned by the default path. Society assigned
  79. 07:57them the goal of go to school, get a job, retire at 65 and that's all they know. That is the goal that is directing
  80. 08:03their learning and behavior because they behave in a certain direction. They make an error and then unconsciously most of
  81. 08:09the time they correct the error to maintain the direction that was set for them by society. So the destiny that
  82. 08:15they were assigned inevitably will come true even if the person themselves aren't conscious of it or didn't want it
  83. 08:21in the first place. They just never questioned their conditioning. And now the pernitious thing here, I like the
  84. 08:26word pernicious. I don't even know if that was the right word to use, but the pernitious thing here is that the person
  85. 08:32who is conditioned to go down the default path will not notice opportunities like money-making
  86. 08:37opportunities or health opportunities or opportunities to actually improve their life beyond the outcome that was
  87. 08:44promised to them, right? The outcome of retiring at 65, whatever your image of that looks like. That's your bar. That's
  88. 08:51the highest you can go with that goal. And so you will not notice these opportunities of say starting a business
  89. 08:56or becoming a creator or starting a personal brand or even leveraging AI in an intelligent way because your brain is
  90. 09:04actively filtering it out. It doesn't even have the chance to register and stick and retain because you're not
  91. 09:10working toward a goal that would demand that as input. These people are not in
  92. 09:15control of their lives. They are a puppet of someone else's ideals. And this is most people. I'm talking very
  93. 09:21negatively here, but this is just how it is. In order to fix this or in order to course correct, you need the awareness
  94. 09:27of the problem because you may or may not have noticed that if this is if this video is actually registering with you,
  95. 09:34a new goal is starting to form in your head and your behavior and learning are starting to pick up and notice
  96. 09:40opportunities in that direction. And by simply having awareness that this could be a problem, that's going to direct
  97. 09:47your behavior in a certain way. We'll also talk about anti-marketing in a future video, but this is largely
  98. 09:53marketing as well. This is a a better form of marketing if you understand deeply how psychology works, not the
  99. 09:59surface level psychology that goes viral on Instagram, but actual psychology and
  100. 10:04how learning and behavior work. Now, this is the part that is important. If you consciously create your own frame by
  101. 10:11knowing exactly what you don't want out of life and comparing it to an evolving vision of what you do want out of life,
  102. 10:18you are only then able to sense when you are off track, notice the error, correct the direction you are heading and learn
  103. 10:25as a byproduct. Now, I want to repeat that part. You need to know exactly what you don't want out of life and compare
  104. 10:32it to an evolving vision of what you do want out of life. That is it. That is
  105. 10:38the key. That is literally success. That's it. What do you not want out of
  106. 10:43life? What do you hate? What are the experiences that you've had? Look, just create an image of a person in your head
  107. 10:49that you would despise being like. And now aim in the other direction. What does that person look like? What is
  108. 10:55their potential? And now that's imaginary. So you have to work towards that, but you have to refine it like a
  109. 11:00sculpture over time by comparing it to what you don't want or where you are now. And slowly more and more and more
  110. 11:07you eventually become the vision that you had. So all of that makes sense hopefully. What do we actually do? Step

  111. Become obsessed with a meaningful goal

  112. 11:14one is to become obsessed with a meaningful goal. And the way you become obsessed is to look at your current
  113. 11:19actions and realize where your life will end up if you don't change. And for most people that outcome is not pretty at
  114. 11:26all. Sit with that image. Actually sit with it. Pause this video. Think and let it fill you with this potent emotion and
  115. 11:34redirect that emotional energy toward a better direction for your life. Moments like these are the moments that my life
  116. 11:40change. And it's very hard to explain. Some of you have felt it, but you just get filled with like I I guess you could
  117. 11:47say this divine energy, something you've never felt before. And like you get choked up and you just want to attack
  118. 11:52whatever goal you have. Like that is one of the greatest feelings in the world. And only then can you actually align the
  119. 11:58goals you pursue with the aim of your future. Only then does a useful learning process start. The opposite of schooling
  120. 12:05where your learning is determined by the direction and goals society sets for you. The other thing is that being
  121. 12:10extreme toward a goal changes your brain and enhances neuroplasticity. And so in
  122. 12:16my eyes, a lot of people tell you like, oh, don't quit your job. Have a backup plan first. Do all of this. And that's
  123. 12:21great. Like that can work. Absolutely. But personally, I thrive when I'm under pressure. I want to quit my job. I want
  124. 12:28to feel the weight of the world on my back and I want to carry it. I know that's a very masculine thing. So, with
  125. 12:34those with a very feminine orientation in my audience, you may not resonate with that, but I think you can get where
  126. 12:39I'm coming from. To me, that is a much better option is to just burn the boats.
  127. 12:45I like to romanticize my life a little bit. I like to feel like I'm going to war because that's what my brain
  128. 12:50responds to and it gives me a huge advantage over other people who don't have that same energy and drive and it

