Transcription
Most people think AI gives them an edge. But for the top one or maybe 2%, AI does not give them an edge. It is the edge because it amplifies something that they already built. A system of thinking. And if you don't have that system, AI just makes you faster at spinning your wheels.
Look, in my opinion, AI doesn't make you smarter. It makes you louder. And if your thinking is messy, your outputs are going to get messier faster. And I'm speaking from experience because over the last 6 months, I have been building a community of over 10,000 founders, creators, and operators. These are people using AI not just to save time, but to reshape how they think, build, and scale. And after watching their habits and studying the ones that quietly outperform everyone else, I noticed a pattern. It is not about the prompt tricks. It is not about the latest shiny tools. And it's not even about the output speed. It's all about mental infrastructure. It comes from installing better habits. The kind that make AI feel less like a chatbot and more like a second, third or fourth brain. Basically, they have rebuilt their default mode, how they approach problems, how they store insight, how they think with machines, and that is what gives them leverage that the rest of the world cannot see.
So, in this video, I'm going to break down seven of the most underrated, misunderstood, or transformative habits of elite AI users. And I'm not just talking about get more done habits. I mean operating system upgrades that fundamentally change how you build, how you decide, and how you create with AI. Because if you are still trying to prompt better, you've already lost. This is a new game. So, listen. The people who win with AI are, in my opinion, not the fastest typers. They are not better prompt engineers. They're just more intentional. They have built these habits that make AI feel less like a tool or like a chatbot, as I said, and more like an extension of how they think, how they create, and how they build. Because here's the thing, if you wake up asking, "What tool should I use today?" you're already behind. The real question should be what process do I follow that compounds with or without that tool because here's an uncomfortable truth that I think many people choose to ignore. AI in my opinion doesn't give you direction. It just amplifies the direction that you already have. Now think what if your systems are scattered? What if your focus is unclear? Or what if your thinking is reactive? Well, AI just multiplies the mess. Unless you've built daily systems to guide your mind, you will probably spend more time chasing trends than building momentum. The top 1 to 2%, they don't use AI. They partner with it. They've created these feedback loops and rituals and mental models, these tiny inputs that can lead to compounding outcomes. And that also let AI accelerate the work that actually matters. And they do it with less effort, not more. So if you want to be in that group, start with your habits. Because when you fix the input, the outputs take care of themselves.
Okay, so let's get into it. Habit number one. This one I call the architect protocol. The first upgrade, because this is not about what you prompt, it's about how you think before you even open chat GPT. Most people treat AI like a genie. You know, they type a request, they wait for magic, and then they copy, paste, and they're done. They ask for content ideas or a quick email or a smart caption and that works until it doesn't because AI doesn't reward creativity. It rewards clarity. And clarity doesn't come from prompts. It comes from how you think, from your mental architecture. And the problem turns out to be the absence of a system behind the prompt or the absence of structure behind the request. So what we found is that top AI builders and creators do not start with the question. They don't chase the perfect prompt. They start with the system with the architecture. They think in inputs, outputs, context flows, edge cases, modularity literally like product designers or system engineers because to them a prompt is never a oneliner. It's a sequence, a container, uh repeatable logic. And while the average user tries to get AI to do a task, the one to 2% they design repeatable logic. They ask, "What's the real outcome? What inputs create that? How can I make it modular? Where does this slot into a bigger system that I want to build or that I'm creating?" They design it once and then they deploy it a 100 times across teams or tools or touch points. The habit isn't get faster at prompting, not even get better at it. They build frameworks, not tasks. They build containers, not commands. And they build sequences, not oneliners. They think like designers, like engineers, like architects. Because once the architecture is solid, AI becomes the builder.
