The DFT calculations for the bornylamine scaffold suggest that there is little difference in the activation energies for the C-H insertion steps between 3-methylpicolinamide and the unsubstituted system. With this in mind, we then went onto examine other sp3 C-H arylation reactions to see if improved conditions could be identified. Reaction of cyclohexyl picolinamide 14a and p-fluoroiodobenzene under our standard conditions led to the formation of the arylated product 15a in 70% yield ( Scheme 7). By changing the solvent to 3-methylpentan-3-ol (tHxOH, bp 123 °C), without changing the external temperature, the yield of 15a was increased to 80%. 3-Methylpentan-3-ol is available commercially in reasonably large quantities, but has rarely been used as a reaction solvent for C-H activation. Changing the directing group to 3-methylpicolinamide 14b led to a further improvement in reaction yield (91%, 15b). These conditions could also be used to improve the arylation yield of the same substrate with p-anisyl iodide from 68% to 85% (15c/15d).