  129. Don’t start learning

  130. 12:57just feels amazing. Now, step two, don't start learning because the life you want
  131. 13:03lies at the end of a series of meaningful projects. Doesn't really make sense, but a project is simply a
  132. 13:10structured set of goals and milestones. It's a way of creating something tangible to work toward a goal. It's the
  133. 13:17way that you achieve goals is by creating a project and completing the project and preferably publishing the
  134. 13:23project whatever that means in the context of the project. If it's a tangible product I mean project you put
  135. 13:28it out as a product. If it's a tangible writing then you publish it to get feedback from the market by posting it
  136. 13:34on social media. Your mind is to be treated as a project as is your body your relationships or your financial
  137. 13:41situation or any other domain or skill in your life. A project creates a frame for your learning by filtering out
  138. 13:48unimportant noise. Anything that does not directly move the project forward is not worth learning right now at least
  139. 13:54because you won't retain it anyway. In other words, when you want to learn something new, don't start learning.
  140. 14:00Don't start studying. Don't start watching tutorials. You start the project. You start with an image of what
  141. 14:06you actually want to do in the world first and then you take the first step toward the goal. We'll talk about that a

  142. Seek specific knowledge

  143. 14:12bit more. But step number three is to seek specific knowledge. And we'll start with a quote from Naval because specific
  144. 14:19knowledge is kind of Naval's thing. I ultimately think that everyone should be figuring out what it is that they
  145. 14:24uniquely do best, that aligns with who they are fundamentally, and that gives them authenticity, that brings them
  146. 14:30specific knowledge, that gives them a competitive advantage, that makes them irreplaceable, and they should just lean
  147. 14:35into that. And sometimes you don't know what that is until you do it. As a side
  148. 14:40note on that quote, you eventually come to realize this, but beginners especially get so stuck in like what do
  149. 14:46I do? What do I do? You just do something. Like you learn what to do by doing something. And for some reason
  150. 14:52that doesn't register for them because it's a paradox. They don't get it. They're afraid that as an example,
  151. 14:58posting on social media, oh, their first post is going to flop. It's not going to do well.
  152. 15:03Really? You don't think that the first post is going to the first post is going to do amazing? you're just going to go
  153. 15:09viral and get famous all of a sudden. You don't think that it takes years. What are you thinking? What's going through your head? Of course, it's going
  154. 15:15to suck. Of course, it's going to be terrible. Of course, you're going to be embarrassed. That's the entire [ __ ] point. Oh, it gets me so riled up to
  155. 15:23just like I'm not a violent person, but oh well, I just kind of just want to like punch you in the face. It's a bit
  156. 15:28intense, but I I want to give you a little slap and be like, "Hey, dude, just post." Schools teach general
  157. 15:34knowledge or knowledge required to do a job. They do not teach how to navigate your own path. They narrow you into one
  158. 15:40area of study which by nature does not prepare you to direct your own work through the path of entrepreneurship or
  159. 15:46simply doing what you want to do. Self-education is the process of learning what's necessary to achieve
  160. 15:52self-generated goals. Again, no hoarding general knowledge to feel like you're learning. So, as an example, let's say
  161. 15:59that I wanted to learn After Effects, right? Adobe After Effects, a very complex animation software that when you
  162. 16:05go into, you're like, I have no idea what to do. It's just a bunch of buttons that mean nothing. And so your first
  163. 16:11thought is, okay, I should go watch a tutorial on how to use After Effects. But then you do that and then you're no
  164. 16:16better off from when you started. You look in there and you're like, where is everything again? And then you
  165. 16:21get stuck in this loop of like, I need to learn this software inside and out before I even create anything, which
  166. 16:27isn't the case at all. Instead, you need something to actually build. You need something you want to create an
  167. 16:33animation. You need a vision or an image of it in your head. When people sign up for Eden, there's only so many tutorials
  168. 16:40we can create before it's up to you to just figure out how to do what you want to do. The software is a tool and you
  169. 16:46need to use it to actually achieve something to use it like a wrench. How
  170. 16:51you would use a tool. You can't use a tool if you have nothing to use it for. And so when people come to me and they're like,"Well, how do I how do I
  171. 16:58use this?" And sure, I we need to create tutorials and teach how to use it, but my first question is always, "What are
  172. 17:04you trying to do? Are you trying to write content? Okay, do you know how to write content? Have you educated
  173. 17:10yourself? Have you started?" And only then can I give you a proper answer? Because another thing that peeves me so
  174. 17:16much is that there's software coming out, there's tools coming out, there's videos coming out where they just think like, "Oh, I'll teach you how to go
  175. 17:22viral in 5 seconds or this app will make you go viral." That doesn't work. That's
  176. 17:28not how it works because you have to learn the intricacies of attention and psychology and you have to practice so
  177. 17:34many times to get feedback from the market on your posts so that pattern recognition over time builds in your
  178. 17:40head to the point where you are an expert at that thing. It doesn't matter if Claude tells you that a piece of
  179. 17:46content is going to go viral because do you understand how attention and value shifts over time? Content is subjective.
  180. 17:53Code is more objective. Yes, Claude and AI can write code that works because the
  181. 17:59end result that you're looking for that you determine value, the value of the code by is does this work with content,
  182. 18:06with writing, with creativity, with art, it's very subjective. The value changes over time according to culture and
  183. 18:12market sophistication and how much an idea has been ran through to the point where everyone thinks it's just basic or
  184. 18:17cliche. And so in order for us to build a good tool like Eden, unless we want to go against our morals and just make a
  185. 18:24ton of money, like I could easily, very easily just give you a system that would probably make you go viral once, but
  186. 18:31that would be freaking useless to you. It wouldn't do anything. I need to create a tool that's actually good that
  187. 18:36you're going to use consistently rather than just sign up once, go viral, and then not be able to do anything again and pay a ton of money to do so. So,
  188. 18:43back to the After Effects example. Sorry, that gets me very heated and I am
  189. 18:48essentially going to war with every other social media app because I do not like them. So, you need to start the
  190. 18:54project with the knowledge you have. And if you don't have knowledge, then you find a specific tutorial that is as
  191. 19:00similar to the project you want to create as it can be. So with After Effects, if I want to create a
  192. 19:06minimalist line animation, right, like I used to on Instagram, then I would go
  193. 19:11and try to find a tutorial of someone that creates that specific animation or something slightly similar to it so that
  194. 19:18I can directly apply what I'm learning in the moment. And the thing is that most of the tutorial will be useless,
  195. 19:25but you'll be filtering it out and you'll be noticing the things that you can actually go and apply. And then you do that over and over again until you
  196. 19:31stack enough techniques. Not every single tool in the After Effects sidebar or the Photoshop sidebar or the Canva or
  197. 19:38the Eden sidebar, but you stack enough techniques to get the result that you want, which is specifically your goal.
  198. 19:45As an easier example, think of learning an instrument like the guitar. Do you immediately go and study music theory?
  199. 19:52Probably not. You simply choose the song that you want to play and then you learn
  200. 19:57the first chord of the song because you try to play it and you're like, I don't I don't know what to play. You learn the
  201. 20:02first chord and then the second and then the third and then eventually you pick up other things like, hm, this doesn't
  202. 20:08sound right. Okay, I need to tune the guitar in a certain way. I need to add a capo. And then you pick up little hacks
  203. 20:14until you're able to play one song and then the next and then the next. And then at that point, you feel kind of
  204. 20:19confident that you could maybe try creating your own very simple song. And then years later, you're just going
  205. 20:25crazy and you can do anything. You're a master. That is how you learn. So, we just learned all of that. How to
  206. 20:31actually learn things fast. And it's literally just do things. For all the people that want a bullet point summary,

