Jorge: 0:00

One of the things that we need to be aware of is how we acquire information and how we update our models of the world.

Narrator: 0:15

You’re listening to Traction Heroes: Digging in to Get Results with Harry Max and Jorge Arango.

Jorge: 0:31

Hey, Harry.

Harry: 0:32

Hey, good to see you again, Jorge.

Jorge: 0:34

It’s good to see you again, my friend. I’m still mulling over the stuff that we spoke about in our last episode. I think the reading that I’ve brought today is actually, serendipitously

Harry: 0:51

Oh, interesting. Huh, I can’t wait. Go for it, man.

Jorge: 0:56

All right, I’ll jump right into it.

Harry: 0:58

Okay.

Jorge: 1:02

“Schools everywhere are organized on the assumption that there is only one right way to learn and that it is the same way for everybody. But to be forced to learn the way a school teaches is sheer hell for students who learn differently. Indeed, there are probably half a dozen different ways to learn. There are people like Churchill who learn by writing. Some people learn by taking copious notes. Beethoven, for example, left behind an enormous number of sketchbooks, yet he said he never actually looked at them when he composed. Asked why he kept them, he is reported to have replied, “If I don’t write it down immediately, I forget it right away. If I put it into a sketchbook, I never forget it, and I never have to look it up again.” Some people learn by doing. Others learn by hearing themselves talk. A chief executive I know who converted a small and mediocre family business into the leading company in its industry was one of those people who learned by talking. He was in the habit of calling his entire senior staff into his office once a week and then talking at them for two or three hours. He would raise policy issues and argue three different positions on each one. He rarely asked his associates for comments or questions. He simply needed an audience to hear himself talk. And how he learned. And although he is a fairly extreme case, learning through talking is by no means an unusual method. Successful trial lawyers learn the same way, as do many medical diagnosticians. And so do I. Of all the important pieces of self-knowledge, understanding how you learn is the easiest to acquire. When I ask people, “How do you learn?” most of them know the answer. But when I ask, “Do you act on this knowledge?” few answer yes. Yet, acting on this knowledge is the key to performance, or rather, not acting on this knowledge condemns one to non-performance.”

Harry: 3:13

Hmm. There isn’t a chance in the world I’m gonna guess where that came from.

Jorge: 3:20

This is from a very short book by Peter Drucker called “Managing Oneself.”

Harry: 3:28

Of course I have it on myself, but haven’t managed to read it yet.

Jorge: 3:32

I think this might be as close as Drucker ever came to self-help, right? Like writing self-help. And it’s a-- like I said, it’s a very short book, but it’s filled with nuggets that can help one improve themselves as they work through their career. But I wanted to bring this one to our conversation because so many of our conversations here in the podcast have been about self-awareness and, kind of unwittingly being unaware of conditions around us. And one of the things that we need to be aware of is how we acquire information and how we update our models of the world, right? And this is something that I think many of us realize over time, that, “God, you know, I…” I’ll give you an example. Like, I realized in school that I don’t learn very well when I’m in a, uh, when I’m in a presentation when, like, someone’s talking, like giving a lecture. That’s not how I learn. Like, I learn by reading, I learn by writing, that’s how I learn, right? Like, I like to read about stuff and then take notes, and I annotate my books with sticky notes. And if I’m reading on an e-reader, I will highlight things, and I will make notes there, and I will argue with the author. I get very engaged with text. But if I’m sitting in a classroom and somebody’s yabber, yabber, yabber, yabber, I don’t, you know, I don’t… Unless I’m taking notes. Like, if I’m-- If my hand is moving, I retain some of it. But if it’s just like, you know, the words just kind of wash over me. And that is a realization that I picked up fairly early in my--. Like I said, I was a student when I realized that. Conversely, if I’m in a situation where someone is guiding me through a hands-on exercise, yeah, I can, you know, I can pick up certain skills. But I also recognize that that’s just me. Some people do learn well in lectures. Some people prefer that medium, right? Like, some people are more like listeners. I’m not a listener. I guess I have to work at that.

Harry: 6:21

Mm-hmm.

