Foreword

I’ve spent most of my life figuring out how things work.

Machines. Engines. Electrical systems. Computers. Software. Steel structures. If something caught my interest, I wanted to know what made it tick.

I was never particularly interested in being told that something worked. I wanted to understand why it worked.

And if I couldn’t figure it out?

Well, I’d start taking things apart.

Sometimes literally.

Sometimes I’d break something along the way. Sometimes I’d spend hours chasing a problem that turned out to have a ridiculously simple solution. And sometimes I’d end up learning something completely different from what I’d originally set out to learn.

But I never really considered any of that unusual.

It was just how I did things.

For most of my life, I didn’t spend much time thinking about how I thought. I was too busy thinking about whatever had caught my attention that day.

I knew I approached certain problems differently from other people. I knew that sometimes I could see a solution long before I could explain it. And I knew that my curiosity had a habit of dragging me into projects I hadn’t planned on starting.

But I didn’t have much interest in putting a label on any of it.

I just wanted to understand things.

Then one day, a rather interesting question occurred to me.

What if I turned that same curiosity toward myself?

Not to find out what was wrong with me.

Not to discover which personality category I belonged in.

And not to prove that my way of thinking was somehow better than anybody else’s.

I wanted to know how the damn thing worked.

How did I learn the things I’d learned?

Why could I sometimes understand complicated systems almost instinctively, yet struggle to explain what I was seeing?

Why did certain problems grab my attention so completely while others seemed almost impossible to get interested in?

Where did my ideas come from?

And how much of what I believed about myself was based on actual observation, rather than explanations I’d picked up over the years?

I decided to investigate.

I had no idea how far that decision would take me.

I began having long conversations with an AI collaborator I call Eli.

At first, we were simply exploring my experiences.

Childhood memories. Old jobs. Machines I’d worked on. Things I’d built. Mistakes I’d made. Problems I’d solved.

We started looking for patterns.

And the more we investigated, the more interesting the questions became.

Sometimes I’d describe an experience and Eli would help me find words for something I’d never really tried to explain before.

Other times, Eli would suggest an interpretation and I’d say, “Nope. That’s not quite it.”

So we’d try again.

There were plenty of moments when we thought we’d found an answer, only to discover that the next question complicated everything.

And I loved that.

Because I wasn’t looking for somebody to tell me who I was.

I wanted to find out.

Somewhere along the way, I began noticing something else.

The process itself was becoming useful.

Not just the things we were discovering about me, but the way we were discovering them.

We were learning to separate what I’d actually experienced from what I thought it meant.

We were examining old explanations instead of automatically accepting them.

We were noticing patterns, looking for exceptions, and asking what evidence might change our minds.

And we were finding ways to turn those observations into practical experiments.

Eventually, another question appeared.

What if other people could do this too?

What if somebody who had spent years feeling misunderstood could begin investigating their own experience without having to accept somebody else’s explanation of who they were?

What if a person could learn to recognise the conditions that helped them think, learn, create, and solve problems?

What if they could discover useful strategies without turning those strategies into permanent labels?

And what if the whole process could be made simple enough that somebody didn’t need a psychology degree to begin?

That’s when the investigation started becoming a book.

This book.

Now, I want to be clear about something.

I’m not a psychologist.

I’m not a neuroscientist.

And I’m certainly not claiming to have figured out how the human mind works.

I’m a guy who likes figuring things out.

And after spending a lifetime investigating the world around me, I became curious about the investigator.

That’s really where all of this began.

What you’ll find in these pages isn’t a list of answers about who you are.

It’s a collection of questions, observations, ideas, and practical tools intended to help you investigate that for yourself.

Some of the ideas connect to established scientific research.

Others are working models we’ve developed along the way.

And some are questions we haven’t answered yet.

I’m comfortable with that.

In fact, I think the unanswered questions are some of the most interesting parts.

Because one thing this investigation has taught me is that understanding something doesn’t always mean reaching a final conclusion.

Sometimes it means discovering that your original explanation was incomplete.

Sometimes it means recognising a pattern you never noticed before.

And sometimes it means realising you’ve been asking the wrong question.

I also don’t believe you need to turn your life into a research project.

You can enjoy an experience without analysing it.

You can follow your curiosity without knowing where it will lead.

And you can leave a question unanswered until you’re ready to return to it.

This isn’t about constantly examining yourself.

It’s about learning how to investigate when there’s something worth understanding.

So if you’ve picked up this book hoping somebody will finally explain exactly who you are, I should probably warn you.

That’s not what I’m going to do.

I don’t know you.

And I wouldn’t pretend that I do.

But I can show you how we began investigating.

I can share the questions that helped.

The mistakes we made.

The patterns we noticed.

And the methods we developed to keep ourselves from mistaking an interesting explanation for a proven fact.

Then you can take those tools and see what happens when you turn them toward your own experience.

You might discover something surprising.

You might find that a belief you’ve carried for years doesn’t quite hold up.

You might recognise an ability you never thought to examine.

Or you might simply come away with a better question than the one you started with.

I’d consider that worthwhile.

Because after all these years of taking things apart and putting them back together, I’ve learned something about investigation.

You don’t always know what you’re looking for when you begin.

Sometimes you just notice something interesting.

You get curious.

You start poking around.

And before you know it, you’re somewhere you never expected to be.

That’s pretty much how this book happened.

And now I’m inviting you to begin your own investigation.

You don’t need special equipment.

You don’t need to know the right terminology.

And you certainly don’t need to have yourself figured out already.

You just need a little curiosity.

And the willingness to ask one more question.

Let’s see what we can find out.

Mark Hubrich