  207. The Second Subconscious (Delete Your Note-Taking System)

  208. 20:37go and do things. See if that helps you. But now I want to talk about the note-taking systems, the second brains,
  209. 20:43the obsession with just capturing ideas and writing down notes and hitting the bookmark or save and then never looking
  210. 20:50at them again because there's obviously something valuable there, right? There's something useful. You saved it for a
  211. 20:55reason, but you haven't actually taken it and applied it to your life. Am I saying that you're going to apply thousands upon thousands of notes to
  212. 21:02your life? Probably not. But there's a lot of gold that's just sitting there. So what how do you actually manage that
  213. 21:08stuff? Because with technology that actually enables you to do a lot. People just aren't using it correctly. And I've
  214. 21:14tried all of the systems before. I started my second brain journey with Rome research if any of you guys know
  215. 21:20it. And it completely changed how I write my newsletters. I built a knowledge base of very potent ideas. And
  216. 21:27then I was able to pull from those when it was time to write because the research was already there. My
  217. 21:32note-taking was essentially like preparative research. And a few years ago, I even built Cortex, which wasn't
  218. 21:40meant to be a second brain software, but that's kind of what it turned into because I was trying to take my writing
  219. 21:45process, what helped me so much, and put it into a software. And in order to do that, we needed some kind of note-taking
  220. 21:51system and connections and tags inside of there. But Cortex inevitably failed. And I I mean, it didn't really fail, but
  221. 21:58it very painfully evolved into the version of Eden it is today. That's why I haven't been posting very much. But as
  222. 22:04you can see with the black background, we are getting back to it because Eden is in a very good state right now. Thank
  223. 22:10God. So, I'm not here to say that second brains are completely useless. I just think that they are misused. They're
  224. 22:17very powerful, but people just don't know how to use them. Like, organizing your entire life inside of notion is not
  225. 22:24going to help you very much because you bookmark and you take notes just for them to never be seen again. So you
  226. 22:30quite literally wasted your time thinking you were learning when you could have actually been learning in the
  227. 22:36first place and engaging with reality and trial and error. So in the past people didn't have a popularized second
  228. 22:43brain that markets very well and catches attention. They had a commonplace book. Marcus Aurelius's book meditations is
  229. 22:49essentially a private commonplace book with notes to himself and digested philosophy. And it was never meant to be
  230. 22:55published but that's kind of what it is. Leonardo da Vinci filled thousands of notebook pages with sketches,
  231. 23:00observations, questions, and borrowed ideas. Mark Twain, HP Lovecraft, Thomas Jefferson, Ronald Reagan, Rick Rubin,
  232. 23:06and many more each had some variation of this. But there is a major difference between your second brain, productivity
  233. 23:13bro, and these successful creatives. Their collection of ideas was the fuel
  234. 23:19for their creations. Their inventions, writing, and music would not be what they are today. And I would go as far as
  235. 23:26saying you wouldn't even know who those famous people are if they didn't have some variation of a commonplace book.
  236. 23:32That's me saying that a a digital commonplace book isn't like an absolute
  237. 23:37requirement to success, but it definitely helps in it. So rather than this being a second brain, I like to
  238. 23:43think of it as a second subconscious because when you create something, your subconscious spits out relevant ideas
  239. 23:49that contribute to the quality of the creation, but it's still limited in processing power. And sometimes it
  240. 23:55decides to just not help you at all, leaving you in a creative rut. And so that's what the second brain systems are
  241. 24:00missing is they don't have a project to apply the ideas to. It doesn't spit out ideas when the time is right. And
  242. 24:08related to this, a metaphor from Senica was to gather pollen from many flowers and then digest it into your own honey.
  243. 24:15That's his way of saying steal like an artist. So you could wonder if the steal like an artist guy stole like an artist
  244. 24:22from Senica. This is the antidote to writer's block. You don't have ideas for your writing content or videos because
  245. 24:28you don't have a repository of ideas to pull from. Every single thing I've said in this video is from other articles,
  246. 24:34videos, social posts, random ideas, and highlights that I've saved before. So, I think you get it. But how do you
  247. 24:40actually build something like this? How do we create a digital commonplace book
  248. 24:45leveraging modern technology like AI? Because that's what it's good at. And that's step one, which is to choose the

