Most people use AI to search faster. I use it to understand deeper.
There's a real difference. Searching gives you more information. Understanding gives you fewer, better ideas.
Here's the actual chain:
- Start with a question I genuinely don't know the answer to
- Ask ChatGPT to write a detailed research prompt for Gemini — specifically to crawl the web for the best sources and expert perspectives on the topic
- Use Elicit to find academic papers — it follows citation chains, not just keywords
- Dump everything — PDFs, links, notes — into NotebookLM and start asking questions
- Switch NotebookLM to analyst mode, shorter outputs. Map the major opinions.
- Form my own view. Then ask for evidence that supports or challenges it.
- Bring that to Claude for writing.
The step most people skip is step 6 — forming an actual opinion before writing. That's why most AI-assisted content reads like a summary. Because it is.
The chain above doesn't skip it. The goal isn't to collect more. It's to reach the point where I have something to say — something that's true but that most people haven't yet thought all the way through.
That's the only thing worth writing.
Tools referenced
- ChatGPT — chat.openai.com. Used here specifically to generate better research prompts for other tools, not as the primary research surface.
- Gemini — gemini.google.com. Better at live web search than ChatGPT. Used for sourcing current expert perspectives and articles on a topic.
- Elicit — elicit.com. Academic research tool that traces citation chains rather than just matching keywords. Significantly better than Google Scholar for building a real understanding of a topic.
- NotebookLM — notebooklm.google.com. Google's document Q&A tool. Best used in "analyst mode" with your own sourced materials loaded in. Excellent for synthesizing across multiple long documents.
- Claude — claude.ai. Used at the writing stage. The reasoning quality for long-form synthesis and structured thinking is noticeably different from other models.
On the methodology:
- The "form your own view before writing" principle connects to Cal Newport's Deep Work — the argument that real understanding requires uninterrupted synthesis time, not just information collection.
- The distinction between "searching faster" and "understanding deeper" is the core of How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler — a surprisingly useful text for thinking about what engagement with ideas actually looks like.