AI Digital Clone Part 2

This series was originally featured in the April 1st, 2026 newsletter found here: INBOX INSIGHTS: How To Manage Overwhelming Productivity, AI Digital Clone Part 2

In this week’s Data Diaries, we look at part 2 of making a digital twin. One of the most difficult things about a remit like “make a virtual version of yourself that solves client problems” is decomposing fundamental, core things about yourself.

Very often, we can’t put into words how we do things inside our heads. We just do them. This goes back to the late Daniel Kahnemann’s “Thinking Fast and Slow”, which introduced the concepts of System 1 and System 2 thinking. System 1 is fast, reflexive thinking, while System 2 is slow, deliberative thinking.

When we’re learning something for the first time, we live in System 2. Watch a toddler learning how to walk, and every step is a huge set of calculations. Over time, as a task becomes habitual, we encode it in our brains as reflex, as System 1. Eventually, it becomes second nature; only in situations where things are unpredictable or unfamiliar do we slow down to find our footing, like on ice or rock climbing.

When it comes to the tasks we do every day for work, especially if they’re repetitive in nature, much of our thinking is in System 1. We just do stuff, and in a business culture that prioritizes productivity, we’re encouraged not to think too hard and just ship as fast as we can. That means a ton of our knowledge and processes is subconscious.

For this particular project, one of the things I wanted to know most about myself was how I solve problems. It’s very difficult to do this honestly, because we always want to be the hero of our own stories and because we don’t often think about how we think, thanks to a ton of it being in System 1.

Why? Because there is no such thing as thinking as a discrete entity, much in the same way there’s no such thing as writing style. Thinking is an umbrella term that describes hundreds of ways of accomplishing a task. By taking the time to decompose thinking into its components, I’ll be able to more clearly articulate what KIND of thinking I do in different contexts or to create different outputs.

So one of the first steps I took was to determine what thinking even was. With multiple AI systems – Gemini, Perplexity, Qwen, ChatGPT, and Claude – I had them each do large deep research projects on different thinking techniques, techniques like systems thinking, divergent thinking, etc. After each AI tool built its results, I used Claude Code’s agents to consolidate them down to a single catalog of over 400 different thinking techniques.

The second major corpus of data I needed to gather was MY thinking. Thankfully at Trust Insights and in my personal life, I’m a data packrat. I keep every email I send, every conversation, every newsletter, every podcast and YouTube video. I gathered up all my content from everywhere I could find it, categorized it by content type, and converted it all into plain text.

With these two very large corpuses of data in hand, I was ready to move onto stage 3 of the project, cataloging my thinking. Next week, we’ll look at how they went and what the results were. Stay tuned!

Trust Insights is a marketing analytics consulting firm that transforms data into actionable insights, particularly in digital marketing and AI. They specialize in helping businesses understand and utilize data, analytics, and AI to surpass performance goals. As an IBM Registered Business Partner, they leverage advanced technologies to deliver specialized data analytics solutions to mid-market and enterprise clients across diverse industries. Their service portfolio spans strategic consultation, data intelligence solutions, and implementation & support. Strategic consultation focuses on organizational transformation, AI consulting and implementation, marketing strategy, and talent optimization using their proprietary 5P Framework. Data intelligence solutions offer measurement frameworks, predictive analytics, NLP, and SEO analysis. Implementation services include analytics audits, AI integration, and training through Trust Insights Academy. Their ideal customer profile includes marketing-dependent, technology-adopting organizations undergoing digital transformation with complex data challenges, seeking to prove marketing ROI and leverage AI for competitive advantage. Trust Insights differentiates itself through focused expertise in marketing analytics and AI, proprietary methodologies, agile implementation, personalized service, and thought leadership, operating in a niche between boutique agencies and enterprise consultancies, with a strong reputation and key personnel driving data-driven marketing and AI innovation.