Hope > fear.
Most of what reaches you every day is built to scare you. It works because the human brain is wired to find danger first. Old mapmakers drew monsters at the edges of the known world for the same reason.
Right now, the monster at the edge of the map is AI. I believe it is the biggest threat humanity faces, and people should be concerned. Nobody knows how it turns out.
Then again, nobody has ever known how the future turns out. People have always lived on a frontier, and somehow they keep meeting it. I refuse to let fear drive, and I built IamClearBuilt for people who feel the same way.
Five facts guide the mindset here.
1. AI is here.
Pandora's box is open, and it will not close.
2. It could end terribly.
People have used tools to hurt each other since the dawn of time. How you use this one is 100% your choice. Even if you use it with the best of intentions, someone else could use it to destroy. Use it to make people's lives better anyway.
3. I cannot control everyone.
Some people will misuse these tools. History shows that most people use new tools to make life better for themselves and others, so move yourself in that direction.
4. Confidence is the way forward.
Hesitation gets you killed, and this frontier is no exception.
5. Clear heads prevail.
Wyatt Earp told his biographer that the most important lesson he learned from seasoned gunfighters was to stay deliberate instead of rushing. Take your time, but be quick about it.
The real obstacle is not AI. It is vagueness.
AI can help you accomplish almost anything, but it cannot tell you what to want. These tools only improve your life and your business if you can describe what better looks like, and that description matters even more when you are giving instructions to a machine.
Don't take my word for it.
I am a builder, not a philosopher. So, I went looking for the people who have thought hardest about purpose, discipline, and change, and I built their best ideas into a routine you can follow. Here is who they are and what I took from each of them.
Epictetus
The Stoic philosopher taught the whole method almost two thousand years ago.
First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.
— Epictetus, Discourses, Book 3, Chapter 23
That order is the design of IamClearBuilt. The intake is where you say what you would be. The daily emails are where you do what you have to do.
Dr. Jordan Peterson
Peterson built Future Authoring after noticing that most people have never been asked to seriously consider what they want their life to become. The program has you write freely about your ideal future for fifteen to twenty minutes and then turn it into specific goals, motives, obstacles, and a plan. You also describe the future your worst habits would create, so you have something to aim at and something to run from. His point is that even a rough first plan beats no plan, because it shows you what you do not want and gives you something to improve.
The approach has been tested. In a 2010 randomized controlled trial co-authored by Peterson and published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, struggling university students who completed a written goal-setting program earned significantly better grades four months later than a control group. The IamClearBuilt intake is modeled on Future Authoring.
Read the study →Dr. Andrew Huberman
In his episode on the science of setting and achieving goals, the Stanford neuroscientist explains why picturing failure and its consequences can keep you moving. He also stresses that a goal only works once it is specific enough to act on. The intake asks you to write the future you want to avoid for that reason, and it turns your goal into daily tasks.
Tim Ferriss
Life punishes the vague wish and rewards the specific ask.
— Tim Ferriss, Tribe of Mentors
A vague goal gets a vague result. The intake does not finish until you confirm one specific goal.
James Clear
Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.
— James Clear, Atomic Habits
Clear describes every action as a vote for the kind of person you want to become. His rule for slipping up is to never let one missed day become two. The twice-daily email is built on both ideas. Each morning names the vote to cast, each night asks whether you cast it, and a missed day brings the same tasks back so that one miss does not turn into two.
Dr. Anne-Laure Le Cunff
The neuroscientist and author of Tiny Experiments argues that goals should be discovered, tested, and adapted instead of locked in forever. I believe curiosity is what keeps a goal alive when reality pushes back. My thesis is that what works for a person also works for a business, where curiosity looks like tiny experiments. Does this work? How could it be better? You will not know until you try, and a failed experiment is closer to success than a daydream.
As the saying goes, way leads to way. You must begin in order to see the next turn in the road, and staying curious and aware along that journey is what will help keep you on your individual path.
Joe Hudson
Through his Art of Accomplishment work, Hudson teaches that lasting change comes from aligning the head, the heart, and the nervous system, not from grinding harder. That is why the daily loop carries no judgment. It gives you a reminder and asks for an honest answer.
George Mack
Mack's essay on high agency describes it as three skills working together: clear thinking, a bias to action, and disagreeability. He writes that low agency is the default for most people, and then he gives the good news.
You have agency over your agency.
— George Mack, highagency.com
Helping people become more high agency is the point of everything on this site. I want you to succeed.
The name is a statement.
Clear stands for clarity, because vague goals fail. Built stands for action, because clarity without action is only a dream. IamClearBuilt is something you say about yourself, and the daily emails are how you prove it.
The intake is $99. The daily emails are $9 a month, and you can stop anytime.