INSTEAD OF WATCHING NETFLIX TONIGHT. Spend 2 hours with this. Claude AI FULL COURSE that teaches you how to BUILD and AUTOMATE anything. The people who watch this tonight will wake up tomorrow with a new skill. Watch it and bookmark it now.
I accidentally discovered how to compress a semester of learning into 48 hours.
A grad student at MIT showed me his NotebookLM setup. I thought he was just organized. Then I watched him pass a qualifying exam on a subject he'd never studied before.
Here's exactly what he did:
First: he didn't upload a textbook.
He uploaded 6 textbooks, 15 research papers, and every lecture transcript he could find on the subject.
Then he asked NotebookLM one question:
"What are the 5 core mental models that every expert in this field shares?"
Not "summarize this." Not "explain this topic."
Mental models. The stuff that takes professors years to develop.
But the next part is what broke my brain.
He followed up with:
"Now show me the 3 places where experts in this field fundamentally disagree, and what each side's strongest argument is."
In 20 minutes he had a map of the entire intellectual landscape of the field:
the debates, the consensus, the open questions.
Most students spend a full semester just figuring out what those debates even are.
Then he did something I've never seen before.
He asked:
"Generate 10 questions that would expose whether someone deeply understands this subject versus someone who just memorized facts."
He spent the next 6 hours answering those questions using the source material. Every wrong answer triggered a follow-up:
"Explain why this is wrong and what I'm missing."
By hour 48, he could hold a conversation with his thesis advisor without getting destroyed.
The tool didn't change. The questions did.
Most people treat NotebookLM like a fancy highlighter.
These students are using it like a private tutor who has read everything ever written on the subject.
The difference between a semester and 48 hours isn't the amount of content.
It's knowing which questions to ask.
15 open-source tools worth trying before paying for another AI subscription.
1. Ollama: Run local AI models
2. Open WebUI: Self-hosted AI chat
3. LibreChat: Multi-model chat interface
4. AnythingLLM: Chat with your documents
5. Whisper: Speech-to-text transcription
6. ComfyUI: Visual image generation workflows
7. n8n: Workflow automation
8. Flowise: Visual AI agent builder
9. Dify: Build LLM applications
10. Khoj: Personal AI search
11. Jan: Local AI desktop app
12. Aider: Terminal AI coding assistant
13. Continue: Open-source coding assistant
14. OpenHands: AI software development agents
15. SearXNG: Private metasearch engine
Most can be self-hosted. Some features or hosted services cost money.
Find their repositories on GitHub. Check licenses and hardware requirements.
Bookmark this + tag someone tired of subscription fees.
Thank me later.
Every ChatGPT user's deep-research prompt:
"Before answering my research question, do these 10 things:
1. Define exactly what needs to be answered.
2. Break the question into smaller research tasks.
3. Prioritize original sources over summaries.
4. Separate hard evidence from people's opinions.
5. Find credible arguments against your conclusion.
6. Compare numbers across multiple sources.
7. Check dates, sample sizes, and methodology.
8. Flag claims you can't properly verify.
9. Tell me what evidence could prove you wrong.
10. Give me the final answer with sources + confidence levels.
Never make up a source.
If you can't browse or verify something, say so.
My question: [INSERT QUESTION]"
Most people ask ChatGPT to "research this deeply."
Give it an actual research protocol instead.
Thank me later.
Advice I’d give to anyone in their 20s:
Build an audience online. Divert them to an email list. Post weekly essays. Do it for a year or more. After you do that, you can literally do whatever you want for the rest of your life.