NEWS: $3,000+ In Paid Perks / 50% Price Increase Next Monday
TL;DR
Overview
$3,000+ perks. The value of the content library (courses, prompts, video lessons) in the paid version of this newsletter is now $3,000+.
Price increase. The monthly subscription is increasing by 50% on Monday, December 9, to reflect this value.
Your subscription directly improves the newsletter. The annual revenue of this newsletter is $70,000. This revenue is what makes it possible for me to spend most of my time on it. I’m deeply grateful to all paying subscribers who make this possible. At the same time, the revenue is not enough for me to go all out and build a team. By subscribing, you make it possible for me to increase the quality of the newsletter so you can stay at the frontier of AI.
Take Action
Free subscribers:
Click on the button below to upgrade, lock in the current price, and save $60/year (monthly plan) or $80/year (annual plan)…
Paying subscribers:
You can access all of the premium perks on this bonuses page.
Only new paid subscribers will pay the higher rate after the price change.
Love the newsletter? Please take a moment to share or gift it to someone who would benefit from being on the frontier of AI-first knowledge work, thought leadership, and entrepreneurship…
The Future Of This Newsletter And Why I’m Increasing The Price
I started this newsletter in July 2023.
But in many ways, it really started in 2015.
When I launched this newsletter, I moved over my entire body of work since 2015 behind the paywall. This includes:
Library of 60+ blockbuster articles on the #1 skill in the world (see below)
Library of 100+ video lessons from many of history’s greatest researchers, achievers, creators, and thinkers (see below)
Two of the top mental model manuals (see below)
10+ paid podcast episodes on timeless models of thought leadership (see below)
While most newsletters feature content with a short shelf-life, my entire library features the most valuable timeless meta-skills and mental models (learning how to learn, productivity, decision-making, futurism, and problem-solving).
In 2024, I made a big shift and found a way to multiply the newsletter’s value.
First, I decided to go full-time in three unique AI niches.
90% of AI newsletters focus on providing news (new tools, tech breakthroughs, industry news, etc.).
Very few provide deep and practical analysis. Of the ones that do, none focus on the three areas below that I specialize in…
Prompt Psychology rather than just prompt engineering. As AI evolves, interacting with it better often means treating it more like a human and less like a machine.
Intelligence augmentation rather than just automation. AI provides an opportunity to completely reimagine human potential rather than replace it. I’ve been obsessed with human potential my whole life and I’ve gone deeper on how to explode it with meta-skills and mental models than anyone else.
AI mental models rather than just AI news. The first step to making the most of AI and protecting against its risks is actually understanding it. One of the best ways to build a foundational knowledge of AI is to understand the 100 top mental models related to it.
Second, I created two new paid subscriber perks.
These perks are:
Courses
Premium prompts
Courses
So far, I’ve offered three courses on unique facets of AI, which are all included in the subscription:
AI100: The Top 100 AI Mental Models (see below)
Augmented Intelligence (see below)
Frontier Prompting (see below)
I currently have plans to offer the following mini-courses in 2025:
AI-First Thought Leadership
AI-First Entrepreneurship
AI-First Knowledge Work
Augmented Awakening
Prompts
In 2024, I also started sharing many of my premium prompts.
Each prompt took me at least 5 hours (often much longer) to create and test. Each prompt is related to a meta-skill such as meta-learning, problem-solving, decision-making, futurism, and more.
You can see the specific prompts I share below.
The total value of everything you get as a paid subscriber is $3,000+
To summarize what you get…
First, you can access a library of timeless, high-value courses, podcasts, articles, video lessons, and more.
Two mental model mastery manuals. Each manual is roughly 10,000 words and took me dozens of hours to research and write. ($40)
Three AI courses (so far). The courses are on frontier prompting, augmented intelligence, and AI mental models ($700)
Database of 20+ premium AI prompts that will make you smarter ($1,000)
Tutorials and resources, on how to do augmented reading, become a better thought leader, create and grow a paid newsletter, and much more ($500)
Paid podcast, where I interview top entrepreneurs and experts, with 13 episodes so far (invaluable)
Discounts on my other programs ($250+)
100+ curated video lessons from top thought leaders in the world: Malcolm Gladwell, James Clear, Victor Frankl, Yuval Noah Harari, and others ($200)
Database of all my blockbuster articles on creativity, learning, thought leadership, mental models, successful aging, productivity, and having a more fulfilling life overall from the last 10 years. Each article took me 60+ hours to research and write ($500+)
Second, you get access to everything I will create in 2025:
Weekly in-depth article ($100)
4+ AI courses ($400)
10+ premium prompts ($1,000)
But, value is measured by more than what something costs or includes. It’s measured by the value it creates in your life…
The real value of this newsletter
I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it over and over:
AI is no longer sci-fi.
AI is no longer just a helpful assistant.
AI is the most important technology ever created.
AI is growing faster than any technology ever created.
