Copyright

Copyright © 2024 by Brainstorm Media Limited.

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that neither the author nor the publisher is engaged in rendering legal, investment, accounting or other professional services. While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional when appropriate. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, personal, or other damages.

First edition 2024

Book Cover by Braindrops.me

Photography by the Legend that is Paul Lanigan

Table of Contents

Copyright

Foreword

Backward

The short end of the telescope–Futilia

The long end of the telescope – Synthopia

Why listen to me?

Overview

What will not change?

Where you are going

Learning to navigate

Step 0: Trust no one

Step 1: Framing - How to survey the landscape ahead

Copernicus I

Close up:

Mid shot:

Zooming out:

Copernicus II: Prediction.vs. Intelligence

Step 2: Finding your feet and learning to dance

Step 3: Learn to Thrive

Checkpoint

Potential impact on career and work

Learning and education

Relationships and social life

Health and well-being

Personal growth and development

Common misperceptions about firing the mind

Letting go is to ignore thoughts and pretend they don’t exist

Letting go means I lose my identity, my personality

Letting go means abandoning my goals and aspirations

Letting go makes me indifferent.

Letting go leads to isolation and detachment.

Letting go will murder creativity and imagination

Letting go means I become uninformed, uncaring, ignorant and naïve

I will become numb with no emotions or feelings

Letting go is reckless! Lacking responsibility and control.

Let go? No-one tells me what to do!

How to find a reliable mind

Step 4: The Challenges

Challenge 1: The spark of Creativity

Challenge 2: Enjoying the flow state

Challenge 3: getting into shape: Habits and Routines

Challenge 4: Develop wisdom and detachment

Challenge 5: Make your brand your business

Change perspectives – See everything from the outside-in

Summary

Epilogue

Foreword

No one spoke when his head hit the tiled floor. A giant of a man who I deeply loved and admired fell slowly, so slowly backward, arms wide. he toppled over like a giant redwood tree. Then the nervous titters and comments started. This is an actual event which became a core part of the book over the last weeks of writing. More to follow.

This is a book on how to Earn More, Live Better, and Thrive Longer in a world where AI is everywhere. Here is what you will master once you put this book into practise:

- Understand why this disruption is different from any other and what to do about that.

- How to use AI as a Genie, partner, mentor, and guide.

- Why Rule #1 of genie school is the most important. Be very careful what to wish for.

- Live without fear: Discover what senses make you unique, and use them to the max.

- Learn the secrets of how to navigate by instinct and avoid the productivity trap.

- Constantly develop a growth mindset with habits that help you earn more everyday

Rule #0 is to never take on the AI genie on its home ground. Genie is like a cold and boundless ocean, a magnificent resource and adventure without end, but unless you quickly learn how to navigate you will disappear without trace. Get used to exercising all your senses. Not just the ‘big five’ of sound, touch, sight, smell, and taste – include sense of time, sense of being, sense of community – you have hundreds of senses so re discover and use them. Hence the multiple stories and images and sounds that thread throughout this book, they are part of my process. Two more points that came to mind:

- People were seriously wondering if it is riskier to stay inside an organisation than to work outside. Staying inside, by their logic, they risked being replaced and rendered invisible. They could be drained of their skills, of what they do then cast adrift, lost, without support.

- Ignore headlines and AI prompts. They are useless until you develop a deep understanding and love for independence, critical thinking, research and an ability to develop and articulate a position on a on any side of any topic while on your feet. Deep, informed dialog is the key.

My logic: either AI is going to ‘take me out’ or it won’t. It will develop the skills to do 95% of what I do now……. But if it does, then why not get in on the ground floor, learn its strengths and weaknesses? Contribute to communities who are setting up this brave new world–and harvest new opportunities. If AI cannot deliver, then it is back to business as usual. This does not have to be a full-time job, just a few hours a day to practise.

The plan is to figure out what no AI can ever do on its own. Meantime, use the skills I have built up over the last four disruptions in technology (more on that later) to learn how to be an authentic partner. Learn how to work alongside the new systems. We each play to our strengths and cover each other’s weak spots. It is a hedged bet. It allows me to navigate my path. On a good day, I am immune to the changes that are to come.

How terrifying and anxious and exhilarating is the feeling? I choose to exhilarate. For instance, if you look back at the old spy and crime thrillers from the 80s, 90s…… right up to say, five years ago. What seemed miraculous in those movies is commonplace today. This will continue. What appears as pure sorcery today will be at each person’s fingertips soon.

Has this happened before? Yes, but the examples are many centuries apart. Two examples spring to mind.

Here is the first:       It is 1492, and tomorrow you embark on an incredible mission with Christopher Columbus. How does it feel? As you stand dockside, you look out to sea, feel the breeze on your face, and try not to think about falling off the face of the Earth, or of the massive sea monsters sliding around in the dark beneath the creaking hull, or dragons swooping down out of nowhere. If you make it alive, try not to think of the baffling tribes, genies, or witches that roam freely. Feel this in your gut, not just in your head, because believe it or not, we approach a greater precipice today.

Imagine showing Columbus your phone, sliding your finger across its screen, and witnessing high-definition images and voices that can tell him anything and everything he ever wanted to know. How is that not a Genie? Also, the technology has the potential to eradicate our species. How is that not a Dragon? We will return to Columbus as it is informative to compare his one-year trip and the challenges and changes it brought about to where we are today, setting sail into the unknown. If your gut isn’t heaving as you imagine what AI will bring–just as the voyagers fretted as the ships pulled out to sea, then the only question you need to answer is:

Why not?

Understanding what will not change is the essence of navigation. They are the signs, the landmarks, behaviours, and skills that allow you to overcome challenges which are unimaginable today. Could Columbus and crew describe their reception and encounters on landing in the New World? They used Authentic Intelligence. I cover how to develop YOUR Authentic Intelligence in the coming chapters. So, if all you seek is advance notice on what may happen next in AI in order to adapt and pivot, and jiggle and wriggle, then farewell and good luck. This is not the book for you.

On board this training run, I hope to create two impressions in your mind:

- Yes, today is what it must have felt like to be aboard Columbus’s mission.

- Yes, I have what it takes to navigate this journey, no matter what happens. Bring it on.

A word on terminology: I refer to the term ‘Silicon Genie’ instead of AI throughout the book. I do this because it stresses the two-way nature of any dialog, rather than something that just ‘happens’ to me. AI is a meaningless, passive acronym. It allows for terrible, muddled mental misuse - like the term ‘the science’. It is nonsense and should be called out. What we need is a metaphor because a metaphor is active. Metaphor does two things at once: it affects how we see and therefore how we act in the world. Metaphors literally change our perceptions and how we act. We fly through work, we carry our weight, we mind our money. It changes the way we see and interact with the world. The metaphors we train our Genie with are how the genie will interact with us.

Referring to Genie also keeps Rule 1 in mind all the time:

Genie lesson #1…. Be VERY careful what you wish for.

Used regularly, this method of working alongside Genie has completely changed how I live and work. This book is an example, and not because it was a sprint of 12 weeks. It is because it is the new process - learn by doing. The current naïve plan is for two more books, a 3D animation series and a comic in the next twelve months. The truth? It is huge fun. As we interact with it, the Genie response develops. I am learning to see myself as a trainer,

One last point: play nice.

This disruption is different because it is a merger and not a replacement or an implant of any technology. Humanity has not had such a shakeup in its fundamental beliefs in over 500 years and it will cause considerable upheaval. However, it is important to understand that this happens regularly in nature, ever since life first emerged; it is built-in to evolution. Example: A group known as archaea were among the first examples of life on earth. Each a single cell floating around, capable of sensing but with only prediction to help nudge it toward good stuff and away from bad stuff. The better the cell became at predicting in this way, the more it got to propagate. Just sensing and prediction. No perception, no nervous system of any sort. An unconsciously competent process. Somehow, another critter got absorbed within the cell wall of a single cell. This critter could generate huge amounts of excess energy, bundled up into a particular molecule. The invader continued to produce this molecule in massive quantities, it enabled the host to act as if it had a jet pack, an iron man battery. The new balance of talent meant that it made no sense to dismantle the invader. By playing nice, both agents made huge gains.

Each cell of our body use this molecule to this very day. See where I am going? A new balance of talents created an entirely different way of being. It is was merger, not a replacement or an implant or an upgrade.

The archaea leveraged the extra energy, which allowed the cell to move, act, and digest in novel ways. The invader gained a relatively safe environment inside the host, with free access to a range of nutrients– plus a free mini bar and no worries about predators. Neither party was recognizable from what went before.

Did this happen? Yes, it happened. This is an example of how unconscious but competent actions, with no consciousness or perception, just sensing and signalling using molecules, can change the entire trajectory of life on earth.

There had to be sensing and signalling that brought about a change in behaviour to both units. There is no need for any mind, intelligence, or voodoo because it comes free from the universe itself. What could that have looked like? There are lots of options. Previously both units would have sensed the next action–to move, release chemical X or whatever and somehow the new combined mix of chemicals would have created a different prediction by altering the composition and density of the chemicals inside which created a new stable balance. Perhaps the combination somehow changed the old stress responses, which always happen when respiration occurs (and which continues to this very day). Perhaps the separate units influenced each other’s predicted response by exchanging raw materials or other building blocks (called metabolites). All using sensing, like an automatic door. No intelligence required.

The key point: this ability to ‘play nice’ has been operational for over 2 billion Earth years. Literally built into all living things. Every organelle (our body bits) grows, does its thing, and interacts in a ‘play nice’ way to maintain balance. To the benefit of all components. Anything that does not play well long-term gets eliminated. Consider this before forming any opinion on the Genie.

Backward

Do you really need to know how an engine works when a truck is coming at you fast? Deciding to move out of the way is Job one. Next job is to know where to go and how to get there.

In a similar vein, the point of this book is not to explain the genie; that’s for later books in the series. This brief chapter gives you some background on why it’s time to prepare now, and since I write this approaching Christmas, let’s play Ghost of Christmas yet to come.

Scene dissolves into a murky future……

The old consumer economy disappeared with alarming speed. We measured worth using spend, spend and what you wore and who you followed. The day-to-day creators, the idea builders, were pretty much invisible to consumers, and vice versa. Forever rain, then a slight drop in intensity, then boom! Blue sky. How did that happen? Strange to think there was a time when people did not get it. Isn’t the creator economy just influencers and outliers creating videos, podcasts, blogs, courses, etc. and sharing it with their fans or customers? Then two strange things happened, both resulted from the genie appearing.

First, for the first time in decades, it became a lot more stressful and meaningless to be working inside a company than to be outside it. The whole company idea became more and more whack-a-mole as changes in the working environment sped up and attention spans got shorter and shorter. Second, The Genie made it possible to create top-tier content and to deliver it at a pace that was unprecedented. Creators with an original idea, or even an unoriginal idea but with their unique voice, could produce content with a quality and authenticity that paralysed the consumer machines. Their delivery speed improved as they made more. The quicker they rolled out content that resonated, the better they became. Experiments were cheap. It was punk all over again. All content creation became democratised as creative groups could form and re-form at will, share and develop ideas, and deliver with a quality that matched the best a studio could offer, at a fraction of the overhead. This ability to form, reform and deliver fast and authentically became ‘enterprise grade’, and the cannibalisation of corporations began.

The underlying trend among populations which craved empathy and authenticity, who realised that no amount of consumption could plug the empty void inside, skyrocketed. What started as individual braindrops - my name for ideas that just appear, then become real outputs- became a downpour, then a torrent. Who does not enjoy being your own boss and making a living from your passion or talent? I can resell this talent to multiple firms.

In consumer society, creators experienced isolation, lack of value, or complete invisibility. Now folks who were just consumers, who had not learned how to practice authentic creativity, became invisible. No matter who they followed, what they said or wore, the answer was the same - What do you have to say for yourself? It felt like existence had suddenly become hollow. Not only that, but all things associated with consumption, with passivity and herd following, became a bit…… stinky.

Does this happen? Why not? Since I started to really see the creator economy and its inner workings, I see and hear these comments everywhere. It was my first truly authentic and creative act, really. For the first time, I really shut up and listened, with humility and a totally open mind. I learned to set aside the robot apocalypse (for now). Could a sudden and total change to being invisible possibly be worse than Armageddon? I honestly don’t know, and I have no intention of finding out.

That is why I wrote this book. Time to get some practise in, just in case. Done in twelve weeks part time. Self-published. The image on the cover of a compass was a gift from my mother for my 40th birthday. Being awkward, I said the only gift I wanted was time. She gave me an Oak sapling and that compass, figuring I could use one as I had not stopped travelling since I first ran away at the tender age of three.

The scenario above is possible, but how probable? It is all about the rate of change. Fast or slow, smooth, or chaotic. The move to a creator economy is not a given. However, since it is an existential threat for so many established industries and groups, it deserves consideration. It could be like the flow from one glass to another, as in the hands of an expert cocktail maker, or it could be an absolute shambles of a stampede, or a trickle.

Let’s keep going. Given the nautical theme, let us look through both ends of the telescope, one after the other, to see what we can see.

