A Year of Obsession Solves a Field. I Just Finished Mine With AI.
I did it with health and fitness first. Then I did it with AI, and the whole thing comes down to six ideas.
From my experience, one year of true obsession over a field gets you to a level of expertise where you’ve nailed the fundamentals so completely that you’re just good at that field, probably for the rest of your life. As long as you stay up to date with it and keep the obsession going at some level, you’ve basically “solved” it.
The first field I did this with was health and fitness.
I spent a year obsessing like crazy over the gym. Workouts, form, technique, dieting, heart rate, cardio, lifting, the whole nine yards. I spent a summer getting certified as a personal trainer and studying the body. I binge watched Dr. Mike Israetel’s channel, Renaissance Periodization. He’s an exercise scientist, most of the things he says is backed by actual research, and I went through his podcasts too.
That single year took me to the point where I know health and fitness better than about 90% of the population. Probably higher, more like 95%. Anyone can ask me anything they want. Proper form on any exercise in the gym, the best way to grow muscle or lose fat, how to eat a healthier diet, what the various diets actually are, how to improve their cardio, how to improve their heart health, et cetera.
I believe I’ve recently hit that same point with AI.
I’ve been teaching AI for over a year now. Making videos about it, testing all the various tools constantly, 40 hours a week for work. Then I do it outside of work too, so realistically it’s closer to 60 hours a week or more. That’s before counting everything I’ve done in ChatGPT since 2023.
All of that got me to a point where I know the foundations of how to be great with AI. And believe it or not it’s relatively simple. Simple enough that I can put the whole thing in one post. So that’s what this is.
1. Get a high agency mindset
Yeah, I know. “Oh gosh, mindset…here we go.” Just stay with me.
High agency means believing you can solve any problem put in front of you. You’re the master of your domain. There’s a way through and you’re going to find it. If you want that idea properly drilled into your head, go read the copy on highagency.com. It’s the best explanation of it out there and it’s free.
Here’s why this one comes first. Once you actually have that mindset, you realize AI lets you figure out almost anything, learn almost anything, and do almost anything (in some ways). I genuinely feel like I could get thrown into almost any job position at almost any company and excel at it, once I get my AI systems in place.
That’s not just the confidence in me. That’s the mindset plus the amazing tool.
2. Pay for a subscription
This is the entry fee and it’s low.
Skip eating out once a week and you’ve covered it. That trade gets you an insane level of artificial intelligence that can radically help you in almost every area of your life and work, assuming you know what you’re doing (which you can ask it to teach you). The free tiers are basically demos with worse levels of intelligence. The paid tier is the actual product and how you can get ahead.
3. Put your reps in with prompting
There are a thousand prompting techniques and frameworks and ultimate guides out there. At the end of the day, all you really need is reps, clear instructions, and good context. That’s it. That’s the whole thing.
The fastest way to get those reps is voice mode. Dictate your prompts instead of typing them. You speak way faster than you type, you naturally give more context when you talk, and honestly it feels like you’re working with J.A.R.V.I.S. from Iron Man.
That does not mean yap mindlessly. It means give good instructions and good context, quickly. And obviously, still type when you’re somewhere you can’t, or shouldn’t, talk out loud.
The nice thing is this is a moving target in your favor. These models get better at understanding what you actually mean every few months.
4. Actually look at what you’re paying for
Most people use a tiny fraction of the subscription they already pay for.
Spend 30 to 60 minutes clicking every single button in your AI interface. Every tab, every toggle, every menu, every setting. You’ll find three or four things you had no idea existed and at least one that changes how you work. Then follow the company on X (seems to be the best hub for AI news and updates) so new features show up in your feed instead of you finding out a year later.
5. Treat it like the internet
If you’ve ever sat down to do work on your laptop and pulled up the internet (aka almost everyone, everyday now), do the exact same thing with AI. Have it open. All the time. Use it alongside most, if not all, of what you do.
Stay curious, keep testing, keep learning it better. That’s how you build the habit and your AI muscles.
6. Build systems that make action effortless
This is the one that actually changes your day to day.
AI connects to so many different softwares and apps and services now. It can use their tools directly, and at this point all you have to do is sign into your account. From there you can set up entire workflows just by telling it what you want. Skills, scheduled tasks, automations, the works. It’s all just natural language. You literally just tell it to do the thing and it does it. A five year old could do it.
Once that clicks, the only real limit is your imagination:
Give your AI its own phone number. Mess around with something like a Hermes agent and you’ll have it texting you.
Keep local memory files on your laptop that it can pull from any time and expand.
Automate an entire newsletter, images and all.
Scrape your KPIs on a schedule.
Etc, etc, etc.
And now there are skills, where you teach the AI how you do a specific process once and it just knows from then on. Which means you can stop repeating yourself. Get this, you can even setup an automation for it to iterate those skills as you work with them and create self-improvement loops.
That’s really it
I could keep going, but at the end of the day it really is that simple:
High agency mindset
Pay for the thing
Put your reps in with prompting and get comfortable with voice mode
Explore the tools you already have
Use it alongside most of what you do
Build systems that make action effortless
The last part is the one that took the longest to feel the tangible tactical benefits of AI in my bones. If it’s in your imagination, the computer can do it. And it can teach you anything, meeting you at whatever level you’re at.
It’s the ultimate tool. You just have to pick it up.
If you want direct AI Mentorship from me go here: aimentorship.co