Preface I - The Rebellion (Fuck the Format)
Fuck the Format
I've always thought structure was stupid.
Back in school — Year 10 English, cold winter morning — the teacher hands out the marking rubric. "This is how you'll be assessed. This is the standard. This is what good looks like."
And I'm sitting there thinking: How am I supposed to think clearly when you've already told me exactly how to think?
That moment stuck with me. Because it wasn't about learning — it was about obedience. About performing intelligence instead of developing it. About fitting your mind into someone else's container instead of building your own.
So if this doesn't feel like a normal book, that's because it isn't.
I Didn't Write This Book. I Spoke It.
Everyone says you've got to sit down and write. That's what makes a book great — the discipline of writing. That's all bullshit.
Look at the greats. Gary Vee doesn't write — he speaks. Most brilliant thinkers are verbal processors. They think through speaking, not typing. And that's exactly what I did.
I spoke this book into existence. Walking my dog Teddy at 6am, dumping 45-minute voice notes into Otter while the rest of Sydney slept. Lying on my couch on weekends, speaking whatever thought arrived. Sometimes literally sitting on the toilet for 25 minutes because a thought hit and I had to capture it. My wife asking "where are you?" and me realizing I'd been in the bathroom recording insights about trust physics.
I wasn't at a desk trying to sound smart. I was just saying what I was feeling. That's the difference.
The chapters don't follow a formula because thoughts don't follow formulas. Ideas don't resolve cleanly because life doesn't resolve cleanly. This book is random in parts because that's how insight actually arrives — not in neat packages but in messy loops that suddenly make sense.
Anyway, here's why that matters...
The Derek Sivers Moment
For my whole life, I thought I was broken. Couldn't do things the normal way. Couldn't write "properly." Then I read Derek Sivers.
2015 - "Anything You Want." This tiny book changed my fucking life. He was just a musician who wanted to sell his CDs online. No business plan. No grand vision. Just: "I need to solve this problem." So he taught himself to code. Other artists asked if he could sell their CDs too. He said yes. That became CD Baby. Grew it, sold it for $30 million, gave it all to charity.
But what hit me wasn't the success. It was how he thought. Direct. Clear. No performance.
2024 - I'm having breakfast with him at a conference. Can't believe I'm meeting one of my heroes. He tells me he wrote that book in two weeks. Two fucking weeks. And I realize — if this guy who's friends with Tim Ferriss and all these brilliant people can write however he wants, why am I trying to follow some imaginary rulebook?
You don't need a grand plan. You just need to trust what's already there.
And that brings me to the real point...
Books Are Dead. Long Live Books.
Books are great, but let's be honest — they've become trophies. People flex about reading 100 books a year but don't do shit with their lives. That's not reading. That's collecting.
Traditional reading is over. We all know it. We just pretend otherwise because admitting it feels like betrayal.
Books aren't meant to be displayed. They're meant to be used. Butchered. Torn apart. Reconstructed. I don't care if you read this whole thing. I care if you find the parts that make your chest tight and actually do something with them.
The book isn't sacred — you are. Your transformation is. Your clarity is. The book is just raw material.
So what the hell does this have to do with AI?
The AI Revolution Nobody's Talking About
Everyone's worried about AI taking jobs. I'm interested in AI taking excuses. Because that's what it really does — it removes the buffer between you and your truth.
This book was built to be fed to AI. Not to summarize — any idiot can do that. But to become your personal mirror. To reflect back what you're actually saying beneath what you think you're saying.
Here's how it works: You read something. It lands weird. Instead of moving on, you copy it. Paste it into GPT. Not tomorrow. Not after you finish the chapter. Right fucking now. While the feeling is hot.
Tell GPT what you really think. Not what sounds good. What you really think. Then watch as it mirrors back your patterns. Shows you the loops you're running. The stories you're telling yourself. The gaps between what you say and what you do.
That's not reading. That's real-time integration. That's using AI as the mirror system it was meant to be.
Your personality affects how you learn. Some need bullet points. Some need stories. Some need to be yelled at. Traditional books pick one voice. This book works with GPT to become whatever voice you need. In real time. While you're reading. Not as homework.
Don't like how I write? Tell GPT to rewrite it. Need examples? Ask for them. The book becomes what you need because you're finally taking responsibility for your own learning.
Why This Book Is Bloated On Purpose
I could have written something clean and tight. Won awards. Got invited to conferences. Instead, I made it messy and recursive.
Why? Because the more detail I give, the less AI hallucinates. Because compression requires context. Because you can't debug what's been sanitized. Because truth lives in the mess, not the summary.
Every repetition serves a purpose. Every loop is there for a reason. That's how integration actually works — not through clever one-liners but through patient repetition until something finally lands.
The bloat is the feature, not the bug.
Action Looks Like This
This whole book is about taking action. But what is action, really?
Stop right now. Stand up wherever you are. Breathe in for four seconds. Hold for four seconds. Breathe out for four seconds. Do that three times with your eyes closed. Then spin around once. Just one spin.
Do it. I'll wait.
...
Cool. That weird feeling? That slight discomfort? That "this is strange" sensation? That's action. Doing something slightly outside the normal to create space for the extraordinary.
I walk around my neighborhood talking into my phone like a crazy person. My neighbors probably think I'm psycho. But I had to overcome that discomfort to create this book the way it needed to be created.
That's what action is. Not grand gestures. Just small movements outside your usual box. The willingness to feel slightly weird in service of what's real.
The Only Real Leverage Is Clarity
School taught me to perform intelligence. Life taught me to develop it. School taught me to follow rubrics. Walking taught me to find patterns. School taught me structure was sacred. Building taught me structure emerges from function, not the other way around.
The only real leverage is clarity. The only real freedom is self-authorship. And the only way to trust yourself is to stop living by someone else's rubric.
Read a paragraph. Feel something. Don't just note it — investigate it. Copy it. Paste it into GPT. Tell it what you really think:
"This section on permission makes me angry."
"This part about trust feels like bullshit."
"This framework might explain why my business is stuck."
Then add your real context:
"I'm angry because I've been waiting for permission for ten years."
"It feels like bullshit because I trusted someone and got burned."
"My business is stuck because I keep lowering prices when people don't respond."
Let GPT mirror back your patterns. Then — and this is the part everyone skips — do something. Even tiny. Send the email. Take the walk. Have the conversation. Whatever the obvious next action is, take it.
Because insight without action is just sophisticated procrastination.
You Already Have the Answers
This pisses people off, but it's true: You don't need my answers. You need better questions. You don't need my framework. You need to see your own patterns. You don't need my permission. You need to recognize you've been withholding it from yourself.
I'm not special. I'm just really fucking weird. Weird enough to walk loops until patterns emerged. Weird enough to speak my thoughts into existence. Weird enough to share probably too much in the hope it helps you see your own stuff more clearly.
Traditional books are about the author's ego. This one's about your transformation. Butcher my words. Use what works. Leave what doesn't. I don't care about being quoted. I care about you changing.
The book doesn't work unless you break it.
Welcome to The Mirror Loop.
And fuck the format.