Why I Walk 6 Miles a Day and Build AI at Night

On paper, my daily routine doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Walk 6 miles a day.
Carry estate responsibilities.
Raise two teenagers.
Then sit down at night and work on:

RFS (field‑based memory),
NME (trait structuring),
MAIA (intent spine),
AIDF, LQL, LEF, CAIO, AIOS, AIVA, TAI.

It’s a weird mix:

a very physical, repetitive habit,
wrapped around deep math and architecture work.

From the outside, it can look like:

“discipline,”
“grit,”
“hustle.”

That’s not how it feels.

For me, the 6‑mile walks and the late‑night AI work are the same thing:

They’re both parts of the system that keeps me from collapsing under the load I’ve chosen.

This is why I structure my days that way — and what I’ve learned from living in that rhythm.

The Version of Me That Tried to Think Without Moving

There was a stretch where I was:

heavier,
sleeping badly,
sitting most of the day,
carrying a lot in my head.

I was:

transitioning out of NTT/AWS,
grinding on t‑emgee,
handling estate tasks,
trying to understand why AI systems kept failing in the same structural ways.

My default mode was:

stare at screens,
jump between calls,
scribble notes late at night,
then crash.

I told myself I just needed:

more focus,
more time,
more willpower.

What I actually needed was a different substrate.

My thinking felt:

noisy,
jittery,
hard to sustain.

I could see patterns but couldn’t hold them long enough to lock them in:

the RFS field model,
the MAIA intent structure,
the AIDF invariants.

It wasn’t a lack of intelligence.
It was a lack of capacity — physical and cognitive.

The First Walk That Didn’t Feel Optional

I didn’t start walking 6 miles a day because of a fitness plan.
I started because I was angry.

Angry that:

I felt slower than I knew I was,
my body wasn’t keeping up with what my mind wanted to do,
chaos in my life was eating the margin I needed to think.

So I did the simplest thing I could commit to:

put on shoes,
go outside,
walk.

At first, it was:

short loops,
no metrics,
just movement.

Then it became:

daily,
non‑negotiable,
longer.

Somewhere around the point where 6 miles felt normal, I noticed something:

the noise in my head dropped,
the structure in my thinking sharpened,
ideas about RFS, MAIA, AIDF, and TAI clicked faster and cleaner.

The walk wasn’t an “extra.”
It was the thing that made the deep work possible.

Why the Walk and the Architecture Are the Same System

It’s easy to treat:

“health habits,”
and “work,”

as separate domains.
They’re not.

When I walk, I’m not:

checking a box,
chasing a step count.

I’m:

lowering baseline stress,
giving my nervous system a repeatable pattern,
creating the conditions where my brain can hold large structures without overheating.

Architecturally, it looks like:

adding bandwidth to the bus,
increasing buffer size,
improving cooling on the hardware.

That matters because the work I’m doing at night isn’t:

rote,
linear,
shallow.

It’s:

multi‑layered (biology/chemistry/physics in AIOS/LQL/LEF),
deeply structural (AIDF, MAIA, RFS, CAIO),
emotionally loaded (what this means for my kids’ future, for systems people depend on).

Without the physical structure:

I can still write,
still code,
still think,

but I can’t sustain it — and the quality drops.

The walk is the upstream fix.
The AI work is the downstream expression.

Why Night Is When the Architecture Lands

People sometimes ask why I work on AI at night.

Simple answer:

that’s when the house is quiet.

How This Rhythm Protects the Rest of My Life

This isn’t just about squeezing more work in.

If walking and late‑night AI were just productivity hacks, I’d have bailed by now.

The real value is that this rhythm:

makes me less volatile at home,
makes me more honest about my capacity,
keeps me from trying to think my way out of problems that need structure.

When I skip walks:

I’m more reactive,
I have less patience,
I reach for mental brute force instead of design.

When I don’t protect the night work:

the architecture progress stalls,
frustration builds in the background,
I get resentful at the rest of my life for “getting in the way.”

The 6‑mile walk and the late‑night build are guardrails:

one protects my brain,
the other protects my sense of purpose.

Both protect my kids from a version of me that’s running too hot.

Where This Leaves Us

I don’t think everyone needs to walk 6 miles or build AI at night.

What I do believe is:

if your work demands deep structure,
and your life carries real load,

you can’t leave your nervous system out of the architecture.

For me, the walking and the building aren’t two separate stories.
They’re one system:

structure for my body,
structure for my mind,
structure for the systems I’m trying to put into the world.

The alternative is:

think harder,
sleep less,
hope it all holds.

I already know how that story ends.
I’ve watched that system fail in other people — and in my own earlier runs.

So I walk.
And then I build.

Not because it’s impressive.
Because it’s the only way I know to carry the weight I’ve chosen without breaking.

Key Takeaways

The 6‑mile walks are not a side quest; they’re upstream infrastructure for deep architecture work.
Earlier, trying to think my way through everything without physical structure led to noisy, fragile cognition.
The AI stack I’m building (RFS, NME, MAIA, AIDF, LQL, LEF, CAIO, AIOS, AIVA, TAI) requires sustained, high‑bandwidth thinking that my body has to be able to support.
Night work isn’t romantic; it’s when the system (family, logistics, internal noise) is quiet enough to hold the whole architecture in mind.
This rhythm makes me less volatile and more present at home, protecting the people who live inside the system I’m building.
Treating health and work as one integrated system — instead of separate checklists — is what keeps the whole thing from collapsing.

Why My Brain Works Better at 195 lbs Than at 210
The Role of Physical Hardship in Mental Clarity
Protecting Stability — At Home and In Systems
Rebuilding Moments: The Periods That Made Me Dangerous
What “Math-First” Actually Means As a Personal Identity