How I Use AI to Consume 10x More Content

How many breakthrough ideas have you missed because you simply didn’t have time to read that book, watch that video, or listen to that podcast?

I’ve always been a voracious learner. Even in college, I was buying more books than I could read—hundreds and hundreds.

But two weeks ago at my mastermind meeting, something hit me hard. Member after member recommended books that sounded absolutely essential. A dozen titles, each one addressing challenges I’m facing right now. I wanted to read every single one.

Then I sighed. Because I knew I’d never have the time.

That moment crystallized something I’d been feeling for months: I couldn’t keep up anymore. The flood of information was moving faster than I could swim.

Consider the scale:

• 2.2 million books published every year
• Nearly 950 million YouTube videos released annually
• Over 27 million podcast episodes published each year

That’s not information overload—that’s an information tsunami.

For a while, I tried services like Blinkist to compress books into fifteen-minute summaries. Helpful, sure. But still limited. Still expensive. Still someone else’s curation, not mine.

Therefore, I turned to AI. Not as a replacement for reading, but as a personal executive summary service I control completely. With the right prompts, I can summarize in two minutes what would otherwise take me hours or days to consume. I’m not saying a summary replaces the full experience—I still read books cover to cover when they matter. But for most content, I just need the highlights.

Now I’m using AI to do what I otherwise couldn’t: expose myself to ideas that could transform my life and business. And here’s the best part—if something captures my attention, I can always go deeper. The original content is still there, waiting.

The subscription services? I don’t need them anymore. AI just made them obsolete.

You can expose yourself to 10x more breakthrough ideas without working longer hours. Here are four proven methods for using AI to summarize and synthesize information at scale.

Method #1: Use an AI-Enabled Browser

Start simple. If you’ve never used AI to summarize content, AI-enabled browsers are your on-ramp.

I experimented with dedicated AI browsers like Dia, Comet, and Co-pilot. They’re impressive—built specifically for AI integration. But I ran into a problem: some of my essential Chrome extensions didn’t work properly. I found myself switching between browsers constantly, which defeated the purpose.

So here’s what I settled on: I use two browsers. Google Chrome for my primary work (which now includes Gemini, currently my second favorite LLM), and one AI browser for specific tasks. I also installed the Claude extension in Chrome, which is remarkable.

You can expose yourself to 10x more breakthrough ideas without working longer hours.

Here’s why this matters: Research from International Data Corporation (IDC) shows that knowledge workers spend about 2.5 hours per day, or roughly 30% of the workday, searching for information.¹ That means nearly a third of your work week is just hunting for insights. An AI-enabled browser cuts that time dramatically.

The workflow is dead simple. You’re reading an article. You activate your AI assistant. You ask, “Summarize this in three key points.” Done. Thirty seconds instead of ten minutes.

I use this constantly when scanning industry news or research papers. Instead of reading twenty articles to find the two worth my time, I get AI summaries of all twenty in under five minutes. Then I invest my attention where it actually matters.

The beauty of starting here is there’s zero setup. No accounts to create. No training required. Just immediate value from content you’re already consuming.

Method #2: Create a Custom GPT

Add customization. Once you’ve experienced the speed of AI summarization, you’ll want something tailored to your specific needs. That’s where custom GPTs come in.

A custom GPT is essentially an AI assistant trained on your preferences. You tell it once how you want information processed, and it remembers. Every time.

Stanford researchers found that personalized AI tools increase user productivity by 37% compared to generic tools.² The difference? Context. A custom GPT knows your industry, your reading level, your priorities.

Here’s what mine does: When I feed it business content, it automatically pulls out implementation steps, potential objections, and ROI metrics. When I give it leadership content, it highlights principles, real-world examples, and team applications. I built these preferences in once. Now every summary is pre-filtered for what I actually care about.

Creating one takes about fifteen minutes. You describe your role, your goals, what matters most to you. Then you test it with a few pieces of content and refine. After that, you’ve got a personal assistant that knows exactly how you think.

The compound effect is powerful. Over months, you’re not just consuming more content—you’re consuming better content, processed specifically for your context.

