The 7 Steps to Build Your AI Learning System

Two Spaces in 2 days.

One on building your Second Brain. One on deliberate practice with AI.

And I realized — they're the same problem.

Here's what I mean.

The Problem:

You consume information constantly. Podcasts, books, articles, conversations with interesting people.

But where does it go?

You read something brilliant on Tuesday. By Friday, you can't remember which book it was from.

This is the gap between consumption and creation — and it's killing your ability to build anything meaningful from what you learn.

But here's what makes it worse in 2026:

Most people think AI solves this. Just ask ChatGPT, right?

Wrong.

AI knows everything. But YOU need to know when AI is confidently wrong. And it will be. Often.

There's a doctor — let's call her Dr. X. She memorized anatomy, drug interactions, diagnostic criteria. Thousands of hours. Now she uses AI. AI suggests diagnoses.

She catches AI mistakes every week. Because she has the foundation.

Now imagine a future doctor who never memorized anything. Just learned to prompt. AI gives the same wrong answer — confidently. This doctor has no basis to question it.

The better AI gets at sounding right, the more YOUR foundational knowledge matters.

The System That Actually Works

I've been building this for 150+ days now. Testing it on myself. Here's what works.

Step 1: Create Your PARA Structure

Four folders. That's it.

• Projects (what you're actively working on)

• Areas (ongoing responsibilities)

• Resources (reference material)

• Archives (done or inactive)

Not organized by topic. Organized by actionability. This changes everything.

Step 2: Define Your Current Projects

You can't have 15 projects. Maybe 3-5 max. If you don't know what you're working on, you don't know what information to capture.

Step 3: Capture Only 10%

Most people try to save everything. That's how you build a graveyard, not a system.

Save only what connects to your current projects. If it doesn't resonate with what you're building right now — let it go.

Think curator, not collector.

Step 4: Set Up Your AI Feedback Loop

This is where deliberate practice comes in.

Speed of feedback matters more than perfection of feedback.

A human expert giving you perfect feedback once a week loses to AI giving you good-enough feedback after every single attempt.

Set up instant loops. Write one paragraph. Paste to AI. Get feedback. Revise. Repeat. 10 cycles in the time it takes for one human review.

Step 5: Use the 1-1-1 Method

After every learning session — reading, prompting, conversation — extract:

• 1 Highlight (the core truth)

• 1 Insight (why it matters)

• 1 Action (what you'll do with it)

Without this compression step, you're just consuming.

Step 6: Generate Handoff Documents

Your AI forgets after 15-20 messages. Memory decay is real.

At the end of every session, generate a handoff doc. What we achieved. Key decisions. Next steps.

Start the next session by loading this context. You're not starting from scratch — you're building on validated thinking.

Step 7: Express Something

Capture. Organize. Distill. Express.

The final step is output. A post. A newsletter. A product. Teaching someone else.

This is where the protégé effect kicks in — teaching forces deeper processing than studying. Your brain works differently when you have to explain something.

That's why I host these Spaces. Not just to teach — to encode what I'm learning into my own brain.

The Prompt:

I shared this in the Space, but if you missed it:

There's a Practice Coach prompt that turns AI into your always-on coach. It pushes you at the edge of your ability. Gives immediate feedback. Increases difficulty as you succeed.

And a Writing Coach prompt that gives you specific feedback on every paragraph — what's working, what's weak, why, and how to fix it.

Reply "PRACTICE" and I'll send you both.

The Point

Nobody is going to design your learning for you.

Not your job. Not your school. Not the system.

You have to become your own trainer.

Build your own system.

Track what you're getting better at. Use AI as your always-on coach. Teach what you learn.

That's the game now.

37 days until I launch the full system — the AI Operating System.

Everything I'm building in public, packaged into something you can use.

But you don't need to wait. Start with the 7 steps today.

The person who builds their system now will be unrecognizable in 90 days.

— Vaibhav