Noel said, "In an age of infinite leverage, judgment becomes the most important thing." Easier said than done. How do we hone and build our judgment? And I really like how Charlie Mer puts this. There are two things you have to do. Number one, acquire worldly wisdom. And number two, adapt your behavior accordingly. If you're on this channel, then I know you're doing number one, no problem, right? You're reading books, listening to podcasts, watching YouTube videos, and really learning, taking notes, all of these good things. But it's really when we're in the moment. Hey, I have to make a decision but I'm still using my old way of thinking or it's hey I I need to do something somehow I forgot all my frameworks. So we're going to focus on the second part with how can we take all of our learnings distill them into AI skills so that it helps us actually adapt our behavior. Now there are two behaviors we want to change specifically. Number one is how do we do something and number two is how do we think about something. So, in the last video that you guys seem to really enjoy, we talked about how do we take books or really anything that we're learning into an AI skill, combine it with our notes to make sure that we are applying what we're learning. And today, we're going to focus on the thinking part. So, how can we make better decisions and think differently and address our blind spots? If you're ready, let's get to it. First of all, let's talk about two types of books and how you would use them differently. And specifically here, I I mean non-fiction. I think there's really interesting things we can do with fiction books as well, but anyway, not not going to talk about it today. Now, within the two types of non-fiction book, the first one is what I call how to do books. So, these are really practical books. Yeah, I talked about the onepage marketing plan last time where there's a problem and there's a very clear instructional practical framework or some sort of method that you can follow from the book. So in this case is when you set up your marketing there is a nine grid canvas that you can fill out right and each of the chapter describe how you do them. So it's very clear how do you change your behavior whenever it is comes to let's say marketing. All right those are the ones that we talked about in the last video where you can extract the framework you can see with your own notes where you want to focus and really adapt it to your work. Perfect. Now today I want to talk about the second type of books which is the how to think books and these books are a bit different because instead of a very clear framework for here's how you think it is okay let's introduce a new way of thinking let's introduce some blind spots let's introduce in different situations how a new way of thinking might evolve what you do right so I find myself reaching out more to these books like I'm currently reading well this is a Japanese book it's called the philosophy of sensibility as you can imagine there is not one framework that says hey to build your sensibility here's how you do it right so that's a hard book to apply I'm reading the book by Alan Watts I'm reading uh you know inside the box by David Epstein so these are more of as you're thinking through things as you're going through life and you have moments where you make decisions How can you change the type of decision making that you do? How can you change the thinking behind it so that you get a better outcome? All right. So, I'm going to focus on this second type of book and how you can use AI to create a skill that helps you essentially think better and make better decisions. So, I'll show you in Obsidian as well as in codeex. One note before we start, I just want to mention that what we're not doing is taking abstractions and making them into a skill. Okay, this is not what we're doing. And whenever you work with AI just in general, as much as possible, you want to give it good context. The strength of AI is to ingest a lot of information. So you don't want to give it little information for it to figure out how to do something. You want to give it quality context so that it can give you helpful response. And taking abstractions like summaries of books or just the simple framework by itself, it's not going to be able to do as good of a job as if you give it really rich context that helps you personalize how you want to use something. which is why we are using notes that I have on the book in order to make the skill so that the skill actually helps me as opposed to just some generic, hey, here are some top quotes from the book, here are some top frameworks from the book and just just apply it because you're not going to actually get the AI to apply it in a way that helps you change your behavior. Okay, but anyway, let me show you inside Codeex and inside Obsidian. I'll show you how I go through the three steps of making a skill with a concrete example from the book unreasonable hospitality. This is going to be my thinking book. And the thing I'm working on is how can I make sure that I can achieve almost like conflicting goals and not feel like I I'm completely lost. The why I reached out to this book in the first place is because I wanted to design learning experiences where it's not just efficient, scalable as people say, but also has some heart and some fun into it. Uh it's really difficult to get this kind of thinking in business books because it's very direct like this is what you do, here's the framework, right? You follow it and you kind of operate like a machine. I look at education books, it's the same. It's very academic. There's a flow to it. It's very evidence-based, but at the same time, it doesn't bring out the fun and excitement, the psychological experience of learning because as I talked about in other videos as well, learning a new thing is scary, right? We have all of these emotional obstacles that hold us back like what if I can't learn this or what if I'm not smart enough? What if, you know, we have a lot of overthinking going on. So uh that's why I reached out to this hospitality book because I feel like hospitality is a classic example where you're going through an experience and it's not just transactional even though