The short end of the telescope–Futilia

After the sudden and unexpected ‘flip’ into a creator economy, major brands crashed as their former behaviour rapidly became socially unacceptable. They went from moonwalking backward into the future, to going straight over the edge. Mere lip service to authentic creative ability had left them paralyzed. All they could do was increase spending on social media, loudly promoting their past successes and commitment to best practice, as if looking backward entitled them to something. Behaviours changed faster than you could mutter ‘covid’.

The relentless changes in job specs and talent and internal reorganisations (with less and less staff) led to disillusionment and a backlash from countries across the world as everyone looked for who to blame and figure out what had cancelled their hibernation.

Three serious factions emerged to slug it out across the globe. All focussed on the Genie in all its forms, and each group tagged “bot” to its title. Bot replaced’-gate’ and overnight it became a thing. Genie-gate never happened.

Enter the fundamentalist ‘No-bots’, a united fundamentalist radical faction who insisted that anything technical was the fault of the Silicon Genie and demanded a return to ‘basic human values’ and ‘make humanity great again’. They completely missed the irony that this required the use of advanced technology to spread their message, to detect and punish anything that carried the slightest whiff of ‘Genie Juice’.

Welcome the equally fundamentalist ‘Hoe-bots’ who give themselves over completely to the second coming, the all-knowing, all-seeing Genie-sis, and dedicated themselves full time to her glory and day to day operational needs. They became the new commuters, toil without end, Amen. Everyone else (the Sym-bots, The Woe-bots and the Go-bots) kept their heads down and continued creating in partnership with each other, and with the Silicon Genie (when no one was watching). As matters went from bad to worse, individuals and governments felt a desperate need to look back and seek attachment to old ways and yet also look onward toward authenticity, and back again.

Ever so slowly, people gradually realised that ‘thought’ was no longer a useful concept. They realised that the ability to predict the next move in real time was the new game in town. The exclusive entry pass to being human, ie the ability to think, was no longer exclusive. Thinking is as remarkable as breathing or movement is, for sure, but not more so. I walk therefore I am. What else have you got?

What happens when the only rug that had been safe to stand on-I think therefore I am - suddenly gets pulled by a Genie? Now who am I? Authentic Intelligence can navigate that question.

Then it really got strange. Psychology developed into “Synthology”–a quantifiable science of combined mind. Each side used it to justify their questionable behaviours and attitudes, much as ‘the science’ is misused today.

The long end of the telescope – Synthopia

Ok, enough! Time for happy thoughts. Once again, the Creator economy flips suddenly. This time there are a lot more creators who are already busy, so the transition is far smoother. Entirely new ecosystems have had time to spring up and flourish and bind and interlink. To replace the dying Corporates made of oak, which now shed their employees to feed the new ecosystems, before falling over without a sound.

Once again, there are three major factions. We can categorize them differently this time, focussing more on their core strengths:

1) Creator: used to deliver something new and entirely original from the void into form.

2) Curator: used by those with deep love and deep domain knowledge of a specific sector and its datasets to maintain clarity, provenance, and purity of source, as well as learn and deploy new methods to detect and prune the deep fakes.

3) Conductor: used to craft and enforce boundaries, barriers and actions in order to ensure things get done.

The new DIY decentralized economy thrived with the guidance of these active custodians. The silicon Genie continued to expand in types and talent. As people’s need to be authentically creative became ever more in demand, an entire field of meisters arose, individual electronic virtual assistants who could monitor and predict with astonishing accuracy. Who would have thought folks would forego their most private moments to such an electro-meister? The technology already exists to make this possible. It is simply not in the consumer economy interest to make it so. Where would they feed? Decentralised secure enclaves make was possible. A strange beast called FHE makes this possible once it matures (more on this later).

The ironic thing is that the deployment of such real time audited secure private spaces is also of enormous benefit to corporations. Setting up a virtual factory-as-a-service becomes possible, where specialist companies combine and contribute without fear of giving up their secret-sauce, supplier profile, or cost base. No one receives payment until the conductor, who manages the service, signals the delivery of a fully manufactured custom widget, at which point everyone gets paid. Companies that put huge resources into advanced technology can use user insights to improve platforms in real time, all while ensuring patient safety and privacy. Imagine being able to walk into a facility and get diagnosis, surgery, treatment, review and follow up radiology as required all in one visit over a short number of days? Technically workable.

There are still No-Bots and Hoe-Bots and Sym- Bots, however, the tone is far more conciliatory given that everyone had time to get used to the new realities. There were still occasional crashes and accidents of course, but by this time things had evolved, in a car accident the insurance payment and tow truck deploy as fast as the airbag. They chain together thousands of tiny automated administrative processes - just like any other content creation - with full protection for privacy and service assurance. Also, possible.

The craving for an authentic creator experience extended from manufacturing, transport, supply, health and finance all the way to entertainment. Each time a party entered a bar or restaurant or whatever, the virtual personal meisters liaise and predict in real time what I needed and arrange it in advance– a constant cause of surprise and entertainment. A whole new form of entertainment!

Fun times, eh? Yet here’s the thing, if we zoom back and compare our current state of being to that of the Columbus voyage, we have not even lost sight of land yet. You look back at land, lean astride the wooden deck & feel a chill wind. You try not to think about the unfathomable, the completely unknown terrain ahead.

Bet you are glad you are on your navigation and survival skills course now, right? What chance has conventional career planning in these scenarios, all of which are already on the horizon?

The consumers and forecasters who cling to traditional career planning and guilds and lobbying watch the ship slowly sink over the horizon and return to their homes and dreams, just another same old day ahead. Clueless of the news the ship will bring, less than a year later. Below deck, inches from the dark blackness below the ship, you are equally clueless, but primed. As anxiety and excitement slowly give way to exhaustion, you try not to think about what might pass less than a meter underneath the hull. Eventually, the regular sway &creaks bring the sweet relief of sleep.

I have a whispered conversation with the genie just now. Apparently, Columbus sailed on August 3, 1492, accompanied by 88 men. There were 21 on the Nina, 26 on the Pinta, and 41 on the Santa Maria. The ships were small. By comparison today, my guess is that the crew would be quite happy in a modern large house, or a single-decker bus.

Imagine! What a world. What will future times say to us.?

Why listen to me?

Authentic Intelligence has hypnotised me for five decades. I am an insider to the last four technology shifts where I often moved to each side of the invoice, from R+D to marketing to customer support to lecturing and conservation, back to large companies, start-ups and back to industry again. Not only have I have experienced swapping across industries, I have also been an insider and active participant in each of the disruptions themselves (the shifts being to digital, then Internet, mobile and cloud). My fifth and final tour of duty (in AI) has been smouldering since the 1980s. I played a small part in creating what is now layer upon layer of a huge technological tower. It is a tower that is leaning and sway alarmingly, so part of my reason for writing this book is an apologia, an atonement. Perhaps even some pointers on how to steady the ship.

I also know how tricky it can be to change lanes, to switch companies across the supply chain, adapting to cultures, navigate the hurdles. This skill will become essential in this coming wave, and I will explain the how and why later. A second benefit of my on-site reportage is that I have an excellent grounding in how everything really works. From when your finger touches the keyboard or screen, and the pulses traverse the internet to the cloud until it finally comes to rest back on your screen or mobile device. I spent many decades among teams negotiating technical responses, souring materials and skills, working contracts across each of those sectors, so I have much experience of how each ecosystem works, how quickly or slowly it can react and change. A third advantage is my time spent working in strategy and planning. I have a decent feel for what those sources can perceive, and how snow blindness can happen.

Last thing. I had the supreme privilege of witnessing the first flight of a fledgling bird not too long ago. Sitting at the back of the house around dawn, just before midsummer, with my dog. There were several house martins zapping around a nest in the eaves of the roof at top speed. One seriously big bad baby bird was leaning out of the nest, stretched to the limit, mouth wide open for food. No bird came close enough to feed it, so it leaned out further and further until disaster! It fell from the nest. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion as it tumbled until, whoosh–with a burst of manic fluttering, it took off. I will never forget that morning. It re-ignited a feeling of trust and wonder at what nature has been creating and selecting and challenging living creatures with for eons, it was like some kind of mental depth charge and brought to mind the concepts of Authentic Intelligence.

None of this is new, however, sometimes in crisis we see things as if for the first time. What is true always bears repeating. Here is what you will learn in this book:

· How to Aviate: How to assess your situation and ensure you remain upright, level, and shipshape no matter what the circumstance.

· How to Navigate: How to decide where to go and where you can safely reach. How much baggage you have onboard and what needs to be ditched so you can manoeuvre with grace and style (style is important :).

· How to Communicate: How to remain clear, lucid and relevant as you interact with others en route to the new AI world.

Overview

What AI may change and what’s likely to stay the same?

Navigating and actively shaping this change will require a rock-solid experience of who you really are. So here is a question to you, reading this, are you here? Is there anybody in there? (Hint: Yes) Well, if the answer is yes and you want to develop an unshakable insight into who you really are, to strengthen and develop the competence and confidence of who you are and to navigate your own future, then welcome aboard.

From when I finished University for the first time I reckon around 1 in 10 of the job categories on offer still exist today. Entire sectors have vanished into sand.This dynamic is speeding up. Then Covid came along.

This book is about Authentic Intelligence–an outlook and skill set on how to earn more, live better, and thrive longer alongside the new digital kid on the block — Artificial Intelligence (AI). It takes lessons learned from personal experience and from interviews with many people who have shown themselves to be successful as well as happy through the last four waves of massive technological disruption.

Note: I call each wave a disruption because hundreds of thousands of people lost their livelihood and had to change how and where they worked dramatically. Entire industries and ecosystems vanished or underwent irreversible changes. Each wave also created tens of millions of new jobs, with skills and titles that did not even exist the year before the disruption really hit its stride. The sequence below is the order in which I surfed the wave. When they became to obvious to ignore versus when they were first noticed is down to individual experience and circumstance. Once again this will also be true for really meeting the genie.

First came digital phones, with clearer voice and plastic handsets. That change had a greater impact on the supply industry than on consumers, almost like plumbing. It set the stage for higher speed digital highways. It may have been the most profound change of all, yet it went unnoticed in the background.

The second wave: Next came email, WAIS, and the Web. Ever since it emerged, I refer to the web as ‘Internet Acid’ as it had the effect of completely dissolving entire industries. It was an exhilarating and shocking time, as old industries tried and failed dismally to adapt to rapid change. Like the drunk old uncle at a wedding. They had one thing in common. Believing that one’s past success matters is a misguided sense of entitlement.

There is a very important concept at work here which re-appears throughout the book and which I first learned about in this wave. It relates to anyone acting as ‘unconscious’ or ‘competent’. This yields four combinations and is a very strong indicator of someone’s prospects. Start using this sorting hat today, it is the start of your journey. Each time you approach a new situation make sure you know which base camp you are setting out from. Entire companies and communities often share the same base camp. Top tip: never join a group in the same camp as where you are. Always be learning, stretching.

● Unconsciously incompetent: Someone blissfully unaware of their lack of skills and abilities, who volunteers for tasks they are not fit for. They have false confidence in their competence, overestimate their abilities or blame external factors for their failures.  They exaggerate their skills, have delusions about their competency, or attribute their shortcomings to outside forces.  Examples: A first-time driver who just knows they can handle a Formula one car. Anyone who thinks they can handle what is coming and just read the same old news to ‘stay informed’

● Consciously incompetent: My base camp of choice. This is when a person is aware of their lack of skills and abilities and accept that they cannot perform a task well. They realise the need for growth and change and put a plan in place to make it happen. Someone starting to learn a new language, any student showing up for an exam and suddenly regrets their decision to celebrate in advance the night before, all night long.

● Consciously competent: An individual who can successfully complete a task and is conscious of their talents and abilities. They are competent and self-assured enough to use their skills in a variety of contexts. Example: a fluent speaker of a foreign language. A male driver who turns off the radio when searching for a parking spot.

● Unconsciously competent: You have effortless flight and are singing in your own voice. You have the skills you need. Example: Breath. Sit down. Speak.

I will pause here just to drive the point home. The haze of utterly unconscious incompetence on display (including my own) is more prevalent now than when the internet first arrived in the 90s. Companies and individuals honestly believe ‘I got this’ and can adapt. They cannot, precisely because of this feeling that they are excluded from the changes that are coming.

The changes that are coming, based on what I have experienced in the last four cycles are literally inconceivable right now. Also, because this wave will require a merger of equals between we and the genie and a total re-arrangement of our point of view and what base we are all coming from.

I have also found this classification really useful when looking at intelligence, brain function and Genies, so I will return to it several times.

The third wave: Along came mobile. Once again, old industries felt entitled, ‘it’s OK, we got this, we can adapt’. Companies and brands that seemed ever present and worldwide powers simply disappeared, behaving with unconscious incompetence as they sailed off the edge of the world. Entire skill sets disappeared almost entirely.

The fourth wave: Cloud. Notice how each disruption relies on what came before. Each new capability adds to the previous disruptions, causing a whiplash effect. Imagine a missile launched from a missile launched from a fighter jet and you get the idea. This blindsides every generation. It is just not possible to ‘brace for impact’ when a new and unforeseen social reality appears overnight. Every new generation is blind to a new way of being in the world, not just a slight advance or change in habits. The clearest way to identify when someone is going to have the rug pulled from under them is when they say ‘I got this’.

