Issue 30 - Entrepreneurship, AI-human Augmentation and Self-Encouragement
5/19/2024 - 5/26/2024 in SF
Table of Contents:
On physiological state of an entrepreneur’s life
On the most important skill being self encouragement
On the power of AI human augmentation
Conclusion
On physiological state of an entrepreneur’s life
The key to success is really about how you feel. This is your physiological state. You have to feel confident. This is why so many athletes are chosen to be CEO’s because they habitually develop a sense of physiological confidence from physical activity, and being competitive in sports. Confidence leads to perceived competence. This is a quote sourced from the online course ‘Foundations of Entrepreneurship’ by Chris Haroun. Find the full course on YouTube here. Another important lesson in this course is that confidence is the most important thing in business, and that it’s necessary to have ‘off the charts level of confidence.’
This is an important idea. It is not really talked about when you are learning some skill, like for example, when you’re starting out and learning to code, or design, or any technical skill. It is not talked about how you should feel good and confident in your abilities. For entrepreneurs this is critical. That is why it is very important to be an athlete. No matter what your age, your profession, your life purpose, being an athlete means you do some exercise or sport daily.
In my case I do running, weight lifting and Muay Thai. Particularly Muay Thai is good for this as it is a combat sport where you use your whole body to practice a primordial action of human beings, to fight. You tap into a mental state of a warrior.
It is a horrifying fact of life, that humanity has walked from disaster to disaster, from wars, famines, and other natural disasters periodically that pushed human beings to the brinks of physiological limits, often having resort to primordial animalistic struggles for survival. This was last seen on massive scale in the during World War 2, in various theaters of combat, to various degrees of extremes. Keeping this in mind is important for a life that is anchored to reality. From this bottom edge of human ability to live all of our civilizational structures arise.
Another way to keep this physiological state of happiness, strength and aliveness, is through dance. In fact this is probably the best reason why people go out to night clubs and dance. They get to release the stresses and worries of the week, and become creative, move their bodies, unlock new physiological states of happiness, feel joy, feel connected to the music and feel exultation.
On the most important skill being self encouragement
Everyone has successes and failures. As kids we are taught by our parents, teachers, and people around us what is the way to recognize success, how to define it. It is passed down not through words, mostly it is feeling, it is the thoughts we have, it is unspoken truth of what is felt in the heart. These things are communicated through body language. Your attitude towards yourself is developed this way, it is imprinted on you from the people around you as a child. Sometimes it can be not constructive, sure it was evolved over centuries and eons of human social evolution. In different cultures there are different patterns of conditioning for the attitude that you take towards yourself and your work. Often it can be harmful and can be improved. I believe that the most important skill to learn in life is this ability to have a positive relationship towards yourself. To value your own attempts at a goal, to encourage yourself when you did not achieve it, and most importantly to celebrate the wins, and recognizing that they are not small, but that they are very significant and important to take time to appreciate them.
Your mental state, what you are able to remember and focus on through the day is critical. This is who you are. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, your thoughts become your words, words become actions, actions become your character, and your character becomes your destiny. What you think about all day is everything. This is why I am really excited about building an AI journaling app. Because you are able to dump all of your thoughts, through accurate speech-to-text and then AI can be your soundboard, give you feedback and very personalized advice. It will immediately show you your blind spots. Over time, doing this every day, your thinking changes, you see new possibilities and the speed of your own evolution increases. This is a cause I believe in, something that in my life has been the critical practice for self development and it is something I want to spread to the world.
It is critical that you are able to remember your accomplishments and successes. It is critical that you are able to stay in this mental state of recognizing that you are not yet where you want to be and yet that you have gotten better and you are still learning.
Being able to keep your eye on the goal, to believe in yourself and at the same time be able to support, encourage and practice self care, is the most important ability we need to teach people. It is required in order to succeed in life.
On The power of AI human augmentation
By May 2024 we already have AI that is better than human in most areas, and we are just scratching the surface of applying it to make our lives better. This is exciting, to be building tools in this space that give us superhuman powers, for example LuminaLog.com - an AI journaling tool that conveniently gives you feedback on your thoughts.
In reading, e-books, academic papers and documents it is powerful by being able to quickly summarize the content and to answer questions. This is a powerful tool that we are applying. You no longer need to read a book cover to cover. Now the best way is to first read a dynamically generated summary. Then read a summary of each section, to get to the ideas that are most relevant and interesting to you. Then you can ask the AI specific questions about the content. It will give you personalized explanation of it and can make connections with other ideas you ask it about. This way you have quickly gotten to the center of the ideas of the content and then you are able to relate it to your own existing body of knowledge.
Imagine what is more, is that you can have access to any PDF that is royalty free, this includes all of the books, fiction and non-fiction, and academic papers ever published that are in the public domain. This is a vast library, as vast as the library of Alexandria in your pocket with your own superhuman smart AI mentor that is ready to teach you any topic 24/7. This is a world changing technology. The only obstacle to this right now is the slow speed of developers building well designed applications for this.
We are now able to imagine and create new worlds with AI generated video. This is now possible. This can be inspiring to your imagination about what is possible in your own life, imagine seeing a short film about yourself succeeding at your goals. This will motivate you and make you believe that you can do it. Imagine that this AI generated film with you as the lead performer interacts and discovers new ideas and concepts, therefore teaching you something new using new senses of vision and sound. Personalized video generation will accelerate learning even more.
In getting support for setting and achieving goals, you can have an AI that sends you personalized reminders about your goals and why they are important to you. Imagine if everyone had a personal tutor and coach that kept reiterating to them what their goals specifically are, what are the sub-steps and why they are important. This will dramatically increase your ability to realize your goals.
AI companions is a large section of the current AI consumer market boom. They are frequently AI girlfriend / boyfriend type apps, and they are historical characters and friendship apps. These companions are powerful because they make us better by developing our minds and communication skills. Talking to AI companions daily will augment yourself, as you will be influenced by the AI to change your thinking and develop new ideas and direct your life. In the same way that it is true that we are the average of the 5 people we spend most time around, if they become AI’s that have superhuman intelligence, then our own cognition will evolve and take on new levels we had not imagined before. In fact this is a critical application use case for us to exploit in order to evolve to the next stage of human civilization. I am excited to be building this feature in LuminaLog.com.
conclusion
This week I have been contemplating how a physiological state of confidence is critical for success in business, how AI applications are going to change our world and how self encouragement is a critical skill for life. This week I created this video demo of how to use an AI journaling app. The conviction that ‘content is king’ has been reverberating in my mind this week and I am committed to creating more content around AI journaling, AI and self-development.