How to become an irreplaceable learner

AI killed memorization.

Sep 18, 2025

The video version of this newsletter:

Perspectives are the new oil, and having authentic ideas on generic knowledge will make you, and your learning, irreplaceable.

The way you’re learning has to change.

Especially if just focus on memorizing everything you learn.

Because AI is a memorization monster, that has made pure memorization as a learning tactic completely obsolete.

And thank fuck for this.

We don't need flashcard warriors anymore.

We have talking encyclopedias that live in our pockets.

We don’t need thinkers who can spit out facts word for words.

We do need points of view.

To be within top 1% of learners, creatives, or thinkers, you need to become a irreplaceable learner by crafting unique understandings of the things you learn.

Understandings that even AI could not predict.

Luckily, all of this is rooted in how you think.

AI killed the flashcard warriors

The world doesn’t need people training as memorization machines.
AI already is one.

Pure memorization is officially 100% pointless as a learning method.

It always has been. But AI was the final nail in the coffin.

Because the ability to remember and regurgitate generic information can easily be outsourced to AI by anyone.

This isn't the first time a technological shift has threatened memorization-based learning.

Socrates believed writing was the end for human memory. When the printing press was developed, scholars feared that books would make deep thinking pointless. But all of this inspired thinkers to progress, not regress. Polymaths during the Renaissance focused on connecting ideas across multiple disciplines to create new perspectives; everything in life is linked when you look deep enough.

So how is this happening right now?

AI is making pure-memorization obsolete while making perspective-building the most valuable skill of our age.

Now this might seem like common knowledge to you. But it never was for me back in secondary school (and in college).

I used to focus on memorizing and remembering everything I read (word for word) because we were never taught how to learn (or think) deeply.

I miss secondary school to a degree. It was the lads, mainly. The chats on break always had me in tears. Thank you Eric for your witty knee-slapper comments.

But I don't miss my fucked-up approach to learning.

"Take this sample essay and learn it."

That’s what we were told.

Nobody around me (myself included) really understood what was meant by those two dreaded words:

“learn it.”

I would spend my evenings trying to memorize entire Irish essays word-by-word. I did this for all my subjects.

Every hour I spent was an hour of unnecessary suffering, which could've been avoided if I was learning the right way.

Maybe this sounds like you:

Always trying to remember every single word in the exact order in which it was being read
Never understanding what was being said on a deeper level
Never connecting any (profound, hehe) ideas to my own life
Not developing my own perspectives on what I was learning

Every single thought I had until I was 21, 22 maybe?

Regurgitations of other people’s words, ideas, and understandings.

None of my thoughts were my own and that is a terrifying idea.

And what if most people are in the same boat?

Masters at memorizing other peoples words, but generic thinkers when it comes understanding things in distinctly personal ways.

Long story short?

I was a fucking robot with a barely-comprehensible Irish accent :)

In other words, I was training to be an AI chatbot, before AI chatbot’s made me replaceable.

If you're stuck in patterns that cause you pain (like I was with memorization), I have a Suffering Reduction AI Coach to help reduce unnecessary suffering in your life by identifying and breaking these destructive cycles.

Example: a book I found asleep on my desk

AI hasn't changed how we learn.
It just killed the worst (and most common) method of learning for good.
More importantly, it has highlighted the timeless importance of how everyone should’ve been learning this entire time; and how everyone should approach the art of thinking.

Take Dopamine Nation, by Dr. Anna Lembke.

It's face down, fast asleep on my desk beside me as I'm writing this.

I might be restating the obvious here, but I want to get the point across as to how pointless pure memorization is, and why you should never just try to solely “remember” what you read or learn.

Ever.

Let's say we took 100 people and asked each of them to memorize this paragraph.

Just remember it.

This could apply to an entire page or a whole book even (what I used to do).

But what I'm asking for here is word-for-word regurgitation, like how myself and most people initially try to "learn" things.

i read this back in my first year in college; i understood none of it :)

If 100 did this, would any one of them have something of value to offer to the world in doing so?

What about to themselves?

The answer is a big fat nope.

We have AI for this now.

And this makes learners, thinkers, and creatives who don't have any profound, authentic ideas to offer, replaceable by the machine.

