Transcription
The other day, I was having a conversation with my brother, and you may know my brother as Productive Dude here on YouTube, or in other words, the king of Notion. We were discussing knowledge, and he mentioned that he wanted to start turning the books he was reading into GPTs, not only so that he could take notes easier but also to learn the book better and retain that information more effectively. This got me thinking: you know what, this would be a great YouTube video idea! So that's what I'm doing in this video today.
I have this book called "Maximum Achievement" by Brian Tracy. It's a great book that provides strategies and skills to unlock your hidden powers to succeed. I thought if I could find an online PDF version of this book, which I did, then I could upload that to ChatGPT and interact with the entire book through a GPT custom to that book. I could give it custom actions and have it perform certain tasks whenever I ask specific questions or run through certain protocols. That's what I'm going to show you in today's video. I'm going to walk you through how I built this GPT for this book, and I'm also going to show you some of the conditional logic that I added so that when I hit an activation command, it runs through a certain protocol based on this book and the systems within it. It's a very cool system, and yeah, thank you to Productive Dude for giving me this idea. I suggest you try it out!
Now, by no means do I want you to go and rip a free PDF. I actually have the book, and if the PDF was paid for and it wasn't free online, then I would definitely be buying the PDF as well. So keep that in mind, and yeah, let's get into the rest of the video.
Now, before we jump into this video, I just wanted to mention that my ChatGPT Mastery course is still for sale. If you want to learn ChatGPT from A to Z in depth, with 45+ modules in a growing community of over 300 members at the time of recording this video, then I will be leaving a link in the description or the top pinned comment to access this. It's amazing because we can stay ahead of this AI revolution together. We can start these big group threads within the community, share ideas, and exchange our GPTs.
When you head over to the classroom, you will notice that we have multiple categories with many modules in each one, going in-depth on each feature of ChatGPT. This way, you can maximize it to its full potential, speed up your workflows, and tackle boring repetitive tasks. You can really start utilizing ChatGPT to engineer your life after completing this course.
Now, let's get back into the video. So, let's go in here and get started. I want to create a GPT based on "Maximum Achievement," so that's what I'm going to do first. I'm going to select "Create a GPT," and I can give this GPT a name. I might just name it after the book I'm reading: "Maximum Achievement." By the way, I'm not sure if this will work for every book, but I know this book has an online PDF that I can download, so that's going to be very useful and a big contributing factor to actually creating this GPT.
Then, I can give a description. Now, I can go in here and create a quick image. I've emailed it to myself, and now I am uploading the photo. I'm just going to hit "Open," and now we have that nice little book title right there. It looks kind of cool. I can trim that down if I'd like to, but I like how it's personal, and I don't really want to use an AI-generated picture. I can just take a picture of the book right on my desk. I think that's a good way to go about it.
Now, I get into adding the instructions, but first, I want to dive into the knowledge section of this GPT because that's the most important part. How are we going to actually upload this book to this GPT? Well, you need a PDF, and this is the only way that I've thought about doing this. I know "Maximum Achievement" has a PDF, so that's what I'm going to type in. Now that that's saved to my desktop, I can upload that knowledge to the file section of my GPT. I can click in here, open up this PDF just like that, and it's a whole book—258 pages on a PDF. This has the ability to upload to ChatGPT, and ChatGPT can reference this information anytime I have a question or want to run through one of the protocols within the book.
Now, I can dive into my conversation starters and my instructions since I have the entire book right here within the GPT. This is absolutely insane! Not only is it going to be a wonderful study buddy, but it's also going to be a plethora of information that I could be forgetting within this book. Anytime I have a question about it, I can come right back to it. This is amazing stuff!
So right now, what I have created is a general idea of what I want this book GPT to do. I say, "You are a study buddy and guide for the book 'Maximum Achievement' by Brian Tracy. Anytime a question is asked about the book, reference the PDF uploaded under knowledge." So anytime I have a question about this book or a statement that I want to create or make, or maybe I want an analysis of a certain section, ChatGPT using this GPT is going to reference the PDF that I've uploaded under the knowledge section.
Then, I say, "When other general questions are asked about goal setting, mindset, happiness, greatness, psychology, philosophy, business, economics, history, metaphysics, etc., I want you to also reference the knowledge book PDF." Lastly, I say, "If the user ever needs help, first reference the book, and then based on the knowledge of the book, give an answer. Use the strategies and techniques within the book to help the user." So if I have a specific problem that I want to address using this book, instead of flipping through it trying to remember where I was or looking back at my handwritten notes, I can just go to ChatGPT and get exactly what I want from this book.