  249. Choose The Right Software, Or Create Your Own AI System

  250. 24:51right software or create your own AI system. And I want to have a quote here from Devon Ericson. Don't get breathless
  251. 24:59about how smart AI is. It's dumber than a sack of wet hammers. Leverage instead
  252. 25:04its ability to do rapid input and output for simple tasks on large data sets. There's a bunch of idiots on Instagram
  253. 25:11and other social media platforms right now saying that if you use AI once, then essentially like you are useless.
  254. 25:17Everything you've done is useless. the whole Hank Green situation. And I would encourage you to go watch my video on
  255. 25:22how to think five-dimensionally because it will break down exactly why these people are idiots. And in another video,
  256. 25:28we're going to talk about how everything is a religion. And we're going to break down ideology because frankly, it's sad
  257. 25:33to see who I thought were decently nuanced thinkers pick an absolute side
  258. 25:39in the AI religion, either anti or pro AI, and they can't think for themselves and figure out, oh, okay, yeah, this
  259. 25:45isn't all bad or all good, as all things in life. Come on. So, let's talk about
  260. 25:50how to use it for something good here that would aid in your creativity without taking away from your
  261. 25:55creativity. Because most note-taking and second brain software still require manual upkeep. Some of them have an AI
  262. 26:02chat tacked on, which is absolutely useful, but they're missing the most useful application of them all, which is
  263. 26:08make it so your ideas don't disappear into the void because your creative work depends on your ability to resurface
  264. 26:14them at the right time. So you have two options here and our goal is to just be able to drop an idea in and then find it
  265. 26:21when we need it when we're writing, creating or just working on a project, whatever your project is. So option one
  266. 26:28is to use the popular combination like Claude Code and Obsidian to store your knowledge in one place and retrieve
  267. 26:34ideas with AI. And then there's option two, which is to use kind of like a modern software like my mind or Eden,
  268. 26:40which autotags, categorizes, and embeds your knowledge in meaning space. So it can connect seemingly unrelated ideas to
  269. 26:47birth novel insights. Now, there are plenty of tutorials on number one. You can just go on YouTube and you'll see a
  270. 26:53Claude plus Obsidian video. And it's very popular for a reason because it's a very cool thing. Even though I think
  271. 26:59that many people swapped their obsession for collecting notion templates to an
  272. 27:05obsession of collecting Claude skills and everything that they can do in Claude. Um I need to create it'll be in
  273. 27:11the everything is a religion video I think where I need to create a bell curve meme of AI usage where the first
  274. 27:17guy the stupid guy is like oh you just like tell it what to do and then the top is like all the crazy skills and stuff
  275. 27:24and then the third guy is just tell it what to do. But the thing there is that in order to be this guy, you need to
  276. 27:29know what to do, which most people don't. So, since there are a ton of tutorials already, and I'm not going to
  277. 27:35teach it as well as them, I'm just going to give you very simple step-by-step. Here's what you do if you want to build
  278. 27:40Claude plus Obsidian. First is just download Obsidian and Claude. Then, you can open Claude Code or Claude Co-work
  279. 27:47and select your Obsidian Vault folder on your computer as the folder you're working in. Because when you download
  280. 27:52Obsidian, it's a folder on your computer because it stores files locally. So you
  281. 27:57can work inside of that folder in Claude or Claude Co-work. Now, the best way to create prompts or skills or really to do
  282. 28:04anything with AI is to just ask it, hey, how do I create a skill? How do I create a prompt, a good prompt, right? You
  283. 28:11don't just ask basic questions. And of course, it may not give you the best answer every time, but that doesn't
  284. 28:17matter because you're not trying to oneshot things. working with AI is as close to working with the process of
  285. 28:24trial and error itself because in order to get a good result with AI, you still have to refine, refine, refine. And if
  286. 28:30you settle for slop or mediocrity, that's what creates slop or mediocrity. And the anti- AAI people just think
  287. 28:36that's all there is that exists. So what you're going to do now inside of Claude is you're just going to create a save an
  288. 28:42idea skill. You're going to ask Claude to create a skill that creates a note in an inbox folder with a clear title. And
  289. 28:50so what that's going to do is it's going to create a skill. So whenever you drop an idea or a link or a post or anything
  290. 28:56inside of Claude, it's going to create that and then turn it into a note or a document inside of your Obsidian folder
  291. 29:02and it's going to have a clear title. Now the next thing is to create a process my inbox skill. So you ask
