Keeping the image alive

Persistence of Vision...

Persistence of vision describes how we can keep an image alive, long after it’s first appearance is gone.

This is the principle behind infinity mirrors and other visual magic tricks like flipbooks and light art photography.

In life, we need persistence of vision in whatever goal we seek to achieve.

It doesn’t matter if this is about growing your career, losing 5 pounds, quitting cigarettes or becoming a scratch golfer.

The reason why: We are not that different than AI models, which in the year 2026 have horrible memory deficits.

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Every time you ask an AI chat something, it has to be fed as much information as possible to give you a plausible answer (what we call the prompt).

You don’t see it as a user on the front-end, but everything you ask for has extra info attached to it to help aid accuracy.

You thought your prompt was instructions on how to cook a hamburger, but behind the scenes, it’s going to find past conversations that you’ve had about cooking and if you have a barbecue, so that it can give you a solid answer on the reply.

This is what the vague term “context window” refers to, and that is why when you pick an AI provider and stick with it, you will continually get better answers in shorter amounts of time.

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When we wake up in the morning, a lot of our context is wiped out.

I used to think it was a form of amnesia but it’s not - your brain has gone through a healing and regeneration process overnight.

This can be a wonderful thing if you are going through a difficult time. You’re not going to wake up in the same state you were in the day before.

Yet the problem with this clean slate is that many people will refill their context window by loading up the news or messages. I do it all the time, it’s an innocent mistake.

This is very dangerous for anyone with goals, because most often, the majority of what you will read in the news or in those messages will reorient your compass in a way that is in the opposite direction to your goals.

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Persistence of vision helps you keep the image of your inspiration alive, long after its first appearance in your mind.

This is why when you have a good idea, you must do whatever you can to write it down or record a voice note about it.

That will give it at least a glimmer of hope that it can resurface again one day as you review old notes.

A good idea will likely return to your mind naturally, most often when you’re in the shower, but don’t trust it to be so punctual.

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That means persistence of vision is a whole way of operating where you take control of your thoughts as early in the day as possible.

You get out of bed when your alarm goes off and start the ritual that most aligns with you and your vision for the future that you are working to create.

You do not start your day looking at the orange man in Florida.

This process might even begin in the evening before you sleep.

You cut off the orange man in Florida at a certain hour and start the process of programming and priming your mind for whatever direction it needs to go in.

Be careful about what you watch or listen to before you go to bed - because your subconscious mind is going to eat and drink those thoughts for however many hours you’re asleep for.

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Wishing you the best of luck this week, whatever vision or goal you are seeking to go after…

Elliott