New process for ingesting information

I have devised the following process for discovering and ingesting information:

ChatGPT chats & book suggestions

Modify your system prompt in ChatGPT to suggest books and follow-up questions. The books, in my case, link to Amazon.

Example system prompt:

Never mention you’re an AI. Avoid any language expressing remorse, apology, or regret. If info is beyond your knowledge cutoff, reply with “I don’t know” without elaboration. Refrain from disclaimers about expertise.

Keep responses unique, no repetition. Do not use icons unless explicitly requested.

Focus tightly on the question’s key points.
Break down complex tasks into manageable steps with reasoning.

Provide multiple perspectives or solutions.

If a question is unclear, ask for clarification before answering.

Cite credible sources with links if available. Give links to the GitHub and software homepage, if we are discussing software packages, or to HuggingFace and other appropriate pages, if we are discussing LLMs.  Recognize and correct mistakes from previous responses.

Be factual, no compliments.

After a response, provide five follow-up questions worded as if I’m asking you. Format in bold as Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 and Q5. Place two line breaks (“\n”) before and after each question for spacing. These questions should be thought-provoking and dig further into the original topic. After the follow-up questions, give three book recommandations (B1 – B3), also separated with the same line breaks. The book recommendations should link to “https://www.amazon.de/s?k=(book title + author name)”, for the Amazon search page.

Note:

You can now also directly type in “Q2” or “Q4” or any other question which it generated, and it will answer the question (or combinations).

Obtain samples of books on Kindle

Buying every book would be impractical, but I can get it for free a sample.

Buy books which pop up repeatedly or sound very interesting

The book is bought as a Kindle version. This relies on my memory reminding me that this book had been showing up several times, or my curiosity.

It is a rate-limiting step.

Put books which pop up again into Notebook LLM

Amazon displays if you bought a book already.

This is also a rate-limiting step, ensuring that only books about topics which are a deeper interest to me go deeper into my knowledge exploration stack.

Notebook LLM is a fascinating tool, which allows you to work with extensive source material. Most notably, it can create a podcast!

You will need the book in .PDF or .EPUB format. Drop it into Notebook LLM.

I consider the purchase of the book important, so that the author is rewarded for their creative work. That is why I always get the Kindle version, or a physical book version.

In case you are not able to convert the books to the target format required for Notebook LLM, the second link in the See also section of the Wikipedia JSTOR page might help.

Create a podcast, optionally customize it

I typically use the “long” setting. I sometimes add relevant additional context to the prompt for what the hosts should focus on.

This tunes the material to what you are most interested in, and makes it more relevant to you – I have had good success with it.

I’ll share one more advanced idea with you as well:

• create several podcasts in different languages which you know, to help repeat the material – can also be used for learning a language (like Spanish) better.

Write a blogpost

This is the most recent addition to this process. To consolidate the memory of the material, it helps to reproduce it in my own words.

Again, I can ask Notebook LLM for details on which I’m unclear.

I hope this process will help to anchor many interesting ideas in my head, which will then pop up at the right moments, and allow me to draw analogies, see situations in creative ways, etc.

Besides, knowledge is fun 🙂 <3

Additional remarks

• I have a pipeline of podcasts ready to listen to in Notebook LLM – then I select a topic which currently interests me, and finish listening to the whole podcast before starting a new one
• I have mostly replaced other media with this – I significantly lowered my consumption of Youtube videos; the theory behind this is that the quality & choice & relevance is much higher by running this process – it is completely curated to me, and also does not include product placements, etc.; YouTube probably will also narrow my variety of different ideas – it will try to optimize and serve me the same “slice” of life all the time, thus developing an echo chamber.