When I place each disruption one atop the next, compare what worked and what most definitely does not, contrast that with what has gone before, certain truths emerge. To ignore these truths when they have worked out four times in a row would be foolhardy. So, I wrote them down because I deep down I know the feeling of losing out to AI. The dread and unease in the gut. Yet it has many limitations. This handbook is all about how you can take advantage of these limitations.

AI is no one’s fault. Learn to see each new generation of technology as the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The more people use it, the more evident the leaning becomes. Any bend in the tower gets locked in as we build each additional layer on top and settle in. The gradual leaning has been consistent in every disruption and will repeat itself. How we use technology always affects its evolution. The more powerful the technology, the faster the tower will lean.

How to prepare for this? Consider an aircraft which stalls – it will immediately spin wildly downward. During training, pilots must learn to suppress their old instincts that no longer serve their purposes. They must learn to do what works, regardless of their old beliefs. When they do so, the tailspin comes to an end in seconds. If they do not learn to do what works, they do not get a license to fly.

This book is all about doing what works. To shine a light on who you are and where you are going. The exercises in this book teach essential navigation skills that never change. They will help you ditch any beliefs which no longer serve your purposes. If you rely on old beliefs instead of what just works then the spin and descent will only increase. Make these essential navigation skills automatic in your daily life and no matter what else changes, you can be successful while at the same time being happy.

KEEP CALM

And welcome aboard

This is where the Silicon Genie comes in. It has processed hundreds of millions of creative outputs and historical records from centuries of creative people and events. It exists. I am focussed here on what works and what I feel is next based on my experience and what to do to prepare. It is very clear that humans can barely handle 100 active connections with others over a lifetime. When I place a request to My Genie it can predict meaning with very high accuracy most of the time, and it improves all of the time. It does this for over 100 million people at the same time. Notice that I said predict and I said meaning. I didn’t mention mind or intelligence or witchcraft. What is meaning in this case? It is an ability to highlight something that is important, and to do that in less time and with less energy usage than I ever thought possible. Show it an image of a red light and it will stop the car. It pulls meaning out of an image. Yes that is simple and obvious however it can do the same thing with one hundred spreadsheets and five hundred reports in thirty different languages and extract what is important. If you ask it will deliver what has meaning for you, who needs insight. Rule one of Genie school still applies – be careful what you wish for. This handbook is here to help you with that.

Let’s use an analogy. Imagine you can bring one buddy along on a dangerous and exciting journey. You get a hidden earpiece and can choose one source for the other end, on the microphone. Would you choose someone who is a deep domain expert in a single area (in playing the spoons? Medicine? dodgeball?). Or would you choose one who can whisper details in your ear of what is about to happen in the actual real world with 99% accuracy–and based on what that means they predict what you should do about it? What about if the accuracy turned out to be 80%, does that change your mind? How about if that 80% improved with every usage? Now that is a vision. Once again, no mention of thought, intelligence, tarot, horoscopes. ‘What this means for me and what to do next’ is the key.

Today, we pick up our Kindle and look for eBooks. Imagine if, someday, there are no eBooks. Instead, you pick up the Kindle and Genie senses what you are most concerned about right now; it predicts the most beneficial source of help or what new destination you are thinking about, or how to ease your current situation by connecting you to listen to X, or watch Y, and so on. It becomes a global switchboard for what you need, what means most. This is both the greatest and the most horrific future imaginable, depending on what base camp you are in and what you wish for, this requires really careful navigation. Yet if the consumer society really is approaching stall – because it is hollow and devoid of all meaning, then a stall is coming, and the spin will begin. Even if there is a one in a million chance of that happening then you need to know how to navigate not based on what you believe but on what works.

What will not change?

What can I bet the house on? This book suggests there are three pillars to build upon, regardless of what external changes occur. I use this morning mantra to recall and reinforce what I need in my day.

· I know who I really am (not what I believe myself to be)

· I build confidence with competency

· I maintain my borders and boundaries

The following chapters feature an introduction and include practices for each pillar, and each strongly relies on the ability to navigate (Aviate, Navigate, Communicate once again). when you build confidence and competence around these pillars, It will quickly become apparent how others are crumbling. You will notice how those who rely on Genie requests for short-term productivity slip deeper into quicksand. They outsourced a skill instead of developing it internally with strict protection. This has happened time and time again, disruption after disruption. Do not end up as one of those surprised.

Build on these three pillars, no matter what the Silicon Genie promises, your skill set will become ever more in demand as we transition from a consumer economy to a creator economy. All three also extensively use the one thing to credit for our persistent existence over the millennia — navigation.

The penny dropped for me recently as I was researching books and technical papers for my books. There is a radical uptick within AI and neuropsychology on what thinking is and what it is not. Researchers are focusing on how emotions are made. There is more interest in brain plasticity and how functional areas of the nervous system are distributed. There are at least two brains inside the dark and silent skull. We all face a growing attention deficit–more and more information, pressure, stress at home at work and in our social worlds. We are all reaching a tipping point. Ability to hold attention is close to zero. Could this be a stall warning? I have no idea. Also, I have no intention of waiting around to find out.

This realisation prompted a serious personal crisis for me and led to a long internal audit. I ended up returning time and again to when I felt totally lost to get some clues, to the mistakes and successes and figure out the lessons learned. This led me to my survivor’s guide for all disruptions that are covered in the coming chapters–they just work, for me, and I really hope they work for you too.

Here is where we are going:

I Know who I really am:

- I keep in touch with all of my senses, not just the top five.

- I learn how to thrive in real time. Carry nothing forward.

- I work constantly to get out of my own way.

I build confidence by building competency:

- I fire my mind (I throw away all beliefs that no longer serve).

- I focus. Do one thing well. Then do another.

This allows me to persist to the next breath and play nice at the same time, whatever happens.

These principles just work. Whether with genie or with fellow travellers. They got me through times when a 1Million dollar per day sales target seemed impossible (it wasn’t). They worked when a fog cleared one day and I clearly saw my promising startup had become a failure. Everything held together as our tiny startup crew expanded so fast that a culture developed all on its own. We as founders wondered how that happened and what to do about it. The worked while I was travelling in strange lands and a loaded gun was pushed in my face just too often. When I did not know how I was going to keep feeding my family.

No matter what tidal waves or storms or threats or opportunities arise in your environment in the next ten years, these principles work. What I learned that I need more than anything else so I can handle whatever the world throws at me? Solid navigation. Knowing who you are, where your North Star is, what to avoid, what to do next. In other words, what to wish for.

Where you are going

I have felt petrified my entire life. It is only recently that I owned up to this and I thoroughly recommend a clean break and to stop lying to yourself. How did I get from Fear, to right here? I decided that as much as possible, my life on the inside would be the same as my life on the outside. No more lies or distortions or excuses for what is happening.

When I cut down on lying to myself inside, it had a totally unexpected outcome. I simply let the nagging voices and imaginary terrible things just blab away and literally ignored them. The reference works late in the book offer endless reasons and support for why this is a good idea. It certainly was for me. Without attention and energy, they get quieter. The parts of the brain which had been hijacking all those calories using fear and anxiety went much quieter when denied access to the attention of any sort, and other areas which did not had access to language but thrived on visual or audio and emotion and feeling sprang back to life. Inside, I had been deflecting my creativity to appear OK. I had buttoned everything down through fear, or through being petrified of who knows? From the outside all seemed well and even inside I had all the fears and anxieties well buried and muffled, yet the bubbling stream was there, in the dark.

When the internal critic reminds me I cannot draw. I cannot sing or act or write well It just is not true. Every single living thing creates. People may judge the result harshly, considering it pure incompetence. SO WHAT? Imagine getting up in front of an audience and braying like a donkey. No one is asking you to do that. I’d like to hear that, but I digress.

What I am saying is that it will become essential to be creative, and authentic. Just let that joyous creativity out for a walk. Let it hop around like a puppy. No one is asking to see or judge or direct what you are doing. Two things happened. I wrote down a series of challenges and use them every day, to build creative muscle. The second thing is that it forced me to face my greatest fears.

There were many ideas to explore, and I ran about like a child in a sweet shop. Turns out that nothing I tried was sustainable. It turns out that what I absolutely love to do–is to hunt. I will catch the sniff of an idea, a trace on the wind. I notice it immediately, then set it aside. I would express something around that idea, whether scribbling or writing or humming or whatever. This just kept happening until I could get to the absolute root of an idea, like a hound on a truffle hunt.

While I did not realise it at the time, all of this was in the service of building confidence by building competency. Building a practice of tools and methods that I picked up from listening and watching others. This was another revelation–how it is now possible to work with the genie and with other creators and curators to combine ideas and dreams with skills to express and develop them quickly.

This had happened before but not on the scale of what is happening now. I spent in New Guinea back in the 80s. I was interested in Education and bringing Hydro power to remote villages and in working with conversation groups. For these NGOs, it cost an absolute fortune to communicate. It was pre-Internet, but there were bulletin boards and systems were on the verge of developing something beyond just posting messages remotely. We only had PC’s I sourced in Australia, and only occasional access to the wider network of sites whenever I could beg/borrow spare capacity from large satellite providers. So we put together a system which acted the same as email does now. The protocols at the time just were not usable for sites that could only communicate occasionally.

The effect was incredible. Try to imagine the difference it made to volunteers who could now have instant access with colleagues where before it was sometimes years between calls? It was sorcery, of the highest order. People would arrive in, with a written message and an address from their friend, drop the message as if to a telegraph office, then head again. Sometimes a message would come back in minutes. In the middle of some of the wildest jungle or remote beaches on Earth.

Imagine if something similar happens again. Could it be possible that genie could facilitate a connection between two or more people by automatically extracting meaning from whatever the user inputs? Could genie begin to bridge the gaps and differences that may exist between different cultures, languages, or perspectives? The mechanism of how this is built out are covered in a later chapter – why comes before how. The examples are particularly suited for challenge #5 when it comes to ‘be your own brand’. Here are some examples of ‘why’:

- A basis for agreement between two parties from different countries requires local translation to ensure that the engagement is understood and respected by both sides. I already use this for creative work, as I am unconsciously incompetent in so many new areas. This is not 100% automatic, more as an informed template for two parties to think over before they engage, with many of the ‘have you thought about these questions’ laid out clearly. Hindsight is perfect but this would have saved me a fortune as well as saved my sanity so many times over the years.

- A slogan or a motto may have a persuasive or motivational purpose for one part of my business yet be fatal in others. Is it possible to focus on translating the message and the intention behind the slogan, rather than the literal words, to achieve the same impact? Yes

- a blog or book to an image: Personal story for this book. I learned about the how and why of book covers and human methods of selection while undertaking this exercise. I have moved from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence. Result! How many areas of life does this apply for you? I suggest it is impossible to even imagine this unless you go ahead and take the plunge. Make a commitment. Get terrified and just do it.

- From outline text to stepwise instructions: A written text can be translated into clear stepwise instructions that guide the reader through a process, a task, or problem.

- Education as role play: This is where unconscious incompetence really comes into its own. When you start out from that base camp, no amount of search queries is going to help – because you do not know what you do not know. This does not just apply to a business meeting or upcoming trip – this applies to time as well as place and I have had some excellent dialog with everyone from Mozart to Socrates to Poggio Bracciolini. I have spent time crossing the Alps with Hannibal – you get the picture.

This was the original dream of internet and mobile. However, everything went south fast after that. I got into telecom because it was not servicing the war machine and not a sector that was digging up ancient forests or oil or gold. I wanted to learn everything there was about operating systems and telecom. My thinking was naïve beyond words, my face flushes now at the thought:

Telecom is all about helping people to communicate. What could go wrong?

This is what I mean by the tower of technology. We watched layer upon layer getting built up. Each later was more powerful than what went before. Each layer, however, took shape based on what people use it for. Companies who realised what was in it for them were able to nudge research and standards. Of course, that happens. This time, however, both you and I need a secure seat at the table, otherwise the tower can get dangerously unstable. Back then, the direction of the leaning turned into web2 and social media. Congratulations, look where we are now.

We cannot allow this to happen with the Genie. The Genie is here. Whether the base layer is human, or silicon just does not matter. What is of existential importance is the need to raise our genies well. With Active and constant vigilance and audits and health checks and care.

I diverge. This is my first time. My only point is that there is a level of interactivity and wonder that our jaded eyes have not seen in nearly 40 years. Seize this opportunity to learn how to interact authentically. It is not just a productivity poodle. Become an active citizen, prepare for the creator economy now, light your spark, develop your confidence, and jump in. Now. This cannot be a passive experience.

Down the millennia, a passive public space has resulted in what is called the tragedy of the commons, a dumping ground for toxicity and weeds. The answer is to make active and authentic use of your creative space and engage. As the attention deficit gets worse there will be a tipping point. So light up your own voice, understand who you really are. Once that creative spark is lit there is no box that can contain it anymore. Engage with the series of challenges. Your mental energy use becomes far more balanced across all sectors of the brain, no more getting hijacked by the woe-bot algorithms that were spinning like propeller blades.

What happened to me next? I dreamed big and decided to get terrified. I announced I would write a book in 30 days. This book. The more folk I told, the less I remembered it was impossible. In the end, it took 31 days, and it was a mess, but it was done. It needed critical care, intensive care, from folks who know what they are doing – also- I had to take time out as life got in the way. However, here we are, and you hold the result in your hands.