the business still makes sense, right? We we still can get very good uh experiences. So that's why I chose this book. But as you can imagine, it's very difficult to just absorb this and all of a sudden everything changes. So that's why I'll turn this into a skill. And there are three steps that we want to do. one is what is the new thinking. So what you'll find is as we're reading books we can't quite articulate very clearly what is that exactly is this new way of thinking right like when you bring in thinking fast and slow if I just ask you hey so what's this new way of thinking that you're going to do now most of us have to say uh let me think through it right there's something to do with cognitive bias something to do with uh not letting your system one take like you know and we start to think about what is it actually that I'm learning. So step one is to get clear on that and then step two we're going to uh enrich the context because as I was mentioning earlier context is key whether it's for agents or it's for humans right we need to know how does this fit into the bigger picture because every single time we abstract an idea we summarize an idea naturally we lose some of the context and so over time it becomes too vague and too unhelpful for us to use. So, we want to go the other way of, okay, how can I make this idea even richer for my agent and myself to be able to use? And I'll show you what I mean by that in a second. And three, we're going to uh make into personalized skill. And this is something I want to talk about, right? If you're in playing with AI and agents, you'll see a lot of people uh uploading their uh AI skills and they're all very generic. Some of it really works uh because everyone can benefit from the same things. But with behavior change, right? We're changing how we think. We're changing how we do. It has to be personalized because even though we read the same book, the things that you get out of it is very different from the things that I get out of it. And so the things that you want to change is probably different from the things I want to change. And the specific context does matter, right? How do we know how to apply to exactly what we're working on? That's why it has to be personalized. And we can't just say, okay, hey AI, distill this into a skill and let me use it. It's not going to adapt to who you are. So we're going to make it into a personalized skill. All right. So with these three steps, we need two things. The two things that feed into it are your notes and an AI agent. Okay? By notes, I mean any sort of notes. Even if you take handwritten notes, no problem. Your AI can probably read it and help me help you change it into text. I personally use Obsidian. I'll just draw it here. I don't know. Every time I attempt to draw it and it looks funny. Anyway, that's Obsidian. That's where my nose live. Okay. And then the AI agent. I'm going to use Codeex again. Terrible drawing of codeex, but I will use codeex. You can use cloud code. You can use cloud code work. You can use JBT's uh work. That's also an agent. Uh you don't have to build any agents to be able to do this. Just out of the box works. If you don't know what I mean, check out the free resource down below to get started. Anyway, you need notes and agent. And so I will show you how I do it inside Obsidian. I'll show you two ways that I do this. Uh, one is within Obsidian. So if you don't take notes in Obsidian, check out the second way. My Obsidian way, just a heads up. It looks technical. It really is not technical, but I know, you know, some people are don't like the look of the terminal. So, I'm just putting a heads up. You can check out the second version if you like. Uh, but the second one is very general. Anywhere you save notes, it doesn't have to be Obsidian. You can have it anywhere and it will still work. Okay. So, let me first show you inside Obsidian. So, I have an a note open that's on the book Unreasonable Hospitality. And I open up terminal inside my Obsidian. I like this way because I can see both my notes as well as what the AI is saying. Uh you do that by going into community plugins and installing this. I actually talked about this more in detail here. You can check it out. Uh and I do integrate it. So it opens inside. I start codeex claw code whatever it is. You can start it here. and I'll give it a prompt to look through my notes on unreasonable hospitality and give me some of the patterns it sees that I I'm interested in so that I can see what is this new way of thinking that I'm bringing into my world. Okay. Help me look through my notes on unreasonable hospitality so that um you can tell me if you see any patterns in the ideas I find interesting and relevant for me. Something very simple like this, as you remember probably me saying in the last video as well with agents, it's less about the prompt and more about the actual context you give it. So taking taking good notes is your job, right? Like doing all of this um prompting is less important. I am drawn to making apparently conflicting goals work together. Yes, that is the key focus in my mind especially with this book. Okay. How to preserve both things you value when conventional advice says to choose. Yes, that's one thing. Uh I like bold idea more when it has an operating principle. Correct. So I really like frameworks. It really makes things easier for me. And some of the notes in there like the 955 rule uh it is to make sure that you have a system so that you still do the nice operating things and be able to uh bring surprises and generosity right um I'm focusing on small deliberate choice creating disp proportionate effect right this is like 8020 rule at its core I I don't like working hard just for the sake of it uh so correct I'm looking at these small deliberate choices. Um, and ambition that isn't bounded by present circumstances. Yes. So, this is another thing that actually drew me to the book Unreasonable Hospitality is that they started as um receiving two stars for their their restaurant and now they're the world's best restaurant and they uh have three Michelin stars. So, I really like the idea of not being not holding yourself back because of what you see around you, but knowing what you can