When I take a big course or read a book, one question I always had a problem with is this: Where the hell do I even start applying this knowledge?
I am not starting with a blank sheet. I already have a system and processes. Integrating the new knowledge and insights has been paralyzing me.
Moreover, most courses and books do not provide a bird’s eye overview, a grand scheme of things, something an AI can easily do.
Last but not least, you forget the insights you had at the beginning of a book/course, which you can quickly refresh with a summary and key insights.
That’s why I started to use my AI assistant to solve these problems.
This framework forces you to stop being a passive consumer and become an active builder. Instead of being paralyzed and not knowing where to start and what to do, you’ll have an actionable step **to understand, test and integrate.**
As a result, every learning translated into an action that propelled my business further.
For any book, course, or piece of advice, run it through these 7 stages.
### 1. Ingest: Get the raw material
Your goal is to get the information out of its container (book, video) and into a flexible format you can work with. Reading or watching takes time. It’s a waste of time when you are familiar with the topic and want to close the gaps. Don't "read" or "watch" in the traditional sense. Extract.
- **Action:** Transcribe videos (I use Gemini AI Studio). Convert ebooks to plain text or markdown. Add it to your AI assistant for context.
- **AI Prompt:** `[Paste the raw text here]. Clean up this transcript and format it for clarity. Identify and separate the core concepts into distinct sections.`
### 2. Deconstruct: Find the first principle
Most tactics are just temporary expressions of a timeless truth about human nature. Your job is to ignore the wrapping and find the core mechanism. Every business problem is a human problem.
- **Action:** Ask *why* the advice works. What is the root psychological driver? Is it status, fear, greed, social proof, loss aversion?
- **AI Prompt:** `Analyze this content. What is the single, underlying first principle of human psychology that makes these tactics effective? Explain it in one simple sentence.`
### 3. Understand
If you want to be the sovereign leader of your business, you must first construct your own understanding. Use the AI as a Socratic tutor to fill your knowledge gaps. Do not blindly follow whatever AI suggests. Sometimes it’s brilliant, but often it’s dumb. You want to be the orchestrator, not the other way around.
- **Key Questions:**
- Explain the core concept of [X] to me as if I have no background in this field. Use a simple analogy.
- Let's roleplay. You are the expert, and I am a skeptic. Challenge my current understanding of how [X] works.
- Design questions for me to reveal what I do not yet understand about [X].
### 4. Align: Make it relevant to you
Generic advice is useless. You must translate the universal principle into the specific context of your business, your audience, and your situation.
- **Action:** Ask where the principle connects with your customers, product, business. Ask where it challenges your current assumptions. The more context you provide the more aligned answer you’ll get. I, for instance, have all my core business parts stored in markdown that I always use to provide context.
- **AI Prompt:** `How does this core principle apply directly to my customers' primary pain point? And which of my current business assumptions does this new insight most directly challenge?`
### 5. Architect: Design a test and experiment
Do not create a grand, multi-month plan. Design a small, fast, low-cost experiment to see if the principle holds water in your world. You are not implementing a strategy; you are testing a hypothesis.
- **Action:** Define the smallest possible output that can get you a clear signal. A single email. A five-post social media sequence. A 30-minute change to your sales page.
- **AI Prompt:** `Design the smallest, fastest, and cheapest possible experiment to test this principle in my business. Define the specific hypothesis as 'If we do X, we expect Y result, measured by Z.' What is the Minimum Viable Output required for this test?`
### 6. Decide: Integrate, reiterate or discard
The experiment is over. You have data. Now you must make a sovereign decision. Have you gained insight and can conclude the experiment(s)?
- **Action:** Look at the results. Was the hypothesis validated or invalidated? Make a conscious choice.
- **AI Prompt:** `The result of my experiment was [describe result]. Based on this, should this principle be: 1. A core component of my business engine? 2. A temporary tool for specific situations? or 3. A failed hypothesis to be discarded? Justify the choice.`
### 7. Synthesize
This is the final and most crucial step for your growth. You close the learning loop by codifying what you learned from the entire process.
If integrated, the new process is documented and becomes a formal part of your business's operating system and context for next interactions with AI.
- **Key Questions:**
- "Why did this experiment succeed/fail? What was the deeper reason behind the surface-level data?"
- "What did this process reveal about my audience that I didn't know before?"
- "What mental model or belief of mine has now been updated or replaced because of this outcome?"
- "How will this lesson influence my strategic decisions in the next quarter?"
That’s it!
Want more? Sign up for my [AI-Powered Solopreneur newsletter](https://www.maray.ai/ai-powered-sovereign-solopreneur) if you want to receive AI-powered systems I design and share weekly in your inbox.