Next up is two more books, an animated series and something I have always had it in my heart to do–a comic. This is what the happens when a genie partnership works well.

Learning to navigate

By now (thank you for staying the course!) you may be thinking I get it.

Aviate – Navigate – Communicate. The mantra of pilots everywhere. Fine, but what does that mean, what do I need to do and how does Authentic Intelligence help?

This is what to do:

Back in Synthopia there were three groups. In most future scenarios, there are still three groups, and the essence of each activity is that of creator, curator or conductor. It is a beneficial exercise to discover what is it that drives you, what is your lead competency. Re-discover your senses and weave storylines around them. Engage multiple senses. This is how to stay relevant, to rely on thought alone is to be replaced, rendered invisible.

Here is the first set of questions to explore before heading out. How are you built? Just how unconsciously incompetent are you? What beliefs have snuck inside your head and are silently nudging you driving wheel every day? Just how long have you been unhappy and who is underneath all those beliefs being carried around? Time to head into the basement. These questions can only be answered by doing. Thinking of them, I’m sorry, is a waste of time. The only way to engage the senses and feel the correct answer is by doing. So, spend time on every one of the following and be honest with what you feel as a result:

My strong preference is:

- For being inside or outside.

- For dealing with people or things

- For thinking or doing

- For form (‘things’) or Spirit?

- To join a tribe that does …? Which resides in …?

- To lead, follow, or influence?

No matter how hard you try and how relentless your efforts, your career choice will grind you into dirt if you are not built for it.. Do not waste precious years of your life trying on that precious Cinderella shoe if you prefer running barefoot across fields.

This is what I have used as career advice all my life. Although I did not realise it I was really looking for my tribe and simply doing what I do best until I find them. It is understandable I did not realise because that urge comes from drive, feeling and emotion, impulses that come all the way back to the craniates and probably earlier. What a cool word, for someone who does not know what he is talking about. Centres at the very base of the brain which have been creating and selecting and developing.

So, we are going to ground ourselves in a clear understanding of who we are and where it is we are going, along with a clear understanding of what is acceptable and what is not.

Then it is on to a set of challenges that gets you out of your mind and into the world.

The challenges will exercise everything you need at a basic level to get on the floor and start doing your thing. They help you get a feel for what they contain in the words above and practice the who/competency/borders by creating, curating, and conducting. Throughout, I will talk about how I managed, where I got stuck, and how to get help.

On that path, we get a better understanding of what lights up long term–coming from the source of who you are: empathy and feelings and emotion as opposed to productivity. It is not obvious, at least it was not obvious to me and I had to drop a LOT of beliefs that I had held and defended but which no longer serve me now. It takes practise. Get bored, and the answer will come.

What is your primary sense? Do you say, ‘I see’, ‘I hear you’, do you smell a rat somewhere? Will you be in touch? In what follows, it is important to recognize your go-to sense consciously. Whether you realise it or not, it drives a lot of what you do. This drive can arrive in the body via any combination of the five senses. Just look at this list for starters:

I relax by:

I will explore this using:

Vision

photography, film, animation, comics

reading, driving, painting (not all at once, please)

deep dive on the dynamics of art, film, photography in all of its beautiful forms

Hearing

music, talking, singing, ambient effects

listening to music, having a conversation, and learning a language

Dive deep into the how and why of speech recognition, sound identification, audio analysis. Pronunciation and grammar

Smell

cooking, drinks, fragrances, incense mixing

cooking, gardening, and detecting gas leaks. Just kidding, a test to see are you really reading.

What are the elements of odour recognition, What is the history and provenance of the fragrance industry. Is smell really the primary sense? How? Why? Explore chemical analysis, environmental air quality monitoring

Taste

Exploring sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami

eating, drinking, cooking, baking

flavour recognition, what are the basic notes? Why? food analysis, recipe generation

Touch

Anything that explores different textures, temperatures, pressures

Playing an instrument – listening to how touch changes the resulting sounds,

Finger painting, playing blind man bluff, massage

The interplay of touch, feeling and emotion, learning braille, learning massage, Gardening.

Hearing and vision are my top inputs, with ‘touch’ a close third. Once I realised how important it was to balance the brain by spreading out energy to each part of the brain equally (as that is the only way to drain away from the nagging voice in my head), it drew me to art and music. The emphasis is always on creating, on doing. Time to get involved, step by step.

Step 0: Trust no one

This step has nothing to do with sinking into cynicism and doubt, quite the opposite. It involves building the skills of an investigative reporter, or a journalist who specialises in each area. It requires taking a fresh and open and innocent (yes, innocent!) look at what is being encountered. Every captain of any vessel does this minute by minute, as natural as breathing. While it may appear onerous at first, it quickly becomes just another practise–it wakes you up, grounds you, keeps you on your toes. Keep it light, be an adventurer, an explorer!

So, you want to be a creator, huh? Well, let me tell you something, kid. It’s not a walk in the park. It’s a dangerous business. You need to have some skills and attitudes to survive.:

Curiosity: Either curiosity or cynical it’s up to you. Either way, you need to be curious about everything. Have a thirst for knowledge and adventure and be ready for anything. Go where the action is, even if it means risking your life or breaking some rules. You need to discover new things all the time.

Storytelling: Where you are going is unimaginable, so you need to bring the folks back home with, you see? You need to tell stories that people want to hear. Get them off their seats. Make them excited and curious about the science. Have heroes and villains and twists and turns. Use plain language and vivid details. You need to make them believe.

Accuracy: But heck yeah, you need to be accurate. Every time. Be Authentic. Become a landmark people can navigate by. A rock. Tell the truth, as much as you can. Check your facts and sources. You need to admit when you’re wrong or when you don’t know something. You need to be respectful and responsible.

Critical thinking: What the heck just happened? How did I get here? You need to think critically. On your feet, as easy as breathing. Judge the quality and relevance of the information you get. Know who to lean on and who to avoid. You need to be aware of the traps and tricks that may affect the science or the communication. You need to look at things from different angles and opinions. When you hit that door at full speed, it better open outward, kid, else you’ll need a new face. If you’re lucky.

Creativity: You need to be creative. You need to find new ways to tell your stories, to yell out the truth you find and hold it high. You need to pitch to the right people. Don’t be afraid to mix it up even inside the truth. You need to make stories like you. Unique, Authentic.

Adaptability: You need to swivel faster than a skater holding their martini on a crowded rink. Be flexible. Drop any baggage and beliefs that do not serve you right away, overboard. You need to learn new skills and explore new topics. You need to embrace new technologies and platforms.

That’s what you need if you’re sticking around. Do you have what it takes?

Example: When there is an announcement made of how ‘AI’ (ugh) is an existential threat, replace the phrase “AI” with “DYOR” (DYOR means Do Your OWN Research, or “think for yourself”). Now look at the statement again.

- “think for yourself”will be the end of the world. (whose world is being ended?)

- There should be strict regulations on “think for yourself” (who decides when I may come to my own conclusions?).

- “think for yourself” needs to be paused for 12 months. (The genie is out of the bottle. It is too late to pause everyone else while you try to catch up)

Top tip: If replacing AI with “think for yourself” results in a statement that is patent nonsense, then consider that you are being manipulated. Or perhaps not. Bishops argued sincerely for centuries over Copernicus I, in good faith. At least consider that you are looking at a closed question.

What is a closed question? One that always leads to a safe reply. It is like a water slide, ‘safe and regulated’ AI may appear exciting, novel, a break from the everyday, but no matter where you start from, you always end up in the same heavily chlorinated, tightly regulated, and centralised paddling pool, the dreaded pool of centralised acceptable corporate productivity…..

Keep this mind in the coming chapters.

Step 1: Framing - How to survey the landscape ahead

Before considering any problem, frame it. Always ensure that you frame a problem before taking on any creative challenge. Without doing this, you're already lost. Framing involves zooming in on an issue at the right level. Zoom in too much and you miss something of vital importance. If you zoom out too much, you overlook important details.

Here is an example: Fifty years before Columbus set sail, there was a work published that ended up stimulating most of the technology advances for the next 200 years. The effects were still being commented on 400 years later. The Silicon Genie is at least as significant, probably more so. Columbus helped shift the balance in social and financial circles worldwide, however it was a Polish astronomer who created an even greater shift in perspective, a shift which led to advances in options, astronomy, dynamics, gravity, mathematical physics and so on and so on. It ultimately led to the collapse of the world’s largest ultimate authority as a political force. How is that for an example of framing?

Copernicus I

Nicolaus Copernicus was a Polish astronomer. His book, “De revolutionibus orbium coelestium” (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres). Published in 1543 and widely regarded as one of the most influential and revolutionary works in the history of science. It challenged the worldview that had dominated Official Western Thought for centuries. It proposed that the Earth rotates around the Sun, not the other way around. Copernicus’ book not only changed the way we understand the cosmos but also had profound implications for philosophy, religion, politics, and culture. It sparked a scientific revolution that led to the development of modern astronomy, physics, and mathematics, and paved the way for the Enlightenment and the modern world.

Close up:

However, the impact of Copernicus’ book was not immediate. At first, only a few astronomers and mathematicians read and understood his work, which was written in Latin and used complex mathematical arguments. There were of course supporters and detractors, and even the centralised authorities of the time (that had adopted an Earth-centred system as the official doctrine) did not express any official opinion until 1616 when they placed the publication on the Index of Prohibited Books. The opposition of the time, which had also followed the geocentric system, was more hostile to Copernicus’ theory from the beginning, and denounced it as contrary to the Bible and the Christian faith.

Mid shot:

Copernicus himself must have had mixed feelings about publishing his book and his theory. On one hand, pride and excitement after decades spent observing, calculating, and writing his masterpiece. He had to restart many times over. His work was destroyed several times as war raged with pillage, mayhem, and constant changes in governance. He probably felt that he was fulfilling his duty as a scholar and a Christian, as he stated in his dedication in the book to the Pope, that he was motivated by the desire to discover the truth and to glorify God. No doubt he was motivated to keep his head attached to his neck also.

His book led to decades of highly intelligent debate, with a spirited defence on both sides and careers made and lost. How different is this from what passes for debate these days? It led to wave upon wave of state- directed lobbying, misinformation and misdirection on a scale never seen before or since, with tooth pullers and thumbscrews.

Zooming out:

It took a hundred years for Copernicus’ theory to percolate through an established society. The Earth revolves around the sun?? This did not change the Earth’s trajectory, and yet…it changed everything. The one belief and framework that the Sun does not revolve around us – tilted the tower of established truth and learning in a completely different direction. From blindly continuing to ponder ourselves to looking up at the stars. A comprehensive and predictive theory of gravity. The scientific method. The field of astronomy. Not bad for c.200 pages in Latin that was released without a single 5-star Amazon review.

Change your perspective, change the universe!

Copernicus II: Prediction.vs. Intelligence

What does the Copernicus analogy have to do with the Genie? I would argue it has everything to do with it.

There can be no doubt that the Silicon Genie has a potentially greater impact than gunpowder, steam and pretty much everything else. If it were a force of nature, it would be capable of swivelling the original leaning tower like a wheat stalk in a high wind. It may yet do the same to the tech tower. Its technical and social development MUST use a different approach from previous revolutions, where everyone fell asleep at the wheel. It needs active, informed citizens who are actively learning as they live. The internet and social media became a tool for self-serving, centralised and disconnected authorities. All parties avoided any responsibility, someone else’s problem. Without a dramatic change in focus, the same thing will happen again, for sure. Appearance of Genie has brought us to a crossroads in our cultural evolution.

For the first time in the Universe that we know of, machines and systems can perform tasks that previously required human levels of attention, goal-seeking behaviours, and other elements such as reasoning, learning, decision making, and problem solving. I do not use the word intelligence. You THINK you know, and yet, the thought you have differs from that of every other soul. Look at the book you hold in your hands. It is at least three books. One is a book conceived and sweated over by the author. One is the series of symbols displayed on a page or electronic device. One exists purely in the reader’s mind. Every single copy is unique and very different from every other.

Step 2: Finding your feet and learning to dance

Without solid ground, nothing else matters. I have argued that thinking is not my friend. Not my enemy, not my friend. The aim of thinking is……more thinking and what creates those thoughts will throw anything and everything into the pot in a fit of desperation and anxiety to keep thinking going.

Here is another metaphor. What if the space in your head was like two vast cities, separated by an extremely narrow bridge? In each vast megapolis, there are millions of neighbourhoods that require energy, a liquid environment, waste disposal and so on. Each neighbourhood would need to differentiate itself, in a bid to capture more energy and better services. Some neighbourhoods specialise in processing inputs from different senses.

See where I am going? It is just a metaphor, not fact, not science. Yet it has helped me enormously because now I see each neighbourhood as being a constant tug between persisting and playing nice. To specialise and be better at a given task than any other neighbourhood, but not so much that the overall service breaks down. It then becomes possible to ‘feed’ and nurture each sense separately by diverting more attention to them. This can automatically help balance different areas. It helps explain how areas can take over different specialities over time, how areas shrink and grow based on usage.

Who or what would call the shots in that case? My bet is on the invisible nudges that impact us from moment to moment. The gut feel, the rising emotion, a particular feeling. Like the beep-beep of a car reversing, or the dash indicator of going too fast or too close and so on, these invisible ‘feelings’ are conscious (by definition), but only when we go outside a ‘balanced’ state. The big word for this is homeostasis, and it is an autonomous driving system that has navigated ever since life crawled onto land crawling onto land, avoiding 500million years of predators, not to mention the previous ‘big five’ near extinctions, which wiped the slate of living creatures of all living creatures (almost) clean.