AI can 10x you today.
AI will give you the biggest opportunities in your career if you’re proactive.
AI will be your biggest threat if you’re reactive.
To capture the value of using AI, you need to do much more than casually prompt it. You need to reinvent yourself on multiple levels over and over:
Prompts
Mindsets
Tools
Paradigms
Mental Models
Workflows
Business Models
Organizational Structure
Value Creation
Etc.
This takes an incredible amount of time—time that most people don’t have.
The value of this newsletter is that I take you right to the frontier of AI, to areas that 99.9% of other AI newsletters overlook. I help high-level thought leaders, entrepreneurs, and knowledge workers create immediate practical value in their career and business, life, and self, while also exploring AI deeply on a fundamental level.
Cumulatively, the value of everything that members receive is worth more than $3,000 and is life-changing.
For just a few more days, you can access it all for just $10/month or $100/year…
The Price Of This Newsletter Is Increasing On Monday, December 9, 2025
To reflect the value that I’m offering in this newsletter and to support people who see the value in what I’m offering, I’m increasing the monthly price of this newsletter to $15/month rather than $10/month. The annual price will remain the same.
FULL & DETAILED PERK LIST
1. Library of 60+ research-backed blockbuster articles on the #1 skill in the world
In 2015, I identified that in a rapidly changing world, the #1 long-term skill to learn is how to learn faster and better.
Over the next 8 years, I wrote 60+ articles and I spent 60+ hours researching each. I pulled from the following three areas in my research process:
Top business learners in the world (Ray Dalio, Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Thomas Edison, Mark Zuckerberg, Frederick Taylor, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs)
Top science learners in the world (Richard Feynman, Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, and others)
Hundreds of academic studies across 10+ disciplines (psychology, adult development, network science, neuroscience, economics, leadership, learning sciences, AI).
Focusing on meta-learning was one of the best long-term decisions I’ve ever made, and it still pays me back every single day.
2. Library of 100+ video lessons from many of history’s greatest researchers, achievers, creators, and thinkers
In 2023, I curated a short video nearly every single day. Then I distilled it into a timeless lesson. Each video took me three hours to find, clip, and summarize. These videos come from the world’s top practical academics, learners, creatives, scientists, thought leaders, and entrepreneurs.
What makes these videos so valuable is that they contain the highest-value, timeless, most universal nuggets of wisdom from the smartest thinkers, achievers, and researchers over the past 70 years on the topics of productivity, AI, motivation, learning, psychology, and personal growth.
Beyond the luminaries mentioned above, the individuals and topics featured include:
Thought Leaders On Thought Leadership
Malcolm Gladwell
Neil DeGrasse Tyson
Yuval Noah Harari
Michael Lewis
Tim Ferriss
Michael Gelb
James Clear
Elizabeth Gilbert
Simon Sinek
Daniel Pink
Ryan Holiday
Jim Collins
Robert Green
Deep Thinkers
David Deutsch
Neil Postman
Marshall McLuhan
John Vervaeke
Stephen Wolfram
Jordan Peterson
Bertrand Russell
Daniel Schmachtenberger
Taichi Ohno
AI
Andrej Karpathy
Sam Altman
Mustafa Suleyman
Tobi Lutke
Demis Hassabis
Shane Legg
Geoffrey Hinton
Dario Amodei
Elon Musk
Chris Olah
Ray Kurzweil
Wisdom Sages
Parker Palmer
Gregory Bateson
Joan & Erik Erikson
Mr. Rogers
Researchers On Learning
Ian Leslie
Mattias Gruber
Marty Lobdell
Mortimer Adler
John Dewey
Other Researchers
Clayton Christensen (disruptive innovation)
Brene Brown (vulnerability)
Dan Gilbert (happiness)
Researchers On Motivation
Andrew Huberman
Teresa Amabile
Isaac Asimov
Gabriele Oettingen
BF Skinner
Kay Jamison
Elissa Epel
Edward Deci
Researchers On Adult Development
Robert Kegan
Suzanne Cook-Greuter
Bill Tobert
Michael Commons And Sara Norris
Psychologists
Virginia Satir (one of the inspirations for NLP)
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (flow)
Viktor Frankl (well-being)
Carl Rogers (thriving)
Rollo May (anxiety)
Fritz Perls (well-being)
Gabor Maté (trauma)
High Achievers
Novak Djokovic
Michae Jordan
Oprah Winfrey
Tony Robbins
Mr Beast
Andre Agassi
Gene Dykes
David Blaine
Mike Tyson
Bruce Lee
Paul Orfalea (Kinko’s)
Kobe Bryant
Sheryl Sandberg
Alexi Pappas (Olympic athlete)
Dick Fosbury
Creatives
Johnny Cash
Alan Moore
Akira Kurosawa
Rick Rubin
Danielle Steel
Barbara Cartland
Steven Pressfield
Quentin Tarantino
Ken Burns
Tyler The Creator
John Mayer
Dan Brown
Kurt Vonnegut
Roald Dahl
Ethan Hawke
Jerry Seinfeld
Dave Chappelle
Alfred Hitchcock
Salvador Dali
Lee Child
Stephen King
Ray Bradbury
Laura Hillenbrand
Sidney Sheldon
3. Two of the top mental model manuals
In 2018, I founded the Mental Model Club. Since then, we’ve created 50+ 10,000-word mastery manuals that help you deeply understand and apply the world’s top mental models. Each mastery manual is the result of dozens of hours of research and curation.