achieve. Back to the idea of, you know, achieving your potential. You might not have demonstrated all the success that says you have potential, but uh I I want to believe in that. And I really like how it concluded with giving me a nice summary. Right? The AI is really good at giving summaries. that says you're collecting ways to be ambitious without flattening what makes the work meaningful. That's exactly what I'm trying to do. So coming back to what's the new thinking uh is exactly without me telling the agent that I wanted this. This is what it's doing, right? This is my new way of thinking is this. Perfect. That's step number one uh inside Obsidian. Now, let me show you just in your agent. If you don't have Obsidian, what you would do is just point it to maybe a folder that has all your notes. Maybe it's Apple Notes, maybe is, you know, Google Doc, wherever it is, just tell it find my notes on uh Unreasonable Hospitality. And I would usually, if you have a file path, just give it to it. or if it knows where to find it because you've set up your agent, right? Then that's also good. My agent should be able to find it. Uh so I won't give it a file path. And I will just say exactly the same things as we did here. That's it, right? It's definitely not complicated. We're basically just doing exactly the same thing. And basically this terminal is just this is except this UI is easier to read. So uh whatever it is that you prefer to do that. Now one thing I want to mention is because AI is not deterministic the second answer I get based on the same notes are going to be slightly different. And I think there is I don't see that as a problem right because even if you ask me what are the ideas I see in here every single time I give you an answer it will be slightly different. And I actually find it really helpful to see different ways of phrasing it so I can get clear on what it is that I actually care about. Right? So let's read through this one just to see. Okay, it's it says, "Oh, you like to pursue exceptional work while preserving generosity, play, and humanity." I think that's al also a really good way of thinking through the problem because yes, I I want the work to be exceptional, but I want it to be playful. I want it to be human, right? So that's also a really good way of thinking through it and pulling out another aspect of the idea which will naturally lead us to step number two which is what we're trying to do with enriching the context behind these ideas. And it talks about okay you notice examples that challenge an apparently trade-off. Yes, that's what I'm trying to do right like conflicting things with different trade-offs. How do I manage that? Very helpful. um something like you like mechanism that make extraordinary experiences possible. Okay, that's a different take to what we were saying before. Before it was more about um mechanism that focus on a small thing that can do something very big and this way it's changing the focus slightly to towards the extraordinary experiences. I think that's also really helpful um practical ways to protect delight. I think that introduces a new way for me to think about this of okay, it's not just for me to create, but also need to protect how I do this. Okay, that that's very helpful. Um, you're exploring how ambition relates to staying in the game. I'm glad it also brought this up because to me, I want to be able to stay playing the infinite game. I really like what I do and I want to keep on doing it. So, I want to make sure that it's sustainable and at the same time I have fun. Okay. Um, you care about what an experience leaves inside someone. Yeah, I'm glad it picked that out because to me that's really important. Uh, so now it does a different summary, right? How can careful design make room for something unusually ambitious and unusually human? Again, a really good way, just another way of phrasing what it is that I'm trying to achieve. So, uh, definitely I don't see this as a problem. Like some people feel like, oh, I just want to have one one concrete result all the time and be specific. But I actually think going through this helps me see what I'm doing inside a slightly different lens so I can decide for myself. Hey, do I want the emphasis to be on finding the small thing that give me a big disp proportionate change or is it really about creating space for protecting uh the ability to delight or is both you know that's for me to think through which I think is helpful when I have multiple options. All right, then let's go to the second step. Right, we're going to enrich the context because to make a really good skill, it needs to be based on a rich quality context that actually give the skill and understanding of what it is I'm trying to achieve. So what I really like to do is inside my notes find related thinkers like trying to place the thing that I'm learning into a school of thought so I have a better understanding of where does this idea come from and where do I agree and where do I disagree and uh let me show you what I mean by that. I'll show you inside this version because I think most people will be using um a interface like this even though you can do exactly the same things uh inside the terminal as well. All right. So what I'll do next step is based on these ideas that you pulled out, can you find related thinkers uh who have similar ideas? And I specifically want to focus on philosophy ways of life bringing this outside of just hospitality. And personally, I think I really get better results when I tell it, hey, I don't want you to think about this book very narrowly, right? This book is about hospitality. So, I know it will it can find books that are related to hospitality or how do you host parties? I I'm sure there's lots of ideas in here that relate, but the power of AI is you can shift the context that it works in. So to me most helpful is always to have the philosophy background so I can see like take a step back and see just in general you know which school of thought do I find interesting so it said Schiller Dwey Dr. Okay. Simon, we Aristotle our strongest connections. That's interesting. Let's take a look. Um, becoming whole through play. Okay. Letters on the aesthetic education of man. Interesting