Where do these nudges originate? Surely it has to be the brain stem. I like to imagine it as a DJ with a vast slider deck, every beat and every breathe being managed as an orchestra. To achieve a state of balance (homeostasis), the body defines "good" as moving closer to home base and "bad" as getting closer to the edge - like Scotty in Star Trek. This description I take from Mark Solms book, which is one of the major books referenced in the essential reading list on the website (hit the QR code to subscribe).

This is just a metaphor, one that has taken me personally from being a dried up retired old man to one that has burst into live and love and energy all over again. All I had to do was to line up with that metaphor, shut up, drop every single belief that no longer served, and get out of my own way. It just works.

This is why it is so important to get a feel for who or what you really are. Not your thoughts. Those pre-conscious thoughts (I call them Braindrops) come from one small group of neighbourhoods encased within the skull. No other neighbourhood uses thought as a raw material. Other neighbourhoods process images or smell, or touch or whatever. The only intercommunication across neighbourhoods are neuron beats and whatever mix of chemicals that DJ brainstem assembles. These rhythms are not independent of each other. DJ Brainstem alters the chemical mix based on the neighbourhood firing patterns, and vice versa, So there can be widespread effects.

Thought arises from a neighbourhood that is unconsciously incompetent. The neighbourhood selects a Brain drop from billions of pre-conscious variations, any candidate which matches the grammar of the day. That is its function. Consciousness only becomes a factor after that selection. Therefore, I clearly say that thought is not your friend, any more than cigarettes or alcohol is. Thought is not your enemy, either. Some brain drops push your buttons, change the local mix of chemicals, and DJ Brainstem has a job to bring it all back into balance.

Because it is DJ Brainstem that nudges and hints and slows down and speeds up what you do, who nudges toward being inside or outside, people or things and so on. It literally is a veteran of 500 million years of survival campaigns that is nudging your unique combination of 500 trillion cells to its next breath. Totally new.

This is just metaphors that work for me. Each help me get out of my own way, to avoid getting involved in an internal row. This allows DJ Brainstem to work closely with the Genie while awareness is just aware and observing while this miracle unfolds as ‘I’ tries and tries and tries again to get out of your own way.

Right now, you may think, ‘what about my career, the ladder, feed my family’ and so on? This is the wall I scratched my mark on, like solitary confinement, day after day. The next section goes into the ways I got out of that prison cell, using three sets of exercise. I feel as if I am right side up, with a clear navigation path and capable of fluent communication in the emerging world. It is not my natural habitat yet, but it’s getting there. it is now at the stage where I look forward to more and more and more folks waking up and turning up.

One last look at the brain neighbourhoods floating on tidal streams of DJ chemical messages. What base camp would they fit into?

- Unconsciously incompetent: An example of this would be random Braindrops that are produced but never get the limelight of awareness shone upon them. There could be trillions of these ‘pre-thoughts’ that form and disappear in the fog beneath awareness.

- Consciously incompetent: This could be a hint or an intuition that something needs to change

- Consciously competent: like taking the breathing wheel for a while for some ‘relaxation’ exercise, to try box breathing or Qi Gong exercises. Many years ago, I was in a Tai Chi class where we did not breathe for over 5 minutes. Each movement lifted or dropped the rib cage and allowed breathing to happen with no effort, conscious or otherwise. Utterly terrifying for a few years until the habit just clicked. Just once. It was good enough to last a lifetime.

- Unconsciously competent: where you have effortless flight and are singing in your own voice. You have the skills you need. There are parts of the ‘old brain’ that sense and regulate millions upon millions of processes within, from blood pressure to heartbeat to (I am not at all medical, so I shall shut up here).

Let us not even mention the 4,000 species of bacteria. They do not have identical DNA to you as host, but the number of DNA enabled cells probably outnumbers yours. They inhabit this body and without them, I would not be here. Then there are the unconsciously competent systems whirring away millions of times per second that keep trillions of processes humming along. That’s about 99.99999% of all activity and energy transfers that happen beneath my skin. What about the brain neighbourhoods? We can regard only a minute fraction as consciously competent. Measurement after measurement has come up with the same result: The energy and processing capacity used by consciousness has similar energy consumption to early mobile phones. That.Is.it. Imagine a fly on the windscreen of the Starship Enterprise. That is about the right magnitude. So, may we all now calm down and get our framing right?

Whatever the provable truth of how we are and act and live, these metaphors help in navigation. It gives a clearer view of WHAT is being navigated and how delusional most of the output of thought and rationality really is.

And now there is the genie. With our framing done, let’s look at how that may play out.

Step 3: Learn to Thrive

It’s time to get practical. What are the specific skills that are essential now and in the future? How to make a living, how to thrive? It's time to get practical and identify the specific skills that are essential now and in the future for making a living and thriving. We know the basic rules (Aviate, navigate, communicate), our travel outfit is ready, our bags packed, and we have identified the strengths (identity, competency, borders).

The crunch question: ‘how to earn more, live better, thrive longer’. It has been a long journey to get here. A total head wreck. Eventually the answer arrived, it came out of nowhere.

I was asking the wrong question. Or rather, I was launching the question from the wrong place. A scary, stinky place called fear. Back to my 20th century viewpoint. Fear was so embedded in every neighbourhood in my dark and silent skull that it was invisible. Not trauma, massive headline stuff, just ever present, low level, exposed and lonely stinky fear. Of course, fear is useful, it sits at the crossroads between the need to persist versus play nice. The point is not about the value of fear; it is about who chooses a path, me, or fear? Who is driving this bus?

Once I got a feel for who was asking and where the question was coming from, the answer came in loud and clear. You want to be authentic? Pick a path. Own it. Then live it.

Back to the first words in the book. What happened to me is that I saw that giant of a man again, a giant I loved and looked up to. He was demonstrating the exercise in trust. I saw him fall back, slight smile, arms wide, only to crack his head on the tiled floor. I see it again and again. The shocked looks, the nervous giggles, it was bound to happen, wasn't it? Now I know what to do: Move away, never rest, never be open, avoid this feeling whatever the cost.

Yet life goes on, as did he, and as do I. There are lessons to be learned for sure - but deciding who you are based on a single experience is not the way to live better, thrive longer. What if the falling back in trust was the action to focus on, not the landing? To be who you truly are, without lies or excuses, what if there is no landing? What if there is only freefall?

The answer left me breathless and panicked. It was so shocking, so liberating. What a revelation. Since that time, fear is still around, same as everything else is still around. So what? Actions and questions now come from a completely different source. Since then, there are few questions really. Pretty much everything is quiet inside. Silent as in the seashore, not silent as in snow covered night.

Now all I see are creators, curators, and conductors everywhere. I see totally open software tools and plug-ins popping up everywhere, like flowers after a torrential desert downpour. It is easier and easier to make music, art, animations, books, photorealistic images – pick your style.

What about earning a living? That is my point. The collaboration tools now popping up like hot popcorn will become business friendly really soon. Work practise will not strengthen - they will ossify, fossilise.

What I use today to design an extendable house for gaming engines or animations will soon add another plugin – one that checks local regulations for safety and green living. Suddenly the free toy is approaching a commercial design grade use, from below. The fun online game creator will add a  plugin that prints and signs a binding agreement. The online role play engine will become a graduate physics certification, a chemistry major, a biology course. Learn by building – and having fun doing it.

It can be used by anyone who uses gaming or entertainment systems today. It will be more familiar to the end user client than it will be to the professional architect. It all starts as a toy that is super convenient and engaging and fun to build because the toymaker carries a stamp which says, “built by passionista’s”. This is just a made-up name for those who build from a place of authentic love of the craft - and yes, who get by on a pay-per-use basis. It will upend entire industries. Factories, supply chain networks, insurance and risk modelling are just the start.

When I look at traditional education all I see now is the Jaws poster - nemesis approaching from below. This is a vast subject that is changing daily so go to the site for up-to-date newsletters and analysis.

KEEP LEARNING

And welcome aboard

People or companies who are all looking around for who to be like, need to look to the playpen, to the world of infinite games and just-a-toy. Not some enhancement or prosthetic or productivity improver. Just like Jaws, the future will emerge from the deep and terrify the beejeebers out of those who are not paying attention.

I felt permanently frozen by anxiety for what seemed forever. It can take a very long time to see what was right in front of me all the time. In a world of infinite games (go look it up), there is no winner takes all. You know the basic rules (Aviate, navigate, communicate), you want to develop your strengths (identity, competency, borders). The answer is to engage every physical and mental sense you have, because you cannot think your way out of this one. This helps keep the energy flows across neighbourhoods more even, helps to establish a more stable tidal pattern for DJ brainstem, and brings the game to your home turf - which is where you have your being - and not to some exotic productivity Silicon hack where you have zero chance of competing.

The more I work across different platforms and genies I see the same groupings. The pace of innovation and the quality of what is being produced are eye and ear popping.

1) Creator: used to deliver something new and entirely original.

2) Curator: used by those with deep love and deep domain knowledge to maintain clarity, provenance, and proof of sources, to prune weeds within a specialist area Deep and abiding love of a domain is the key.

3) The conductor maintains boundaries and borders, ensures we deliver as promised to an agreed standard.

These truths are almost too simple to understand. However re-discovering what you really love is not easy. That is what the navigation and challenge exercises are for. By focussing on how you express yourself you recast any role, into one of these categories. So why bother? Because these roles will eventually scale across multiple industries, multiple environments. Rather than work in a booth for a company against all competitors in the endless struggle to roll up that hill, the balance will shift to make it easier and easier for your unique talent to be re-used across multiple clients, using the tools being used today for entertainment creation.

It is your responsibility to get to the crossroads and choose an authentic existence. To choose personal growth in the new world is all about real-time, collaborative creation.

Time for a break, to review the trip so far, the key points, and to look at questions and objections. Then on to your challenge.

Checkpoint

At the start, I posed questions:

- Who am I and how do I survive and thrive in this age of AI

- How can I interact with my family, friends, and community to create positive outcomes for everyone involved?

There may be a range of new questions now, ones which are tackled over the coming chapters:

- Do these recommendations and practice work?

- How can we put them into practice?

- Do I really need to dump every belief that no longer serves me? How?

- What are the benefits of doing so?

Starting with the last questions first:

Daily writing–automatic writing where I simply sit and write and write and write any old drivel until there is no more has been life changing. Writing is learning, it gently lifts the unconscious into the light, into consciousness, and by doing so it makes it quite easy to perform a deep cleanse of old beliefs that no longer serve.

Here are the benefits, for me, of taking this approach:

- I am finding an authentic voice. The first hoarse baby cries of a fresh voice.

- I [nearly] always live in real time, unperturbed. There are always crises, yet underneath all is Peace.

- I turn obstacles and blockages into objections to be listened to and cleared

- I never get tired, only blocked. By resting when this happens I typically wake up knowing a way around the blockage

- I realised the need to place my inner child in pride of place

- I wake up on Day 0–every day

You may be actively considering the benefits of the change to real-time living and firing your mind–becoming captain of your own craft and master of your soul by developing the skills you need to do so. Remember the drill:

Aviate: know who you really are and not who you just want to believe you are. No more lies. Live a life that is the same inside your head as outside. Get a feel for what flying straight-and-level feels like and you will be unable to go back, ever.

Navigate: develop your strengths and confidence in this world step by step - the challenges later in the book will help.

Communicate: understand and recognize the borders and boundaries needed to ensure safe and prosperous encounters.

Checklist to practise every day – Pay Attention! Where does your awareness linger?

- being inside or outside.

- dealing with people or things

- thinking or doing

- form (‘things’) or Spirit?

- Where is your tribe most likely to be?

- What do they do there?

- What is your number one lead role? creator, curator, or conductor?

- What is number two?

Then, in my daily living, I get to persist drawing breath and learn to play nice by concentrating on three roles–creator, curator, and conductor.

Writing this book in 12 weeks required that I eat my cooking, so to speak. The experiment has already improved my skills and performance, it has enhanced my relationships and happiness. I have a voice! A natural expression. I am future-proofed thanks to the principles and practices I re-learned while researching and writing this book. I am learning to ditch every belief that no longer serves, to survive, and to know where my home base is. It took everything to start again from absolute scratch, from a place where I was fear filled, beaten, and exhausted to someone who is developing confidence via competence, and to understand which borders and barriers matter.

Training with my genie and working alongside it in a creator economy is so energising. Even the most remote chance that the next major disruption may grow out of doing what I really love in a playful atmosphere - that is hilarious.

Potential impact on career and work

As I spoke of earlier, I have already been through several disruptions–this one is fundamentally different. Perhaps it is age and a creeping exhaustion of the new-new thing, however I really have found these exercises to be the perfect antidote for feelings of anxiety, stress and an overall feeling of being overwhelmed. I literally would not be here now without the newfound discovery of the creator economy:

When I was feeling stuck, I created a new routine of just auto writing and getting into the flow state–I just let everything out. After almost two weeks of daily practise, the outline for this book just appeared. Onscreen. No genie, because autowriting is not safe to lay out on the internet. It felt like just another day as I sat back and watched the mis-typed words fly by, I felt all sense of stress and being overwhelmed just disappear. The words on the screen revealed the outline for this book, what it is about and how lay it out. After all the bile and angst and foul diatribe came out, a silence descended. Eight short weeks later, you are reading the result.