AI works by noticing patterns so it can predict outcomes.
If your understanding of a topic follows the same predictable patterns as everyone else's, AI can replace you.
Your learning is therefore replaceable.
The antidote to this, is through developing your own unique perspectives, shaped by your very soul, to make yourself and your learning, irreplaceable.

Becoming an irreplaceable learner

You have not learned something until you've made it your own.

I sound like a broken record if you’re a consistent reader of this newsletter.

But certain profound ideas are always worth restating:

Consuming information does not mean you’ve learned the information.

Learning only happens when information passes through your conscious mind (absorption), and you transform it (processing) into something that belongs to you (encoding).

To put it simply, in 3 steps:

absorb information
play with the information until you understand it
reshape it into something that feels uniquely your own to store in your memory

There's also a filter system at play here.

It's your own personal filter system based on your:

past experiences
prior knowledge & understandings
way of connecting dots and seeing patterns
tastes and interests
Knowledge of being you

In other words, your soul is the personal filter.

I call this filtering process soul encoding.

It's when you take raw information and shape it into something that's uniquely your own; a mental product that nobody else could’ve made (not even AI).

AI can generate content for days, but it cannot replicate the essence of a human soul within a piece of content. That's why most people don't like AI-generated content. People like people, not machines.

Think of soul encoding like creating your own understanding of a topic, subject or skill, understood in a way that only you could think of, that still arrives at the same outcome as everyone else’s understandings.

You're not trying to lie, manipulate the truth, or to say something controversial for controversies sake.

These methods don't take you to the truth - the same learning outcomes as everyone else that are all true.

But it's how you create these understandings to help you (1) keep them in your long term memory and (2) to think originally.

Example: here’s a profound thinker

I've been listening to a lot of Naval Ravikant this past week.

He’s a profound thinker because he doesn't focus on remembering anything. He derives everything he knows from core principles and concepts - his own original understandings.

Influenced by physicist Richard Feynman (his nickname was literally "The Great Explainer"), Naval builds mental models from first principles thinking, and uses what he calls specific knowledge. These are insights (understandings) which are unique to him, that emerge from his unique combination of experiences and perspectives.

This way of encoding information presents another profound idea:

You don't need to memorize something if you understand it. And feeling the need to memorize something means you probably don't understand it very well.

I remember I was walking to work in the lashings of rain during the week, and I usually hate talking my phone out when it's raining.

I hate trying to type on a wet screen.

But I did it anyways, because I fucking loved this other profound idea he mentioned:

Authenticity is how you become irreplaceable.

This is exactly what self-actualization is.

When you develop understandings that could only come from your unique combination of experiences, you're becoming more conscious. Swiss psychologist Carl Jung called this process individuation - the process of becoming fully you.

We could say that when you learn, you're not just learning about the world itself. You're discovering your irreplaceable way of how you make sense of the world.

Naval's ideas are so fucking profound because he's expressing his actualized understandings.

Authenticity in how he learns.

I think a lot of people really miss this when it comes to learning.

To be authentic in your learning, means filtering everything through your unique perspective. Every single one of your understandings, they're just your own ways of understanding you. This is why you don't learn something until you've made it into something that's your own.

You do this by creating mental products from what you learn.

Like a content creator making digital products to solve problems or answer specific questions.

These are mental products of your own design, to be stacked on the shelves inside your own mental house.

This is done by absorbing information, and turning information into:

Personal understandings
Simplifications
Unique analogies
Personal connections
Solutions to problems/questions

Place your products in their rightful places within your mental house so they can be accessed and applied at anywhere, at any time.

Like we've said:

You don't need to memorize something if you understand it. Because if you truly understand something, all information can be derived from the understanding you have created - the little painting you've made and hung up inside the corridor of mental house.

I could sit here trying to memorize every technical detail of an arm-bar.

Hand placement. Angle adjustments. Other small pointers.

But if you understand the core principles (leverage and joint mechanics), you can arm-bar anyone from anywhere.

This is where jiu-jitsu gets really fun :)

Perspectives are the new signal in an information (noise) abundant world.

This is all about developing your own conscious blueprint - your own learning signature.

This is how authentic perspectives are created. Stop trying to memorize what you don't know. Start trying to see all things through your irreplaceable lens.

We live in a world where all known information is free and your understanding is still the most priceless asset there is.

