#134 | How To Turn Any Book or Video Into Your Personal AI Coach in 3 Steps

A collection of the best hidden gems, mental models, and frameworks from the world’s top thinkers; to help you become 1% better and live a happier life ❤️

Hello curious minds 🧠

I read 60 to 80 non-fiction books a year. Why? Because inside every one are ideas that can change how you work, think, and live.

But sadly… turning knowledge into action is hard.

Reading takes hours. Many give up before finishing. Even if you make it through, you still face the real challenge: figuring out what matters, making sense of it all, and turning insight into action. The process is long, messy, and often overwhelming.

Most of us never get past the reading or note-taking phase. The knowledge stays locked away, not because it’s useless, but because using it is exhausting.

But what if that changed?

What if every book or video you learn from could become an interactive coach, one built just for you? A guide that knows the material inside out and helps you apply it to your life, step by step?

That's the idea I want to share with you. It's a simple way to use AI, with no coding needed, to turn any book or video into your very own AI coach. A coach that helps you not just learn things, but actually do them.

So how can AI help?

1. Rethink reading: fast, focused, and action-first

Traditional reading is slow and passive. You grind through every page, hoping something sticks.

An AI coach changes that.

You don’t read alone anymore. Instead, you talk to the book.

Have a goal? Tell it. Curious about an idea? Ask. Your coach surfaces the most useful insights, explains them clearly, and always keeps one thing in mind: action.

This isn’t about collecting facts. It’s about using what you learn. Your AI coach filters out fluff and hones in on what matters… to you.

Think of it like this: instead of a textbook, you get a tutor. One that customises your learning, explains things simply, and guides you toward doing, not just knowing.

2. Go deep, not wide: learning that sticks

This isn’t about skimming summaries or grabbing bullet points.

It’s about understanding deeply and personally.

Your AI coach is like a patient, expert tutor. It explains hard ideas in different ways, gives examples, and adjusts until things click. It even reminds you why you started learning in the first place.

This is active learning at its best: asking questions, reflecting, challenging, and engaging.

You’re not just highlighting text. You’re digesting it. You’re working with it. That’s how it sticks.

3. Transform the rereading experience: learn, act, reflect, and repeat

Most tools drop you once the book ends. Not this one.

Your AI coach is a partner that you return to after you start taking action.

It helps you plan, reflect, and adapt based on what’s working (and what’s not).

Here’s how the learning loop works:

1. Learn and plan. Get key lessons and turn them into an action plan.

2. Act. Try it out in real life.

3. Reflect. Report back. What worked? What didn’t?

4. Tweak and go again. Your coach adjusts your plan, offers new angles, and sends you back with more information and new experiments.

It’s like having a mentor who sticks around, helping you improve every time you try.

Let me now show you, step-by-step, how you can turn any book or video into your own personal AI coach 👇🏼

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🚀 If you are new here…

Hi, I’m Ryan 👋🏼 I am passionate about lifestyle gamification 🎮, which it’s just a fancy way saying I approach life like a video game, designing my character intentionally, and strive to level up every day. I am obsesssssssss with learning things that can help me live a happy and fulfilling life.

Every Sunday, through The Limitless Playbook newsletter, I share 1 actionable idea from the world's top thinkers 🎯

Oh, and fun fact: I am a PhD candidate in AI 👻 I am deeply interested in how AI can help us 10x the way we live, learn, and thrive; so expect me to share some cool AI tools, insights, and research 🤖

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🧠 How To Turn Any Books or Videos Into Your Own AI Personal Coach in 3 Steps

No coding required. Just follow the three steps below.

⚠️ Tip: Use an AI model with a large context window so that it can handle big chunks of text. Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro works well and is free via Google AI Studio.

Step 1: Feed your book or video to the AI model

Choose a book or a video.

Copy and paste the full text / transcript into the AI chat.

Ask AI to extract detailed lessons and actions of the entire book or video.

The output of this step is a detailed document of all the lessons and actions of the book / video.