I meditate daily and have done so for over 30 years. Not sure it has helped me, but everyone around me is eternally grateful that I do else I would be unbearable. I know that.

I am bored, regularly, which is fantastic. It feels like a respite after the frantic dive into new ideas or new tools that turn ideas into created products faster and faster. Boredom is essential. Cherish it. You are crossing a silent sea and approaching the shores of creativity.

Being at peace with feeling constantly in danger, exposed and insecure is a gift beyond price. It sounds terrifying, and it is, that is OK. I just stand straight and tall, holding hands with the giant from long ago. I lean back and try to smile as if I mean it. Thanks for your gift of trust, Dad. Sometimes you just to need to see it to be it. X

Publishing this work and building the website community - I hope this strange feeling never disappears. It is just a feeling and since I have learned how to cope with the odd panic attack, the severity of it all is less. It is the cost of entry to the creator's economy and is totally unavoidable. Maybe that is why the community is so welcoming and helpful–every single one of us feels the same with feeling constantly open.

Learning and education

For me this book has been about how to learn by writing, which I learned by writing this book. It is a nonstop roller coaster of learning and engagement. Ever since I publicly pledged that the book was to be written and published, the learning never ends. Every day is day zero, and it is a facet of the creator's economy and navigating in real time. It never, ever ends.

Relationships and social life

Living in real time, throwing any useless old beliefs out the window allows me to get out of my own way. I used to see red and howl at an imagined sling or arrow of outrageous fortune. Now, on a good day, I cherish that arrow, because it points directly at an energy blockage, an abandoned, neglected belief that needs release - I hold it tenderly and untangle it as a beloved necklace heirloom from a loved one. Breathe into it - when it opens then relax backward and release it, may it travel well. Mind you the generator of that arrow may still get a lovingly crafted box to the head….. That’s another story…

This sounds trite as I read it back. Cherish the arrow is incredibly difficult, almost impossible. For so long, every sling and arrow has felt so personal that my reaction was to go ballistic. I became consumed with outrage and reliving past slights and imagining the perfect defence. What was really happening was my hidden beliefs were feeling the heat. They called in DJ BrainStem as a diversion. Now that I can more gently lift them into the light, life has become much easier for everyone around me. Thanks for your patience.

There is still the occasional hiss and rattle of course. What HAS happened (I’m talking months, not days) - what has happened is that the reaction has been less of shock and outrage and more like being startled. Return to balance has been faster and less of a splutter and snort. This rate of change is increasing. The more I let go the more I am able for. Now it feels more like the whoosh of a car that goes by but which cannot pull me along. Previously it was a massive articulated lorry crashing through the window. Each of the spears and arrows continues to register, now they are more like passing traffic. If something needs attention or action, is it acted upon.

Health and well-being

I understand now there is no wealth to match good health. There is a close and abiding connection with what is happening - an ability to listen to what the body is saying. I still make mistakes, but when things go out of balance (and they really go out of balance), I notice the tilt much sooner. There is much less narrative and nag.

Personal growth and development

The open and creative mindset has always been a gift, thankfully. No progress is possible without it.

Each time I re-do the challenges included at end of the book, there is more openness and freedom that I have ever felt before.

All of this is turbo charged by Genie. Developing an ability to engage, enquire and have structured interactions with Genie and the underlying technology has unlocked a whole new set of skills. It has led me to deliver books, 3D Animations, comics and artwork that I never would have dreamed of before.

For this writer, in this present moment, it is a genuine practice of my inner Authentic Intelligence. It lights me up. Gives me purpose, makes me feel invigorated and useful.

Common misperceptions about firing the mind

Recall that firing your mind means letting go of beliefs that no longer serve you well. Here are some common misconceptions about what ‘letting go’ means:

Letting go is to ignore thoughts and pretend they don’t exist

Letting go does not mean destroying or deleting or repressing a thought. It simply means getting back into a centred conscious state with the least stress and fuss. Experience the thought as a brain drop — no need to open the drop to see what is inside right at this minute, no need to marvel or stress — there is just work to be done and I will get back to you later. Rest in the relaxation area we can engage in later.

When I started this, each letting go was worse than bringing my children to their first day at school or their first haircut. Agony on both sides. Such a fuss and so much pain and drama. The children were fine. It was just me. As time went by, letting go felt like an enormous truck had zoomed past - a sense of disaster narrowly avoided and pulling me along in its wake.

Eventually things settled, from truck to speeding car to almost nothing, a leaf drifting along, perhaps just trees passing by from a car window. Yup, there are raindrops forming and that’s fine. Tick Tock. No change in the conscious centre, all quiet.

They are not my thoughts. Passing braindrops. Letting go means acknowledging and allowing the braindrops free passage onward without attachment or effect on mood or current behaviour. If it is important, the thought will circle around. It doesn’t.

Letting go means I lose my identity, my personality

Say hello to the blank staring robot. Aha! This one can be scary. It can bring a hail of braindrops and cause much physical discomfort, shifting, and distraction. This time often felt like bringing our children to the dentist. Distract, avoid, tense up. Funny enough, letting this go is a personal thing, different strokes for different folks. What worked for me was swapping the metaphor. Think of it like taking off a uniform, struggling with tight shoes or cramped boots until pop! Off they come. Taking a relaxing bath, just relax.

What YOU are is eternal, whole, unchanging, and complete. It cannot change. Identity is not a handbag. It is not something you can possess. It is what you are. That is a different proposition. If Identity can be taken away or somehow lost, then I’m sorry, it is not your identity to begin with. Vast amounts of energy have gone into maintaining and defending and killing and burning based on something that is not real.

Personality is simply something others attribute to someone who behaves in a regular and predictable way, day in and day out. Sounds boring. What sharp and cold stone is that person sitting on that limits their responses to such a small set of expressions? Where is the benefit from staying in such a straitjacket? Could it be time to shed that coat of armour,find some new behaviours that serve you today? That helps you change and grow and expand and (heaven forbid) give the freedom to relax?

Letting go means abandoning my goals and aspirations

Goals feel like targets — red lines in a sandpit. Motivators. I was someone who jumped around like a performing seal for many years. I never really took time to understand who was really setting those goals, and how I came to own them. Is the goal designed to create change, to make me feel better? It has taken until now to realise that nothing that arises from outside can make me happy for long. They may indeed be mighty and worthy. Just take time and work through the challenges section before deciding.  Let go of old unconscious orders, clear the mind and your true goals – on how to earn more, live better, thrive longer based on who you actually are, not false ideas or goals on who you should be – these true goals float up into the light and will no longer be ignored.

Letting go makes me indifferent.

Of all the misconceptions, this may be the most insidious. It is the weapon of choice for passivity and indifference. It is an example of the water slide debater — get back into the paddling pool of productivity. Nothing could be further than the truth. Experiencing thoughts for what they are–just passing braindrops that are not YOU, leads to greater awareness, less emotional volatility, and a heightened awareness of what is going on. Remove those false filters taken on board from outside parties. It is those filters which distort the view.

Would you prefer to be operated on by a specialist who has nothing in their mind apart from an excellent procedure–or one who is distracted by doubt, hassled by hours of paperwork and a dysfunctional environment, facing terrible domestic stress and so on? Letting go of thought means aligning and being centred on values and purpose, on becoming more focused and effective. Thoughts are just not always relevant or conducive to your goals, and sometimes they can distract you or hold you back. Clear the mind, allow energy to flow freely toward whatever matters most now, in real time.

Letting go leads to isolation and detachment.

When your thoughts are let go, you are more centred and aware, more empathic, and more compassionate. It becomes easier to resonate with the feelings of others, and it makes you more open to engagement and attachment. Thoughts or braindrops are not always respectful of the reality and diversity is in the world. Letting go of thought in the moment opens the heart and mind and creates a larger and more welcoming space for others. It goes a long way toward relating to others in a more authentic and harmonious way.

Letting go will murder creativity and imagination

Here is the truth: Thoughts and braindrops kill creativity and spontaneity faster than a summer torrent at a BBQ. Letting go of thought means no more official ideas or certified opinions. It is child’s play when the teacher leaves the room. Do not do this, children. Learn how to suppress every instinct you have and do as you are told. Now and forever, in a world without end. Amen.

Nothing destroys creativity and imagination faster than holding onto thoughts which no longer serve. Throw it away. Stay bored for long enough and the entire world will show up in all its uncensored and inappropriate glory. Thoughts are derivative – they are copied from others, orders and commands from outside. Could it be possible that thoughts can limit or stifle creativity? Heaven forbid.

Let go of your thoughts to tap into creativity and intuition. Create something that has never been anywhere else in the entire UNIVERSE.

Letting go means I become uninformed, uncaring, ignorant, and naïve

Crisis: a specific time when a difficult or important decision must be made.

A specific timeframe. So, make the decisions! Identify, Inform, Decide, Act. Enforce. By this definition, a crisis cannot be long term. That would simply mean that we have not made important decisions. The emphasis needs to be on stepping up, executing your humanity and democratic mandate, making the required decisions, and then ensuring they are enforced and carried out. No Perma-crises, just a constant demand to decide and carry out enacting those decisions with what your humanity and empathy know is right.

Do your own research, every day. Learn how to think, investigate, validate, corroborate, conclude, and act. In awareness and calm, unhindered by thought. Live in real time.

It is very hard not to be overwhelmed and distressed about the state of the world. One avenue to reduce these hard feelings is to imagine a world of naïve, active, curious, energetic, discerning, open-minded, independent, critical thinkers with a bias toward action. Imagine being in a tribe who fully embrace reality, yet who practise such skills every single day–learning from different independent sources, weighing up the alternatives, then questioning, verifying, validating, and acting.

I will become numb with no emotions or feelings

I have fired my mind. I let go of thought. Seeing this misconception generates massive waves of feeling. It wells up uninvited, with no old thoughts or should or could or what-if-ery. Everything is welcome because it is what it is. Free and unrepressed. Warning: anyone that tries is liable to become buffeted with random feelings of empathy, joy, clarity, spontaneity, passion and a bewildering drop in fear, loathing, dread, and suspicion. Emotions course freely about the body. There is very little else to say. It is whatever it appears to be, then it moves on.

Letting go is reckless! Lacking responsibility and control.

Letting go means not getting distracted or pulled into old thoughts and habits that no longer serve. It results in centred awareness, greater empathy and a huge availability of energy in which to live in real time. Anything else is a masquerade–a well-camouflaged wolf.

Letting go and living in real time is all about gaining responsibility, accountability, mindfulness, and empathy. This is our natural state. It is what happens when everything is let go and we grow, naturally. Thought is not your friend. Mind is like a mental weather system that blows and rains and grows and chains people in a bazillion different ways. It is utterly indifferent to outcomes.

Letting go allows for the realisation that thought is often not the best guide or judge, that can occasionally result in poor, impulsive, unfiltered action, triggered non-consciously. Letting go can lead to actions of intent and awareness, with consequences and implications more clearly visible. It means that YOU are now driving the bus, you take charge of life.

Let go? No-one tells me what to do!

Free will. That old chestnut. There is no choice to create, only to stop. Research and lab results show time after time that thoughts arise from nowhere, up to half a second before there is any conscious awareness and well after motor activity is already underway. There are results which seem to show there is a decision speed (back in the plane again…). Decision speed is that time when the captain must either commit to liftoff or slam on the brakes. It is speed dependent and varies from craft to craft and the length of runway I would imagine (DYOR).

If you have free will, then do not think of hippopotamus. If you have free will, tell me when you consciously and deliberately disagreed with this sentence. I do not mind whatever position your free mind takes. Does it matter? How can you ‘have’ free will? It is not a possession. If it is a trait, then who decides it exists? If that is someone else, then…… sorry, it’s not free if it can be taken away.

How to find a reliable mind

Silicon platforms will rise and fall, there will be scandals and crashes. Most of these will relate to governance –so the parties charged with developing and nurturing the genie are not up to the job or else are very competent but have aims and objectives that do not all align with the common good.

There are also several seriously negative aspects of AI that require constant watch. It is back to Genie school.

This is a vast topic area, changing rapidly and is covered on several blogs on the main website in a lot more details. Once again, in summary:

Be careful what you wish for, areas such as:

- eroding human identity and dignity,

- undermining human agency and free will,

- creating social and economic inequalities,

- displacing human workers and skills,

- threatening human security and privacy.

These are serious and valid concerns, so what to do? Let’s review each item and then lay out some guidelines on what to watch for. Remember, trust no-one.

Eroding human identity and dignity: AI can pose serious threats to human identity and dignity, as it can manipulate, deceive, or exploit people, or reduce them to mere data points. AI can undermine human dignity as a universal moral value, a right, and a duty, by challenging the notion that humans are unique and irreplaceable. It can feed into the popular notion that our dignity and worth is dependent on our usefulness to society. We may use it in ways that devalue human life and the deterioration of human flourishing because they can function as a substitute for us.

