Stop Trying to Hack Wisdom
A subscriber recently asked me a question to my "How to Turn Books Into Results (My 3-Step System)” video that stopped me in my tracks:
"What’s your opinion about AI for reading summaries and insights of books without reading the book? Wouldn't it be more efficient to get those same core ideas from AI?"
It's such a good question that I recorded a video to answer it properly.
Because on the surface, it seems perfectly logical. Why spend weeks reading when AI can give you the key points in minutes?
But this question reveals something deeper about how we've come to misunderstand learning itself.
The Matrix Download
Remember that scene in The Matrix where Neo downloads kung fu directly into his brain? He emerges from the chair declaring "I know kung fu!"
Here's the thing - my approach to deep reading is actually very similar to that. But not in the way you might think.
When I truly engage with a book, I'm not just absorbing information - I'm reconstructing the author's mind. I'm asking questions between the lines, anticipating their next point, having a conversation with them over coffee. It's like downloading their entire way of thinking, not just their conclusions.
The process is painstakingly slow - I’m talking up to 10x slower than simply skimming. But then something magical happens. Once you grasp the fundamental components of their thinking, there's an exponential acceleration of understanding. Suddenly you're not just reading their words - you're thinking their thoughts. You've downloaded their mental operating system.
This is at the core of the Epiphany Mapping Method - where you don't just collect information, but create entirely new connections and insights that weren't there before. It's the difference between having someone else's summary and developing your own breakthrough understanding. A user versus a creator.
AI summaries promise the kung fu without the download. They give you the flashy moves without the practical mastery, the How without the Why.
Epiphany Mapping: The Triple-Layer Learning System
When you truly engage with a book, something remarkable happens. You activate three distinct learning channels that humans have used since before we had written language.
First, there's the motor channel - the physical act of writing notes, underlining passages, or sketching diagrams. This is how we learn sports, through physical engagement and repetition. Your hand remembers what your mind might forget.
Then there's the pictorial channel. We drew on cave walls before we developed alphabets for a reason. When I read about cultivating a winning mindset, I don't just absorb the words - I draw a graph showing how to assign emotional weight to successes (be like Tiger Woods with his fist pumps) while staying stoic about failures. That image stays with me far longer than any summary could.
Finally, there's the semantic channel - understanding meaning, symbolism, and making connections. This is where you link Nassim Taleb's antifragility to Rilke's "Let everything happen to you" or see how Taoist concepts of contrast illuminate Western philosophy.
These three immersive channels working together to richly encode your new knowledge so that it becomes part of your neural pathways, not just information stored in short-term memory. AI summaries give you none of these. They're like trying to learn kung fu by simply watching YouTube videos without putting in the work.
I go more in-depth on the benefits of Epiphany Mapping in Day 1 of my free 5-day course course in case you’re interested in deeper dive.
The Council of (Five) Advisors
Here's my controversial take that usually makes people uncomfortable: You only need to deeply absorb three to five books in your entire life.
Not 100. Not 50. Just three to five.
If you can truly internalize one Marcus Aurelius, one Nassim Taleb, one book from each domain that matters to you, you'll have what I call a "Council of Advisors" that you can summon in any situation. These aren't just books you've read - they're authors whose thinking patterns you've absorbed so deeply that you can think like them.
I discovered Marcus Aurelius's Meditations during a particularly difficult time in London. I didn't just read it - I conversed with Marcus, grappled with him, and slowly began to see the world through his Stoic lens. Now, years later, I can summon his voice when I need it.
This is the power of Epiphany Mapping - you're not just understanding their ideas, you're discovering your own unique insights by combining their perspective with your lived experience. You're creating your own Council of Advisors - a mental construct that only you could have developed.
Using AI to blast through 100 book summaries is just a more sophisticated version of the same content consumption pattern that leads nowhere. It's the Netflix-ification of reading. Always ask yourself if you’re binging or learning.
Fiction: The Unexpected Teacher
Bekzo also asked about fiction, wondering if it's worth reading when he could be focusing on "more practical" books for career advancement. This revealed another popular self-help myth.
Some of my deepest insights about human nature came not from philosophy books but from stories. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy taught me more about how our world actually works than most non-fiction. Why? Because as fantasy writer Neil Gaiman notes, humor is reality tilted at a 45-degree angle. That shift in perspective often reveals truths that straightforward explanation misses.
When I went through a difficult breakup, I didn't reach for a self-help book. I picked up Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Through its exploration of lightness versus weight, of choice versus commitment, I understood my own relationship patterns in ways no psychology book could have shown me.
Fiction gives us what non-fiction cannot: raw empathy, the ability to live multiple lives, to see through different eyes, to understand not just what people do but why they do it.
Poetry takes this even further. As a hybrid of fiction and nonfiction, the medium bridges the analytical and emotional, allowing exploration of concepts that prose can't quite capture. As Red Pine in his preface of the Taoteching, which is written as a collection of 81 poems, notes:
“The words of philosophers fail here. If words are of any use at all, they are the words of the poet. For poetry has the ability to point us toward the truth then stand aside, while prose stands in the doorway relating all the wonders on the other side but rarely lets us pass.”
How to Select Books
The books that change your life are the ones that find you at the right moment. They address a real challenge you're facing, not just an abstract interest.
I picked up Prisoners of Geography not because geopolitics sounded interesting, but because Russia had just invaded Ukraine and I needed to understand why. The necessity drove the learning. I picked up Mindset Secrets for Winning because a client mentioned it was transforming his approach to life. That necessity to understand my client better led me to discover an entire field of subconscious programming that revolutionized my own practice.
When you read from necessity rather than novelty, utilization becomes automatic. You have skin in the game. The knowledge has somewhere to go.
The AI Thinking Partner
Now, here's where AI becomes genuinely powerful - not as a replacement for deep reading, but as an amplifier of it.
After I've spent weeks with a book, after I've drawn my Epiphany Maps and filled the margins with questions, after I've internalized the author's thinking patterns - that's when I might create an AI assistant based on that book's principles. Not to summarize, but to become an ongoing thinking partner.
Imagine having Marcus Aurelius available for consultation after you've deeply studied Meditations. Or being able to explore "what would Taleb think about this?" after you've internalized his concepts of Antifragility. This isn't about shortcuts - it's about extending and deepening the conversation.
This is what I call moving beyond prompts to become an AI system designer. You're not asking AI to do your thinking for you; you're creating a tool that helps you think better, based on knowledge you've already earned through deep engagement.
If you’re interested in diving deeper into this concept, Mind Map Nation member Lewis Holland, a Google program manager, walked us through how he created an AI investment thinking partner using 20 years of Berkshire Hathaway’s shareholder letters. Note that you do have to be a MMN member to access this one.
Stop Hacking Wisdom
In a world drowning in content, everyone's trying to read faster, consume more, optimize everything. But what if the answer is the opposite?
What if the path to wisdom isn't through more, but through less? What if the three to five books you spend a month with matter more than the hundred you skim?
Stop trying to hack your way to wisdom. Some things can't be rushed. The question isn't "How can I read more efficiently?" The question is "Which few books deserve to become part of who I am?"
And once they're part of you, once you've earned that knowledge through deep engagement, then you’ll have a mental asset that pays dividends for the rest of your life.
Then and only then can AI help you take that wisdom even further.
Because in the end, you're not just collecting information. You're building a council of advisors, developing your own life operating system, creating breakthrough insights that only you could discover by applying and testing knowledge through experience.
That's worth more than a thousand summaries. Happy mastering kung fu.
What's one book that you took the time to integrate into yourself? How did you know it was "the one"? I’d love to know!
Make the most of your Epiphanies
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