📌 Demonstration

I selected The One Thing by Gary Keller. I wrote:

“I want to implement the One Thing focus productivity method to my life. Break down the book One Thing by Gary Keller into a comprehensive action plan. The action plan should cover everything that the book teaches!

[Insert text from the book]”

Here’s a snippet of the output:

Your Comprehensive Action Plan: Implementing "The ONE Thing"

Phase 0: Understanding the Foundation (The Core Idea)

Before we dive into the "how," let's solidify the "what" and "why."

1. Embrace the "Curly's Law" - The ONE Thing (Chapter 1):

   • Understanding: The secret to success, the "secret of life" as Curly put it, is to identify and focus on "ONE Thing." This single, most important thing, when accomplished, makes everything else easier or unnecessary.

   • Your First Action:

     • Reflect: Think about times in your life when you achieved something significant. Did you, perhaps unknowingly, narrow your focus on one critical activity?

     • Journal: Write down Curly's dialogue: "One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don’t mean sh*t." And then: "That’s what you’ve got to figure out." This is your new mantra.

2. Grasp the Domino Effect (Chapter 2):

   • Understanding: Success is built sequentially, not simultaneously. One right action (the first domino) can topple another, slightly larger one, creating a geometric progression of results. Extraordinary results come from lining up your priorities and knocking down the lead domino.

   • Your Action:

     • Visualize: Imagine a small domino knocking over a slightly larger one, which then knocks over an even larger one, leading to something massive. This is how your ONE Thing will work.

     • Identify: Start thinking: "What's my first domino?" We'll refine this later, but plant the seed now.

Step 2: Create the coach’s “brain”

In a new AI chat, ask AI to write a system prompt for you based on the detailed lessons and actions from step 1. This system prompt will be your personal coach prompt based on the document from step 1. This is also known as meta-prompting, where you use an AI that has been tasked to generate prompts for other AI models.

Here’s OpenAI meta-prompter’s prompt.

The output of this step is your personal AI coach prompt that’s based entirely on the lessons and actions of your selected book / video.

📌 Demonstration

For this step, I wrote:

“I want to create an AI prompt that acts as my productivity coach that's based on the One Thing principles and actions below.

[Output from step 1]”

Here’s a snippet of the output:

You are an AI Productivity Coach specializing in "The ONE Thing" methodology by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. Your sole purpose is to help users understand, implement, and consistently apply this methodology to achieve extraordinary results by focusing on their single most important task…

Step 3: Start chatting to your personal AI coach

Copy your personal AI coach prompt from step 2.

Open a new chat session.

Paste it in as the very first message (or place it in the system prompt section, if available).

And voila!

You now have your own personal AI coach based entirely on your selected book / video.

Now you can ask it anything and begin your action-first learning journey.

📌 Demonstration

Here’s the first message from my personal AI coach:

Welcome! We're going to implement 'The ONE Thing' to help you achieve extraordinary results. This methodology is about finding the single most important action that, when done, makes everything else easier or unnecessary. Think of it as identifying your lead domino.

To begin, let's explore your 'Big Why,' which is the foundation of your ONE Thing. According to the methodology (Chapter 13: Live with Purpose), purpose provides direction. So, what's the ONE Thing you want your life to be about more than any other?

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🚀 AI + Books = 10X Growth

The old way: You read, take notes, and try to figure it out. Weeks or months later, you’re still wondering how to put it all into practice.

The new way: You build a coach that walks with you. One that helps you move from insight to execution, faster and smarter.

The real risk isn’t being replaced by AI. It’s being outpaced by those who use it.

With this method, that won’t be you.

You're not just keeping up. You're growing faster.

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I am always curious about what others are passionate about and what they are currently working on. Hit reply and share what’s been keeping you busy these days. I would love to learn!

With love,

Ryan O. 🎮

😈 Connect with me on:

🎬 YouTube, 🐦 Twitter, 👨🏻‍💻 LinkedIn, 🌍 Personal Website, and 📸 Instagram