No, this isn't another "stealing" hook that switches you from one thing to another based on a power word.

You cannot "steal" this from someone and make a million bucks in a month.

This isn't something you can "steal," but you can stop the "steal".

Because theft is happening right now with you — only it's happening ever so gradually to notice.

Know how you can live years undiagnosed with some condition until it hits you all at once? It may be a health concern, a relationship red alert, a 9 to 5 you're too afraid to leave because of "stability". Or something else entirely.

This is YOU being led off your path. Being stolen away from it, and not stealing your hand at a gracious dance with proper manners and in a courteous manner.

Right now it's especially easy to get lost because we're dealing with a tech bubble which most people think is the end of their livelihood, their identity, and things are getting crazier by the day.

Every day brings some kind of grim news, and it makes it especially difficult to go on and pretend nothing is happening.

Layoffs, world politics (as shitty as ever), markets going down, and the ever-looming fear of a recession ongoing. It's all a bit too much for the person who hasn't gone through chaos all their life.

As a millennial who's been brought up with nothing but chaos around my education and career, stability is a concept I'm not personally familiar with in these areas.

Aaaand as cheesy and action-movie-dialogue-ish as it may sound:

→ I've embraced this chaos.

And in this process, I've personally hated anything that seems even slightly templated.

A templated life. A templated career. A templated content calendar. A templated mind. And last but not least, templated communication and paths to self-development.

Templated thinking: The eye opener

I grew up watching people suffer because templates ran and ruined their lives. This linear, not-looking-outside-your-vision thinking caused all the suffering I saw in people around me → friends, family, and society in general.

But today, we don't have that problem of eyes being closed — at least not as much as we used to. The problem is your eyes, ears, and senses being too open and receptive to well - everything!!

Earlier, people had issues like how most people didn't learn, grow, or develop their personalities after finding "stability" in a job secured through a templated path.

How did their character, brains, and careers stay the same throughout their lives?

How it was fun to stay the same way.

Yes, it's ideal to opt for a stoic, stable life any day, but most millennials, Gen Z, and Gen A haven't been given this gift.

There is no stable housing (thank you, Avocado sandwiches), no stable jobs with a pension (thank you, ever-evolving markets), and no stable relationships(don't get me started).

So templates and stability are out the window before we even get to open our eyes to the reality of our lives ahead that await us.

But all isn't doom and gloom. We're thrown into a Cyberpunk reality, instead of a calm and soothing steampunk reality from a peaceful Ghibli movie.

You have to choose your character and stick with it. Grow it. Nourish your brain with what happens in this always-changing world.

The knowledge and wealth gap grows by the day because of how systems are built and no one asks — why does it have to be that way?

We're growing up and seeing in real time how Gen Z and Gen A have the world's information, and today, thanks to AI, custom-suited information-feedback loops in their hands? They have more information and awareness in their hands, but also the same issues with depression, anxiety, and even hopelessness that COVID planted the seed of, and reality is nurturing it.

They already hate having to work for a living in a 9 to 5 and see the same in their parents, millennials, and others around them as an anti-goal. When everyone could just read some books and be a creator, an influencer, or sell courses.

"No one wants to work anymore." ← Every generation to the next one.

But the reality is, because of where the creator economy is headed, attention is as good as oil, and you do have to work for it.

So the entire creator economy or creators don't need to think or do anything outside what's taught to them, since templates are easy to get on and stay on.

Getting off the hamster wheel is when you sweat and see what you were doing. Not before. You get off to take a breather, maybe look around, see what everyone else is doing and continue to do the same.

OR you take a breather, and then you decide to stay off it - come hunger, thirst, instability in your financial, mental or physical balance.

The reality check: Cognitive decline and AI reliance

There’s a strange creature I see everywhere these days.

It wakes up early.

Pours the coffee.

Opens Notion.

Types: “Content is king. Consistency is queen. Engagement is the game.”

It scrolls.

It swipes.

It posts.

It repeats.

It’s not a person. Not anymore.

It’s a Content Hamster™.

