Synopsis

This kickoff introduces the5‑week “How Not to Use AI” challenge, where we treat AI as amedium that shapes us, not just a productivity tool to “use better”. Abi walks through the philosophy behind the challenge, theAI Sovereignty Matrix, thearchetype quiz, and theweek‑by‑week curriculum, so you can decide how you want AI to fit into your wo…

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How it all started

When I started writing here at the end of last year, I genuinely didn’t know if anyone else was feeling what I was feeling — the specific discomfort of watching an entire industry sell you a revolution and your gut quietly telling you something was off about their terms.

These four things kept arriving in my inbox. From strategists, educators, therapists, founders, writers, researchers. People who had nothing in common except that something was off and they couldn’t name it yet.

Nobody is teaching what’s actually happening.

The only we’ve had about AI : here are five tools to use faster. Here are 9 insane prompts to 10x your productivity an that make AI do X,Y,and Z. Adopt now or get left behind!

The truth is:

AI is not a tool. A tool sits still until you pick it up. A hammer does not change how you think about nails when you’re not holding it.

AI is a medium. And a medium is always on.

It restructuring how we see, how we speak, how we think — whether we’re logged in and using it or not.

Television didn’t just entertain people. It rewired a generation’s understanding of attention, narrative, and what counted as real.

AI is doing the same thing to us now — at speed — and the industry selling it to you has every incentive to make sure you don’t notice.

Are you the one using AI or is it using you.

Medium literacy asks different questions than tool literacy ever could.

Not which prompts work — but what is this doing to my voice when I’m not watching? Where does the medium end and I begin? Am I making a choice here, or has the design of this thing already made it for me?

I’ve decided it’s time to stop handing you pieces of the argument and give you the whole thing.

The#HowNotToUseAI 30-Day Challengeis built on my book —How Not To Use AI: 50 Contrarian Principles for the Imagination Age— and it is the book made liveable, over 30 days.

If you want to build mental toughness, you do75 Hard.
If you want to recover your creative voice, you doThe Artist’s Way.
If you want to understand your habits, you readAtomic Habits.
If you want to understand what AI as a medium is doing to your thinking — and take it back — you do the#HowNotToUseAI Challenge.

In this challenge the goal is not to avoid AI. It’s to study the system and recognise that you always possessed the intelligence AI attempts to approximate — and to build a working relationship with the medium that protects that.

OnDay 1you’ll this diagnostic quiz (quiz.hownottouseai.com) to see where you’re starting from — 16 archetypes, 16 different traps, 16 different ways through the challenge.

ByDay 30you will have writtenyour own Code of Usefor dealing with AI. Your own human-led framework or constitution — in your voice, in the first person, with no hedging — that codifies what AI will touch, what AI will never touch. Everything in the five weeks before it is in service of that document.

Five weeks.One audio or video lesson per week. Daily tasks dropped weekly so you move at your own pace.

Forpaid subscribers, starting end of July — with pre-challenge drops landing before then.

For this cohort,chat is enabled. You won’t be working through this alone — you’ll be in it with other paid subscribers asking the same questions, making the same reckonings.

Subscribe now

If you’re already using AI every day, the question isn’t whether it’s shaping you. It’s whether you’re going to choose that shape on purpose.

One reader put it plainly:“The goal isn’t to avoid AI. The goal is to recognise that you possess the intelligence AI attempts to approximate.”

Pre-challenge drops land before the end of July, for paid subscribers only.

Upgrade to paid to get all challenge content and pre-drops.

Subscribe now

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One week.

That is exactly what’s left before the #HowNotToUseAI 30-Day Challenge opens on July 26th.

Whether you are already on the roster or still sitting on the fence, there is only one thing you need to do before we meet:

Go take the #HowNotToUseAI Diagnostic atquiz.hownottouseai.com

If you read theDon’t Start With Silicon, Start with Soulchapter ofmy book, orlast week’s articleof the same name you already know the unshakeable law underneath this entire challenge: You do not open the interface before you have asked yourself what you already know. That is the spine of the next thirty days—coming back to the intelligence that was already yours before you touched the machine.

The first step to mastering this new medium is mastering yourself.

I built this diagnostic as an unforgiving audit to help you understand exactly who you are, andhowyou are, when faced with the algorithm. It maps you against sixteen archetypes to frame and guide exactly how you will move through this challenge, ensuring the next month is a customized experience rather than a generic tutorial.

If you are already a paid subscriber:Please take it before the meet and greet. Save your exact result. You will take this audit again on Day 25, and the distance between those two readings is the actual measure of what we accomplish over these thirty days.
If you haven’t upgraded yet:Take the diagnostic anyway. Find out exactly which strategy you are running. If you realize it’s time to change how you operate, you have exactly seven days to upgrade your subscription and join us inside.
How Not To Use AI is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

THE KICKOFF: DAY 1

Sunday, July 26th | 5pm UK / 12pm ET / 9am PT (Substack Live)

On this day and at this time, I will be going live on Substack.

Day 1 is not a lecture, and there is no homework. It is a proper meet and greet.

Before we get into the trenches, I want to introduce myself properly and tell you the story of why I actually built this challenge. I am going to open everything up, walk you through the curriculum, and show you exactly what we are going to learn over the next 30 days.

Then, we open the floor. Bring your questions, your concerns, and whatever is on your mind.

Expect a proper chin wag, not a stiff corporate webinar. We are building a community here, and that starts with getting to know who is in the room.

The real work starts Monday the 27th, when the first week’s content and exercises land in your inbox.

Establish your baseline today. I will see you Sunday.

— Abi

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Authors Announce 'How Not to Use AI' Challenge

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