  292. 29:08Claude to create a skill that goes through your inbox folder, adds tags, moves it to the right folder, and adds
  293. 29:14back links to other related notes within the vault. Then over time as you drop things in, these two skills are going to
  294. 29:21work in tandem to keep your second brain growing and organizing so that when you
  295. 29:27ask it a question to pull something out or you're working on a newsletter or writing social posts and you say, "Hey,
  296. 29:32what are what other ideas could work with this?" Or, "Hey, give me some very unique ideas on this topic." It'll be
  297. 29:38able to look through your second brain and then pull in certain ideas that you've left in there. And one other
  298. 29:44useful thing here is to ask Claude to help you define your taxonomy so it knows what tags and categories to use.
  299. 29:50And that would be something that you look at, you look over, and then you approve. And you can iterate on all of
  300. 29:55this with time. And so it's super simple. Now, all you have to do is drop an idea inside of Claude on your phone
  301. 30:01on desktop or you need to drop your writing in there and say, "Hey, add this to my brain." And then you're good to
  302. 30:06go. And we're talking about this for the sake of creativity, creative projects. You can of course use this for other use
  303. 30:12cases, but this is just like idea capture. And so that works for finding most ideas, but good writing and
  304. 30:18creative work come from novel connections. So not keyword search or the AI brainstorming synonym so it can
  305. 30:24try to think that it finds novel connections. So, if you don't want to do all of that manually, and frankly,
  306. 30:30everything shouldn't be done in an AI chat, then you can use a software like my mind, which allows you to save any
  307. 30:36link or files, I believe, or just a note or quick idea to a large searchable
  308. 30:42library. You don't have to organize anything. You just drop things in. And so, Eden has largely the same things.
  309. 30:47And all of everything that I'm talking about is free, by the way. You can sign up and use the things that I'm talking
  310. 30:52about for free relating to building your second brain. But the difference is that you also write your newsletters or
  311. 30:58schedule your social posts inside of here. And from your library, it can show you connections to what you're writing.
  312. 31:05And I can create boards or swipe files where I have YouTube videos. Or I just drop all of my ideas and Substack
  313. 31:12articles and Instagram reels that I save and social posts and all of my writing and notes and Substack articles. And
  314. 31:18these are all transcribed. And the other thing that I like quite a bit is that there is a reader mode where I can
  315. 31:23highlight and then these things are added to my library. And we're going to talk about how to use the ideas or the
  316. 31:30highlights or anything else that you save. But the way that my mind and Eden differ from something like Claude and
  317. 31:35Obsidian is that everything you add to your library is categorized, tagged, and embedded. So that means you can search
  318. 31:42and find your ideas without using all of your Claude usage. And if you want to build a second brain or be able to
  319. 31:47access it with AI, you can just connect Eden to the MCP and not have to do all of the crazy claw finangling. Now, the
  320. 31:54reason I bring up the autotagging and the autocategorizing that my mind and Eden do is because those apps can show
  321. 32:00you what's nearby. It can show you the novel connections or the novel relations. And that's because each item
  322. 32:07is embedded with 1500 plus numbers that act as GPS coordinates for an idea. They
  323. 32:12don't need to keyword match in order to find a related idea. So that's exactly what allows you to drop an idea in,
  324. 32:20forget about it, and then be able to surface it while you're writing or creating. And you don't have to worry about it either because you'll know
  325. 32:26you'll be able to find the right ideas when you need them. And I'm guessing that you don't want to maintain a vector
  326. 32:32database, an embedding API, indexing scripts, re-mbeddinging when notes change, keeping the index in sync when
  327. 32:39files are renamed, and caching so you don't repay for unchanged content. That's why you pay for tool, well, not
  328. 32:45even pay, it's free for tools and technology. And everyone just thinks, oh, I'm going to build my own app. And it's like, no, you're not. You might for
  329. 32:51the very simple things in your life that you want to build and maintain. And that can be local apps, but for something
  330. 32:58like an outlier search for high performing content inside of Eden, you're not going to spend $10 to $20,000
  331. 33:03of your own money to store and maintain the database and continue pulling in and indexing creators content. You can
  332. 33:09scrape a few creators here and there, sure, but that's why you would use a different tool. So, you have your
  333. 33:14system, one of the systems that you're going to use, whichever one doesn't, it honestly doesn't really matter. But step

