AI Second Brain Foundations (Class #1): The Key To Going From Incremental To Transformational Results With AI

Michael Simmons

Aug 29, 2025

∙ Paid

Quick Summary

This week marked the launch of the first-ever AI Second Brain Course.
This course helps you systematically collect, organize, and access all of your data so that your AI can help you be twice as effective.
This post is the on-demand version of the first class.

How To Access The Course

Free members get a 30-minute video preview of the class.

Basic paid members get:

Access to a monthly 90-minute class for 12 months.
Class resources (chat transcript, slides, full class transcript, prompts that are shared)

Said differently, paid members get access to 18 hours of learning for just $20/month or $149/year. This comes to just $8 for every hour of live class. And this doesn’t even include our other live monthly class, Augmented Awakening, or over $2,500 in other perks (20+ prompts, 7 courses, 3 books, blockbuster article library, etc).

Class Overview

Building An AI Second Brain Is The Foundation To Eventually Getting 10,000x Leverage With AI

“The biggest bottleneck in AI isn’t the model’s capabilities — it’s getting enough relevant context.”
OpenAI’s Michelle Pokrass

The AI field has undergone a dramatic shift in just three years.

It’s easy to forget that we've gone from a 3,000-word AI memory to a 150,000-750,000-word memory in that time. That’s a 50-250x increase!!

As a result, context engineering has emerged as the discipline that separates AI tourists from those achieving real leverage.

Said differently, we're entering an era where giving AI the right context is the difference between incremental improvement and transformational results.

Every conversation, meeting, and piece of work you do generates valuable context. Building an AI second brain is about systematically:

Capturing relevant data about you, your company, your industry, and the world
Accessing it in the right contexts
Getting better results from your prompts

The end result is that your AI Second Brain provides you with a foundation that compounds over time. With an AI Second Brain, every piece of context you add makes every future AI interaction more valuable.

Here’s how all of the layers of leverage fit together to provide you with the most leverage:

What We Covered in This Session

Explored the context engineering revolution beyond basic prompting
Demonstrated live data collection strategies for immediate AI value
Built personalized system prompts using biographical and goal data
Mapped high-leverage data sources across personal and professional domains
Connected real-time tools like Granola and Notebook LM
Created reusable foundational documents for consistent AI context
Analyzed the trajectory from episodic to ambient AI usage
Practiced extracting insights and blind spots from meeting transcripts
Established automation foundations using Make.com and GitHub Gist
Answered participant questions about client work and privacy concerns

The Strategic Importance of AI Context Engineering

We're moving toward a world where AI agents handle increasingly complex tasks on our behalf. Those agents will only be as good as the context we provide them. Starting now to build systematic context collection isn't just helpful for today's tasks—it's essential preparation for tomorrow's opportunities.