Now, I'm going to customize this workflow a little bit and add some conversation starters so that I don't have to type out prompts every single time. After I add the conversation starters, I'm going to go into these custom instructions and add the logic for what this GPT needs to do whenever a certain conversation starter is selected.
The first conversation starter I can add is, "I need help creating notes for a section of the book." This can be the first conversation starter for creating notes for a certain section of the book that I can actually take in and apply to my life or that just helps me better remember this. So when I say this conversation starter, what do I want ChatGPT to do? I can get into that a little bit later. First, I need to find effective note-taking strategies in order to create good notes, and then I can give those note-taking strategies to the instructions so that when I hit the specific conversation starter, I can have ChatGPT take me through a note-taking protocol that I know works every time.
I can get into that a little bit later, but first, I'm going to add some other conversation starters here. Now, I've added two more conversation starters: "I need an alternative perspective," and "I need help creating goals." Within the book, there are certain sections that I think would just be good to get an alternative perspective on. I can have ChatGPT play the devil's advocate and run through what a different route to get to what he's talking about would be. I can set up the custom instructions for that.
Then, I also have "I need help creating goals" because within the book, there's a 12-step process for creating goals. Anytime I want to create a goal, I can have ChatGPT run through that 12-step protocol by just saying to reference that in the book. I don't have to put the entire 12-step protocol within the backend instructions here; I can just say to reference that part of the book to help me create the goals, and it will reference this PDF that I've uploaded on the book to help me pinpoint and create goals based on that 12-step system.
Now, I need to implement all the instructions for these conversation starters so I can have ease of use when using this GPT. The first thing I'm going to do is find effective note-taking strategies within ChatGPT so that I can effectively create notes for when I'm reading this book. I'm going to ask ChatGPT to find me 10 unique and super effective note-taking strategies for studying knowledge within books. I can send that off, and now I'm going to find a unique note-taking strategy from ChatGPT that sounds appealing to me and that I would retain and learn information from in a good way.
After reading through all of these note-taking methods that ChatGPT generated, I really like the double-entry journal. It says to divide the page into two columns: on the left, write down quotes or key concepts directly from the book. ChatGPT can write down those quotes for me, and then I can fill out on the right in a numbered list or whatever it may be my own thoughts, questions, or interpretations of that book. This will help me remember what's in the passage and also give my opinion on what's actually happening in the book. This is the one that I'm going to use. I'm going to copy that just so I have it, and then I can X out of that tab.
Now I'm back in my GPT, and I can get into the logic of these conversation starters. I can say, "When the user says, 'I need help creating notes for a section of the book,' anytime I select this conversation starter, anything I put after this little prompt in the instructions right here, ChatGPT will run through within this GPT." So then I said, "Run through this process," and I paste in the double-entry journal. I know that I want to do the double-entry journal, but since we're not using actual paper, we're using ChatGPT, I want to reframe this in a different way.
Instead of dividing the page into two columns, I can say, "Create a table. In the column on the left, write quotes or key concepts directly from the user-specified section, and then leave the right column of that table blank and prompt the user to write their own thoughts, questions, or interpretations for each point you provide." So that's the idea of the double-entry journal, but first, we need to have this GPT ask the user what section they need help on. I'll have this be step two, and I'll say, "Run through this process."
Then I need a step one of asking the user which section they need help studying. I can give more instructions into this action, so I say, "When the user specifies a section of the book they need help with, move on to step two." It's first going to ask the user which section they need help studying with after they send off this conversation starter, and then they're going to move on to the double-entry journal method.
Then I write a third step: "After the user writes down their thoughts for each question, send the user a completed version of the table with their notes included in the right column matching the left." This is the first logical run-through that we have using one of the conversation starters. So now, anytime on the right here, if somebody sends off "I need help creating notes for a section of the book," it's going to run through that three-step process that we just created in the backend of the instructions.
First, it's going to have us specify which section of the book we need assistance with. Then, I will look through here and find a good section to get help from. I know this is going to be mirrored, but I'm going to get a section from chapter 3 called "Homeostasis." So then all I have to say is the section I need help with. I can say, "The homeostasis section in chapter 3." Because it asked which section of the book I need assistance with, I can just say the exact section in the exact chapter. I can send it off, and then it's going to start going through that note-taking process that we told it to after it finds that section through the PDF that we uploaded earlier in this video.
Then it does just as we asked. It goes through this double-entry journal method in order to help us fill out this section and better understand and interpret it. Right here, I can list how I can apply this in my life or my thoughts on the person I currently am or anything that's going to help me better understand the section with note-taking. What you can do is actually upload multiple different strategies in here for this one command, and you can have ChatGPT decide which strategy is better based on the section, but I'm not going to get that in-depth right now.