Undermining human agency and free will: AI can undermine human agency and free will, as it can influence, coerce, or override human decisions, or make them irrelevant or obsolete. AI can also reduce individuals’ control over their lives, as they become more dependent on or addicted to AI systems that monitor, predict, and nudge their behaviour.

Who or what decides if I am to be hired for a certain role? What happens when an algorithm decides on career advancement for workers and freelancers? Who or what limits my exposure to diverse and contradictory viewpoints and thus impairs my critical thinking and autonomy?

AI can create social and economic inequalities, as it can benefit certain groups or individuals at the expense of others or widen the gap between the rich and the poor. Existing biases and discrimination can become amplified and embedded in data, algorithms, and outcomes, affecting marginalized groups disproportionately. AI can also erode social cohesion and trust, as it can create polarization, fragmentation, and isolation in society.

Displacing human workers and skills: AI can displace human workers and skills, as it can automate or outperform human tasks, or make them redundant or undervalued. AI can also cause job polarization, where only high-skill and low-skill jobs remain, while middle-skill jobs disappear. AI can also reduce the demand for human creativity, innovation, and problem-solving, as it can generate novel and superior solutions that surpass human capabilities. AI can also diminish human cognitive, social, and survival skills, as people become dependent on AI systems that do the thinking and acting for them.

New systems can threaten human security and privacy, as it can enable cyberattacks, surveillance, or warfare, or expose or misuse personal or sensitive information on a scale never seen before. There are new classes of unintended or unpredictable consequences. Unless systems are entirely open to continuous monitoring and audit, transparency and explain ability then a new breed of opaque governance comes into being.

No surprise there are large groups of interests already examining each of these areas.

If you were getting a puppy you would check out the trainer, right? Else you will end up with a poor sick animal, one with some form of congenital defect or one that has some serious psychological difficulties if it has been badly treated.

The same is true for ANY genie you deal with. Trust no one and verify that at minimum, the following principles apply to anything you deal with. Consider it a basic safety lit, but one that needs to be tailored to your specific needs. Do not interact with any Genie that cannot provide certification or proof of certification for all the following:

* Open source

Every single piece of tech needs to be open source, just as Linux is today and it runs the world. Make very sure that what you see is what I see, and that there is no space for anyone to slip in extra code. This is very hard to guarantee, but easy enough to check. Steer clear of anything which does not have explicit checks on Open Source.

* Thousand eyes

Make sure that there is a mechanism in place to demonstrate that anyone can carry out the auditing and verification of all execution code for bias, and that no other party can see that code or inputs. No excuses. There MUST be a mechanism for demonstrating that all the time anyone can carry out a full audit of code being used in production. Do not allow this to be limited to a closed group of experts. Open source and any eyes mean what it says. Be open.

* Auditable

As per the points above, ensure that audits are run regularly and are open to the public to review.

* Realistic benchmarks and checks that citizens can run (for profit?)

Look out for realistic benchmarks and checks. These are pretty rare in the early days and typically have all manner of pseudo-scientific names. Expect this area to explode over the coming years as more and more companies rise up to ensure the validity of any claims, just like the malware and anti-virus industries are today. More on this on the website.

* Governance

How does your Genie grow? Who handles their care and upkeep? Are there a diverse group of individuals and organisations looking after Genie welfare? How are they incentivised? How often are THEY reviewed? How much is made public, how are they selected, how often are the governance, engineering, ethics, safety and operational parts of the organisation audited, replaced, updated and who decides how this is done and when?

How to care for your genie is as important as how you care for yourself and your loved ones (including that puppy!). Sone day your life will depend on it, at which time it will be too late. Trust no one and when you do need to rely on an external source of expertise be sure to do your full investigation – as covered in the earlier core skills section.

Find out more and keep up to date via the website

Step 4: The Challenges

The five challenges are simply a way of going from place to place, all the time developing confidence, improved competence. Rising out of unconscious. They start out with the admission test – where only you are allowed show up, no old or preconceived ideas allowed in the door.

My partner and I work long and hard. It is a core part of our lives, way more than simply providing a home for ourselves and our children. It serves to provide purpose, meaning, and identity. It helps us to learn and grow and interact in social groups that relax and revive us. Suddenly, we see a path where everything in our work that involves process and productivity is automated. What remains? Surely this eats away at the very basis of identity.

This change is on a different scale than Feminism, Universal human rights, Gender identification, Nationalism, Climate change and many others put together. It may take five years, it may take fifty, yet it is here and growing. The how and the why and the technical details I detail later in this book series, because none of that matters unless you can answer the following:

When every form of work and expression and certification are stripped away, who remains?

So far I have laid out the basics of how to navigate this question. The following challenges help you to exercise Authentic Intelligence. Many more examples and cases and evergreen examples are available on the website.

The guides illustrate ways in which we can examine a situation, and the mindset needed to do so. They talk about having an active, empty mind and how that has everything to do with clarity. They illustrate how to be in the cockpit, It is not just good mental hygiene.

Set out now to clear your cockpit instruments and windows for a long and comfortable navigation. Set your phasor to tickle.

Challenge 1: The spark of Creativity

Originally, this was case number 5, after covering the basics and ensuring the best chance of success. Know what? Every course worth doing has an entrance exam and unless you take this one, then cheerio. How can anyone or anything exist if it does not create? Even flies and dung beetles and bacteria create. Welcome to the resistance. Not some form of underground elite fighting force. The resistance is what you feel when you are close to freedom. To doing the right thing. Every time you sit back, pop another can, fire up the social media, binge buy online–there is no resistance, right?

When identity starts to wriggle and perk up, there is resistance. Resistance is there to let you know you are on the right track. Think of it as the eggshell instead of some dark force. Recall each time that the stronger the resistance, the closer you are to a breakthrough.

I have many copies of a timeless classic called The Artists Way by Julia Cameron. If you just go buy a copy now, then let’s agree that you pass the first test. Seriously. Creativity requires the conversion of energy. Physicists call that work. To hear and identify your own voice, you need to sing or draw or paint or bang a drum or write or all of the above.

Personally, I have completed the programme of quick exercises twice, and after writing this I am going to do so a third time. It has saved my life. This challenge is where the rubber really hits the road. So go ahead, get moving.

Even after my first time completing the course, I still did not understand what the resistance was about, so I hesitated. One Sunday I came across a series on digital art on the Gorilla Sun Blog (https://www.gorillasun.de/). He turned up one Sunday for a creative coding challenge with an artwork he had created for the event with a full musical score overlay. It really is incredible. I have been a big fan ever since. Now here I am and so too shall you. Go for it. Another example is a YouTube video I watched while waiting on a plane at Atlanta Airport featuring James Rhodes explaining how to play a full Bach piece from start to finish in just 6 weeks. It worked!

One forever inspirational work is a Ted Talk by Sam Burns on his recipe for a happy life. He was so inspiring that his words and memory is burned into my heart forever. It is beautiful work.

There is little else to say. At a minimum, go buy the book, study it, let it works its magic and ignite that creative spark. Without a creative light, there can only be darkness.

Challenge 2: Enjoying the flow state

My personal experience of flow started decades ago, but as per usual, I did not know what was going on. I would concentrate and everything fell away, but I now realise what I needed just falls into place. It is being fully immersed in an activity, where focus and activity are effortless, and creativity just shows up. It is not in any way mystical or demonic. I often see it with young children. Total absorption. Such behaviours are the very essence of authentic intelligence. They have absolutely nothing to do with productivity.

Remember, productivity is now owned by the leaning tower of tech. Flow relates to creativity, or curation, and in being the conductor operating in real time. The real trick is how to summon it up. Think of it as holding your hand out until a bird or butterfly or (pick your favourite) shows up. For the butterfly to show up, it is necessary to be in the right place, at the right time, and with a genuinely calm demeanour. Show up often. This is not cutting-edge science. It’s a gift from heaven when I saw that fledgling tumble out of its nest. Show up.Learn how to get out of your own way.

I have been so bad at achieving writing flow that it’s tragic. I ignored the signs for decades until I felt as if I was about to burst. In the end, I took an extreme course, one which is not for the faint of heart. I used a program where you type continuously for at least ten minutes with no breaks. After 4 seconds, the words turn grey, then red, then POP! I lost everything. No screen grab, no cut paste, nothing works. Anyway, nine days of multiple sessions did the trick. My mind just disappeared. What I now refer to as mini-me still shows up occasionally, but it is now like a bull in a China shop compared to the usual stillness. Do not do this, be careful. Remember how Jack in the Shining ended up?

What IS an outstanding suggestion is to make a pledge. Some folks respond well to the threat of loss, some to the promise of gains. Make a pledge. Be careful of what you intend. Start small, but it must hurt (or really get you pumped). This sense of challenge, of purpose, is hard-wired in us to get that mojo popping. Gamify the challenge, set levels and attainments, challenges and puzzle solvers. That is what this book is. Writing to understand and articulate something. What is your problem? Seriously. A problem is anything which does not go away when you throw money at it Write that problem down, craft and carve and hew the shape of it. My problem is the question of Identity. Authenticity.

What is your problem? Dig into it!

Flow is not rare. You’ve got this. Anything can induce flow–whatever floats your boat. Sport, music, art, writing, chess, gaming, gardening, cooking, and meditation. Just find the right spot, set the right surroundings, and engage in the activity with relaxed AND deliberate effort. Balance the challenge and the skill.

The flow state is normal and unexceptional. Turn up. Every day. Without purpose or reason. Don’t just do something. Sit there. There is nothing mystical about it. Why do this? To invite creativity into your world and feel like a three-year-old again. How utterly cool is that? (just don’t wet your pants, OK?). Gradually, this state will become easier and easier to attain and sustain.

Challenge 3: getting into shape: Habits and Routines

Case 3 is all about the mental fitness and tools I have still used since the first day I read about them. I have read and reread these evergreen classics to help me cultivate resilience, discipline, agility, and an open, curious disposition. Each of these books and many more have their own permanent Star on my Boulevard Walk of Fame. On the website, I review and explore why they are still so relevant, even considering what is coming. Go buy each book. Read the book. Internalise the book. Stop skimming.

Not a reader? Hunt down any of the hundreds of interviews and summaries and videos online. Not a looker? Listen to any of the hundreds of podcasts and interviews online. Just do the work. In your hunting, can you experience the strange new world of the creator economy?

Drop Old beliefs that no longer serve you. Prepare for the journey ahead. Perhaps you do not have the creative spark yet. Your own voice is still stiff from decades of silence or restriction. So, after reading each book, develop your ability to have a voice by interacting with your genie of choice. It helps you develop your investigator skills as well. Cast the Genie it as a conversationalist in the Socratic mode and start your own book club. Set the title in question as the topic du jour and have a deep interactive conversation. Not sure how? There are examples on the website. Every course on navigation has volumes of information where you require unconscious competence.

Learn how to be startled into dropping old beliefs that no longer serve you by learning what is going on in that darkest of caverns between your ears.

Read ‘em and Reap.

* The Hidden Spring–Mark Solms.

“Feelings are intrinsically conscious in a way that sensory perceptions are not.”

* How Emotions are made: The secret life of the brain - Lisa Feldman Barrett..

“How Emotions are Made did what all great books do. It took a subject I thought I understood and turned my understanding upside down.” [Malcolm Gladwell]

- The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size - Tor Nørretranders

“Jaw dropping encounters that helped me understand why I feel so empty, dissatisfied.”

* The Master and his emissary–Iain McGilchrist

“I finally see brains as I see cities–neighbourhoods competing for energy by specialising”

* The strange order of things–Antonio Damasio.

“What the body feels is every bit as significant as what the mind thinks, a neuroscientist argues. Turn to emotions to explain human consciousness and culture.” [Guardian]

* Mindset: The New Psychology of Success–Carol S. Dweck.

“It’s not always the people who start out the smartest who end up the smartest.”

* Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life–Nir Eyal.

“the secret of finally doing what you say you will do with a four-step, research-backed model.”

* Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones–James Clear.

“No matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving—every day..” [Goodreads]

* Taming Your Gremlin (Revised Edition): A Surprisingly Simple Method for Getting Out of Your Own Way–Richard David Carson

“Techniques for getting a sliver of light between natural you and the monster of your mind..”

These books either spring from what Siddhartha Gautama advised two and a half thousand years ago (‘Get out of your own way’) or they offer sharp, lucid explanations of why that is necessary and how to bring it about. This entire book is an ode to the ongoing struggle to stay out of my own way. To feeling that resistance to showing up and doing it anyway.

Getting out of our own way is an absolute deal breaker for the creative life. It must be done, redone, time after time.

Lots more on the website.

Challenge 4: Develop wisdom and detachment

Imagine a movie pitch where the wisdom of detachment meets a billion-dollar growing corporation – it’s Business with Buddha.

The Surrender Experiment: My Journey into Life’s Perfection, Michael A. Singer

This book tells the extraordinary story of Singer’s 40-year commitment to saying yes to the opportunities that life presented to him. He shares how this decision led him to both achievements and challenges, and how he cultivated inner peace and spiritual liberation. The book is a reminder that there is another way to live, by surrendering to what is right in front of you. As an example of realisation, clarity and big business the book is without equal. It really is a life-changing book of eternal significance.

