We tested 3 ways to distill information (The CODE Challenge)

Previously on the code challenge.

That's the O in code. Organize.

Organize this a little bit better. I'm

going to add their LinkedIn profile.

Boom.

I don't need more content. I don't need more information. I just need to surface

more information. I just need to surface what I already have and make all of that accessible.

Now, the real question, what do you keep and what do you let go?

And that's already the insight that my AI agents is giving me. I'm going to go one by one um on the applicable intermediate packets to start distilling

all of my notes before we outreach to locations.

A beautiful rainy day um happening right now. So, we'll see how much we get done

now. So, we'll see how much we get done today and where our where my work will take me.

Distill is the phase where most projects die. It requires you to eliminate excess

die. It requires you to eliminate excess information and make definitive judgments. Karolina uses an analytical

judgments. Karolina uses an analytical process to bridge the gap between years.

Hello. Hello. I'm back. Now it's time to distill the materials that I have been collecting. I have some coffee with me

collecting. I have some coffee with me now so it gets more doable just to catch up with what we did last session. I run

an agent on my second brain. It

processed everything and then I came up with all the materials in my second brain that I could use for this research. And one of them was talking

research. And one of them was talking about the intelligent automations. It

already gives me what the insights are.

AI agents are resilient because they reason through exceptions.

2500 miles west. Ethan was deciding what to throw away. He distills with pure pragmatism.

So, let's start here with our consulting calls. Let's go to the first one here.

calls. Let's go to the first one here.

Uh, this is this is with a guy who has 21 Pokémon trading card machines in rural Wisconsin. He gave me product mix

rural Wisconsin. He gave me product mix recommendations. My key takeaways are

recommendations. My key takeaways are newer Japanese cards. Let's say like Mega Dream, Mega Inferno, and 151.

English sets going to be 151, Mega Evolution. What else? 70% English, 30%

Evolution. What else? 70% English, 30% Japanese. That is the split. So for US

Japanese. That is the split. So for US cards, I'm going to say Facebook groups and Facebook Marketplace. for Japanese

cards. Buy via Pokei Unlimited and then I can hyperlink that.

So, these are my key takeaways. I'm

going to highlight this nice green color. That's progressive summarization.

color. That's progressive summarization.

I just summarized, you know, two and a half, three pages of notes in a quarter of a page right there. This is all the information I need to take action. I'm

going to go to the next consulting call here.

For Eduardo, distillation is a psychological battle. Filtering his

psychological battle. Filtering his notes requires him to fight his inner critic to isolate the emotional truth of his manuscript.

There's a couple things that we have done um that I've done since my last uh recording. I went through and just

recording. I went through and just worked on distilling information on my own uh with some of the feedback that I was getting from Grog from some of the notes I've taken and and little by

little I'm integrating that. I'm going

to do one more kind of broad stroke of trying to integrate the information. So,

first thing that I want to do, let's go ahead and make sure all of our feedback is where it needs to be. I'm hoping my process allows me to Yeah, just to see if there's anything I'm missing, any pieces. Yeah, there might be some

pieces. Yeah, there might be some redundancy. It's okay. So, let's just

redundancy. It's okay. So, let's just make sure I picked up some of the main points and I'm actively integrating it or and I think that's the next step.

I'll make sure I picked up all the points. Then I'm going to make sure

points. Then I'm going to make sure those points are are integrated or reflected inside of my outline where things land where they need to be. I am

really going to focus on just my highlights because I've already done the distilling, just my highlights and my bolds.

This is a section where I went out and reviewed onestar reviews. Looked at what people liked or disliked about the books. I just read through it. Um, noted

books. I just read through it. Um, noted

what resonated to me. Privilege,

blindness oversimplification things to be aware and careful about. I'll just I'll just bring in this. This thing might not go

anywhere, and that's okay. I just want to do this because it's a bucket list that I want to do and I think is important for me.

Meanwhile, Carolina checks what her agent has found in her second brain. She

connects a dormant 2022 research note directly to her upcoming presentation.