  334. Capture The Ideas That Best Represent Your Ideal Mind

  335. 33:20two is to capture the ideas that best represent your ideal mind. Because when
  336. 33:25AI can create anything, curation matters more than ever. You need a curated space
  337. 33:32for ideas that spark inspiration. The opposite of an endless fire hose of noise we call a social media feed. As a
  338. 33:38writer, creator, or someone trying to do independent work, meaning you need to build an audience by attracting them to
  339. 33:43the ideas you put out, people don't follow you for your content anymore. There's Google, AI, and plenty of
  340. 33:50information that can be found at the click of a button. People follow you for your point of view, your opinion, your
  341. 33:56interpretation, your personality, your story. And all of those things are downstream of the ideas that compose
  342. 34:02your worldview, the ideas you use to make sense of the world. As an example, when I get into a conversation about the
  343. 34:08nature of reality, my mind jumps to ideas about history, integral theory, spiral dynamics, and more because I've
  344. 34:14deemed these the most useful lens from which I can view that conversation from. It makes the most sense out of the other
  345. 34:20ideas I've heard that tend to fall flat. Now, this is a side tangent, but I have made many videos on how you are the
  346. 34:26niche in content creation, in business, especially modern business as a solopreneur. And I've seen a few pieces
  347. 34:32of content lately that are like, "No, you are not the niche." Because they think that you are the niche just means
  348. 34:38posting about you, you you you. No, you're documenting, you're placing your mind in public for people to explore.
  349. 34:45Your mind is not just your personality traits and the your story and the things about you. It's the ideas that create
  350. 34:52this web of interconnections that make how you say the ideas unique. And so
  351. 34:58your second brain or your second subconscious when used correctly is an externalization of that that you then
  352. 35:04take and use as fuel for the things that you put in public. It's a layer between you and your published work. So those
  353. 35:12are the things that you capture, the things that form your worldview or are powerful enough to eventually form your
  354. 35:19worldview. You listen to that podcast and you're like, "Oh, wow. That's a really good idea. I like that." That's
  355. 35:24what you save. So, you curate a large set of knowledge that would best represent your ideal mind because that's
  356. 35:31what your fancy note-taking system was meant to be, right? You just never got around to solidifying those ideas as a
  357. 35:37part of yourself, usually through the act of thinking, writing, and sharing in public so that you can receive feedback
  358. 35:43from the market and let the best ideas win. So, how do you actually do this? You read more books. You let your
  359. 35:49curiosity guide you. You reject doom scrolling and embrace curated lists of authors and thinkers who are dedicated
  360. 35:54to producing good ideas. You make time for research because as a writer or creator, that's 80% of your job. Notice
  361. 36:01how I'm not choosing one side with AI. I'm not saying, "Oh, you touch AI and then you're just brain dead cuz that's
  362. 36:07not how it works. Just observe. Don't live in your own head and make up fantasies." But I also didn't say that
  363. 36:12you shouldn't read or that you should outsource your creativity. I'm saying that you still even with AI you need
  364. 36:18it's just a tool. Stop like over exaggerating it in your head. You still need to do the things that lead to a
  365. 36:24good mind in life. It is as simple as that. And if AI is taking away from that, then stop using AI for that
  366. 36:30specific use case or change how you use it. Mindblowing stuff, I know. Now, step three is to build your ideal mind

