Most people are going about AI completely wrong.
They either use it to do their work for them, or they barely use it at all.
AI is one of the most revolutionary technologies (if not the most) humanity has ever seen.
Yet, over half the American population has never used an AI chatbot. And the other half either make it too complicated for their own good, or they’re missing out on most of the potential.
And it’s not really their fault.
This is a brand new technology. No one had AI literacy classes in high school.
But that’s exactly where AI’s best use case is hiding.
While most people are applying AI to “increase productivity,” there’s a handful using it to increase autonomy instead.
The easiest way to get the most out of AI as possible is to swap roles.
It’s surprisingly simple, and by the end of this newsletter, you will have completely changed how you think about using AI in your life.
The Path of Most Resistance
49% of US Adults use AI Chatbots, 24% use them daily, 12% several times per day, 4% almost constantly. 51% don’t use AI chatbots at all.
The most common use case for AI is the AI overview at the top of a Google search. Almost everyone who has access to the internet is exposed to this.
And there’s nothing wrong with the AI overview. It’s just a faster (or slower) version of what you’ve already been doing for the last 20 years.
But there is real potential for AI to positively impact your life that the search engine overview doesn’t even come close to.
Even the daily power users often miss this angle.
Most of them use AI for the things they are already an expert at, and then get frustrated when the output doesn’t meet their standard.
In doing so, you either:
bring in a second expert who competes with your expertise, creating a “too many cooks” situation;
or you bring in an absolute beginner that you have to teach from the ground up before it does anything genuinely useful.
Either way, it’s a lot of friction.
You’re using the most capable tool for the thing you need the least amount of help with, and then you’re grading its homework. You wanted a faster version of yourself, and you ended up with a slower version that argues back.
This creates a fight for control over something you already know how to do, causing that complexity and friction.
So what’s the real advantage AI provides?
The Advantage
When my Dad was a kid, if he wanted to learn something, he had to find a ride to the library, and stay there for hours, hunting for the right books and parsing through them to find the information he was looking for.
Many points of failure here.
Sometimes you don’t know what information you’re missing.
Sometimes you do know, but you don’t know which books hold that information.
Or you do know which books you need, but the library doesn’t have them.
And sometimes you can’t even get to the library at all.
If I wanted to learn something when I was a kid, I could just go on the internet, which reduced a lot of the friction.
I didn’t need a ride or permission to look something up. I didn’t need to know which sources had the information I needed. The internet could tell me that.
But self-education only takes you so far.
The highest leverage education resource in existence is individual mentorship.
A one-on-one teacher understands your specific situation, answers your specific questions, and adapts to you instead of a syllabus.
This is why private coaching is exclusive.
This is why private tutors cost what they cost.
This is why every master you’ve ever admired had a master of their own.
This is where self-education dies.
It’s you alone with a book and no one to say “here’s specifically what you’re doing wrong.”
So you stall. You assume you’re not smart enough, or the material is too advanced, or the whole thing is a scam.
Really you just needed a teacher, and teachers cost money.
For the entirety of human history, the private mentor has been a scarce luxury.
Now you can summon them on command.
Infinite versions for infinite situations.
On demand.
Free.
Think about that.
The single biggest advantage for individual mastery in any domain at your fingertips.
If you’ve ever watched a great YouTube video and thought, “Damn, I wish I could sit down with that person for three hours and work through my project with them...”
Now you can.
The Path of Least Resistance
The easiest way to get the most out of AI as possible is to swap roles.
Take off the expert hat and put on the student hat.
Otherwise, your effort goes into defending what you already know, comparing every output to your standards, and racking up reasons to distrust the AI.
You’re not learning anything because you already knew it, and you’re not getting anything, because you could have done it better or faster yourself.
When you’re the student, things become simpler. You spend less time correcting, debating, and pushing back and more time actually learning from the AI.
This is a teacher who never gets tired, never judges your questions, and will explain it a fifth, sixth, nth way until you fully understand the concept.
The result is a dramatic improvement in autonomy.