So, go going back to notion. It is

easier to see. This is the full material. I'm going to distill it. It's

material. I'm going to distill it. It's

already a little bit distilled, but I'm going to distill it more. This is

already a highlight from the full book.

I just saved the ideas that caught my attention. This idea right here. I am

attention. This idea right here. I am

going to highlight it so I can get back to it later. And then I came back to another point right here. It's talking

about the low code and no code applications like a maker all of those. And this is something that I want to show there. It's the back then

versus what we have. Now, this is another one. Yeah, this is also an idea

another one. Yeah, this is also an idea that I want to explore. We have that one here and then we have this one here that

I saw that I did a lot about this. Okay,

value creation might be one point that I want to explore. For example, for session one, I know already what I want to talk about. I already laid out the

titles here, the outline of everything.

So now I'm going to write down each one of the text. I don't go into much detail detail because this is going to be a live workshop. I just need to have the

live workshop. I just need to have the main points and the slides, but that takes a lot of time and I'm not going to show this on video. My next step is

going to be going each one of those and then going through all of my material and start writing. Just start jotting

notes on each one of those points and I'll try to hunt for gems of highlights that I might have here. As I'm doing

this, I will develop a little more those topics and those topics are going to become the slides for the presentation.

Carolina is on the finish line with distillation. Ethan is not too far

distillation. Ethan is not too far behind.

Okay, lovely. So, that was a great progressive summarization session as well. One final one. I did one more call

well. One final one. I did one more call with Joe, so let's knock this one out.

Here are some pricing strategies we already discussed.

Ooh, Tik Tok sourcing. Interesting.

Those are the biggest ones really. I got

90 95% of the information I needed through my consulting calls. Now, with

this information, I can start sourcing locations. Those

were kind of like the secret tips that I had to run with. Ethan had narrowed two weeks of research into one page. Eduardo

was still organizing. He was trapped by the Malcolm Gladwell illusion. An

intimidating internal voice demanding he'd be a master of the craft before typing a single sentence. I've come to the realization especially in external

expressive work um you know we work in a we live in a world of influencers right all right and content creators and the big the biggest currency for movement

there is attention all right we did it all right we got through all of the all the content for yeah what we're what we're what the

research is telling me now I want to just spend some time bringing all the things I'm learning, all the things I've distilled here into the outline. And so

what I'll do here is as I as I read, I'll just see where it fits and I'll just drag things over if it makes sense.

Right. Oh, you know what would be interesting before I do this? I think

what I want to do is I want to get back to, you know, just kind of creating what's the main problem here. What's the

solution? You know what? I'm going hold off on that. Let me just bring the research over uh and then I'll let all the information inside of each one kind of build up uh my problem, the solution

that I'm I'm trying to bring.

All right, let's go. So, these are all notes to myself as I'm writing this. So,

maybe I'll uh it's important that I don't anchor these inside of one activity. Serve the giver surface how

activity. Serve the giver surface how dysfunction becomes a norm. That is all we know and it's all that we do. So,

here's what we're going to do. Let's go

ahead and highlight all this stuff at the top because honestly, I'm going cut that and I'm just bringing it all over here because it all still is a part of this, right? Things to be aware of,

this, right? Things to be aware of, things to be careful for. I'm I'm kind of speaking to how I want to structure and build this book is helping me in the writing and editing process that I'll get to. Okay.

get to. Okay.

Meanwhile, Karolina was sharpening her draft using AI.

I already came up with an outline for each one of the four sessions. And what

I want to do today is with the end in mind, I'm going to come back and I'm going to use AI to challenge me. Here I

just have the outline for this workshop.