Jorge: 6:22

But I think that being aware of my learning styles is something that has helped me throughout my career, and this little passage from Drucker’s book I think did a really good job of articulating why, right? Like I said, people have different

Harry: 6:37

I think the other thing about the Drucker passage, and maybe the book itself, is it seems to sort of give you a license to have a different learning style, you know? And I think that’s important, because otherwise there may be some shame associated with or embarrassment associated with, you know… like I have-- My learning style is the head-banging, right? I have to do it until it hurts, and I’m like, “Oh, that didn’t work,” and I’ll try something else. And I’m like, “Oh, this is how it works.” But, you know, I’ve slowly learned to read-- I mean, to learn through reading directly and then trying. That seems to be a less painful approach. But sitting in a classroom like you is just horrible. Um, just doesn’t go in. And, uh, really funny that, um… I mean, this touches on a bunch of things. One is, I remember somebody once said, you know, “Why is it that you talk so much?” And I’m like, “Well, that’s easy. I talk more because I think out loud.” And being able to express the ideas and see if they make sense is, it’s like half of the dialectical process, and the other half is seeing if they make sense. And so the writing process has that built into it, but totally strangely, uh, you’ll never believe what I’m reading this week. Uh, it’s a book by Robert McKee. He wrote the book Story, and that’s not what I’m reading. I’m reading his book called Dialogue on how to write dialogue, and it’s super interesting because, of course, he goes into a fairly rich discussion about internal dialogue and externalizing internal dialogue and communicating with But there is this dialectical notion, this way of going back and forth as a learning style that I realize is certainly very potent for me personally. And then the other thing that just jumped out at me was, uh, you know, I’ve been working on figuring out how to take my book and turn it into a course, a workshop, a workbook and so on and so forth. And somebody recommended a book to me called… I think it’s called Teaching From the Back of the Room. It’s on the shelf behind me. I can’t grab it gracefully and tell you who the author was, but it’s very much about sort of leading people through the process of, of… and kind learn rather as a very engaging style, in contrast to like the Robert Mager style of self-paced curriculum development, where you know, you try to figure out what the learning objectives are and then figure out what the dependencies are in terms of what they need to know and then what skills they would need to develop, and then like this very reductionist kind of methodical process. And all of that I say with the giant C caveat that I have a learning disability, I grew up without the ability… I didn’t learn to read until I was in fourth grade. And, you know, I had terrible dyslexia. I still have a lot of it. But in fourth grade, you know, they put me through this phonics program to learn how to read, and it was this giant opening for me in terms of being able to think and read and communicate and then teach with other people. So anyway, this is just a sort of super personal topic to me, and I really appreciate that you brought it forward. Is this a book that somebody recommended to you, or how did this jump out to you?

Jorge: 10:47

I think like many people, I have been… curious might be understating it. But, uh, you know, Peter Drucker is somebody that anyone who is in business needs to grapple with, right? Like, his work is foundational. I was very intrigued by the fact that he wrote this book. You know, most of his work is about managing organizations. He wrote this book teaching you how to manage yourself. I mean, that’s the title of the book, right? So it’s like, so… And it is a short book, like I said. So I checked it out. I read it perhaps far too late in my career. By the time I read it, a lot of it was like, “Oh yeah, I know this,” right?

Harry: 11:37

Mm-hmm.

Jorge: 11:38

For someone who is starting out, it might be a useful thing to check out. But I wanted to actually recommend another book just because you mentioned working on a workshop for your book. It’s someone who I think, uh, you know, Rob Fitzpatrick.

Harry: 11:57

Oh yeah.

Jorge: 11:58

So Rob and Devon Hunt wrote this book called“The Workshop Survival Guide.”

Harry: 12:02

Oh yeah.

Jorge: 12:04

And so they had the book on writing, right, which I

Harry: 12:06

Yep.

Jorge: 12:07

you’ve read.

Harry: 12:08

Yeah, Write Useful Books. Uh-huh.

Jorge: 12:10

“Useful Books,” right?

Harry: 12:11

Mm-hmm.

Jorge: 12:11

I’ve read that too and recommend it. But Rob wrote another book called “The Workshop Survival Guide,” which is about… And it’s to making workshops what “Write Useful Books” is to… I’d say it’s a book

Harry: 12:25

Hmm.

Jorge: 12:26

about structuring learner-oriented workshops.

Harry: 12:32

Yeah.

Jorge: 12:32

The reason I’m bringing it up is that one of the points that he makes is that you should switch up learning modalities every 20 minutes in the workshop.

Harry: 12:40

Mm.

Jorge: 12:41

precisely because people have different ways that they learn.

Harry: 12:46

Mm-hmm.

Jorge: 12:46

It feels to me like that approach is very intentionally oriented toward accommodating people with different, uh, different ways of learning.

Harry: 12:56

Mm-hmm. And when you said learning modalities, is that limited to like visual versus auditory versus like how, how… When you say modality, what do you mean?

Jorge: 13:06

And I don’t remember if modality is the word they use in the book,

Harry: 13:09

Ah, okay.

Jorge: 13:09

what it means is if you’re going to lecture, don’t do so for more than 20 minutes.