Every skill you never learned because the barrier was too high is now 10-100x more accessible.
Knowledge is power. Wielding it is what actually makes you powerful.
Note: AI is an incredible learning tool, but do not outsource your thinking entirely. It should be used to uncover new information and progress toward a goal, not plant beliefs, values, or opinions.
Stop defending what you already know and start learning what you don’t
Why are you so desperate to outsource the skills you already excel at? Instead, use AI to outsource the high value, low supply resources - personalized mentors for literally whatever the hell you want.
The best way to obtain this teacher is with what I call an AI Buddy: a dedicated chat for learning an ongoing topic or completing a long-term goal in an area where you’re lacking knowledge, skills, or experience.
No expensive tools or complex integrations. Just a regular AI chatbot.
It takes your “why” into account to give you the “expert how” for your specific situation and goals.
An AI Buddy can take one of 4 forms:
Consultant: Best for short-term learning/consumption
Collaborator: Best for short-term doing/executing
Companion: Best for long-term learning/consumption
Coach: Best for long-term doing/orchestrating/executing
You’ll typically know which one you need based on what you want to accomplish.
But goals evolve as you progress towards them, and the beauty of AI is that your mentor evolves with you.
You may start off with a consultant learning about gardening, and it may evolve into a collaborator, doing research on your behalf for the best plants, soils, fertilizers, etc. for your garden specifically.
And that collaborator might evolve into a coach, helping you keep your garden healthy year-round and overcome any unexpected challenges that may arise along the way.
The typical evolution is from short-term to long-term and/or from learning to doing. Doing is, after all, a more evolved version of learning.
So how do you actually build your first AI Buddy?
Context Is King
Whether you’re learning or doing, you always need to provide context.
AI knows everything in the world, but it knows nothing about you unless you tell it.
For example, the first AI Buddy I ever built for someone else was an HR Buddy. My sister Molly was having a rough time at her job with a huge workload and management that gaslit her every chance they got.
“It wasn’t one singular incident,” she said, “but the culmination of lots of little things, and I needed a way to document what was happening objectively without constantly revisiting an already difficult situation.”
As her brother, I wanted to give her the validation she needed in order to do something about it, but I knew I only had the parts of the story that she could distill into our weekly phone calls. I also knew that, as a writer, she was hesitant to use AI, so the solution had to preserve the human element.
So I built the HR Buddy, designed to
capture every questionable moment at work,
evaluate it through the lens of a standard Human Resources perspective,
provide non-sycophantic validation when appropriate,
challenge or push back when appropriate,
and formulate an action plan to do something about it.
Ultimately it helped Molly submit a clear and accurate record of events to HR.
“What could have been an incredibly time-consuming and emotionally exhausting process became something I could manage in real time, and when I ultimately decided to escalate the situation, I wasn’t starting from scratch.”
The only reason something like this was actually effective was because she was able to provide the context from her personal situation on an ongoing basis.
Whenever her boss did something that made her question “wait am I overreacting?” she would drop it into the chat, adding to the overall context of the situation and getting an immediate read on the interaction based on the entire history of the situation.
I knew this would be more effective for her than trying to collect her thoughts for a 20-minute meeting with the HR department. How could she articulate all the microaggressions that don’t sound so bad on the surface, but have piled up with crushing weight?
Because the HR Buddy had all the context, it was able to help her articulate the issue to HR in a much more effective way than it would have been off the cuff. (I know my sister.)
I’m happy to report that Molly is now free from the chains of the corporate overlords and is cultivating her own personal autonomy, right here on substack.
Turn Anything Into A Course
The best thing about AI is that it knows everything in the world.
The worst thing about AI is that it knows everything in the world.
But context is only half the equation.
The expertise is the other half.
You have to do more than tell it what you want. You also have to tell it why you want it, how you want to do it, and why you want to do it that way.
Sometimes general expertise is sufficient, typically for things that are done in a standard way.
But most times you want to do something a specific way, and that’s where specialized expertise comes in. Without a specific expert or resource to draw from, the AI draws from everyone and everything, and that’s how you produce slop.