Branded. Optimized. Half-asleep but algorithmically alert.

Spinning in a wheel shaped like a funnel.

With neon signs above it that say things like:

There's no depth, no train of thought, and their entire messaging, positioning, and basically the surface area of their online presence are an afterthought or pixel-to-pixel copycat of some famous creator's.

AI has made it incredibly easy to pump out content—one-liners and two-liners that are as wise as the person they're copied from. After all, it's all a charade to get maximum traffic based on a template that works for the famous creator, not the person and their ideal audience.

Hell, "stealing" is the biggest business today, all glorified thanks to Big Tech (lawsuits ongoing), who've trained their LLM models based on every book, every blog, and creative work present on the internet. Sure, it makes research easier to produce new content and is as good as a professional researcher, a junior developer, copywriter, or a content writer. If it's generating the next word or generating the next pixel, it does what is asked of it — nothing more and nothing less.

And the best part → it's constantly trained on the mistakes it makes, the mistakes users make and more material for theft generated every single day.

If you notice, we've come far from "In this era" and "synergy" (despite having used it as a piece of diction myself) to now em dashes (—).

Why? Because writing or thought is a connection of ideas. Or in the case of this thief, the connection of words without comprehension or some comprehension. And it excels at giving off the illusion of comprehension with complete confidence.

So anything you write like is at risk of being codified, mathematically turned into a brand voice, tone of voice, "style", and copied by people who have to rely on AI like a mental disability.

Talking of mental disability, when you rely on a crutch, you are, by definition, relying on it because you can't stand because of an injury or handicap.

To rely on something means you're not able to use what you have because of a lack of support or augmentation, perhaps even powering up.

Oh, wait, we've been through this before!

Social media made the world more social and scaled your reach and connection, sure, but it also made people less reliant on the NEED to be social.

Artificial Intelligence is the same way.

Social media can be used for good, connection, expression, and creativity, but the vast majority use it to scroll.

In the case of AI, we're going to see this effect dialed up to 11 because it would have you believe with absolute confidence that what you're thinking is right, or what it made you think is right.

Because every time you come across a hurdle, instead of figuring out how to get over, under, around, or teleport (haha) through it, it is EASIER to ask AI how to do it.

When you're stuck in a personal situation and can't sort out issues with your friends, family, or coworkers, it would not only lend a helping hand but also be the shoulder to cry on.

Goodbye relationships, connection, and hello solitude, self-independence, and the ultimate one-person army.

The vision correction: Custom lenses

The masses have, always have, and always will look for an easier path out.

The heart is a muscle. Our body is made up of muscles, skeleton, and nervous tissue.

What you train your "muscles" with has an effect on your skeletal structure and nervous system.

Biology class over, but every innovation, invention so far by humanity has been made by the fact that our muscle or resistance to tear down old ideas, bridge it with new information and train it into wisdom.

This wisdom, the training data, the resistance and so many other factors are innumerable and infinitely permutable with no exact match. But there are similarities, because we're all brain with the same instincts and knowledge base. It starts taking shape, identity, wisdom into what you are today. Based on circumstances, environment, life experiences, biology, and so much more.

But when you put on a blindfold over these experiences and ask someone else to lend you their hand, they could help you reach greater heights, sink to insane depths, and stay the same based on what worked for them.

AKA experience and wisdom. But your brain has an information absorption and implementation rate.

The implementation rate is restricted to your body and the physical 24-hour clock we all follow as humans.

The information absorption and learning rate depend on your brain, its processes, and maybe even IQ.

All this to say → You decide who gets to put on the blindfold, vision correction lenses, binoculars, microscope on how to go about observing the reality of your life.

It's all you, but to keep it that way and own it, this needs work. Because everyone wants you to have a taste of their reality, walk on their path.

The way forward with your lenses? Learn how, when, where and what kind of lens you need, and living without your attention stolen becomes easier.

The weapon: Your mechanism and methods

As I said above, you get to fit your reality with any lens you so choose to fit over your eyes so that the information and the picture you receive is how you want to see it.