Harry: 13:13

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jorge: 13:15

You know, you sometimes have to lecture during a workshop because you have ideas you wanna communicate. But keep it to 20 minutes and then switch it up, right? So have people do an exercise for 20 minutes, or have a Q&A for 20 minutes, or have people presenting their ideas for 20 minutes. So keep the pace of the thing moving so that you don’t get stuck. Like, I’ve been in workshops where the whole, the entire four hours or whatever is someone in the front of the room talking, and if you’re someone like me who doesn’t learn well when someone is lecturing, then it’s like you lose me, right? So their point is, you know, keep people engaged and acknowledge that people have different ways of dealing with information input.

Harry: 13:59

Would you say that the neurodivergence axis is different than the learning modality axis? Like, do we need to better understand the different facets of neurodivergence How are you thinking about that?

Jorge: 14:16

I haven’t given it much thought, and I would imagine that there is research around this, which I am not familiar with.

Harry: 14:24

Mm-hmm.

Jorge: 14:27

But you brought up dyslexia. I think that it’s very natural to assume that someone who is dyslexic would struggle more with reading as a learning modality than making things,

Harry: 14:37

Yeah.

Jorge: 14:38

right? Or talking through things. And that’s something else that AI chatbots may be a boon for. And have you heard the phrase “rubber ducking”?

Harry: 14:52

No. What’s that?

Jorge: 14:53

My understanding is this comes from the programming world, like computer programmers. They… Some of them would keep a rubber duck next to their computer. Whenever they got stuck with a problem, they would describe the problem to the rubber duck. Not because the rubber duck would have any answers, of course, but because sometimes the act of describing the thing that you’re stuck with unlocks something in your mind

Harry: 15:21

Mhm.

Jorge: 15:22

that provides you the answer. And I’ve read about people having similar success with chatbots, where you’re asking ChatGPT or Claude or one of these things for help with And the very act of writing the prompt or speaking out the prompt, as important as the answers that you get back in helping you find your way to solving

Harry: 15:52

Right. Yeah, that’s the, uh, I don’t remember the axiom verbatim, you know, the problem well-stated is a problem half-solved kind of thing.

Jorge: 16:00

Yeah. Yeah, well, and I think that the act, and Drucker mentioned this in the Beethoven The very act of writing something down, at least for me, but I know that this writing something down can unlock things. And I’m sure you’ve seen the Field Notes series of pocket notebooks. They have that tagline, “I’m not writing it down to remember it later. I’m writing it down to remember it now.”

Harry: 16:37

Uh-huh.

Jorge: 16:38

Right? I think that a lot of people assume that note-taking is a prosthetic memory of some sort. Like, you’re

Harry: 16:49

Mm-hmm.

Jorge: 16:50

taking notes because you wanna revisit the notes later, and you’re like, you’re delegating. It’s like computer memory, right? Like, it’s like you’re putting down thoughts on paper so that you can revisit them later. And that’s certainly one of the functions that notes play. But I find that keeping my hand moving on the paper, regardless of whether I actually revisit the notes later, serves as a means for me to learn, right? So, so just the act of lines on the page. And it doesn’t have to be writing. It can be doodling or sketching or making, you know, drawing a little model. It unlocks ideas that I would not be able to summon were I just sitting there about them with this kind of Cartesian, you know,

Harry: 17:47

Mm-hmm.

Jorge: 17:48

mind-body distinction at work.

Harry: 17:53

Has anybody written a book called Managing Neurodivergence?

Jorge: 17:57

I’m not familiar with that.

Harry: 17:59

I was just thinking because, you know, listening to you talk about writing, you know, writing stuff down to remember it now, like, if I start writing, I can’t hear anymore. Like, I stop listening. It’s really hard for me to… Like, if somebody’s talking to me when I’m driving, yeah, I can’t see the windshield, right? It’s-- I have this very maniacally mono-monofocus, uh, often. And I was just processing more on the question of modality versus the modality being kind of the input bias versus the processing bias, right? So some people, you know, will… They listen well, but then they structure things in their head abstractly or whatnot, so kind of an input versus a processing bias. And I was thinking of neurodivergence as not being the bias, but something to accommodate or a limitation or a constraint or some kind of affordance, if you will. And that kinda led me down the path of, like, you know, how do we think about How do we think about learning styles, and how do we think about managing oneself when it comes to being more effective with other people, I’m just kind of-- I feel like I’ve kind of got a subroutine going on in my head, like how to, how to, how should I be thinking about this?

Jorge: 19:27

Yeah, that’s a great question. And, um, there is a book called Please Understand Me.

Harry: 19:35

I re- that came out, I maybe read that like 10 years ago or something. Is it… Did it come out a while ago?

