I Quit the YouTube Rabbit Hole

When it comes to learning anything new—from cooking a difficult recipe to fixing a complicated piece of tech—my default mode is YouTube. I rely on it for everything.

But a few weeks ago, I was walking through a plant nursery in Paris, planning to pick up some greenery for my apartment, and I decided to try something completely different. This experience revealed something profound about how we are about to learn everything, forever.

🛑 The YouTube Trap: Passive Consumption

My usual process for buying plants is a guarantee of confusion and eventual failure:

1. Hours of Research: Watch ten different videos on "best indoor plants," "low-light gardening," and "how to repot."

2. Information Overload: End up with contradictory advice and still confused about what would actually survive in my specific, low-light Parisian space.

3. Passive Learning: Consume information far away from the actual task, relying on memory when it matters most.

This time, I skipped the pre-research entirely. Instead, right there in the middle of the nursery, surrounded by hundreds of options, I opened my phone camera in Live Mode and started a chat with ChatGPT.

📸 Live Learning: Personalized Advice, Instantly

This wasn't a standard Google search or a static text prompt. Because I keep my Custom Instructions up to date with my location, schedule, and previous failures (i.e., plant deaths), the answers were hyper-personalized.

We had a real-time, interactive conversation while physically pointing the camera at the options:

• "Which ones should I buy?" We narrowed down selections based on their toxicity (I have a cat) and low-maintenance requirements (I travel often).

• "Which would suit the light in my living room?" I showed it the corner of the nursery with the appropriate light, and it suggested species based on its Visual capabilities, understanding the specific shade conditions I needed.

• "Does this color fit my balcony vibe?" We discussed aesthetics, comparing flowering vs. evergreen options to match the visual style I preferred.

The difference was staggering. No pausing videos, no skimming comments, and crucially, no endless research. Just live, interactive learning specific to my situation, while I was doing the thing I needed to learn.

✅ The Outcome: My Personal Plant Journal

I walked out of the nursery with a mix of healthy plants, repotted them myself following the AI’s step-by-step suggestions, and a few weeks later, they are all still alive and healthy. (A definite first for me.)

But the best part is the saved chat.

The entire conversation—from initial selection to repotting steps and post-care tips—is now my personal, living plant journal. I go back to it to check watering intervals, light conditions, and new arrangement ideas.

This experience crystallized a deeper realization: the way we learn is fundamentally changing. We are moving away from passively consuming generalized information (YouTube) towards actively co-creating personalized knowledge, in the exact moment we need it.

Next project? Building an autonomous maintenance system for these new, thriving plants.

Read More on AI with Ayushman

If you found this approach to learning and efficiency interesting, check out these related posts that explore the underlying tech and strategy:

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  • Related to this post: This post treats AI as a personal efficiency engine, shifting the perspective from expense (time spent researching) to growth (time saved, knowledge acquired).

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  • Related to this post: Just like the plant guide, this post focuses on utilizing AI tools for practical, actionable self-improvement.

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  • Related to this post: This explores the creator behind the Transformer architecture—the very core technology that allows ChatGPT to deliver such context-aware, personalized learning experiences.