I want you to take a look at this outline and create some questions that will challenge my thinking against all of the materials that I have been

collecting for this workshop. Then ask

me those questions so you can play the devil advocate and help me thinking through this. I'm going to ask them as

through this. I'm going to ask them as if I am an skeptical FPNA leader in the room. I love this. Two weeks after the

room. I love this. Two weeks after the workshop, what observable behavior changed for a participant? specifically

what would they now do differently on a real close forecast cycle that they didn't do before

okay so let me answer those okay so I think the decision usefulness I will standardize option one for

session one I think it's clean and more actionable now for the second one AI as a thinking partner

Now I have very little space to answer the last one. Oh god, I really wish I could read this better. I cannot see. It

just doesn't let me. I hate the way it's set up on here on notions. There's no

way to make it bigger. This AI, as you guys can see, is not the best to work with with this little box right here. It

should be a bigger box, but that's what I have right now. I don't want to be switching from one to another.

Oh, I got it.

I got it. So now I can make it bigger.

Okay, it's good that you guys see the the problems. It's nothing as rehearsed.

Devils advocate. If you don't teach a loop, participants will use AI like a text generator and your decision usefulness will degrade into generic

advice.

2500 miles away. Ethan prepared for pitching.

I spent 11 hours designing the brochures I'm going to use when I pitch locations.

Oh, yeah.

Monter.

So, I just picked up the flyers. I got

60 of them. They're actually trifold brochures. Check this out.

brochures. Check this out.

Check these puppies out. They look so good. Look at this silk heavy 100 lb

good. Look at this silk heavy 100 lb material.

Pokemon vending machines for business notel. This is in Los Angeles. Look at

notel. This is in Los Angeles. Look at

that flyer.

So nice and clean.

And then since it's a trifold has front and back, six sides. Business are going to freaking love this.

By the end of the week, Karolina had four outlines. Ethan had a pitching

four outlines. Ethan had a pitching strategy. Eduardo had three weeks of

strategy. Eduardo had three weeks of organizing.

All right. Well, let's uh let's jump back in. Uh it's time to start putting

back in. Uh it's time to start putting my thoughts together. And I would be lying if I if I didn't say that. Um this

isn't scary. I I I hate this part because this is where things get insecure. A couple things. I

have finished. I finished organizing. I

brought all of my blogs and newsletters in and and uh I've had the link and I've kind of sub, you know, put in a quick summary of what this is about. And then

I went over here and I tagged all of those items to to what's uh each chapter, right? Each section that I uh

chapter, right? Each section that I uh drafted before. Okay. Yeah. I think I

drafted before. Okay. Yeah. I think I think what I want to do here is just I I want to bring this whole section in to that new document. I'm just do it one at a time just to I think from here what I

want to do is just kind of get my mind wrapped around what is here and I wanted to see you know just how to organize it.

His meticulous organization was secretly functioning as an avoidance tactic. He

used the process of collecting quotes and categorizing tags to hide from the vulnerability of shipping an imperfect draft is is me not being confident. Me saying,

"Well, that's dumb. I shouldn't go that way. I shouldn't talk this way. This

way. I shouldn't talk this way. This

group of people are going to hate it if I come out with this perspective."

Shrinking is kind of diminishing who I am. diminishing my current presence, my

am. diminishing my current presence, my space in order to kind of bow to somebody else's experience or

preferences. Um, and expanding is really

preferences. Um, and expanding is really it's me taking risk. It's me saying, "Hey, I know this doesn't feel good right now.

I'm going to put it down anyways." I and the thing I know about myself is I love being in the throws of developing systems, refining systems, kind of like

preparing the ground for action. Um uh

and in this project specifically, uh if I if I had to answer the question, you know, what is it? What am I actually trying to do here? You know, what does

success look like? It would be putting my actual words on the paper.

An organized system cannot finalize the manuscript if the user refuses to face their own internal fears. The tools are useless if they only used to build a

wall against failure. Day 21, three drafts done. One question, will any of

drafts done. One question, will any of it survive the show? Today it's time to express. That's the last letter on the

express. That's the last letter on the code framework. We capture, we

code framework. We capture, we organized, we distilled. Now it's time to express.

Check this out. He responded same day within less than 2 hours. Can you stop by next Monday at Oriental? Lovely. Hey,

so I have a unique opportunity to take another look at what I've been building here and to reuse it to express three different projects, one shared method,

and one week left for each of them to actually ship something.