Jorge: 19:41

It’s an old book, yeah. And the author, I’m looking it up right now. The author is David Keirsey.

Harry: 19:47

Okay.

Jorge: 19:47

I don’t know if that’s how you pronounce it.

Harry: 19:49

Mm-hmm.

Jorge: 19:49

And I remember reading this 25 years ago, so you know, I’m well overdue revisiting it, but my recollection from having read it like, temperaments, communication styles, of taking in information. And I remember, and I read it as part of a management training thing. Like, I was working at a company at the time, and they gave it to those of us who were managers because the whole point was not just understanding your own abilities and characteristics, but perhaps more importantly, understanding the abilities and characteristics of the people that you work with. It’s been so long, I don’t remember the details, but the message is what stuck in my mind, which is, you know, not everyone thinks the same way that you do.

Harry: 20:54

Mm-hmm.

Jorge: 20:55

One thing that, one insight from that book that I do remember that did stick with me and which has helped me a lot subsequently, is that some people need a little bit more time to respond.

Harry: 21:17

Ah, ja.

Jorge: 21:18

When you ask a question, this is really hard for me because I’m someone who is-- like, I tend to respond very fast, and I’ll say things that are half-cocked.

Harry: 21:35

Uh-huh.

Jorge: 21:35

things that it’s like, “I haven’t thought through this, but I’ll just put it out there,” right? And there are people who really want to be very precise in what they’re saying, and And if you’re not aware that some people longer to respond, and you are engaging in conversation with somebody… Like, if you’re someone like me who expects an answer really fast, you are interacting with someone who takes their time to think about what you’ve said and then respond and you’re not aware that that difference exists between you, you can start projecting on those people, thinking worse, right? Like, it’s like, “This person is dumb or something because they’re not giving me the answer I want immediately.”

Harry: 22:34

Whereas

Jorge: 22:35

if you’re aware that a difference exists in communication styles, you can then learn to give people the leeway they need to be effective in that situation.

Harry: 22:46

So first off, um, I’m one of those people that I will tend to wait before I respond. It doesn’t mean I don’t go off half-cocked, it just means I go off half-cocked a little late. Um, and, uh, but some people get really frustrated with me ’cause I’ll just… They’re like, “Did you hear me?” And I’m like, “Yes, and I’m thinking.” But the other thing that reminds me of is one of my mentors at one point There are people that are gonna be storytellers, and there are people that are gonna give you answers, right? And if you interrupt a storyteller, like they’ll get to the answer, right? But if you interrupt a storyteller, like at a minimum they’re gonna be At a maximum, they’re gonna have to restart the story. And if you happen to be talking to a storyteller, like it isn’t necessarily because they don’t know how to answer you, it’s just because rather than, I don’t know, episodic’s the wrong word, but rather than like indexing in and being able to give you like a discrete answer to a specific I have a friend who, you know, if anything I ask him, I get a story back. And it’s not an irrelevant story. Like there are plenty of irrelevant stories and lots of people that, you know, tell them, but it just feels very similar. Like there are probably a set of things that in a leadership position, and even just a non-leadership position, just if you’re interacting with people, that there are gonna be people that, you know, if you’re aware of these different communication styles, you’re going to be more accommodating of interacting with them in a way that’s gonna be mutually respectful and mutually beneficial. I’m curious how to learn more about this.

Jorge: 24:40

I need to revisit that book, but I would imagine that that “Please Understand Me” book is a good source for that. But we have kind of verged into communication styles where we started talking about But I just want to point out, and I do think that they’re related,

Harry: 24:54

Mm-hmm.

Jorge: 24:54

but I just want to point out, and I mentioned it at the beginning of this conversation, I suspect that there’s a relationship between this subject and the subject that we talked about in our previous episode about, uh, you know, an analytic mindset versus a more holistic mindset in the people who

Harry: 25:09

Ah,

Jorge: 25:09

will give you the story, you know, the narrative thing, it’s like they’re Mm-hmm. And I have people very close in my life who are like that, and I I don’t need the whole context. And it can be very frustrating. So again, like, having the self-awareness to know how you take in information, how other people communicate information, and what the optimal combination of that is, I think it can help you gain traction.

Harry: 25:47

Yeah, I think that’s right. And I think you are, once again, right about there’s a difference between the communication style and the learning style differences and distinctions, and recognizing communication and listening and communication styles, but that if you’re expecting to recognize they may be learning very differently than you do, projecting upon

Jorge: 26:28

Absolutely. Well, once again, I learned a lot by talking here.

Harry: 26:35

And I heard you loud and clear, man.

Jorge: 26:38

All right, take care.