Stop learning like everyone else.

Start learning like you.

FRAMEWORK: How to become an irreplaceable learner

You might have some objections to all this.

What if I need to memorize facts, figures, or dates?
What if I need to study for a specific exam that requires me to answer niche-specific, detail-heavy questions?
What if a basic understanding won't be enough!

As a general response, I say this:

Always ask yourself why you're learning what you're learning.

The purpose behind what you're learning will dictate how you learn it.

Need to memorize facts for an exam? Class!

I'm not trying to disregard memorization entirely; sometimes it serves a specific purpose.

I do, however, despise memorization as being your only learning practice, especially when you have zero understanding of what you're actually learning.

This guide is for people who:

Use memorization as their default learning method (like me back in school)
Lack understanding of what they're trying to learn
Feel they need to "remember everything word-for-word" to compensate for that lack of understanding

Even if you need certain facts memorized, this process will still help improve your understanding of any subject; whether you're self-educating or studying for exams.

So how do we transform from memorization machines into irreplaceable thinkers?

Bonus Tip: Pre-learning

Don't jump into learning blind.

Ask yourself what 20% of concepts would give you 80% of the knowledge.

You can ask Chat GPT this, or you can read this newsletter I wrote to help you with this.

Start there. Then run it through the process below.

1) Absorb

Question everything like your life depends on understanding it.

Your mind is a workshop for creating solutions. It's not a warehouse for hoarding facts.

This is all this is.

You're just creating solutions to questions, but building them in a way that's yours to help you remember them.

Read with a pencil in hand - underline the logical argument of non-fiction books as you question it
Question everything - If you're watching a jiu-jitsu instructional, ask why each detail matters
Hunt for underlying concepts - there's always deeper principles or concepts at play

If your brain feels maxed out or you absorb something you don't understand, move to processing.

2) Processing

Attack ideas like you're raiding a Clash of Clans village on your work break

Be fucking relentless.

Aristotle said knowledge without action is useless.

I would add to this profound idea saying action is useless without a purpose.

This is where most people fall into the memorization trap.

Instead of memorizing, you want to:

Simplify it - Explain it like you're teaching a 12 year old (Feynman technique)
Find your angle - What's your take on what you've absorbed?
Create analogies - Connect it to something from your own life
Challenge it - What would happen if the opposite were the case?

To test this level, you want to see if can talk about what you've absorbed out loud.

Because most people struggle with articulating their thoughts to others, not thinking them up.

The next step solves this.

3) Soul Encoding (Understanding)

"This is where the fun begins." - Anakin Skywalker

Filter everything through your personal experience until it becomes distinctly yours.

Teach it to yourself simply (I literally do this at work but I look like an idiot sometimes, all the time)
Write your explanation in your own words - no looking at the source
Ask: "How does this apply to my daily life?"
Ask: "Where have I seen proof of this in my own experience?"

If you can't explain something simply in your own words, you need to reread, identify knowledge gaps, and fill them in.

Expose a gap, understand it, repeat.

4) Authentic Perspective

Sound like you. Not a boring old textbook.

Two people can explain the same concept completely differently and both be right.

Your job is to sound like you when explaining it.

This is the essence of being irreplaceable as a learner, as a thinker, as a creator, as a human being.

Use your own vocabulary. I'm not afraid to curse in my writing because I curse all the fucking time in my own life.

In your explanations, use personal examples. Avoid using examples from your information sources when possible.

Don't be afraid to talk about things you found hard to understand. Other people can help you strengthen your weaker understandings by questioning you, exposing knowledge gaps, and showing you where work is needed.

And never afraid to be yourself. Fucking. EVER.

If you get riled up talking about philosophy, then do that. Because that's you. Sometimes I do it in recording my YouTube videos. Even when I'm writing I tend to get excited when I connect a dot somewhere.

I don't always like that I'm like this, but it means I'm not a machine.

It means I have a soul.

And it means I'm irreplaceable.

Go learn some cool shit. Right now.

If you want to organize your life around this irreplaceable learning approach, you can use my Profound Life Engineering Template.

If you want to use any of my AI self-improvement prompts, you can see my entire Prompt Library here.

If you want to learn how to manage multiple interests, to become a profound polymath, you can read this post to learn how: