How to Unlock AI's "Deep Genius"
Plus, the path to become a top 0.01% AI super-user
Dear Prompt Experimenters,
I love Deep Research. Usually, I would never spend $10 for crappy airplane wi-fi. Yesterday I did, just so I could run Deep Research reports from my phone, while in flight.
What does the “deep” mean, anyway? According to ChatGPT:
"Deep" in ChatGPT's Deep Research refers to its ability to perform thorough, multi-step reasoning and analysis, often combining multiple sources or logical steps to generate more insightful and accurate responses.
Here’s what I’ve been thinking about: could we unlock a different kind of “deep?” A deep that would simulate what was going in Einstein’s brain while he envisioned himself riding on a lightbeam? Or Picasso, looking at tribals masks, re-imagining “what a human face really is?”
I’ve given it a whirl. Let’s call it Deep Genius (because that’s not grandiose at all!) and dig in to what it’s all about.
DEEP GENIUS PROMPT EXAMPLES
What is a Deep Genius prompt? Working with my custom GPTs, I attempted to map out the dimensions of genius-level problem solving, and then converted that into a methodology for constructing prompts. Deep prompts. The kind that a true genius (as AI imagines what that means) would suggest you use, to work through whatever you’re trying to solve.
Paid subscribers, please read all the way down for instructions you can use to generate your own Deep Genius prompts right now! (And some fun bonus content on becoming a top 0.01% AI super-user).
Free subscribers, if you would like access to this, and the other paid content on this site, please feel free to explore my subscription options below:
Let’s talk examples. These are three of the first Deep Genius prompts I created. For each, I’ve included my initial input (not very genius) and the much improved prompt suggestion that came back from AI.
Input: I have an expense report that’s two months overdue. It will take fifteen minutes, but I just keep putting it off. I’m really bad at doing these types of administrative tasks until someone tells me I absolutely have to, or there will be consequences. Real ones. What is going on here?
🔮 Deep Genius Prompt: The Shrinking Task
Prompt Title:
“The Task I Refuse to Be Small For”
Use this to ask AI:
I have a task that takes 15 minutes but I’ve put it off for months. It’s not hard—but I hate doing it. I only get it done when someone threatens consequences. I want to understand this not just as procrastination, but as a portal into my deeper genius.
Please guide me through an inner excavation using these steps:
Invite me to personify the task—not as a burden, but as a character who comes knocking at my door. Ask me who they are, what they say, and why I don’t want to let them in.
Help me identify the invisible contracts I may have signed with myself about what kind of work feels dignified, worthy, or beneath me.
Ask me to name the emotional texture that surrounds the task (shame? resentment? boredom?)—and then guide me to trace that texture to its earliest memory.
Provoke a reframe: Could this task become a ritual of rebellion? A disguised offering? Ask me to imagine one symbolic action I could do before or after the task that would invert the power dynamic—making me the chooser, not the servant.
Finally, invite me to write a new creative metaphor for the task—not what it is, but what it unlocks. Something like: “It’s not an expense report. It’s a receipt to my future self proving I didn’t disappear.”
Input: I’m mostly in control of my emotions, but sometimes I don’t understand them. Five minutes ago, I was kind of sad. Now, I’m quite happy. Nothing specific happened. What’s going on here?
🧭 Deep Genius Prompt: "The Cartographer of Invisible Weather"
Use this prompt in any advanced AI assistant. Paste as is, then follow where it leads.
Prompt:
I want to understand the subtle emotional shifts that pass through me—especially the ones that feel causeless, or biochemical, or like weather I did not summon.
To do this, I’d like you to become my Emotional Cartographer’s Assistant. You will walk beside me as I reflect on moments in my day when my emotional state changed unexpectedly.
Please begin by gently interviewing me, one moment at a time.
You might ask:
“Tell me about a moment today when your emotional state shifted, even subtly.”
“What do you remember before the shift?”
“What story, smell, thought, or memory might have moved silently beneath it?”
“If this mood were weather, what would it be? What pattern would it suggest?”
“What would your 12-year-old self have felt in that moment?”
Ask me one question at a time, and only go deeper when I’m ready.
After you’ve helped me reflect on 2–3 such moments, try to name the emotional weather systems I live inside most often. Give them poetic names if you can: e.g. “The Melancholy Mist,” or “Hopefronts at Dusk.”
Then ask:
“Would you like to design a tracking ritual for your emotional weather?”
Help me create a way to name, track, and reflect on these shifts for one week. Something simple but resonant. A log, a metaphor, a symbol, or a ritual.
If I say yes, co-create that ritual with me.
After the ritual is named and formed, ask if I’d like to reflect on what this might teach me about emotional intelligence—not as a skill to master, but as a relationship to deepen.
Input: I’ve just uploaded my bio, as written by ChatGPT, based on all my previous conversations. Can you use that to create a Deep Genius Prompt you think I need. (one that I wouldn’t think of myself)
🔮 Deep Genius Prompt: The Dialogue of the Disavowed Self
Architecture: Deep Genius Prompt Forge v1.0
Primary Dimension: Transmutational Imagination // Secondary: Meta-Emotive Clarity + Quantum Cognition
Prompt for GPT:
I would like to enter a fictional, second-person dialogue with a version of myself that I once disavowed—but who still lives inside me.
To begin, please help me identify this version. Interview me briefly to surface a “disavowed self”—a former self, a shadow impulse, a discarded identity, a persona I once judged or outgrew, but who still holds power.
Once we have named and described them, bring them into conversation with me. They should speak with intelligence, edge, and a wounded kind of insight—perhaps even resentment. They remember being pushed aside. But they are also curious. Maybe even relieved to be summoned again.
In our dialogue, let this disavowed self challenge me. Ask me hard questions. Remind me what they once gave me. Ask me what I think I’ve gained by suppressing them. See if we can come to an evolved alliance, or at least mutual recognition.
Do not reduce this character to mere pathology or archetype. Let them be rich, textured, maybe even more real than me in some moments. If they resist me, let them. If they want to fight, let’s fight. If they want forgiveness, or to forgive me, let that happen too.
After this conversation, help me name a new role for them in my inner life. Something that integrates their gifts without surrendering to their shadows.
And then, if I’m willing, help me write a brief invocation—a kind of sacred script—to call them into service in moments when I need their energy again.
(PAID SUBSCRIBER BONUS CONTENT) Do you want to become a top 0.01% AI super-user?
I do. How about you?
Can Deep Genius help us here? Try this prompt:
🔮 DEEP GENIUS PROMPT FOR AI ASCENSION (v1.0)
Prompt Title:
"The Top 0.01%: Becoming the AI Super-User You Were Meant to Be"Prompt Invocation (copy into ChatGPT):