7 practical ideas to resistance train your mind in the age of synthetic intelligence, even if you think you don't need it (you do).

We went from building temples to going to the gym. The same shift is now happening with our minds.

Jun 26, 2025

When ancient builders stopped lifting stones, something strange happened.

Their bodies began to atrophy, and their strength, once a side effect of necessity, became a liability in the new urban world.

So, they invented kettlebells. Those cannonballs with handles (a simulated burden) were designed to replace real ones.

We, more or less quickly, went from building temples to doing reps.

The same shift is now happening with our minds.

For centuries, knowledge work was a kind of mental manual labor: the merchant in Venice used to calculate margins by hand, the lawyer in Alexandria used to remember entire legal codes, the strategist in London wrote arguments longhand, without using CTRL+F.

Intelligence was not really measured by what you knew, but how hard you had struggled to make sense of it.

A merchant in Venice busy doing mental math

Then came the machines.

First they handled memory. Then calculation. Then suggestions. Now, they complete our sentences!

We are, for the first time in history, outsourcing not merely effort, but cognition itself.

I see a danger, but, unlike what many point out, is not that AI will replace our thinking: is that we will stop thinking before it even gets the chance.

Much of what passed for “thinking” in corporate life was already an illusion anyway: you skimmed a report, you reused an old slide, you Googled the industry acronym, you wrote the update and called it insight.

But it wasn’t.

It was compression, approximation, curation, and it worked (!) because nobody had time to look too closely.

Now, machines are far better than humans at this surface game.

They can summarize faster, they pull trends better, they reword strategy memos in perfect, dull prose, and even write project recaps that sound eerily like your last one.

And so begins the trap.

You stop struggling. You let the machine draft the first thought.

Just like a bodybuilder who only ever trains with bands, your mind becomes aesthetically pumped… but not functionally valuable.

You become a little bit more useless day after day.

In the AI age, human struggle is the advantage

Let me be clear: we do not need more information. If you have not realized it yet, we are literally drowning in it.

What we need is more struggle. What we should target is more weight, more tension in the mental muscle.

We need to resistance train our minds.

In the Renaissance, a well-educated person was expected to master language, logic, arithmetic, and philosophy. All that effort did not make them more productive, but taught them how to think. It gave them judgment, and a forma mentis that could prepare them to learn more, and more disparate, subjects.

That is what we are losing.

Judgment is slow. In modern lingo, judgement is analog.

It is painful. It does not scale. But it is what separates the strategic consultant (please allow the improper use of the term) from the slide-maker, the leader from the technician, the sovereign from the outsourced.

We need a new kind of mental gymnasium: a place not to consume, but to resist, a system to feel the burn of a difficult book, hold an argument in your head longer than a tweet, hear the tension in a child’s question and formulate your own answer (unprompted.)

Somewhere to write something so hard it hurts. Then write it again.

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We are now entering the Age of Mental Kettlebells.

You will no longer get rewarded for knowing, because, well, machines know more.

You will no longer be paid for speed, because, well, machines are faster.

What remains is how you think: the structure, the discipline, the weight you are willing to lift without help.

If you are serious about remaining irreplaceable (in consulting, in leadership, in life, wherever it matters to you) here is your training regimen.

This is not a list you read and forget about, it is not a nonsensical productivity hack.

I see it as a new way of being.

1. Write long-form. Without bullshit.

The ancient Greeks had rhetoric. The Enlightenment had letters. We have LinkedIn blurbs and Microsoft Teams updates.

Where did we go so wrong!!

Writing, as Steven Pressfield poses it in his The War of Art, is an act of resistance. It forces clarity. It exposes lazy thought. It is the intellectual equivalent of squatting with bad form in front of a mirror.

If you want to think clearly, you must write clearly.

Do not write to “build a brand.” Write to build a brain.

It could be newsletters, essays, journal entries, arguments, confessions, etc. Do strenuous writing.

If you can write 2,000 words with structure, insight, and tone, you are already in the top 1% of thinkers in your cohort.

2. Read philosophy like you would lift weights.

Scrolls are easy. Stoicism is not.

When you read a passage from Marcus Aurelius or Montaigne, you are reading to lift.

Try this: pick one passage, and read it in silence. Then read it again aloud. Then once more with your eyes closed.

The first time you consume it. The second time you confront it. The third time you internalize it and understand it.

Try to interpret what you are reading rather than highlighting it with a yellow marker. Chew on the words, and let your mind wander for a second. You can always go back to that line…

3. Protect the attention span at all costs.

Most people now treat attention like a gigabyte of data. They waste it on things that do not matter and then wonder why they cannot think straight.

Fight back.

One book per month. One uninterrupted hour per day. No half-podcast while checking email. No split-screen thinking. Don’t half-ass things.

When your brain wants to switch, hold, and sit in that boredom.

