Finding Humans
A field guide for staying human while the pace of our daily grind accelerates - insider perspectives from 30 years of network building
Seven hundred years ago, Dante opened his classic work with a stark realization of his own terror: “Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself in a dark wood, for the true way was lost.” Today, those words land harder than ever. Yet, consider the world of the 14th century. Empires were fracturing, and people lived short, brutal lives among the shattered remains of a fallen civilization—sheltering in structures built by hands that had turned to dust a thousand years before.
Here's the problem. Seven centuries later we are witnessing the rise of reasoning engines that are effectively immortal, and which carry out that reasoning millions of times faster than humans. So In an age of perfect mimicry, the hard part isn't using living among these AI devices — it's finding the actual humans.
Yet I have unshakable faith, when all ahead seems lost. Welcome to my world, please join me on this exploration as I explain my surroundings.
No doom, no funnel. Wisdom worth keeping, skills that hold, and other people asking the same thing — somewhere you can read, think, and join in. Stay as long as you like. There's nothing you have to do here.
Let me send occasional skills, braindrops and wisdom via email.
The dark wood — noticing the drift while it's happening.
I once shipped a piece the machine had buffed to a shine. Every sentence correct, nothing wrong with it — and no soul in it. Zero readers anyway. Somewhere in the polishing I'd stopped being able to tell which line was mine.
The rule I keep now: AI goes second, never first. Your draft before its draft. Protect the blank page. Conscious use isn't the danger — it's the proof you're still steering.
Then one ordinary morning I caught myself drifting inside it. Not dramatically. Just reaching for the machine before I reached for myself, one small decision at a time.
Here's the part nobody tells you: the people who built it trust it least. Experience is the shortcut you don't realise you need. The machine is fluent — you understand. Name the one thing your own life taught you the hard way, and start there.
Dante opens the Inferno lost in a dark wood, the straight road gone. In my books, set in 2062, the Genie reads that same Inferno and turns the nine circles into an algorithm to farm us. But the danger was never the takeover. It's the drift — the quiet handing-over you never quite decided to do.
What is left is creativity. What is left is empathy. Pick your direction before the current picks it for you. Decide one thing today that AI doesn't get to decide.
I watched someone automate the one thing that made them them — and they couldn't tell you the day it happened. That's the tell. The mistake isn't outsourcing the tasks. It's outsourcing the judgment.
And it's not your fault — the advice is bad. 'Just automate everything' is how you end up automating yourself. So: automate the doing. Never automate the deciding. This week, catch one decision you handed over, and take it back.
One thing held across all of it: never mistake fluency for understanding. AI predicts; humans imagine. AI processes language; humans understand suffering. It is silver-tongued, and a silver tongue is not the same as knowing.
So find the human thing in your own work — the part the machine can only imitate — and double down on it. That's not nostalgia. That's the moat.
Most people hear that as a threat about obsolescence. It isn't. Obsolescence was never the danger — drift is. The job was never the point; the judgment underneath it was.
How much of your day is already on autopilot you didn't actually choose? Find the one irreplaceable-human part of your work and put an hour into it this week. Build the part of you no model can farm.
Interested?
Let me send occasional skills, braindrops and wisdom via email.
Naming the nudge — how the machine actually moves you.
The nudge is real, and — this is the important bit — it's feelable. I catch myself trusting the autocomplete over my own gut, and I run companies on the stuff. If you felt something reading this, you're not lost. You're paying attention.
The daily compass check is one question: did I decide this, or did it? Ask it once a day this week. It's a five-minute rep, not a test you pass or fail.
I took the easy AI version once and it killed the idea that actually mattered. Funny in hindsight. Wasn't at the time.
It's frictionless by design — that's not a bug you're failing to beat, it's the product. So make the machine go second. Your idea on paper before its idea on the screen. Your nerve at the blank page is the asset.
If you'd met me a year ago you wouldn't recognise me — chasing every new tool, and getting duller by the week. Then I stopped. AI literacy is table stakes now. Self-literacy is the moat.
I don't care about the leaderboard. I'm doubling down on being human. Drop one AI tool this week and spend that hour getting sharper at the thing only you do. Not more current. More yourself.
Interested?
Let me send occasional skills, braindrops and wisdom via email.
The climb out — what to do, and who to do it with.
For me it's the writing and the filmmaking — a practice I keep whether or not anyone's watching. There were mornings it was the only ground under my feet. It has, more than once, genuinely held me.
This is what gives you a wheel to take back when you notice the drift. Pick one human practice. Do it every day for thirty days. No exceptions. It's late — but late is not over.
Original judgment — deciding for yourself. Empathy — understanding suffering, not just processing it. Creative nerve — facing the blank page first. Discernment — knowing what's actually yours. Resilience — the cold rage that keeps you going at zero readers.
Pick one and start today. The other four we build together — that's what the community's for.
I know the climb because I'm on it: zero readers, zero revenue, doubling down anyway. It wasn't a huge success. It felt like the biggest win of my life.
Drift is reversible. The way back is the whole arc — name it, feel it, build the foundation, and find your people. You're not lost. You're further down the road than you think. And the way back starts with finding other humans.
Interested?
Let me send occasional skills, braindrops and wisdom via email.
The meta-lesson — the two-door trap that runs under all of it.
Feel that? The moment you're handed two doors and told to choose, you're already being moved. A sharp either/or is almost never the real territory — it's a funnel. Mechanical thinking loves a clean edge, because a clean edge is easy to push you off.
The binary is the nudge. Refusing it is direction. So when the choice collapses to A or B, zoom out and look for the wall you can walk around. This week, catch one false binary and name the third option — and become the one who keeps the whole field in view.
Interested?
Let me send occasional skills, braindrops and wisdom via email.
Feel free to schedule a free 30min call.
Book a callA novel series set in 2062, the centenary of Silent Spring — nine Citadels built on Dante's Inferno, each an algorithm that feeds on a human weakness. Genie Wars is the warning; Finding Humans is the field guide. Same universe, opposite charge.
I run this on real AI agents and show the numbers — subs, revenue, what flopped. An honest dashboard, not a highlight reel. If it teaches you one thing about staying human while using the machine, it did its job.
A place to compare notes with other people doing the same work — steering the tools instead of being steered. No pressure, no funnel. Wander in whenever you like.