Your perspective.

Your reality.

Your life.

There will always be a war for your vision because it's the thing that drives humanity forward. A vision. Dare I use the line: "If you don't have your vision, you'll follow others with theirs."

Without a vision, you may as well be working up Mount Everest, in circles, following a fake guru, or believing your own lies into self-sabotage.

Your lens, your ability to replace what you choose to see, act on, and listen to, is your ultimate weapon.

And yes you need to learn how and when to use these lenses and frame your reality. It's upto you and no one else to frame it, build it, or destroy it how you want.

Unlike the TikTok attention deficit users, I'm going to assume all people reading up till here in my lengthy newsletters had their curiosity either piqued or dead from the very beginning, based on how I frame the pixels that create these words you're reading. It's completely up to you to ignore, implement, think, or block this vision I'm exposing you to.

The greatest mechanism and the best thing you can do is to guard your vision and reality like never before. No you haven't been trained to fight Big Tech, or won't even see the need to do it. Until they cross a line, then it becomes painful and worth taking action on.

Much like OpenAI started with GPT 3.5 and continued expanding it, and adding features to it.

Creating something for an actual smart audience is 10x, maybe even 100x, more difficult than what some AI can emulate for you.

Case in point, the movie "Her" showed the sci-fi reality of having an artificial bot talking to you like a real girlfriend a decade or more ago. OpenAI copied just that from that movie, and even stole Scarlett Johannson's voice to sell the initial concept of voice search.

And when it picked up because the idea was already sold through the movie, all they had to do was ride out the lawsuit wave like a tone-deaf windsurfer.

What game designers, copywriters, movie directors, animators, and writers create from their own vision, mindset, and creativity is something the tech industry loves emulating/copying into existence.

The art of war — against AI Sun Tzu

This isn’t Sun Tzu’s battlefield where enemies wore red sashes and marched toward you with weapons drawn. No. This war is quieter. Sleeper cell quiet. The enemy doesn’t kick down your door — it whispers ideas into your mind and calls them your own.

AI doesn’t fight you with violence(yet). It fights you with comfort. It battles with convenience. It wins with “why not just let me do it for you?”

And like a frog in boiling water, you don’t realize you’re losing until you’ve stopped thinking for yourself.

This war isn’t against a machine. It’s against what the machine makes you forget about yourself.

Forget your resistance training — the kind that sharpens your decision-making, fortifies your instincts, and builds character muscle. Forget wrestling with ambiguity. Forget hitting a wall and learning how to scale it.

Now, you hit a wall and prompt ChatGPT:

“Write me 5 ways to overcome burnout.”

Boom. Instant wisdom. Zero discomfort. Zero discernment. No truth earned. Just content.

AI Tsun Zu doesn’t conquer with logic. It conquers with shortcuts disguised as intelligence. It simulates wisdom. It plagiarizes from your future self — the self you could’ve become if you’d just stuck with the discomfort a little longer.

This is not a rebellion against progress. This is a rebellion against lazy sovereignty.

See, the war isn’t about replacing you.

It’s about rewriting you — into a version that needs the system more than it needs you.

And it starts small:

• Just automate the emails.

• Just template the landing page.

• Just summarize the blog.

• Just let the AI edit your voice.

• Just tweak your thoughts until they aren’t yours anymore.

This is the part where many give in.

Where they say, “Well, if it works, who cares?”

But here’s what they don’t understand:

The best creators — the kind who last — aren’t just trying to “make it.”

They’re trying to make something that makes them.

That shapes their voice. Their values. Their future.

And AI can’t give you that.

But it won’t give you depth.

It won’t give you the bones of a philosophy forged in discomfort.

It won’t give you a business you’re proud of building because you built it.

So what’s your move?

War is inevitable.

But the battlefield is internal.

It’s your awareness vs. your autopilot.

Your clarity vs. your craving for ease.

Your soul’s long game vs. the machine’s next dopamine hit.

The battlefield isn’t coming.

You’re already standing in it.

Till next time!

— Ankit