It is like lifting a heavier weight than you are used to: your form will break at first, but then you will adapt, and muscles will start growing.

4. Teach something you do not fully understand.

There is a Roman saying: docendo discimus (“by teaching, we learn”).

Pick an idea, and try to explain it to a 10-year-old, or your partner that is not familiar with that idea, or a friend over coffee.

Linger in your brain, their confusion, and the tension in between, and notice if you squirm. If you do, that is good! That is your blind spot getting exposed.

Keep doing it. Soon, you will understand that idea more precisely, and you will finally own it.

5. Use AI as a sparring partner, not a crutch.

When you ask ChatGPT something, do not just accept the first answer like gospel, because it is most likely bullshit.

Think: what do I expect it to say? What would I write, before it completes my thought?

AI should be the dumbbell. Not the lift. Use it to test your judgment, and perhaps sharpen your counterarguments, or stress-test your frameworks.

If you let it do your thinking, your thinking dies! Instead, challenge your thinking so it can strengthen.

6. Choose a friction-filled project and finish it.

Build something you do not yet know how to build. Some ideas:

Write a book;
Start a business;
Design a course.

You should do one of those not to impress anyone or to make money, but to finish something difficult.

This is the Ironman of modern thinking: not the sprint of ideation (because ideas are cheap and almost useless), but the marathon of execution.

Nobody ever became wise by taking notes. You become wise by finishing the damn thing.

That is part of the reason I wrote Beyond Slides. The book is not about tools or tactics or “hacks” (the dreaded word!), but about thinking. If you are serious about staying sharp (and irreplaceable) in the age of synthetic intelligence, I hope you will consider grabbing your copy today.

7. Meditate like a philosopher, not an app user.

I had not included this activity in my original list, but when

Ankur Gupta

mentioned it to me, I went, Yes, of course!

Meditate for thirty minutes alone. You don’t need devices, or music, or even a goal. Let your thoughts pass like clouds, and observe them without trying to catch them.

(Last year, I bought a Shakti mat, and it has been brilliant. It is an acupressure mat full of spikes, which makes your back very red after you lie down on it for 30 minutes!)

This is not me after a Shakti mat session

You are not trying to “relax.”

You are simply observing your own mind without distraction.

I actually believe this is a solid example of mental sovereignty.

The return of the sovereign mind

The tragedy is not that AI will take all our jobs (that is a ludicrous take spread around by people who literally make money by convincing other people the world is collapsing tomorrow).

The tragedy instead is that we will hand our jobs over, one shortcut at a time.

In this new era, thinking will become a rare, respected, and rewarded craft again.

The best clients will not pay you for your slides, but rather for your ability to judge, to simplify, articulate, stay sharp when others go soft, and say something real when others ask a machine.

We need fewer but heavier prompts (thanks

Anu Atluru

for the metaphor).

The world will be run by those who still know how to struggle with ideas, and so I want to be one of them.

Ciao, until next time! 👋

🚨 A few words from Beyond Slides’ advanced readers

The best testimonials are always from others, so let me share some of the comments I received from early readers:

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Think of Beyond Slides as Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential but about the opaque industry that is management consulting. Maurizio makes the industry and its characters come alive, packing a punch both in the stories and practical exercises for consultants wanna-bes. You will come away utterly convinced you have the skills and confidence to be a consultant!

Maurizio has captured timeless insights from his years of on-the-ground experience in Beyond Slides. This book is an excellent reference for young consultants, who often lack direction and guidance in the fast-paced, high-performance world of consulting. It also serves as a reminder and a reflection for senior executives. What I enjoyed most was the consistent embedding of philosophy, alongside the unmistakable Ancient Roman and Italian flavour you would expect from the author. Highly recommended.

Beyond Slides is packed with experiences and stories that lead to actions that you can take to build your career. I found myself laughing at the stories and taking notes to use the strategies that I learned in each chapter. Much of success comes with experience over a long timeframe. Beyond Slides shortcuts this by letting you ride along as the author jumps into one situation after another, putting his skills and his BS detector to good use. Highly recommended for anyone in business!

Cuna’s book peels back the covers of a life as a management consultant that has you nodding profusely, taking notes, and chuckling out loud. Part practical guidebook, part philosophical essay, part autobiography: Cuna explains what’s really going on behind the bland job descriptions, fancy office buildings and endless PowerPoint decks. From his writing, you can smell the mood in the boardroom, the tension between team members, the pithy Partner appraisals, and the social decompressing after “pulling an all-nighter.” A must-read for anyone who works for/with medium and large consulting organisations, senior leaders at corporations in any country, and for anyone wanting to get tips and tricks on how to influence and grow your career, with humour and integrity. Join Cuna on a professional cultural tour around the world from Puglia to London, Iowa to Hong Kong, and Iceland to Sydney, with plenty of pizza.