So if you want to implement a certain process or strategy, you have to tell the chat explicitly.
This is how you can turn any YT video, podcast, newsletter, book, or any other form of media into your own course.
It’s very simple.
All you have to do is give your AI Buddy the article, transcript, pdf, or whatever resource you want to use from whatever expert you want to emulate. Tell it what you want to use the resource for, and why you want to use this particular resource or expert.
When Molly was “onboarding” her HR Buddy, the chat asked her to upload her company’s employee handbook for organizational context.
Side note: if you don’t know which expert to draw from, you can ask your AI Buddy for suggestions based on your context. Then go watch videos, listen to podcasts, and read articles/books by those experts to see who you resonate with the most. Then come back with your favorite piece from that expert.
If you like learning and taking courses, this is your coupon for free unlimited courses for life.
I’ve done my best to make this as easy as possible for you.
I wrote up a free AI Buddy metaprompt for your convenience.
Copy and paste that into your preferred chat bot. Answer the questions about your problem or goal. Upload an article or video transcript, and explain why you want to use that resource in particular.
Then the chat will output a prompt for your AI Buddy. Copy that prompt and paste it into a new chat. Start providing the context for your situation and appreciate the beauty of infinite private mentorship.
This is my favorite way to use AI (maybe you can tell)
I have used this for so many different things that not only made me more productive but also relieved stress, improved effectiveness, and ultimately became enjoyable learning pathways.
Some examples:
Coding & App Development Coach - Building my personal command center with no developer experience. I didn’t even know what a “commit” was, and now I have a polished web app for my specific use case.
Fantasy Football Collaborator - Haven’t really watched the NFL in years, so I created a consultant to help me prepare for the draft. Now it runs weekly injury reports and researches potential pickups and trades for me.
Health Insurance Consultant - With general context of my medical history (no sensitive data was harmed in the making of this AI buddy) this consultant made selecting a health insurance plan surprisingly painless.
Content Analysis Collaborators/Coaches - If I find an article or tweet I like and want to use the same structure for one of my own ideas, a consultant will break down why it works. It will evolve into a collaborator, helping me map my idea to the structure. And into a coach so I can use the same structure again in the future.
The Mentalist Companion - I wanted to keep track of the 6-season thruline without spoiling anything for myself. This was super helpful for confirming the things I wasn’t sure if i remembered correctly, and keeping track of my own theories.
Board of Directors - This is like a combination of the 4 C’s. I chose 3 public figures to be on the board, and fed my favorite content to the AI Chat. Now whenever I have a question for the board, I put it in that chat. It gives me the perspective of each of them, then synthesizes what they agree/disagree on, then I make my own decision, taking that advice into account. It’s hard to choose a favorite, but this one might be it. Complete game changer.
To reiterate: AI Buddies are incredible learning tools, but do not outsource your thinking entirely. They should be used to uncover new information and progress toward a goal, not plant beliefs, values, or opinions.
Building Your Buddy
Now it’s your turn.
Pick a project you’ve been putting off, a problem that’s been nagging you, or something you’ve always been curious about but never bothered learning.
Determine if there is an expert or resource you want to guide you on your learning path, then build your AI Buddy following these steps:
Copy/Paste the AI Buddy metaprompt into your chat bot of choice
Tell it about the topic you want to learn, goal you want to accomplish, or problem you want to solve.
Tell it why you want to solve that problem, learn that thing, etc.
Upload a resource or ask it to suggest an expert
Copy/paste the specialized buddy prompt into a new AI Chat
Provide as much situational context as possible
Learn from your new mentor
Share the metaprompt with someone who could use it
That’s really it.
These prompts have produced some of my longest-running chats, and I’m always eager to return to them and pick up where I left off.
It’s removed all the frustration and friction of two experts butting heads, and reignited the flame of curiosity and drive for self-education.
Even before AI, this was the best way to learn any topic or skill.
Now it’s orders of magnitude more accessible.
Please take advantage.
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See you inside,
Tim