Method #3: Build an AI Project

Scale systematically. When you’re processing content regularly, a project-based approach lets you work at scale. This is where AI becomes truly transformative.

An AI project is a dedicated workspace where you can upload documents, books, transcripts—anything—and the AI maintains context across all of it. Instead of one-off summaries, you’re building a knowledge base that compounds.

According to research from Harvard Business School, professionals who use systematic knowledge management systems are 26% more effective at applying insights to new situations.³ The reason? They’re not just collecting information—they’re connecting it.

You’re not just summarizing content anymore. You’re building a second brain that gets smarter with every addition.

Here’s how I use this: I have a project dedicated to AI implementation strategies. Over the past six months, I’ve uploaded 47 books, hundreds of articles, and dozens of podcast transcripts. Now when I ask questions, the AI synthesizes across all of that material.

Want to know the common threads across twelve different AI experts on a specific topic? Done in thirty seconds. Need to compare approaches from different industries? The AI spots patterns I’d never see manually.

The setup requires more investment—maybe an hour to organize your first project—but the payoff is exponential. You’re not just summarizing content anymore. You’re building a second brain that gets smarter with every addition.

Method #4: Build a Searchable Knowledge Repository

Preserve and leverage. The real power isn’t just consuming more—it’s being able to find and use what you’ve learned. This is where most people’s systems break down.

You’ve read a hundred summaries. Great. But can you find the one insight you need six months later? Probably not.

Research from the Association for Psychological Science shows that information retrieval—not just acquisition—is the key to long-term retention and application.⁴ If you can’t find it when you need it, you might as well not have learned it at all.

This is where NotebookLM changed everything for me. It’s Google’s AI-powered research assistant, and it’s built specifically for this use case: creating a searchable, conversational knowledge base from your sources.

Here’s how it works: You upload documents—PDFs, articles, notes, transcripts, whatever you’ve got. NotebookLM reads everything and creates what’s essentially an expert AI that knows only your materials. Then you can ask it questions, and it synthesizes answers from across your entire library, citing exactly where each insight came from.

Imagine what becomes possible when you can expose yourself to breakthrough ideas from fifty books instead of five.

The magic happens when you search. Need ideas for improving team communication? I ask NotebookLM, and it pulls relevant insights from eight different books, four podcasts, and a dozen articles in my collection—complete with direct quotes and source citations. The AI already did the hard work of distillation. Now I’m just connecting the dots.

What makes NotebookLM particularly powerful is that it doesn’t just retrieve—it synthesizes. Ask it to compare approaches from different authors, and it will. Ask it to find contradictions or common themes, and it does that too. It’s like having a research assistant who’s read everything you’ve read and can instantly recall any piece of it.

Pro tip: Want to process physical books or protected ebooks? The Implementation Kit includes my exact workflow for converting any format into AI-ready PDFs in under sixty seconds.

These four methods build on each other. Start with a browser extension this week. Create a custom GPT next week. Launch your first AI project by month’s end. Build your archive as you go.

Within thirty days, you’ll have a system that lets you consume content at a pace that was impossible six months ago. The information tsunami doesn’t go away. But now you’ve got a surfboard instead of a life vest.

Imagine what becomes possible when you can expose yourself to breakthrough ideas from fifty books instead of five. When you can synthesize insights across your entire industry instead of your limited reading list. When you can actually remember and apply what you’ve learned instead of letting it slip away.

The constraint isn’t time anymore. It’s willingness to use the tools we already have.

Which method will you implement first to transform how you learn?

Comments

If you have a question about using AI to consume more content without working more, click here to send me an email. I read every one. Seriously. Your experiences help me write better content, and sometimes the best insights come from readers like you. 

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P.S. Consider the AI Business Lab Mastermind: Running a $3-10M business? You’re past the startup chaos but not quite at autopilot. That’s exactly where AI changes everything. The AI Business Lab Mastermind isn’t another networking group—it’s a brain trust of leaders who are already implementing, not just ideating. We’re talking real numbers, real strategies, real results. If you’re tired of being the smartest person in the room, this is your new room. 👉🏼 Learn more and apply here.

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