Allan Nascimento

Behind the Scenes

Hey everyone, this is Allan. Today I’m showing you how I create videos, using yesterday’s video as an example. I study every day, but I don’t always have good ideas. What really helps me is the content I store in Obsidian, emails, notes, books I’ve read, courses, articles, Instagram story screenshots, videos I’ve made, videos I watch, and even WhatsApp notes. All of that forms the foundation for my video ideas.

My Second Brain

I open a shortcut that takes me straight to the folder that holds my “second brain.” Most of it is in Portuguese because most of the source material is in Portuguese, but I write the planning notes in English. I tell the system I want to plan the next video, and it pulls recent notes that could become ideas. It gave me a few candidate topics. The first candidate turned out to be yesterday’s video, which I hadn’t yet added to the second brain. I liked the second candidate, so I chose it.

I’ve built a small script that plays a sound when the cloud process finishes, because I’m not always looking at the screen. The sound lets me know when the AI has finished its work.

How I Use AI

I don’t like AI to write text for me. I prefer it to ask me questions, then generate topics based on my answers. When I read something, I only keep the topics I wrote, not AI‑generated text. I find AI‑written scripts obvious and less authentic. The AI gave me five questions to answer; I answered them simply. For the third question I asked the AI to clarify, because I wasn’t satisfied with the first response.

AI Summarizing Books

One of the AI’s suggestions was about people using AI to summarize books and then counting that as “information absorbed.” I think that’s bad advice. When you read a book you absorb knowledge through context, examples, and the author’s arguments. A summary gives you only small phrases or ideas, not the way the author thinks. It’s not the same as reading the whole book with all its examples and arguments. That’s why I believe quality beats quantity when studying.

Planning the Video

I asked the AI to finish the draft for now and write a temporary file with what I’ve written and what still needs to be done. It’s almost 11 p.m., and I still have to post before midnight, so I’m cutting this short. One thing I like about this process is that when I discuss a topic with the AI, it pulls ideas from the sources I’ve stored in my second brain. I even have a transcribed meeting and a note about the Newport bottleneck that I used for yesterday’s video.

I asked the AI to translate my notes into English because I record in English and want to think, write, and speak in the same language. It corrected the text, and now I have the outline in English.

Next Steps