So I want to give you an idea so you know what I mean. I've seen many amateurs uh prompting things like, "Write me 10 newsletter ideas." And sure, AI will do great with something like that, but it can do fantastic with something like use this tone, this audience, this persona, this swipe file, and please produce 10 newsletter titles in three styles: curiositydriven, outcome driven, story driven. Guess what? After you've done that, all you need to do is save it as a prompt stack and then reuse it across clients or content. you can use that again and again or you can hand it over to your team or you can automate it in a custom GPT or with NA10 and this way you get repeatable systems that scale either content production or whatever you're working on without sacrificing the strategy. So look um I hope by now you see that it's not about speaking versus typing. This is about moving faster without repeating yourself. So, what's one problem that you solve every week that AI could probably solve every time, faster, better? Or maybe what's a system that if built once could run forever and save a lot of time or cost for you. What you want to do now is turn that into a thinking system and then let AI run the process for you. Because if you are still prompting from scratch, you are not building leverage. You are just typing faster. And once you stop prompting like a consumer and start designing like a founder, you quickly will start hitting a ceiling. You can architect the perfect prompt or the perfect workflow, but it's still limited by one brain, yours. And that is where the elite AI users pull ahead because they don't just talk to AI, they think with it.
So let's move to habit number two. This one I call the mirror looping because most people use AI like an intern. You know, they toss it a vague instruction set and they skim the output and then maybe tweak a line or two and then wonder why does this feel off? Well, because they're thinking, "How do I get AI to do this for me?" But that's the wrong question. Elite users ask a different question, probably a better one in my opinion. They ask, "How can AI help me think clearer?" Because AI is not um tool for delegation. It's a mirror for your thought. And the best AI users use it to reflect, to refine, and to amplify their own intelligence. So I want you to think about one thing. What would it be like if you didn't use AI to write for you, but you used it to expose how you think and make it sharper? Because I think the elite treat AI like a thinking partner. They continue staying in the room. They continue going back and forth. they continue sharpening the edge because creativity shouldn't be something that you just outsource. It should be something that you orchestrate, that you direct, that you nurture. And instead of oneshot prompting, you want to use um engaging multi-shot creative dialogue. You want to use cocreation in loops. And if this seems to abstract, you can think about it like this. a rough idea or thought could become a question that you ask AI or the situation where the model pushes back. Then maybe you ask it for a new angle or maybe you work with your LLM to test different framings so that you can sharpen your positioning or maybe you can ask it to spot your gaps so that you have this fallback plan. I mean, the magic isn't just in what the model says. It's in how the conversation evolves. And it's where breakthroughs truly happen because the process forces you to expose your thinking, to see your blind spots, and to iterate at the speed of your thoughts. It's literally creative dialogue at fantastic light speed or machine speed. Every loop exposes more signal, more insight, more clarity ultimately. and AI becomes less like a writer and more like a second brain that answers the questions that you didn't even know to ask. Think about that.
Now, I want to give you again an example to make this as practical as possible. So, think of a solo founder who's working on a product launch. Maybe you've been in that situation yourself. Now, imagine you're not asking Chad GBT to write you a landing page. Instead, what you could do would be to take your rough notes, paste that into Chad GBT or whichever model you're using and ask, what's missing in this logic? How does this positioning land with this audience? Or if you were to rewrite this for emotional versus rational thinkers, how would you do it? This way, you'll be layering prompts basically like a painter, like you're brushing. And by the end, you won't just have the copy, but you will have the clarity of vision because you don't need to get clarity before you start, but you get it by working in that loop. So, in my opinion, this is how you get truly real life leverage because your clarity is going to give you more confidence and your confidence is going to build momentum. So, I want you to think about this. Instead of asking, what can I get AI to do for me? Ask where do I need a thinking partner to move faster? Where are you maybe expecting AI to perform when it could be helping you refine? I don't know, maybe that's um refining a pitch or um unpacking a big idea that you've been holding in your brain for a while or preparing for a negotiation because AI shouldn't be your mouthpiece. It should be your thinking partner. It should be literally like a mirror. So, you don't want to prompt once and move on. You want to sit with it. You want to shape it. You want to push back. You want to ask where do I need sharper thinking right now? not better writing because the people building the future, they're not the ones outsourcing thought, if you see what I mean. They're the ones orchestrating in the loop.
So, this brings us to the next habit because once you've partnered with AI to develop your thinking, then you'll want to preserve it. Okay? And that's not in your brain, but in a system. So, what if every good idea or every insight or every asset didn't have to disappear? What if you could capture and codify your brilliance and make it usable by yourself or others on demand? So, let's go to the next one. Habit number three is about codifying mode. Because if you've solved something once and you're still solving it again, you're just leaking leverage. The most powerful AI users don't solve problems and move on. They work once and then they make that reusable. They turn that into a system because they know that the game isn't about doing more work, right? Nobody wants that. It's about building systems that do the work without you. And the habit behind that, well, I call it the codifying mode. And essentially what this means is turning one insight into infinite output. And this actually has a backstory because we met with someone about a year ago uh who was looking to codify their vast experience. And for me, that was the first time that I had heard the term And it made so much sense to me right there and then. So let's say that you write a high performing email sequence or you create a great onboarding process or I don't know you figure out the perfect prompt flow for a client deliverable. You don't want to stop at great that worked. What you want to do is ask how can I save this logic? Where else can I reuse this thinking or can I package this as a system whether it's for your team or your clients or just your AI. So what you want is to think about codifying into prompt stacks or custom GPT instructions or modular templates or notion systems or automation workflows whatever fits your scenario because just like that one insight then becomes a reusable asset and that one win that you had on a Thursday afternoon becomes infinite leverage because you're not starting from scratch every time you're compounding.
Okay, so this is in my opinion a huge secret to exponential output. You learn once, you codify the insight and then you reuse it endlessly or you delegate it to a system. So this is um what you could call the evolution of the second brain that Thiago Forte popularized and except now what you want to think is that this is not just about storing knowledge. It is about engineering reusable thinking. So again I want to give you a very practical example to bring this home. Let's say that um creator launches a lead magnet using AI. Well, instead of writing a new funnel from scratch every time, what they can do would be to save their prompt stack, create a GPT that generates versions for different niches and then package it as a tool, whether they want to sell that or they want to use it internally, but essentially now they can launch in a day, not a month, okay? or a fractional CMO builds a prompt system to write content strategies for early stage SAS companies for example rather than rewriting it every single time what they can do is break it into reusable chunks like audience insights and positioning formula and I don't know tone and style guides and then turn it into a modular prompt engine that adapts by niche or by client and then you can share it with a team or you can sell that or you can put it into a Zapier or NA10 automation and now that strategy is no longer stuck in someone's brain, it runs without them at scale. So coming back to what codifying means, it's how you stop solving the same problem twice and start building compounding clarity. So what you want to do now, I encourage you to ask yourself, where are you solving the same problem every week? What would happen if that solution lived somewhere outside of your brain? What if your past clarity became a tool for your future momentum? That's your codify mode. It's not about hoarding knowledge. It's about engineering insight into reusable systems.
But of course, having a codified system is only half of the game. The next question is, what happens when the tools change? I know that happens a lot. Or what happens when your stack breaks? Look, what I'm seeing is that elite AI users would not panic in such a situation because they've built tool fluency, not dependency. So, let's talk about that next. The fourth habit, I call it stack fluency. Because what you want is to master the mindset, not just the menu. Okay? Most people chase the latest tool. But the top 1 or 2%, they chase fluency over features. Okay? They're not married to a platform or a UI. They're not panicking when the pricing plan changes or they don't get attached to, I don't know, a Chrome extension. What they do is they're fluent in the language of systems. Okay? And because tools will change fast, they choose fluency because it stays with them forever. Because I think there's an important truth that we want to acknowledge, especially nowadays. Tools are going to change. Interfaces are going to break or they will change significantly. What's cutting edge this month is probably going to be basic next month. But what an elite AI user does is they don't memorize how to use tools. They understand why the tools work and they speak the language underneath the software. If that makes sense. the the logic, not the buttons. That's what matters because they're not tool dependent. They're tool fluent. Okay? They have transferable skills. They understand the thinking. They've built thinking models that adapt across platforms. I don't know. This tool runs an extraction pattern or this agent is performing a multi-step transformation or this interface just wraps my core prompt logic. And because of that, they can spot the underlying pattern. They can map their system onto a new stack. they can rebuild their workflows faster than most people can read tool product documentation. You don't want to become dependent on the tool. You want to become a master at orchestrating them. Okay? Because then you behave less like a user and a lot more like a conductor. You know, you have your own orchestra that you are conducting. You have your own team of architects and you're assembling modular intelligence because look, AI is evolving at lightning speed nowadays. I think we can all agree with that. And what was cutting edge today will be super lowlevel and very little exciting in a month or a year. But if you learn why a tool works, the logic behind the automation, the structure behind the prompt or the flow behind the outcome, then you become unstoppable because you no longer need to fear the change. You just flow with it. You adapt. Okay, this is the difference in my opinion between using AI as a crutch and using it as a creative extension of your brain.
So again, I want to give you a specific example so we can drive this home. Let's say that you're using chat GPT to summarize articles, okay? Um, someone who's uh quite new and amateur uh would probably memorize a prompt, something like summarize this article in bullet points. And sure, that works until the article is too long or formatting breaks or the tool changes. But if you're fluent, if you're part of the elite users, then you design um portable system, you know, a system prompt with tone, with structure, with comprehension rules, uh you will have some embedded logic maybe for what not to include. You'll have a fallback flow uh for the documents that are over the token limit. Um or a way to move between perplexity and uh chat GPT or Gemini. So you see, you then become a process designer and even if the tool changes tomorrow, you still know how to rebuild the system anywhere. So here I want you to ask yourself, am I dependent on a specific tools interface? Or do I understand the logic behind what I'm building? Or what part of your stack breaks if one tool disappears? What would it look like to be fluent instead of fragile? That is your stack fluency. It is how top one or 2% adapt faster than the tool chasers can react because they're not just learning software. You see, they're building operating logic that can live beneath any change. And when you combine that with codifying systems, then you're no longer just productive. You become anti-fragile because true leverage comes from thinking like a builder, like a founder, not like a button pusher.
But even when you build smart systems, there is still a trap. mistaking motion for momentum. So, let's talk about the next habit because this one makes the difference between activity and actual output. Okay, this one I call the outcome OS. So, look, the hidden operating system of elite users, at least what I'm seeing talking to them, being one of them hopefully. Um, and the way that they never forget what matters is because they focus on this fifth habit, which is the outcome operating system. And what elite do here is they focus on tracking outcomes, not activity. Because at the end of the day, you can spend eight hours tweaking prompts or 20 minutes shipping something that moves the needle. Sure, one looks productive, but the other one actually is. And the elite AI users don't focus on optimizing for activity. They build their day and their stack around the outcome, around the result that they want to reach eventually. Because busy is a false god. Outcomes are your truth. And most people measure their progress in inputs. Unfortunately, nowadays, did I write five tweets? Did I try a new tool? Did I check 10 things off my list? And AI creates the illusion of productivity by doing that. Actually, I made an entire video about this. I'm going to link it up here if we remember because maybe it's a good opportunity for you to go and check that out. It talks about my anti-hustle blueprint and uh the feedback that we got was fantastic from everyone who's watched that video because the idea is that you can generate endless drafts, endless templates, endless ideas, but that flood can drown you in motion. You know, the top 1 or 2% they measure impact. You know, what did we deliver? What insight was gained? What results was created? And they do that by asking what result do I want first? Okay. And then you reverse engineer everything from that point backwards. So you don't measure the time spent, you measure the value created. And what I see many times the elite users doing is building an internal dashboard, an outcome OS that filters everything that you do through one question. Is this creating leverage or just motion? Because without that outcome focus, that outcome operating system, AI just makes you faster at doing the wrong things.
And I want to explain and clarify what I mean. Let's say that you're building um I don't know a weekly content engine. If you were an amateur, you would probably track, did you write five tweets? Did you explore three tools, but then you would get stuck in prompt loops, always testing and never shipping anything. But the pro, that person would track which idea drove the most engagement, which workflow saved me the most hours, or which tool reduced effort and increased quality, or which prompt saved me hours without losing quality, or which system cut my editing time by 40%. You know, you want to log what worked and discard what didn't. And then you want to refine the system because it's not about doing more. With AI, we have the luxury of focusing on doing most or more of what works. We can build tighter feedback loops. We can put less effort for better outcomes and then repeat the process. The best AI users don't ask what did I do today? They ask what got better? So if that made you think, what I want you to reflect on is where are you mistaking activity for progress? Where are you optimizing for motion instead of momentum? Because instead of asking what did I do today, you might want to try asking what did I learn? What did I deliver? What did I improve? So with that, think about what metrics would you track if your goal was leverage, not output. What would your day look like if you optimized for clarity delivered? Because those are the habits that compound. So this is your outcome operating system. It shouldn't be a pretty dashboard on your screen. It should just be a filter in your mind, okay? One that turns AI from a content machine into a clarity engine.
