Become Your Own AI

When I was younger, I had workout goals in mind.

Whether that meant how to get a big bench or how to get ripped (those were all I cared about). So I read about different programs.

As I got older and had more time under the bar, I had problems.

So I'd read and watched videos about mobility.

What's an option for education today?

AI.

I didn't have the option back then, but it's alive and well today.

I recently used it just to test how much it knew. I asked it about a particular diet plan that I already knew about. The answers it gave me weren't completely wrong, but they weren't completely right either.

AI can do the best it can with the information out there on the internet. But for you, sometimes you're just outsourcing your own mind. The vast majority of people use it as an advanced Google search. That's a great start, because I know the pain of Googling something and hoping the top results are specific to my own problems (they rarely were).

Another beef I have with AI (or technology in general today) is that the information hits you so fast. You run the risk of missing a lot of context (unless you tell the AI about it) or just personal experience. What it returns to you may not apply directly to you, and you'll have to keep chatting back and forth to get the result you want.

Ideally, you want to be self reliant with your own health. That's true whether or not AI is in the picture.

How do you get to that point?

You read and think a lot.

From Artificial to Real

I don't watch a lot of these, but I've seen YouTube thumbnails along these lines:

"We asked AI to write a workout for us (and it was hard!)"

I think those videos are meant to be silly and not taken too seriously, but I wouldn't know.

Again, with my story with the "knowing more than the AI about diet," it doesn't happen all the time. AI has its place. But how do we get smarter than AI in the first place?

How did people come up with all of these ideas and workout programs before Google?! Surely that happened, right? Was it sorcery?

The people I look up to today read a LOT, plus they have personal experience in stuff. It's crazy that in a world of rapid information, there are still people that preach the importance of good ole fashioned reading. But there's a good reason.

When you read a book, you're spending a lot of time focused on one subject. It could take you a full week to get through the book. You could be reading for 30 minutes at a time. That helps with learning a lot. It's similar to spending a lot of time in the education system or with a particular group of friends or with your family. The longer you spend with something or someone, the more you start to adopt the mindset and ideas.

It sticks a lot better than a 5 minute response that AI could give you. You probably feel the same thing. Getting something from an AI response or a Google search just doesn't stick as well.

I believe our minds still operate at the same speed. Just because you watch a movie at 2x speed, doesn't mean the experience was any better. If you watch it any faster than that just to get the idea of the movie, then it won't even feel the same.

It doesn't matter how well your water and protect a tree, it will still grow at the same speed.

It doesn't matter how healthy an expecting mother is, it still takes about 9 months to grow a baby.

To get your brain to start formulating a bunch of ideas, you'll have to combine slow learning with a lot of mental downtime. This is how the "shower thoughts" come to you or you get ideas in the morning. When you go about your day with low to no input, you hit the "default mode network." This basically means your subconscious mind is constantly working in the background, and it finally has time to bring things up to the surface. It works better with rest.

You're also going to need a vessel. That means something you're using this information for. Do you have a goal? Do you want to write to teach other people? That will narrow down your focus and you learn better when you need to "survive" the event of goal, then your brain is primed to learn.

Finally, you can use AI to bounce ideas back and forth to extract the information that's already in your head, not just doing the work for you.

How to Use AI for Your Health

I'm not against AI in the slightest.

It's a tool, just like anything else.

It's similar to writing using a pen but then moving on to a keyboard.

Does that make the message any less impactful?

No.

The problem comes with over-reliance on it.

You should have a baseline of your own information before you start, then AI can help bounce ideas back and forth to help you come up with a plan.

Here's how.

Step 1: Live Life, Get Goals

• Live your life. Set some goals or have problems. If you have problems, those problems will turn into goals anyway.

• This is the baseline for all learning that sticks. Did you remember in school having to learn something just for the sake of the test? As soon as it was over, you forgot about it. It's not because you're a bad person, but because your brain had no reason to remember it.

• What about driving a car? You had to learn a little bit about the process but you also immediately used that new information a lot. That information stuck because you had the goal of using driving in your every day life.

Step 2: Learn the Old School Way

• Before you jump to AI or Google, go research the top 3-5 books on that subject.

• Read them.

• If you do that, you'll know more than 80+% of the population out there. With that information, you can apply it to yourself.

Step 3: Curate the Information

• Read everything you get from the lens of your own goals. You should have a goal but also a constraint, like what you're not willing to give up for that goal.

• As an example, if a workout routine requires 2 hours of your time but you only have 30 minutes, you're going to have to make adjustments. Does that plan have a modification for that? Are there others that do? Keep digging.

Step 4: Think and Make a Plan

• You now have enough information to make a plan. So get a pen and paper (or a computer…or phone) and write one out.

• If you get stuck, here's the beautiful part: spend a lot of quiet time and figure it out. Your subconscious mind is begging to be used, so give it the down time it needs to let stuff out.

• Go on walks (great for this because your body is moving, which gives blood to the brain, you're outside which expands your thinking, and a bunch of other good stuff). Go on drives in silence. Go to the gym without your music (or get earplugs if you're at a commercial gym, sorry).

Step 5: NOW You Can Use AI

• Use AI to bounce ideas back and forth to drill down your plan.

• There's a term in coding called "rubber ducking." You get a little rubber duck that sits on your desk, then when you get stuck on a problem, you talk to it out loud. Of course, the duck can't talk back, but sometimes just talking to someone - or in this case, something - can get the information out of your head and you see things in a different perspective, even if you don't get any feedback. AI does this to the max.

Step 6: Iterate

• No matter what, you're going to mess up. Plans go awry. You get a bad night's sleep. You get sick. The kids are up all night. You have travel. This is called life and experience, and it's the thing that AI can't help you with.

• You're going to have to adjust as you go along. Luckily, you're smart enough to figure out how to get around these issues…right? Right.

• Trust yourself.

If a Machine Cannot Commit Seppuku, It Cannot Write Poetry

I like that phrase because it should wake people up.

AI can probably write something poetic (based on a prompt), but it can't experience life like we can to make the words of the poem reflect the experience of being a human.

There's a scare going on.

It's displayed in annoying ads, trying to convince you that you need to learn AI.

"AI IS GOING TO TAKE OVER. AAAAH! THE MACHINES WILL RULE THE WORLD!"

Thoughts of The Matrix or The Terminator enter the mind.

We think that AI will make us and our work irrelevant.

It can write for us, come up with meal plans, come up with workout plans, do our jobs, etc.

But I'm not worried.

Why?

Because we're still humans.

There are a ton of things that AI will never be able to do.

Yes it can create art or music, but only based on what it's been told. It can't tell you if it's good or not.

It can write a paper about someone's life, but it didn't experience that person's impact on its own life. (It also doesn't even have life of its own.)

When it comes to our minds, our learning, our life experience, our health, it's the same thing.

It can give you information, but it can't make do the thing.

It can write a program, but it can't do the reps, fail, or get excited for you when you succeed.

It can give you a nutrition program, but it can't tell you which foods or meals you enjoy the best.

It can tell you which books are best to use to learn, but it can't make the information soak in your head and make you think about it while you're staring into space.

As I said, our minds operate at the same speed, which is usually slower than we want to accept. But you need to honor that, start with your own baseline of education, then use AI as a tool.

Then again, you can't speed up the process of making progress in the gym, so stop trying to do the same thing with your brain.

Don't fear AI, but don't be overly reliant on it either. It's a tool to extract what you already have in your head.

You're in charge of your own health, no matter what.

Now go read something.

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