“I can instantly feel that if I’m bored, or I’ve heard that before, but I can feel what it feels like to be like, oh my god… that’s the nice part, I feel like. Even if I don’t know what the idea is, just knowing that something’s being sparked there is enough to continue deepening it with AI.” — Michael Simmons
“I’ve got a strong feeling, there’s likely to be something important here. That is exactly the space that I was thinking in.” — Don Back
“You have the feeling coming up that something’s coming through you, and journaling and talking through it.” — Michael Simmons
Session context: 2026-03-19_Mastermind — Michael Simmons (guest, thought leadership and knowledge entrepreneur) was describing his exploration process when working with AI on complex problems. The group had been discussing how to identify non-obvious ideas and how to know when you’ve hit something worth pursuing. Michael made the felt-sense observation twice — once about navigation, once about continuation — and Don Back independently named the same mechanism from a different angle.
Core Idea
When exploring with AI, you have two available navigation systems. The first is cognitive: you evaluate what AI produces against criteria you’ve already articulated — does this fit my positioning, is this well-reasoned, does it answer the question? The second is somatic: you notice what your body does in response to an idea before you’ve thought it through — do you feel bored, or does something spark?
Michael Simmons’ contribution is establishing the somatic system as a precision instrument, not just a mood. When he encounters an AI-produced idea that he’s heard before or that doesn’t matter, he feels bored. That boredom is information: wrong direction, go elsewhere. When something genuinely novel surfaces — even if he can’t yet articulate why it matters — he has an unmistakable physical reaction he calls the “oh my god” feeling. That feeling is sufficient signal to continue deepening the thread, without needing to have a cognitive justification for why it’s important.
The key phrase is: “Even if I don’t know what the idea is, just knowing that something’s being sparked there is enough to continue deepening it with AI.” This inverts the typical relationship between understanding and action. Usually people wait until they understand something to pursue it. Michael uses the felt response to pursuit — and understanding often follows. The felt sense is upstream of cognition.
Don Back independently names the same mechanism as intuition: “I’ve got a strong feeling, there’s likely to be something important here.” He is describing the same waiting, attentional mode — not evaluating rationally, but monitoring for the emotional trigger that signals something worth staying with.
Why this matters for AI-assisted exploration specifically: Standard AI prompting is outcome-directed: you have a question, AI produces an answer, you evaluate the answer. This works well when you know what you’re looking for. It works poorly when the goal is to find ideas you couldn’t have specified in advance — non-obvious ideas, paradigm-crossing insights, underrepresented angles. In exploration mode, the felt response is often faster and more accurate than cognitive evaluation at flagging when you’ve hit something genuinely novel. Boredom tells you “the AI is telling you things you already know.” The spark tells you “there’s something here that your existing framework can’t yet accommodate.”
Michael’s practical application: He uses this in his research process when studying ideas. He reads or listens, and he monitors for the emotional reaction — not for comprehension, but for the signal. When something produces the “oh my god” feeling even fleetingly, he stops and deepens. He doesn’t need to understand yet. The felt-sense is the prior that tells him where to invest cognitive effort.
Practical Application
The Felt-Navigation Protocol — use during exploratory AI sessions when the goal is discovery rather than decision:
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Separate exploration sessions from decision sessions. In a decision session, you evaluate options against existing criteria — the cognitive system is appropriate. In an exploration session, you are looking for ideas your criteria don’t yet include. Use the felt-sense system here.
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Monitor for the two signals:
- Boredom signal: A flatness or “I’ve seen this” feeling. This means AI is in its comfort zone and you are in yours. Prompt to go further out: “What’s a perspective that hasn’t been represented yet? What would a genuinely contrarian view look like?”
- Spark signal: The “oh my god” feeling, or even a faint “hm, that’s interesting.” Even if you can’t articulate why. Prompt to deepen: “Stay here. Tell me more about this. What are the implications? What does this connect to?”
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Give yourself permission not to know why yet. The instinct when something sparks is often to immediately evaluate whether it’s logically valid. Resist this. First deepen; evaluate later. You can always decide it was a dead end, but premature evaluation kills many threads that would have been valuable.
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Trust boredom as signal, not as judgment. If you’re bored by an AI answer, don’t conclude the topic is boring. Conclude you’re in the modal zone — where AI gives its most common answers, which you’ve already absorbed. The interesting territory is off-modal.
Coaching application: When a client seems stuck or unmotivated in an AI exploration session, ask: “Is there a moment in the last 20 minutes where you felt a spark — even if you dismissed it? Even if you went ‘hm’ and moved on?” That dismissed flicker is often where the real idea was. Go back to it.
Related Insights
- Insight - Latent Terrain Cartography — Navigating Off-Modal AI Responses to Find Non-Obvious Ideas — the complementary technical approach: cartography provides the prompting technique to escape the modal zone; this insight provides the internal navigation instrument (felt-sense) for recognizing when you’ve exited it
- Insight - AI as Mirror — When AI Reflects You Back to Yourself — AI surfaces patterns you couldn’t see; this insight is about using your own emotional response as the detector for when AI has surfaced something worth seeing
- Insight - Paradigm Collision Is the Engine of Non-Obvious Insight — the spark signal is often the somatic marker of a paradigm collision: two frames meeting in a way that doesn’t fit cleanly into either, which registers as “something’s here” before the cognitive system can explain what
Evolution Across Sessions
Michael Simmons (guest, March 19 session) provided both the primary formulation and the practical example. Don Back independently confirmed the same mechanism from his own practice. Two practitioners independently naming the same internal signal in the same session gives high extraction confidence. Extracted via Mode B human-dimension-audit retroactive pass, 2026-06-16.