Week 8: Using AI to Get More Out of Books

The Experiment

I’ve been on a nerdy quest to optimize my health; wake up early, drink green tea, meditate, no booze. If there is a way to remove joy from your life in a pious and healthy manner, I’ve done it. As a regular listener of Huberman, I was drawn to Peter Attia’s Outlive. His focus on healthspan and actionable advice resonated with me, putting many of my beliefs into a framework that was easy to understand.

Outlive isn’t light reading. It’s technical, dense, and packed with concepts that are challenging to apply. So, I decided to use AI as a sparring partner—to make the book more accessible, actionable, and personal.

Making Outlive Accessible

As I read through Outlive, I relied on ChatGPT and Claude to help me:

1. Explain complex concepts: For instance, when Attia dove deep into technical ideas, I asked AI for detailed yet simplified explanations.
2. Compare perspectives: I explored what others thought of his advice and compared it to mainstream medical recommendations, validating his wilder claims.
3. Create visuals: The diagrams in the book were useful, but I wanted clearer, more personalized visuals to better grasp key concepts.
4. Dig deeper: AI helped me go beyond the surface, letting me explore rabbit holes and extract insights.

Adding My Health Records

Inspired by the book, I uploaded my health records—years of blood test results—to see how they measured up against Attia’s recommendations.

• AI vs. Attia: Many of the AI’s interpretations aligned with Attia’s advice, but it also surfaced other intriguing tidbits that weren’t mentioned in the book.
• Personalized banter: This turned into an engaging back-and-forth where AI acted like a curious assistant, helping me contextualize how Attia’s guidance could apply to me.

The Challenge of Application

While the book is packed with great advice, some of it is tough to implement. Attia’s emphasis on exercise regimens feels pretty hectic.

Some takeaway? It finally convinced me to eat more protein. After years of dismissing the idea (thanks, Atkins), I’ve started experimenting with a diet that includes 25% more protein, I’m also off the sugar and I’m trying psyllium husk to reduce my LDL cholesterol. I’ll track my stats over the next few months and see how this impacts my health.

The Outcome

This process made Outlive far more engaging and actionable:

• Simplified the technical: AI turned complex sections into something I could digest and apply.
• Personalized the advice: By feeding in my own health data, I could see where I stood and what tweaks made sense for me.
• Sparked curiosity: I came away inspired to feed in more data (like sleep and exercise stats from my smartwatch) to continue refining my health journey.

Key Takeaway

AI is a powerful tool for turning dense, technical content into something relatable and actionable. It’s not just about reading—it’s about engaging, asking questions, and tailoring the insights to your life. As a companion, it makes the reading process more fun.

Pro Tips for Using AI with Dense Books

1. Ask detailed questions: Whether it’s breaking down terms or digging into contentious ideas, be specific with your prompts to get useful answers.
2. Use visuals to your advantage: If you’re a visual learner, ask AI to create diagrams or charts to help contextualize the content.
3. Incorporate your own data: Make it personal by using AI to analyze your stats against the book’s advice.

What’s Next?

• I’m planning to export sleep, exercise, and other smartwatch data to see what insights AI can uncover about my daily habits.
• Outlive has inspired me to continue experimenting—whether it’s refining my diet or tweaking exercise routines based on AI-driven feedback.

Links

1. McKinsey details how AI can transform the modern workplace, but that only 1% consider themselves mature in terms of deployment. Leadership is the primary barrier to scale.
2. Andrej Karpathy founded OpenAI, worked on AI at Tesla and is the OG when it comes to AI. He produces incredible videos on YouTube, this is a summary of how LLM’s tick. Don’t only believe me, here is another review:

Join me as I do 52 AI experiments in 2025. From teaching me to DJ to analysing interviews I’m documenting all I learn.