that this is also related to education. I would not have made that connection myself, but I think this is actually a really important piece of reading I need to do. But already I'm I'm super excited. Okay, great. Uh, which activities let me be intellectually serious, sensually alive, and free at the same time? Okay, something to think about. All right. John Dwey uh the quality of everyday experience matters argues that aesthetic experience grows out of ordinary living. I really like this idea. It's actually something I've been thinking about recently that most of our life's time if we're not careful just kind of dissipates. But there there's actually plenty that we can do in our everyday life without making it, you know, every single day I'm going on vacation or doing something amazing. Like how can we actually enjoy that time and make it meaningful? Super interesting. Um I like the question is suggesting suggesting as well. Interesting. All right. Okay. Dr. mastery that preserves your capacity to live. Um, yes, his knife remains sharp after years of use. When he reaches a difficult place, he becomes careful and slows down. The listener explicitly understand this lesson as in caring for life. interesting that we're talking about caring for life because there's another it reminds me of another thing that I've been reading which is Haidiger and this is in my notes so I'm going to add a look into my notes on hide oh my gosh is that the right spelling um on sword sword sword someone needs to correct me to say that Okay, I think that would be interesting to look into. Can I become more capable in a way that also leaves me more alive? Okay. The secret of caring for life. Uh, Simon While attention as an ethical way of life. Okay, great. So, there's as I can see. Okay, last one. Aristotle, generosity requires judgment and taste. Okay, coming back to the very beginning of what we're talking about, right? With infinite le leverage, judgment is an important skill and uh that's related to generosity. What deserves an ex exceptional expenditure of my time, care or resources and what would make that expenditure fitting? As you can see right just by asking this one small question of hey bringing this into philosophy and you can bring it into any field that you think you know most helps you understand the concepts and expand your thinking. It gives me so many ideas now that I don't I already actually just going through this exercise I already feel like I no longer see the limitation of putting two things together. is it's all about what I think is important and being able to just pay attention to that and make it work. I think I've already changed how I think about this uh just by going through this exercise. And we're not even there in step three yet. Which brings me back to the point of why I don't think using AI is going to make us stupid. Not if you use it carefully in a way that helps you think. Anyway, okay. So, I'm going to ask my agent to look up Haid Haidiger uh to bring out this element of care because I think there were several places where the word care was used and it is probably a place that I need to dig deeper into. Okay, let's take a look. What does extra effort express a commitment I own and when am I simply obeying an expectation? Interesting. Um, choices that come from swords might not make sense to others, but you would be cheating yourself if you choose otherwise. You can only have a point of view about the details if you have engaged deeply with the object in question. Okay, I think this is all bringing it together. I think we have more than enough to move on to the first uh third step. First of all, we have the new thinking that we're doing. Uh, I like what Codex said here. I'm figuring out how to be ambitious without flattening what makes work meaningful. Great. And then we went deeper and found some related concepts to schools of thought that really captured this idea. Right? So we saw that a lot of these things whether it's attention whether it's um making ordinary life more alive these concepts all come back to what I'm trying to do right so there's the element of care that is mentioned throughout so with this then we can build the skill in our third step which is make this skill personalized when we make decisions to improve improve how we think and how we make decisions. So what I'll do is split this third step into again two parts. What we'll do is we'll go into planning mode. So on most agents you can do slash plan or find uh the plan mode uh in the agent and I'm going to tell it exactly what I intend to do. And by the way, when you talk to agents, uh it's really helpful if you give it at least a clear goal that is working towards and some limitations so it knows how to work with um how to set things up for you. So I want to create a skill that helps me see my blind spots and improve uh my decision-m by considering uh the ideas offered in the book Unreasonable Hospitality. Uh the related thinkers that you helped me surfaced will act as context so that we can better understand how to apply these ideas when there is no clear right answer. Tell me how you would set up this skill so that we can do two things. Number one is help me spot the moments where it would be useful to have this different way of thinking that is in unreasonable hospitality because I don't usually think in this way and number two what exactly um does the thinking do so that I have a practical way of applying the thinking to the situation at hand. Ask me any questions uh before you create the skill. So what I'm doing here is first of all it's in plan mode. So it's not going to create the skill right away. It's just going to come up a plan for doing the skill which I find really helpful when I want to one review the thinking of my agent and two uh help the agent think through things before actually putting into action because sometimes I find it just takes whatever is easier and just implement it. So in this case because it's about improving my thinking I wanted to think through it too. The second thing is um I I want it to do two things for me when it comes to changing thinking. We need two parts. The first part is when am I going to use that different way of thinking, right? We're not going to