SPIRIT of Self
While I was tinkering with crafting AGENTS.md earlier this year, I wondered if I could distill my experiences into a set of guidelines - so a loose abstraction of how I think, what I learn, and which to do. When I figured out that the 'read' part of my 'tl;dr' can be a contributory factor to one of the six terms below, it was the further impetus for me to properly write them down for posterity. 😅
At the time of writing, I think I can roughly cut them into four different parts, so that I'll have enough content to post for a while more. Let's see.
SPIRIT
Substrate
- The foundation
Posterity
- Representing the legacy; the foundation of the next; what is left encoded in memory, culture, manifestations
Impact
- The effect of formalizing decisions, actions; cascading of influences
Rites
- Patterning the behaviors of a lived experience
Intuition
- The spark that drives creativity and insight
Tenacity
- Grit that pushes through uncertainty, being resilient through sustained efforts
Looping
While it's a nice mnemonic when read as SPIRIT, the correct structure when bucketing them into the three broad categories - inheritance, agency, and legacy - becomes as such:
INHERITANCE AGENCY LEGACY
(consumed) (actioned) (created)
+-----------+ +-----------+ +-----------+
| Substrate |-->--| Intuition |-->--| Impact |
| Rites | | Tenacity | | Posterity |
+-----------+ +-----------+ +-----------+
^ |
+-- Legacy folds into inheritance --+
Now, SRITIP doesn't read as nice as SPIRIT... this is also kind of why between the two 'I's, Impact is positioned closer to Posterity, and Intuition next to Tenacity.
Inheritance ('think')
From our substrate, we externalize and codify behaviors over time forming into traditions, or simply rites. An inner layer of substrate exists too - which receives the label intuition, adjacent to one's wisdom (and craftsmanship).
Rites, often implying tenacious efforts, eventually manifests as a body's impact on their environment - be it a person, or an organization.
Agency ('learn' and 'do')
Intuition has been compared to as internal substrate - a higher level than gut instincts as it combines with learning - and at times insights are also described as intuitive; unexpected light-bulb-moments, when hypotheses and empirical results concur. The latter of which nicely ties into creating impact as well.
Tenacity describes the 'doing' - and not just a one-hit wonder. Tangentially, craftsmanship arose through rites done tenaciously, giving us both the impact and the posterity.
Legacy ('read')
Naturally, our rites, intuition, and that incessant tenacity leads us to delivering impact on our environment. These can be tangible (new products) and intangible (behaviors, workflows). Changes to our behaviors or workflows continue to reshape the rites we follow, and the act of recording these leads us to posterity.
Posterity may be the final chapter in leaving one's legacy, but having owned such records is also what serves as the substrate for the next - a wiser self, a newer generation, to read from.
Folding
An earlier version of today's entry cuts into discussing how these applications on oneself folds into an agentic-conscious team but looking at my ramblings so far and the next chunk of... thoughts, I'll leave that for the next part. 😉
To recap, instead of applying the usual mechanics in AGENTS.md:
- The agent's role
- Defining the tools
- Project's background
- Idiomatic practices
- Boundaries
I decided to conjure an alternate take predicated on a person's endeavor, as if we're describing for both humans and AI agents alike, giving us the current mnemonic:
- The role (substrate, and to some extent intuition)
- Defining the tools (rites)
- Project's background (posterity)
- Idiomatic practices (rites and intuition)
- Boundaries (rites, tenacity, impact)
AI disclaimer: Have bounced ideas off, so while text is still my own, the way I arrived at some of them may contain minor influences from such interactions.