It is a book that inspires me to trust the flow of life and embrace the unknown with curiosity and gratitude, which shows us how surrender can lead us to our true destiny and happiness. It tells the author’s personal story of how he let go of his ego and preferences and allow life to guide him to his true purpose. The book espouses the philosophy of surrender–freely accepting whatever life brings without resistance or judgment. The book also shares spiritual lessons and insights that Singer gained from his 40-year journey of surrender.

The Surrender Experiment is one of many and yet one of a kind. It is a call that inspires us to trust the flow of life and embrace the unknown with curiosity and gratitude. It shows us how surrender can lead us to our true destiny and happiness. Read it. Absorb it. Embrace and ingest it.

The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle

In a similar vein, The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle is a book that explores the concept of living in the present moment and how it can lead to happiness and enlightenment. The book is based on the philosophy of being fully aware of the now, which is the only reality that exists. The book also teaches how to overcome the mind and the ego, which are the sources of suffering and illusion.

This book that shows you that every minute you spend worrying about the future or regretting the past is a minute lost, because the only place you can truly live in is the present, the now, which is why the book offers actionable strategies to live every minute as it occurs and becoming 100% present in and for your life. Go read the book. Rest awhile there.

So what is the difference?

Similarities:

Both Singer and Tolle emphasize the importance of being present and aware of the present moment, rather than being lost in thoughts, emotions, or ego. They both teach that the present moment is the only reality and the source of true happiness and peace.

Both Singer and Tolle advocate for a practice of meditation and mindfulness, which helps to quiet the mind and detach from the inner voice that constantly judges, criticizes, and resists what is. They both suggest that by observing the mind without identification, one can transcend the mind and access a deeper level of consciousness.

Both Singer and Tolle draw inspiration from various spiritual traditions, such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Christianity, and Sufism. They both acknowledge that there is a universal truth that underlies all religions and spiritual paths, and that truth is the essence of who we are.

Differences:

Singer’s approach is based on the idea of surrender, which means letting go of your personal preferences and desires and allowing life to unfold as it will. He believes that by surrendering to the flow of life, you can align with the divine and experience synchronicities, miracles, and opportunities that would otherwise be missed. He shares his personal story of how he surrendered to every situation that life presented to him, even if it was contrary to his initial plans or wishes, and how that led him to achieve remarkable success and fulfilment.

Tolle’s approach is based on the idea of awakening, which means realizing your true nature as pure awareness and being free from the illusion of the ego. He believes that by awakening to the present moment, you can dissolve the ‘pain-body’, which is the accumulated emotional baggage that causes suffering and conflict. He shares his personal story of how he had a spontaneous awakening after a night of intense depression and suicidal thoughts, and how that changed his perception of himself and the world.

Singer’s approach is more practical and experimental, while Tolle’s approach is more theoretical. Singer encourages the reader to try the surrender experiment for themselves and see what happens. Tolle explains the concepts and principles of the power of now and invites the reader to verify them through their own experience. Singer focuses more on the external aspects of life, such as relationships, work, and health, while Tolle focuses more on the internal aspects of life, such as thoughts, emotions, and identity.

Lessons to be learned for living life in real time

- For every brain drop that is forming in your head, bring it to your awareness, absorb its message, then lean back and let it go.

- Understand that traditional teachings are just as useful as a book about dance, or a dance about painting. Move on.

- Detach from outcomes and embrace uncertainty because there is nothing to know. It is just grasping, trying to either bring in what I desire or pushing away internal braindrops that make us feel anxious, scary, lonely, and so on. This notion lines up with being Indistractible, as highlighted in Case 3.

- Imperfection is …. perfect. It already exists, so how can it not be? Anything else is a reflection or judgement. Let it all go.

Challenge 5: Make your brand your business

Being your own brand is scary. It is intensive, and it is a marathon, not a sprint. Forget the trendy market buzz around the phrase, being your own brand is just another way of thinking about who you are and what you bring to the world. What is useful about the concept is how you learn how to communicate and demonstrate that brand without coming across as a total donkey. Clear communication is a skill which rewards practice. I would not recommend starting out communicating via the medium of dance for instance. Or mime. Or primal scream therapy. There is a time and a place to stand out from the crowd.

There is a lot of uncertainty in making your brand your business, which is yet another reason it is essential to have a strong feel for who you really are. I speak from personal experience. When I left the corporate world, I was under no illusion about the difference between me and the corporate uniform I wore. It is a sudden drop into cold water in setting up meetings and getting time in front of people who may value the work I do.

What to do? There were two serious problems I saw straight away. First, it was very hard to get time in front of the relevant people. Since I had worked on almost every side of the invoice at this stage, I know I have a powerful instinct for who the relevant person was (as buyer, sales, service selection, sub-contractor manager and so on). Getting time was a different ballgame.

The second problem was what to say? When there is no script, no PowerPoint, no website, or proven need–what to say?

I made a pledge–to meet with at least two business owners every single working day for 40 days. This ended up solving three problems at once.

1) Getting time in front of the right people. This took time, a hard neck and endless practise. That is it. There is no substitute.

2) Having something to say. This is where Authentic Intelligence comes in. No one tolerates waffle these days, and getting to the point is important. However, it is also important to build that mantle of authenticity. No one can give that mantle to you. Anything that someone can give, someone else can take away. Once again, the only way to do this is to practise.

One evening, around 9pm, I had not hit my quota. I pulled into the local gas station and asked to see the manager. I alarmed the clerk, yet I insisted politely but firmly. Once the manager arrived, I explained my quest and to be honest, he laughed, but agreed to help. I got a phone call from the owner. Not face to face, but to get an unannounced call that late in the evening counts as a result that I will not forget. The owner gave me several tips that helped me and agreed to help set up more calls with fellow business owners.

3)This brings me to the third point. Persistence. The exercise above is something that anyone can do, even when in a day job. I cannot over emphasise the value it brought. Did I go on to startup my company? Yes. Did I end up driving it into the wall? Also, Yes! Never mind. Hold hands and fall back. Keep going.

Develop a strong feel for who you really are, with no family or corporate background. In the coming age, there will be nowhere to hide and the sooner you learn how to navigate, the better. Take time to uncover your authentic self and what motivates you. Uncover and embrace your passions, interests, and values, and align them with your brand purpose and vision. You need to be honest and transparent with yourself and others, avoid pretending or imitating someone else. No more lying to yourself, it is even worse than lying to another. I spent decades imitating what I thought others wanted to hear. It is a natural urge to fit in and hunt with the pack. It is of limited use anymore, it is just another belief that needs to be thrown out.

Change perspectives – See everything from the outside-in

Here are five perspectives or lenses which can measure the authenticity and effectiveness of being the captain of your own brand.

1) Brand awareness: How memorable are you, what do you have to say? These are extremely hard questions; it can take a lifetime so take your time. Many people have suggested to me that perhaps my only purpose is to serve as a warning to others. Hand on heart, several people in authority have asked that over the years, staring at me stone faced. Go me! I – have a purpose.

2) Brand value: Practise, experiment. Never be afraid to venture away from unconscious incompetence! The only way to get a feeling for your unique perspective and talent is to go practice. When I was small I was chastised for tracing instead of drawing freehand. Nonsense! I was in the mode of feeling the textures and movement and articulation of pencil on page. I was so blown out that I needed lines to follow. I see that now, but at the time it meant the coloured pencils were put aside until I had children of my own. Hold hands and fall back.

3) Brand personality: What an extraordinary feeling the first time you genuinely feel that you ar expressing yourself in a natural and law abiding way. Maintaining awareness as often as possible helps with this.

4) Brand impact: Everyone needs love and understanding. Impact builds as the previous qualities improve, from awareness to understanding the value you bring through to personality.

5) Brand innovation: what is the unique perspective you bring? No one since the big bang has the combination of perspective and skill that you bring. What is perfectly obvious to you may come as a blinding revelation to others.

Working alongside Genie can help in the generation and pre-test of new ideas, new perspectives for unexpected new ideas, products and services. It does not replace the hard work of customer engagement, validation of ideas, and service development. Rather, it can help to see your world, your authentic intelligence, from the outside in.

Ditching the old views an orthodoxy of marketing opens a whole new world. For the first time, it is coming from the creator economy perspective and just as in previous disruptions, the old order changes and cracks appear everywhere. That cracking sound is new opportunities that are calling out to be filled. Endless needs that service the new economy, the creator economy - not in a ‘buy my stuff’ kind of way, but one that allows you to fill a need using your unique blend of experience and talent.

In this section, we have just explored the general landscape of how to create and manage your own brand. Is the idea terrifying? It should be, that is what life in real time is all about - a genuine response from the core of who you really are. The sooner you explore and develop these exercises, the sooner you can reap the rewards of your very own authentic intelligence.

We have discussed the key concepts and associated steps that help you be the master of your own brand and work alongside the genie as a partner, not a crutch.

Lots more on the website!

KEEP LEARNING

And welcome aboard

Summary

The central message of this book is that AI disruption will result in a merger, not an implant or a resource to be farmed, owned, and rented out. It is as controllable as weather. The potential for ownership is about the same. I retired the AI acronym and use the term genie throughout, as it stresses the need for careful, disciplined dialogue and implies some form of meeting of equals. Not equals as in same-as or as-good-as. This is no winner takes all finite game. This is an infinite game that expands and never ends.

Consider it a mental merger. On a good day this means some form of expanded mental capability, on a bad day it is perceived a deadly threat – because it threatens what humans have believed is true for millennia: that humanity is in any way special. ‘I think therefore I am’ is simply not so. It is no more special than ‘I breathe therefore I am’.

Here is what you will can now master as you put this book into practise:

- Understand why this disruption is different from any other and what to do about that.

- How to use AI as a Genie, partner, mentor, and guide.

- Why Rule #1 of genie school is the most important. Be very careful what to wish for.

- Live without fear: Discover what senses make you unique, and use them to the max.

- Learn the secrets of how to navigate by instinct and avoid the productivity trap.

- Constantly develop a growth mindset with habits that help you earn more everyday

The key to “Earn More, Live Better, and Thrive Longer” is no secret. It involves navigation and disciplined practise. Much of the book is an extended introduction on why this is more important now than at any other time.

Much time was spent belabouring the Rule #1 of genie school: ‘be careful what you wish for’.

It stresses that the only way forward is by being authentic, which means meeting fear at a crossroads and actively deciding on your path, then owning that path. Accepting full responsibility for the road travelled and what you pack along the way. Like any good Fairy Tale there are always surprises lurking in your satchel or backpack. You packed it. Own it.

This will bring a crisis of confidence or identity at some point. As soon as it is time to stand out and authentically create something, in public. I covered my own journey these past 12 weeks and the profound effect that deciding on Authentic Intelligence can have. I decided to join hands and fall back in trust, now and forever. I was unconsciously doing this a long time, whether swimming way out of my depth, being where I had no business being, or flying higher and higher until the aircraft stalled and spun rapidly backwards toward cold hard ground. Writing this book has brought me to conscious competence. Less dangerous than what I have been up to so far. I heartily recommend doing so now, before the consumer economy stalls and things flip over into the hands of creators.

The base beat throughout is to Aviate, Navigate, Communicate. To know who you are and develop confidence by steadily increasing your competence in your creative field of choice. Meanwhile never hesitate to maintain your borders and barriers.

You must be reading this, so I thank you from the bottom of my heart for tagging along.

Please leave an Amazon review, it makes a world of difference.

Also, keep in touch by subscribing via the website at the foot of the page

Epilogue

Submitting the final version of the book has been an emotional experience to be honest, I am hooked! I am already hard at work on Book two in the series. I go into much more detail on methods for interacting with genie and how I am getting along creating my own genies. What to look for, what are the pros and cons of the various approaches, and so on.

Depending on reader response this may change. I am also considering it more like a car buyers guide – for different professions - rather than an owner’s manual. No techno babble or hard sums, just a ‘what Genie’ guide for civilians in a specific area can benefit from.

Please subscribe below if you wish to get advance copies for review and feedback – as a paltry human I can only handle around 20 interactions so by all means get your request in early!

Table of Contents

Copyright

Foreword

Backward

The short end of the telescope–Futilia

The long end of the telescope – Synthopia

Why listen to me?

Overview

What will not change?

Where you are going

Learning to navigate

Step 0: Trust no one

Step 1: Framing - How to survey the landscape ahead

Copernicus I

Close up:

Mid shot:

Zooming out:

Copernicus II: Prediction.vs. Intelligence

Step 2: Finding your feet and learning to dance

Step 3: Learn to Thrive

Checkpoint

Potential impact on career and work

Learning and education

Relationships and social life

Health and well-being

Personal growth and development

Common misperceptions about firing the mind

Letting go is to ignore thoughts and pretend they don’t exist

Letting go means I lose my identity, my personality

Letting go means abandoning my goals and aspirations

Letting go makes me indifferent.

Letting go leads to isolation and detachment.

Letting go will murder creativity and imagination

Letting go means I become uninformed, uncaring, ignorant and naïve

I will become numb with no emotions or feelings

Letting go is reckless! Lacking responsibility and control.

Let go? No-one tells me what to do!

How to find a reliable mind

Step 4: The Challenges

Challenge 1: The spark of Creativity

Challenge 2: Enjoying the flow state

Challenge 3: getting into shape: Habits and Routines

Challenge 4: Develop wisdom and detachment

Challenge 5: Make your brand your business

Change perspectives – See everything from the outside-in

Summary

Epilogue