use it everywhere. So I want the agent to help me think through what are the moments where this would be useful. And then two is how to make that thinking practical. Uh in my mind I have hypothesis about both of these, right? Uh specifically, I think whenever I get stuck on a decision where I feel like I am being limited, I'm doing something that is not truly aligned with what I want, I want to be able to use uh this new way of thinking and two, how to do it exactly. I think having prompts like questions for me to think through and having me see examples of where this thinking worked will help me kind of expand what I think is possible in the moment. But those are just my hypothesis. I'm not telling it. Uh I want to see what it comes up with and I'm going to refine the skill. >> A few moments later >> already I think the way it's thinking about when to trigger the skill is pretty good. Um, then it has questions for me. By the way, this is really a hack. If you don't ask your agents to ask you questions, you should definitely do it. So, first of all, it says, "Which situation would this help you think through work in life?" I agree. I want both. Uh, also, when Codex notices a relevant moment during another task, how should it bring it into perspective? So, these are more tactical questions. Uh, I want to nudge. Yep. When you deliberat you deliberately use the skill, how would you prefer to learn the thinking? Show then discuss, coach through questions and give a decision brief. I think I want to coach through questions. Okay. Now based on my response is going to continue creating how it thinks the skill should work. Let's see. It set up as a thinking coach for work and life. two levels during other task and when I eng engage the skill specifically. It would keep unreasonable hospitality central. The philosophers would provide context when values conflict rather than appearing as a checklist. Oh, I love that. It would also distinguish the book's idea, your interpretation, and our proposed application. Before I settle the design, can you give me one recent decision where you us your usual way of thinking might have missed something, even if you still don't know what you would have done differently? That's perfect. Uh I think I wouldn't make too many edits to this because everything seems reasonable. Even it asks me for an example which is perfect. So it knows how to apply this. Uh so I will give it my answer and see what it would propose. Uh recently I've been deciding between whether to do a more transformational 3-w week cohort or do one that's shorter, one day that uh focuses on something very specific. To me, I think the tradeoff is the one day one gets people seeing quick wins uh relatively soon. But I think the transformation after 3 weeks is important for working with agents because the agent gets smarter over time. Let's see what it does with this example because it says, okay, if that was the situation, the skill should notice how you frame the choice before recommending a format. uh blah blah blah. It says, right, we're going to move it into a yes and that's exactly what I wanted to do. Hold both desired outcomes in view long enough to investigate what would make them compatible. And as it's saying that, I already see okay instead of making the choice between those two, I should just start with what is it? What is that desired outcome? And then the formats can come after. I'm thinking about it in terms of format because it's easier for me to plan the logistical things but actually focusing on the outcome would be easier. Okay. So it says in in brief the skill might say oh you're choosing between speed to a first win and depth of transformation. But for treating those as competing formats let's examine what actually requires 3 weeks. I think that would actually be a really good thought exercise to go through. So it says it would then coach me and say at the end of three weeks what would a participant be able to do notice or decide that they couldn't after one day and I you know this is already helping me think through so many ways where I can make the one day also very powerful as well. We just need to manage the scope. So I think we're ready to make the skill and that's the easy part. We're going to uh remove the plan mode and say, "Okay, make this into a skill." That's all you need to say in order for it to make a skill. But the mistake people make is they don't do all of the upfront thinking and they just say, "Okay, you know, turn this book into a skill." That that skill is going to be so I don't want to say useless, but it's going to be so vague that it's not going to help personalize what it is that you do. Right? And coming back to the third third step, changing behavior is a very personalized thing. So we want the skill to understand our context and what it is that we are working on. Okay. So let's uh let the agent work on the skill. >> A few moments later. >> All right. And here it is. And just so you can see what the skill looks like, it has a metadata at the top which you don't need to write, right? the your agent does that for you so that it knows when to evoke the skill. And then it goes through with the goal. Help me organize re recognize occasions for un for unfamiliar way of thinking. Understand what that thinking changes and practice applying it. Important. Okay. So, here's how it's going to recognize useful moments. Here's two ways uh to use it. Sorry, my dog was barking. Anyway, uh then making the thinking practical, right? That's the second part we talked about. It has some extra context calibration, right? Uh this is an example. So that AI works really great with examples. So does humans. Um so having an example will be helpful. And I signed off on that one. So that's great. And so next time whenever I have an a decision it's going to be able to notice that nudge me and then I will remember oh right right I I I want to practice the thinking in this book and then I can go through that. So that is how you set up a skill for a way to change how you think. If you want to see how you change how you do something check out this video here. And any questions? Let me know down below. Which books are you reading? let me know and I'll see you in the next video.