Members of this newsletter get two of the top manuals for free…
The 80/20 Mastery Manual
The most useful and universal (and the most famous) mental model is The 80/20 Rule, or the Pareto Principle.
This mental model says that most of your results are going to come from just a small percentage of your effort or work.
But there’s a lot more to it than simply “20% of efforts yield 80% of results”...
The 80/20 Mastery Manual is the product of 200+ hours over many months, an impressive number of books on the 80/20 rule, and valuable input from 10+ mental model and 80/20 rule experts. Based on this, I believe it is the most condensed and in-depth explanation of the 80/20 rule that has ever been created, with many examples and practical tools to apply this universal principle to all areas of your life.
The Stepping Stone Mastery Manual
The Stepping Stone mastery manual and masterclass help you take the next step as a curiosity-based writer. It’s based on the work of two of the top AI researchers in the world who demonstrated that the biggest creative breakthroughs don’t actually come from a goal-setting algorithm. They come from a novelty algorithm.
4. 15+ paid podcast episodes
I pride myself on having built a network of top entrepreneurs and experts and I’ve trained myself to extract their most impactful mental models—so that you can essentially model how they think!
Rare Conversation With My 30-Year Friend Cal Newport
Creating a Constructive Feedback Loop with Jono Hey, Chief Product Officer at Zen Educate
The Power of Asking Questions with Spencer Greenberg
Turning Your Goals Into Habits with Adam Gilbert, the Founder of MyBodyTutor
Pushing the Bounds of Curiosity, Language, and the Creative Process with Jessica Hagy
Creating a Sustainable Feedback Loop with Niklas Goeke
Focusing on Strategy, Mindset, and the Best Ways to Scale Your Business with Russ Ruffino
How to Craft Your Story and Make it Stand Out with Charlie Hoehn
Growing Your Business and Building Relationships Through Podcasting with Dr. Jeremy Weisz
Turning Your Ideas into a Profitable Product with Jack Butcher
Optimizing Your Marketing Strategy to Create Happy Customers with André Chaperon and Shawn Twing
Sharing Stories Through Active Learning, Collaboration, and Publication with Dr. Benjamin Hardy
How To Write Like Top 4X Pro Author Nicolas Cole
5. Library of mini-courses
The following courses are currently offered on demand:
AI100: The Top 100 AI Mental Models
Augmented Intelligence
Frontier Prompting
I currently have plans to offer the following mini-courses in 2025:
AI-First Thought Leadership
AI-First Entrepreneurship
AI-First Knowledge Work
Augmented Awakening
6. AI premium prompts and bots
In this newsletter, you will find probably the largest database of Augmented AI prompts and bots on the web. These are super high-quality prompts based on a deep understanding of mental models and the thinking habits of the world’s top performers.
The 10-Minute Possibility Expander Prompt helps you break free from mental constraints and see 10x more possibilities in any situation.
The prompt for turning class transcript into a post.
The Galaxy Brain Prompt unlocks AI’s collective intelligence and will set you apart as a learner, thinker, and thought leader.
Systems Theory Bot, pre-loaded with the best resources on systems theory, that you can chat with and ask questions.
Fractal Reader Bot helps you supercharge your fractal reading.
Interview Finder Prompt helps you find more relevant meta-resources based on a book title.
Become An Experimental Innovator GPT Bot clips, curates, searches, summarizes, and synthesizes economist David Galenson's books, chapters, and academic studies related to the two lifecycles of creativity and allows you to go a step further and be coached to apply the ideas to your life.
Prompt to create your own FeynmanGPT, bot that explains any concept in a book like one of the best explainers in history.
Paradigm Shift GPT bot helps you go deeper on paradigm shifts.
Megatrend Tracker Bot allows you to identify and understand the largest, exponential social and tech trends for the future of humanity.
Polarity Finder bot, a companion AI bot that helps you develop integrative complexity.
AI Mental Model Explainer, a chatbot I created to explain each of the mental models, suggest models for your particular situation or contextualize the news.
Breakthrough Knowledge bot, a chatbot that recommends life-changing books.
Prompt Psychology may be the most brilliant phrase I’ve come across to describe what really goes into understanding AI 🙌
It's beyond worth it! You are also paving new paths for what's possible on Substack. I signed up for ideas about how to put myself out there and have gotten so much more. Thank you, Michael.