  367. Build Your Ideal Mind Through The Act Of Creation

  368. 36:38through the act of creation because we're learning here, right? We're acquiring the knowledge. We're building a more beautiful mind. So we need to
  369. 36:45close the loop. We have the system for capturing and retrieving knowledge, but now we need the project to apply it to
  370. 36:50so that it doesn't go to waste. And we still aren't capturing specific knowledge because we don't have a reason
  371. 36:56to learn. We aren't giving our mind the frame from which it can effectively signal that ideas are important enough
  372. 37:02to capture as we discussed. And that's the entire goal we're after. We want to be smarter. We want to retain and
  373. 37:08remember what we learn. We want to sound articulate for superficial reasons maybe, but also because the outcome of
  374. 37:14our lives depend on the decisions that we make and our level of smartness and ability to articulate our own value
  375. 37:20absolutely contribute positively to that. Now, I can't tell you what to create. It can be an image. It can be a
  376. 37:26design, a Photoshop project. But if you're interested in writing or content like I do, that's why I talk about it.
  377. 37:33and I can give you my process that actually recently helped someone else who was struggling to fit all of their
  378. 37:39ideas into a piece of writing. So for something like writing a Substack article, which is becoming very popular
  379. 37:44lately, and it's good. People are shifting toward long form because they're tired of brainless short form. And this also works for a YouTube script

  380. Choose a topic

  381. 37:51or an X article or anything really. But step one is to just choose a topic,
  382. 37:57obviously. But the best topics are the ones that lie at the intersection of performance and excitement. So
  383. 38:03performance equals topics that have already proven to do well. You find these by saving social posts that have
  384. 38:09gone viral or using a research tool that allows you to find out content and study creators top posts. This is just a
  385. 38:15constant. This isn't anything new with social media. This is just what you do. Do you think that your favorite artist
  386. 38:21and by that I mean musician became famous by just making little sounds or did they have a
  387. 38:28structure to it? Did they think how will my audience respond to this? How will the market respond to this? Will it gain
  388. 38:34popularity? That at least has to come into mind for you. A lot of artists skip the business part and that's why they
  389. 38:41become starving artists because they supposedly don't care what the market thinks but that is their downfall. So
  390. 38:48yes, you need to curate inspiration and save posts that have done well before so
  391. 38:54that you know what works on the market and you can take the principles and apply it to your own writing. That isn't sacrificing your voice in any way
  392. 39:01because it still runs through your taste filter. This video literally has how to remember everything you read in the
  393. 39:07title because there have been hundreds of videos titled how to remember everything you read that have gone viral
  394. 39:12in the past. And so is this the same exact video as them? No, it's actually the complete opposite because I say
  395. 39:18don't do that. So that's the performance side of the topic. But now we need the excitement part. Excitement equals the
  396. 39:25topics and ideas that you want to explore more out of curiosity. And your job is to pair the topic you want to
  397. 39:31write about that probably wouldn't do well on social media with a topic that has already proven to do well so that
  398. 39:37you can write about what you want and increase its potential to actually gain traction. After that, step two is to

