Learn How You Learn: QMN017

Martial Mental Models: The Quartermaster, Thursday, 16 May

(Today’s report is a 6 minute read)

BLUF: You should know how you learn best. It ensures your time and effort are well spent and it helps cut back on frustration and failure. You can't change who you are but you can change how you approach who you are.

Brady here.Late in my time in the Army, while I was preparing to get out and go back to school I came across a mental meta-model I wished I'd seen and considered at least ten years prior. Peter Drucker’s essay Managing Oneself presents perhaps the most important things we can ask ourselves in order to ensure success in life. Within a list of things you should know about yourself - including what you are and aren't naturally good at and how you best work with others - Drucker says that you should know how you learn best. I guess I hadn’t seriously considered it before, because the concept that I could retain more knowledge from one method as opposed to another really changed the way I approach everything.

Drucker says that the first thing you need to know is whether you're a reader or a listener. You either comprehend and process information better by reading it or by hearing it - and you're either one of the other- it's near impossible to learn the other ability. He gives the example of Dwight Eisenhower’s performance when he had the opportunity to read or hear questions from the press - and his answers were much better when he had the opportunity to read them a half hour in advance. His example of a listener is Lyndon Johnson, who excelled as a listener in the Senate but failed when trying to use the writing staff he inherited from Kennedy as president. 

Once you know if you're a listener or a reader the next thing you need to know is how you actually learn. Drucker says there are maybe a half dozen ways to learn but highlights only three. These include writing, note taking, and talking. Churchill apparently learned by writing about topics, Beethoven learned by taking extensive notes (which he apparently did not need to reference once taken), and many lawyers and doctors (and Drucker himself) learn by talking. 

The key thing about all this is that you have to find out who you are, accept it along with its limitations and advantages, and then modify your life to fit those parameters. I took this to heart and found that I'm a reader, and that I learn through a combination of note taking and writing. Over time trying to take notes as extensively as I could, I tried to remove all barriers to execution so that I would always have a quick and easy way to take notes and reference or convert them as easily as possible. I found that I do better with larger notebooks and reliable pencils. And I'm starting to experiment with colors as well. I've yet to find a comprehensive process like what Austin Kleon has, but I have faith I'll get there. These changes in my daily habits have done a great deal for my retention and comprehension. The knowledge of my need for note taking gave me the reason to write notes in the margins of books or papers, which helps me make connections and fit ideas into frameworks and models.

Drucker says the reader/listener dichotomy and learning style are the easiest things to learn about yourself but that few people know these things or take action on them. Now that you know there are different ways, how will you approach leading every day differently?

MULTI-DOMAIN OPERATIONS: In a first, Israel responds to Hamas hackers with an air strike (2 min) “Israeli officials did not disclose any details about the Hamas cyberattack; however, they said they first stopped the attack online, and only then responded with an air strike. "After dealing with the cyber dimension, the Air Force dealt with it in the physical dimension," said IDF spokesperson, Brig. Gen. Ronen Manlis. "At this point in time, Hamas has no cyber operational capabilities." It might not seem like a big deal, but executing a single operation between two or more different domains at the tactical and operational level is new and seen as the military competency of the future. Here we have air and ground domains (really our only true multi domain competency since the 1970s that incidentally came from lessons learned from the Yom Kippur War) married with the cyber/electronic warfare domain. An attack or movement in one domain prompting counterattack in another. This is what we have to get good at. (BJM)

COUNTER-AMBUSH? Acoustic Technology Will Reveal GPS Location of Enemy Snipers to Smartphones After the First Shot (3 min) “‘Our system uses the microphone underneath the hearing protection in order to detect the shock and muzzle waves generated by supersonic shots and record the time difference of arrival of the Mach wave between the left and right ear,’ (the creator) explained. ‘By combining the information sent by all the TCAPS deployed on the field, this gives you the direction of arrival of the waves and thus the direction in which the shooter is.’ The acoustic information is relayed by BlueTooth to algorithmic software on a smartphone, which then translates the data into a GPS location, allowing warfighters to accurately return fire.” (KSA) 

THE JUNIOR EXEC: Trust Rings

Chris here. There are two ways to get content these days: You can trust an algorithm to make recommendations, or you can trust people. I try and stay away from algorithmic experiences. If a company has put an algorithm to work in recommending me ads or content - or, most importantly, news - I tend to ignore them in favor of reliably curated experiences.  

I’ve been reading Jason Kottke for almost 20 years. Jason writes about the things I like - design, food, and game shows. I emailed him when I moved to NYC and he recommended Gramercy Tavern, now my favorite restaurant. He posts almost daily something I’m unlikely to have read elsewhere. I trust Jason, not because I agree with him but because he’s been doing the same thing in essentially the same way for almost two decades. I know where he sits on an issue, I can dependably filter his agenda. I don’t agree with him on everything, but Jason is inside my circle of trust when it comes to curated content creators. 

I wouldn’t say the about the New York Times, whose newsroom is still dictated by a commercial model of click farming and newsfeed jiggering. Reddit and Twitter seem to me to be a Clash of Bubbles where the opposition is buried by an invisible algorithm. I don’t like being pushed around by an algorithm. I am never quite sure if I’m being fed the latest news or the latest agenda, and even if a robot isn’t curating my news, I’m never quite sure how many layers of bullshit I’m digging through.  

Modern media are still designed to be agenda centric-instead of user-centric. I think you’re going to see a new renaissance in curated content, like this newsletter or others by people whose curatorial instincts you can learn to trust.  

And I think it’s better to trust someone than it is to agree with them.

Remarks Complete. Nothing Follows.

KS Anthony (KSA) Chris Papasadero (CPP) & Brady Moore (BJM)