But of course, even when you're tracking the right outcomes, you can still stagnate. Why? Well, because mastery doesn't come from knowing. It comes from testing, from doing, from trying, from trial and error. That is where this next habit needs to be adopted. This one I call your weekly experiments, the compounding edge that no one's tracking. So, let's talk about how to stay one step ahead even when the game keeps changing. Okay, so habit number six is about running weekly experiments because if you're not iterating, you're stagnating. AI is evolving. so fast nowadays. But you don't have to chase every headline. Elite users do not get overwhelmed. They get curious. Most people treat AI like a new tool that they need to master. This is I see that a lot. Okay. But top performers, they treat AI like um like a sandbox that they get to explore because the goal isn't to become perfect at something. It's to become adaptive and flexible. And the easiest way to do that, well, you just run tiny tests every single week. You run experiments like you're investing in future insight. You carve out space each week to try one new thing. Maybe that's a different tool. Maybe it's a different prompt structure. Maybe it's a faster system. And the reason why you want to do that is because you understand that you don't find breakthroughs by reading about them. You find them by testing them, by working with them, by rolling up your sleeves and actually doing the things that you hear about or read about or watch someone else talk about. And the thing is, you don't want to master everything at once. You're not glued to text blogs or new launches. What you want is to ask yourself, what's one thing that I could try this week? Or what result would make this worth repeating? Or how can I isolate the variable so that I can actually learn something? I see many times people who are outstanding at using AI, they treat their workflows like a product, their habits like a lab, their stack like an operating system in beta mode, you know. So if you want to do that and if you want to roll up your sleeves and actually try things out every week or every other week, you can come and join our free community. Every two weeks we have a new challenge, but you also have all the previous ones that you can go and try for yourself. That is in my opinion the best way to get started because you apply as soon as you learn something and you will learn so much by trying rather than watching endless videos on YouTube or reading endless books or articles or I don't know blog posts on things that you think are useful because that's how you stay relevant without burning out. You don't need to try everything. You just need to test one thing at a time and that's exactly what we do in our community. It's the product builder mindset that you apply to your own growth. Okay? You can form a hypothesis, then run the test, and then log what worked and what didn't so that next time you know what needs to be improved or discarded. I mean, it sounds pretty easy, but you would be surprised how few people actually do this. What you want is to treat your habits, your workflows, or your stack like a living product. Okay? Because the real edge isn't in which tool you're using. It's in your willingness to adapt faster than others are willing to commit.
So again, let me give you an example. Let's say that your email outreach isn't working. Well, this week's experiment could be test 10 voice note intros instead of cold emails or use AI to write scripts that sound more like you or track reply rate versus time saved. and then next week you can maybe try an AI assistant that updates your CRM automatically every call or you know you see the idea you don't want to just test tools you want to test um ways to solve for your leverage points because every test every iteration becomes another piece of insight another value ad to your business and it could just be 30 minutes a day you know but a test that takes you 30 minutes a day could end up saving you 30 hours a month So the elite make time to explore and every test becomes a lesson. So what you want and I encourage you to do is to reflect what is your one experiment this week? What's something that you've been repeating that's ready for a smarter system? Or what's something that you think won't work but you haven't even tried. It could take 20 minutes or even less. But if it saves you 5 hours next month, I think that's a high leverage bet. And those bets compound into mastery. They compound into outstanding businesses. So if you made this a ritual just one micro experiment every seven days in 90 days your stack wouldn't just be better it would be unrecognizable. I mean that's how the best adapt faster than the whole landscape is able to change. You don't get stuck in optimization. You stay in exploration in curiosity and once those experiments start working then the only thing that's left to do well that's the next habit. the final uh key in my set of habits. That's the one that turns experiments into a full operating system. So let's talk about habit number seven that is dynamic stability.
