Brian Johnson reflects on data from his Aura biometric tracker after attending a Special Operations Command awards ceremony with a keynote by Admiral William H. McRaven. McRaven argued that technology can't replace human intuition, a point Johnson illustrates by sometimes choosing a higher readiness score than his device suggests, trusting his own judgment over the numbers.
Questions this episode answers
7:43am on Friday, May 10, 2024.
5 hours and 13 minutes.
76.
73.
Admiral William H. McRaven.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic one. I started typing this from the balcony of my hotel at 7:43am in the morning on Friday, May 10, 2024. It was a beautiful morning, and I was overlooking the bay in St. Petersburg. And Aura tells me I got five hours and 13 minutes of sleep last night. A 76 sleep score, and that my readiness is a 73. Now, the little title to my readiness score is Focus on what's important and the copy. I'm pretty sure Aura recently hired a new copywriter, as these messages keep getting wittier says, seems like you didn't have the best of nights, but you'll be fine. Now. When I took my screen grabs of those scores and sent them to my heroic soul brother, Sean Casey and Brandon Guyer. Love you guys. As part of my morning ritual, I said, aura, you silly robot. In fact, I did have the best of nights. And of course, I'm gonna focus on what's important now. Day one, all in. Let's go. Now. Last night was an incredible night. I was blessed to attend the United States Special Operations Command awards ceremony. That was the capstone to SOF Week, or Special Operations Forces Week. Some of our most heroic international special forces warriors were honored, including Admiral William H. McRaven, who gave an electric keynote. I got goosebumps typing that and saying that his speech was astonishingly good, both in content and in the kinetic style with which he delivered it. I've literally never seen a speech like it. His delivery was so crisp and effective. It was iconoclastically unique and inspired me to own my own style and strive to communicate with an equivalent excellence. Now, as you almost certainly know at this stage, if you've been following along, I have a great deal of respect for Admiral McRaven. He retired as the commanding officer of SoCalm, and we've featured all four of the books he's written so far. Check out the links to those notes. Now, Admiral McRaven is also a military scholar and renowned special forces operator and leader. Both the content and delivery of his talk were incredible. I won't do his speech justice, but he explored the relationship between people and hardware and the fact that it takes both special people and special hardware to win wars. He used a range of examples to make his point. From the ancient Greek warriors defeating Xerxes and the Persians with a combination of elite warriors fighting to defend their freedom with superior weaponry, to. To more modern special warfare examples. Then he discussed the impact of artificial intelligence on warfare and made the point that people will always be the driving force of victory. Which leads me back to my aura score. And what will become the point of this one? Aura can't see beyond the raw data. If that robot could, it would know that last night was in fact one of the most extraordinary nights of my life. Whenever I see scores like that, I do a few things. First, I appreciate just how great modern technology is. Then I remind myself that no technology will ever be superior to my own intuition and wisdom. Then, if the score is low, after I take any data that might help me optimize, I immediately ignore it and tell myself my soul force is at a 101. Then I flip back to the last best day and and use that data as the score I'm going to go with. In this case, it's a 90 readiness 95 sleep score from a couple days before. Then I carry on with my day, and in our next one, I'll tell you more about why I do that with my scores. There's a scientific reason for it. I'll also share some more wisdom from the week. For now, here's to celebrating the people and the hardware that make our lives so blessed. Our lives are a miracle, and the freedoms we enjoy that make our lives possible aren't free. We have these heroic warriors and their families to thank.