  399. Braindump, Outline, Draft

  400. 39:43brain dump, outline, and then draft. So, you don't just start writing the draft.
  401. 39:48Writers don't just open one page and then expect all the ideas to linearly fall into place. You start with a brain
  402. 39:54dump. You write down all potential ideas that could fit under the topic you're writing. Look through your notes, ideas,
  403. 40:00and links, and add them inside it, too. This is where I use a board in Eden. I look through my library. I search
  404. 40:06through it. I ask the AI chat for certain ideas in it. Then, I add all of those to a specific board. So all of my
  405. 40:11research is there that I can open and reference while I'm writing. And then once you have some ideas, you start to
  406. 40:17add some structure with an outline. So you take all the ideas in your brain dump and try to fit them into a general
  407. 40:23storytelling framework which usually falls within problem, insight, solution. So by that I mean create a new document
  408. 40:30or do it on paper if you want and then organize the ideas by what falls under
  409. 40:35the problem, what makes sense here, what's the main insight that I'm trying to get across which is usually the
  410. 40:40exciting idea that you want to talk about. And then what's the solution or the step by step? What do you actually
  411. 40:45give people to do about it? And then now when you actually create the draft, you have an empty draft. You also have your
  412. 40:52brain dump. You have all of your ideas and research and you have your outline. And now all you need to do is synthesize

  413. Use AI to remove friction, not write for you

  414. 40:57them together and actually turn them into sentences. So now step three is to use AI to remove friction, not write for
  415. 41:04you. Now I'm going to continue talking about my thoughts around AI writing in future videos, but when I say don't use
  416. 41:11AI to write for you, what I'm actually saying is don't use AI to articulate your opinions and beliefs. Because I was
  417. 41:18I wasn't corrected on this. Someone pointed it out to me recently and was like, "Hey, didn't you use AI to write
  418. 41:24this?" And the answer was yes. In my viral Twitter article, the most viewed article on Twitter, there was a section
  419. 41:30that was literally bullet points. Step or 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9. It was small
  420. 41:35descriptions of the nine stages of ego development. The nine stages of ego development is from Susan Cook Reer.
  421. 41:42It's not my ideas. Any other writer who would describe what the nine stages are is just going to go to Google and search
  422. 41:48what they are. And so, yes, I asked AI for those because they're not my
  423. 41:53opinion. They're not my belief. I don't want to mess it up. I want it to be as close to Susan Kroer's version of the
  424. 41:59nine stages of ego development as possible. So, yeah, I'm going to copy paste that bullet point in. It doesn't take away from the value of the article.
  425. 42:05And if you think that, I don't I don't know what to tell you. I have the ideas that I love that I want to focus on
  426. 42:12because I understand the value of articulating them myself and how it improves my mind and my ability. So the
  427. 42:19more I can focus on that, the better I would assume. I don't think it's worth wasting my breath on trying to rewrite
  428. 42:26what the nine stages of ego development are because that's just like what you do in school for the sake of memorization
  429. 42:31when the very first sentence of this video is if you need to remember it, it's not important. If it's important,
  430. 42:38you'll remember it. I absolutely think that there is value in struggling to
  431. 42:43articulate your own thoughts and opinions because it creates a gap that you can then go learn and fill. So when
  432. 42:49I say use AI to remove friction, I'm talking about using it like you would use a course or a mentor or an editor
  433. 42:55while you are learning the skill because AI is good at scanning through large swasts of information to give you what
  434. 43:02you need. Does that mean it's not going to hallucinate that it's not going to be correct? Of course, sometimes it's not
  435. 43:07going to be correct. But then what do you do? Do you think everyone just accepts that as law, or do they question
  436. 43:12it? It's the same thing as going on Instagram and seeing a human expert who
  437. 43:17frankly has no idea what they're talking about giving opinions that people just soak up. And that's exactly what
  438. 43:23happened to the anti- AI people's brains. And just to balance it out, the pro the all 100% pro- AAI people are
  439. 43:30also dumb as rocks. So, how this relates to actually writing an article or newsletter is that if you don't know how
  440. 43:37to structure your article, ask for a list of structures that your ideas could fit into something that a course would
  441. 43:43give you anyways. If you don't know what to write next, ask for a few directions the article can go and then choose your
  442. 43:49own or choose none of them. If you don't understand something, research it like any writer would in the past with a less
  443. 43:55efficient method of scouring through the internet for the right information. Another thing here is that the internet
  444. 44:01can provide you with false information too. All in all, I just trust that you have a brain. You are ultimately the one
  445. 44:07who decides what gets published or what gets written. If it doesn't represent the values, ideas, and beliefs you want
  446. 44:14it to, then refine it until it does or don't post it. And I'll leave it at that because I have a lot more to say and
  447. 44:20I'll just save it for another video. And if you don't know what to write or what to talk about or what your niche would be or how to actually grow on social
  448. 44:26media, then consider joining the creator boot camp. It comes free with Eden Pro, so you get both of those in one. Link to
  449. 44:33all of those in the description. Thank you for watching. Like, subscribe if people still say that. I'll see you in
  450. 44:39the next one. Bye.
How To Learn Anything 10x Faster Than Anyone — Transcriptly