Then I can fill out my thoughts, and I'll just put some arbitrary information in here. It's not stuff that I would actually put; I would actually sit down and think about this a little bit better. Now, this note-taking method, I'm not too sure about. I think it's okay, but I think I could definitely find a better way of taking notes. I'm just showing you this as an example of how you can run ChatGPT through these protocols after selecting a certain conversation starter.
So now I can send off that message, and it will finish that step-by-step system by providing me with a completed version of this table. As you can see right up here, it's just putting your thoughts here and giving us a space to put our thoughts down in that second column. But now it's actually filling out this entire table for us to either copy and paste, screenshot, or put anywhere within our notes. This is kind of a fun way you can take notes on a book with ChatGPT. I gave it a specific section with my GPT and accessed its knowledge database, which is the PDF of the book, and then it took me through a custom note-taking method that I set up in the backend.
Now, I'm actually going to go through here and figure out what I want to put for these other conversation starters. Now I'm done providing instructions. I've added two more protocols for this to run through after those conversation starters are selected. I have "I need an alternative perspective," where the user can actually input a section, and then after the user inputs a section, this GPT will give two alternative perspectives that differ from the main point that the author is trying to get across. It offers a fresh perspective or a different way of going about that general topic.
Then the second set of instructions I added is "I need help creating goals." There's a section in the book found in chapter 5 called "The 12-Step System for Creating Goals," and I told it to reference that 12-step system and guide the user through that process one step at a time until the final result is achieved. Once the user answers all 12 questions and completes the activities, it will compile everything the user wrote regarding creating that specific set of goals so they can reference everything in a nice list.
So now this GPT is complete. I have my three conversation starters. I could even go as far as adding different actions in order to have this saved to my Notion account, have this emailed to me, or have a Google Doc created of my notes, etc. I could have it do all that, but for now, what I'm going to do is hit "Save to Only Me," and then I'm going to hit "Confirm." You can't really see the confirm button right now because it's behind my head while I'm talking, so I'm going to hit that, and then it's going to save this GPT.
I can test it out just like that. We have a nice book GPT that I can go into. I can ask questions about the book; it doesn't have to be using just these conversation starters. Remember, this is my study buddy, so I can ask about certain questions of the book, get insights, take notes, and do whatever I need when I'm reading. I can use ChatGPT as my knowledge retention and learning tool as I'm going through this book. It's a great way of expanding on your knowledge and also just utilizing ChatGPT to its maximum potential.
So I can select "I need help creating goals," and it's going to run me through that 12-step system that I wanted it to reference within a specific part of the book. I can come back, and if I found that goal-setting method successful, then I can always come back here and keep creating goals using this exact system that I used to find success. Then it starts to say it's been reviewing the book, but it's been taking a little bit longer than expected to find that 12-step system. However, it's running me through another Brian Tracy goal-setting process, and it says it's going to continue searching for that 12-step process. It's still going to walk me through the principles of this book for goal setting, which is the main idea of it.
Now, I could make this a little bit easier by just laying out the 12-step system so it doesn't have to go through 40 pages worth of PDF to figure out what it is, but I was kind of pushing it to its limits to see if it could actually do that. I'm sure it could with a little bit more time and refining. But then I can go back here, hit "New Chat," and then I can say, "I need an alternative perspective." I can kind of go through that protocol, and it's going to use those custom instructions that I prompted in the backend to walk me step by step through this.
It says, "Which section of the book 'Maximum Achievement' do you need an alternative perspective for?" I can say something like "Why people don't set goals in chapter 5." I can send that off, and I spelled chapter wrong, but that's no big deal. Now this GPT is going to go through that process, search the knowledge, and offer two alternative perspectives on the matter.
So now it's diving into the section that I referenced, and then it's giving two alternative perspectives on this topic, which is very cool. This part of the GPT is working exactly how I want it to, and this is just one example of how you could utilize a book GPT to get alternative perspectives.
This has been a fun idea for a GPT that I hope you can take some notes from and utilize in your own workflow. Once again, thank you to Productive Dude for giving me this idea. I did not come up with this on my own; I give full credit to Productive Dude. I just wanted to bring it to life in this video to show all of you how it's possible and some different techniques you could use for super learning with ChatGPT.
With that being said, if you want to learn how to create good GPTs from start to finish and also learn ChatGPT from start to finish, including everything to do with prompting and advanced techniques, then I highly recommend joining my ChatGPT Mastery course, which I will be leaving in the description below or the top pinned comment. That being said, I have a ton of free content here on YouTube that you can learn from and take value from. So if you did draw value from this video, please drop a like and comment below, letting me know your feedback on this GPT. Also, subscribe if you're new and hit that bell icon so you never miss a new upcoming video.
With that being said, I will see you in the next one!