How to Use AI to Think and Decide Better

TL;DR

Use AI to think and decide better by improving the information you consume, learning only what supports current decisions, and challenging plans before acting. Three practical upgrades are resetting recommendation feeds, creating a daily briefing with the top three developments, and using NotebookLM for focused learning. AI can also run premortems, expose weaknesses, and rank risks, so read on for specific prompts and methods.

Transcript

Most people think they're using AI the smart way, but they're actually getting dumber. The smartest people I know aren't using AI to get answers. They're using it to upgrade their entire brain. And the gap between them and everyone else is growing every single day. I've built AI into every part of how I run my business. I'm talking my team, my lear... Read More

Key Insights

• AI is more valuable as a thinking partner than as a task calculator. Using it only for emails, summaries, or slide decks captures surface-level efficiency, while using it to improve learning, reasoning, and decisions can strengthen the person directing the work.
• The quality of ideas is directly connected to the quality of informational inputs. Doom scrolling and random content encourage weak ideas, while frameworks, expert knowledge, targeted news, and relevant insights give the mind better material for generating useful conclusions.
• A social feed is an AI-powered reflection of prior behavior. Resetting suggested content, searching for subjects worth mastering, and deliberately liking, saving, and commenting on relevant material can retrain the platform to deliver information that better supports learning goals.
• A daily AI briefing can concentrate important developments into a manageable routine. The suggested prompt requests the top three developments in chosen categories, two-sentence summaries, source links, an explanation of why each matters, and a format readable in under three minutes.
• NotebookLM supports accelerated consumption by creating a focused AI resource around supplied topics and materials. It can answer questions and convert research into slides, infographics, quizzes, flashcards, or a podcast, allowing information to be consumed in a format suited to the learner.
• Just-in-time learning focuses research on an immediate decision instead of collecting information for hypothetical future use. The approach is designed to provide relevant knowledge when it can be applied that same day, making consumption more purposeful and closely connected to action.
• AI red teaming works by intentionally attacking a plan before external competitors or circumstances expose its weaknesses. A premortem asks why the project failed six months later, encouraging backward analysis from the imagined disaster to the vulnerable assumptions or single points of failure.
• The human role in AI-assisted work is described as director rather than doer. The transcript assigns people responsibility for taste, vision, and care, including judging quality, imagining a future that does not yet exist, building emotional connection, and enrolling others in an idea.

Questions & Answers

Q: How can AI help you think and make better decisions?

Use AI to improve both your informational inputs and your decision-making outputs. It can gather relevant developments, support focused learning, challenge assumptions, simulate a competitor, expose weaknesses, and rank risks. This makes AI a partner for reasoning rather than merely a faster way to produce emails, summaries, or slide decks.

Q: What is the AI calculator trap?

The calculator trap is using AI only to complete routine tasks faster, such as writing emails, producing summaries, or creating slide decks. The transcript argues that greater value comes from using AI to think better, learn faster, and make smarter decisions.

Q: How do you create a daily AI research briefing?

Ask AI to find the top three developments each morning in the categories that matter to you. Request a two-sentence summary of each development, source links, and an explanation of why it matters. Format the result as an entertaining, easy-to-digest briefing that takes under three minutes to read.

Q: How can you reset social media feeds for better learning?

Open the platform’s settings, find content preferences, and reset suggested content when that option is available. Then search for subjects you want to master and deliberately like, save, and comment on useful posts. Those actions signal what you want the recommendation algorithm to show you.

Q: How does NotebookLM support focused learning?

NotebookLM can turn material about a chosen topic into a focused resource that you can question conversationally. It can also create PowerPoint slides, an infographic, a quiz, flashcards, or a podcast from the research. This lets you consume the same information in a format suited to your needs.

Q: What is the difference between just-in-time and just-in-case learning?

Just-in-case learning means consuming information because it might become useful someday. Just-in-time learning starts with an immediate need, such as a decision you must make that afternoon, and gathers information specifically for it. This connects learning directly to action.

Q: How do you red-team a business plan with AI?

Begin with a premortem by asking why the project failed six months in the future. Then have AI act as a cynical, highly successful competitor and identify how it would exploit weaknesses or steal customers. Finally, ask it to rank the top three risks by likelihood and impact and create a contingency plan for each.

Q: What should humans contribute when AI handles routine work?

Humans should act as directors who contribute taste, vision, and care. That includes recognizing quality, imagining a future that does not yet exist, building emotional connection, communicating ideas, and involving other people. These human strengths guide and refine AI-assisted work.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• AI provides greater value when it improves thinking instead of merely accelerating emails, summaries, presentations, and similar tasks. Better results begin with premium inputs, including expert knowledge, useful frameworks, and relevant industry developments. The central principle is that the quality of a person’s ideas reflects the quality of information being consumed.

• Three practices can improve informational inputs: resetting recommendation algorithms around subjects worth mastering, creating a short AI-generated daily research briefing, and using NotebookLM to transform focused source material into interactive learning formats. These methods replace random consumption with timely knowledge selected for current goals, questions, and decisions that require attention.

• Important plans should be red-teamed before implementation. AI can conduct a premortem, adopt the perspective of a successful competitor, identify exploitable weaknesses, and rank risks by likelihood and impact. The human role then shifts toward directing AI while contributing taste, vision, care, emotional connection, and the ability to involve other people.