So I think this is an important one because most people build systems hoping that they never fail. But the elite AI users, they build systems that they expect to fail and then recover fast. They don't fear starting over. They essentially design for it because they understand that the tool might break, the model might change, the strategy might flop, they might get it wrong. Most people do. I do as well a lot of times. But instead of resisting that, they bake it into the system. So think of this as versioned thinking. Okay? Nothing's final. Everything is updatable. Figure outable like Marie Forio calls it. Um, you want to have um roll back logic. Okay? So systems um that allow you for undo buttons and you want to have feedback loops so the system gets smarter with every mistake. Now this is emotional resilience. Most people build systems that look smart but the most successful people they build systems that survive reality because in today's day and age where tools change weekly and platforms shift overnight and the game keeps rewriting itself, fragile systems fail. But dynamic ones, they evolve. And the people who end up being successful in my opinion, they're the ones who've installed this final habit, the dynamic stability, the practice of staying grounded, adaptive, and resilient under pressure. Because, as I said, many people build rigid stacks and shiny workflows that just look good, but then they ship a system once and then they cling to it. What you want instead is to just expect that it will fail and design with that in mind. You want to version your thinking and let the system breathe. You know, build it like nature does. You want to build something that's redundant. Um, you want to, I don't know, create a loose coupling between tools. Uh, you want to have that modularity mindset so you can easily replace things. Um, you want to have a fail fast loop. I mean, there are many ways you can build this into your thinking because the real game is not about perfection. You know, it's essentially about adaptability under stress.
Look, um, the elite AI users, they don't just build leverage, they build resilient leverage. So, I want to give you an example again because hopefully these help. Imagine that you built a killer prompt system in GPT4. But guess what? The model updates and suddenly formatting breaks and the tone shifts and the output gets really weird. Well, if you were an amateur, then you would probably panic and rewrite everything from scratch. But if you were one of the one or 2%, you would, I don't know, swap into Claude and use the same stack or reroute through a wrapper agent or test a fallback plan. But most importantly, you would think about where was this fragile because you want to reflect and then improve your design. What you want is not to just build a workflow. You want to have that resilience element built in because that's what keeps you moving, especially when everyone else stalls. So my last reflection for you is to ask yourself, where are you still building with that failure being unacceptable? What system in your life would collapse if one part broke? So you want to look like you're designing version one, but with version 10's failure in mind. Okay? It's a a different mindset, but trust me, it will be revolutionary because true stability doesn't come from having too much control. It comes from being prepared to be flexible because dynamic stability is really not about staying in control. It's about staying in motion even when the environment changes. We are nowadays in a world that is really changing fast. And I I think everybody sees that and your ability to rebuild is your edge and that mindset. That's what makes you unshakable. You don't have to get it right the first time. It's absolutely fine if you don't. You don't have to build a perfect system. You just have to stay moving. Build what works, break what doesn't, and keep adapting until your system becomes antifragile.
This is everything. I really hope this was helpful. I hope it was insightful and that you found some new ideas to bring into your toolkit and help you elevate and go into the 1 or 2% elite AI users. I would really love to hear your thoughts about this. So, let me know in the comments down below what you think and whether this was useful. In the meantime, if you do want to join our community, it is completely free. You just need to go and use this QR code or the link is down below in the description. Come and join us. We can hang out every two weeks in our hive holes. You can go into the challenges really, really quickly after joining and you will get so much value, not just from me, but from interacting with everybody else. There's a ton of great people with great experiences that you can learn from. And just being in a community will continue keeping you motivated and pushing forward no matter how many challenges you encounter. Also, like this video if you did. Be sure to subscribe if you haven't done so. And also share this with anyone in your circle of friends or family who you think might need to maybe upgrade a little bit their AI user habits so that they get to be part of the 1%. Until next time, I suggest you go ahead and watch this video over here and I'll see you soon. Bye.