How to Read a Book Better Without Reading It (Using AI)

I’ve stopped reading non-fiction books.

[Somewhere, a librarian just fainted.]

No, my attention span hasn’t finally collapsed into a black hole of short-form content. I just found a better way to learn from books: I get AI to help me integrate their best ideas into my brain. My new method is more fun, more focused, and way more productive.

Reading a book is like panning for gold — Me reading a book before getting an x-ray excavator.

Think of it like being a gold prospector.

Every book is a huge pile of dirt potentially hiding gold nuggets. Reading cover-to-cover is like tediously sifting through the mound, finding the occasional fleck of gold, then tossing it haphazardly on top of my existing pile of ideas. Sure, you find some gold, but you’ll also spend hours examining rocks that turn out to be just rocks.

AI is my x-ray-powered excavator. It lasers in on the precious stuff I actually want, digs it up, and helps me craft it into something useful.

My latest “read” was the 1940 classic, How to Read a Book. Yes, I used AI to help me read a book about reading books. It worked brilliantly—I had a blast and discovered how to apply the book’s timeless principles to optimize my AI-powered idea-excavator.

Now I want to help you revolutionize how you learn too.

How to Learn From Books Better, Faster, and Fun-er With AI

Think of your brain as a company—BRAIN Inc.—and yourself as the CEO. Your job? Scout for brilliant ideas and get them working together toward your mission.

AI is your Chief Integration Officer. Here’s the five-step process that’s transformed my learning:

Step 1: Define Your Mission

Without a clear mission, you’ll end up with a jumble of random ideas playing ping pong in your brain. So before acquiring a company, every smart CEO clarifies the strategic value of doing so—how does it fit within their greater mission?

Ask yourself:

“What problem am I trying to solve or goal am I working toward by reading this book?”
“In what way do I hope the ideas from this book might still be helping me 10 years from now?

Example:

Bad mission: “Everyone’s tweeting about the Almanack of Naval. The FOMO’s too strong.”
Better mission: “I’m trying too hard and going nowhere I want to go. Can this book give me ideas on direction and strategies to get there?”

Step 2: Conduct Due Diligence

Time for your AI-powered excavator to scan for gold. Upload the book’s text to your favorite LLM and screen the acquisition by asking:

“What’s the central thesis of this book?”
“What are the main sections, and what purpose does each serve?”
“Which chapters are most relevant to my learning objectives?”

Decide whether to dig deeper or move on.

Step 3: Extract Value

Now identify the rock stars who will contribute most to your mission:

Work through the book chapter by chapter, asking:
- “What are the chapter’s key arguments and supporting ideas?”
Analyze standouts further:
- “Explain this key idea in simple terms and with an analogy”
- “What are this argument’s strengths and weaknesses?”
- “How might this be misinterpreted?”
Challenge your understanding:
- “The author seems to be saying X. What am I missing?”
- “What real-world examples illustrate this concept?”

Step 4: Integrate

Great ideas don’t work in isolation—they need to collaborate with the knowledge you already have:

“How does this complement or challenge what I already know?”
“What unique insights emerge when combining this with [another concept]?”
“What discoveries since the book’s publication might refine these ideas?”

Step 5: Deploy

Ideas without application are wasted. Create your activation system:

Write your own summary of the book’s key insights.
- Go back through your AI conversation to record and organize the ideas you want to retain.
Refine your summary:
- “Would the author agree with my summary? What might I have missed?”
Put your new ideas into action:
- “What are three specific actions I can take today based on these ideas?”
Set review dates to assess results

Modernize Your BRAIN Inc.

“But, Chris, how do I get a book into a format like .txt that I can upload into ChatGPT?”

You know what? I’m not the best one to ask. Try ChatGPT or Claude. They may not be able to pull off a flannel shirt as well as I can, but they’re better at this sort of step-by-step technical stuff.

Before you use “too complicated” as an excuse to revert to sifting for nuggets of knowledge the old-fashioned way, I’ll give you a book to upload. Technically, Eric Jorgenson gives it to you: The Almanack of Naval Ravikant. It’s free and perfectly suited for your first AI-powered gold rush.