#1803 Silly Robot

I’m typing this from the balcony of my hotel at 7:43 a.m. in the morning on Friday, May 10th, 2024.

It’s a beautiful morning and I’m overlooking the bay in St. Petersburg.

Oura tells me I got 5 hours and 13 minutes of sleep last night (a 76 Sleep Score) and that my Readiness is a 73.

The little title to my Readiness Score is “Focus on what’s important” and the copy (I’m pretty sure Oura 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.”

When I took my screen grabs of those scores and sent them to my Heroic Soul Brothers Sean Casey and Brandon Guyer (love you, guys! 🙌!!) as part of my morning ritual I said: “Oura, you silly robot. In fact, I did have the best of nights. And, of course, I’m going to Focus on What’s Important Now. 🙄 Day 1. All in. Let’s go!! ⚙️ 🚀”

Last night was an incredible night. I was blessed to attend the USSOCOM Awards Ceremony that was the capstone to SOF Week.

Some of our most Heroic international special forces warriors were honored—including Admiral William H. McRaven who gave an electric keynote.

I just got goosebumps typing 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 style and strive to communicate with an equivalent excellence.

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 SOCOM and we’ve featured all four of the books he’s written so far: Sea Stories, Make Your Bed, The Wisdom of the Bullfrog, and The Hero Code.

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 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 Oura score and what will become the point of this +1.

Oura can’t see beyond the raw data.

If that little 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 101.

Then I flip back to the LAST BEST DAY 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.

In our next +1, 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.

🫡