December 14, 2025 • 42 mins
Dyslexia touches as many as 15–20% of learners, yet most families still hear “wait and see.” Russell Van Brocklen flips that script. As the Dyslexia Professor, he translates structured-literacy methods—proven most effective for struggling readers—into bite-size actions parents can use tonight.
What if the way you think—often seen as a challenge—was actually your greatest productivity advantage?
In this episode of The Quiet Warrior Podcast, I speak with Russell Van Brocklen, an entrepreneur and advocate for dyslexic and neurodivergent thinkers. Russell shares his personal journey of navigating education and business as a dyslexic, and how he discovered that the very traits that once made him feel “different” are the ones driving his creativity, problem-solving, and entrepreneurial success.
We dive into how artificial intelligence (AI) can transform the way introverts, dyslexics, and deep thinkers approach productivity—making work not only more efficient, but more aligned with their natural strengths. Russell offers practical examples of using AI to simplify complex tasks, manage energy, and create space for high-impact work.
If you’ve ever felt like the traditional way of working wasn’t designed for you, this conversation will inspire you to work with your brain, not against it.
In this episode, we discuss:
- Russell’s journey from academic struggles to entrepreneurial success as a dyslexic
- Why dyslexia is not a weakness, but a different way of processing information
- The surprising parallels between introverted productivity and dyslexic problem-solving
- How AI can act as an “external brain” for planning, writing, and decision-making
- Specific AI tools that help neurodivergent and introverted thinkers thrive
- How to design a workday around your energy patterns, not just your to-do list
- The mindset shift from “overcoming limitations” to “leveraging unique strengths”
Whether you’re dyslexic, introverted, or simply looking to improve productivity in a way that feels sustainable and authentic, this episode offers fresh, empowering insights.
Connect with Russell Van Brocklen:
Website: https://dyslexiaclasses.com/
Book reference:
Overcoming Dyslexia, Sally Shaywitz M.D.
Enjoying The Quiet Warrior Podcast?
Subscribe, rate, and leave a 5-star review to help more quiet leaders and neurodivergent thinkers find their voice.
Subscribe to The Visible Introvert newsletter for exclusive insights, reflections, and resources at https://serenalow.com.au
This episode was edited by Aura House Productions
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_03 (00:01):
Hi, I'm Seren.
If you're used to hearing thatintroverts are shy, anxious,
antisocial, and lack of goodcommunication and leadership
skills, then this podcast is foryou.
You're about to fall in lovewith a calm, introspective, and
profound person that you are.
Discover what's fun, unique, andpowerful about being an
(00:22):
introvert and how to make theelegant transition from quiet
achiever to quiet warrior inyour life and work, anytime you
want, in more ways than youimagined possible.
Welcome.
Hello and welcome.
Today's guest on the QuietWarrior Podcast is Russell Van
Brockland, dyslexia researcherand founder of
(00:46):
dyslexiaclasses.com.
Funded by the New York StateSenate, a specialty first
literacy blueprint propelled acohort of dyslexic high
schoolers from grade sevenwriting to graduate entry level
in one 45-minute class per day.
And he is here to tell us thatthe same brain-based habits let
(01:08):
introvert professionals like youand me write tighter, read
faster, and conserve socialbattery.
Welcome, Russell, to the QuietWarrior Podcast.
Russell, can I first ask what isthe correct terminology to use?
Do we call a person withdyslexia dyslexic, or do we just
(01:31):
say a person with dyslexia?
SPEAKER_01 (01:34):
Um either one works because dyslexia is not really a
scientific term.
Um I generally just say uh youcan use dyslexia or neurodiverse
uh is a more broader range termnow.
Um but just so people understandwhat the science is, where I'm
coming from, this is the topbook in my field.
(01:55):
It's brain research out of YaleUniversity.
And this one graph will show youdyslexia.
Do you see how in the back partof my brain there's like almost
no neuroactivity and yours isgoing crazy?
Yes.
But the front part of my brainis two and a half times
overactive?
SPEAKER_03 (02:13):
Yes.
SPEAKER_01 (02:15):
Okay.
So what I did initially, I justwanted to prove a point that we
could do things so much better,faster, and cheaper.
So I took a bunch of dyslectichigh school students that were
highly motivated, highlyintelligent, college-bound with
excellent family support, theideal.
And they were 16 to 18, writinglike they were 12.
(02:36):
So we gave them one class perioda day for the school year, and
at the end of that, they werewriting in the average range of
entering graduate schoolstudents.
They all went on to college,they all graduated with GPAs
between 2.5 and 3.6 on a 4.0scale, no accommodations, cost
New York State less than$900.
(02:59):
Compared to my best competitionat the time, Landmark College,
we were less than 1% of the costand 3x the performance.
So, but then when I presented atmajor dyslexia conferences, the
professors told us we don'tcare.
We want the craft of research.
(03:21):
And this is what I'm going toshow your audience tonight.
What is the craft of research?
It came out in 1995 becausestudents, the PhD students at
the University of Chicago didn'tknow how to write advanced
research papers.
So they showed you how.
Now it's in its fifth edition.
The youngest students are reallyadvanced high school kids.
(03:42):
I've dropped it to uhnine-year-olds, fourth grade.
So it's divided into threeareas: context, problem,
solution.
The solution is coming up withsomething extraordinarily
original.
But for most day-to-day issues,you don't need that.
You simply need context, geteverybody on the same page, and
(04:05):
solution.
I'm sorry, uh problem.
Okay, so context and problem.
And what we're looking for forwhen I do this with school kids,
we're looking for the well, whata well-read student would say in
any given situation.
Nothing original, but you wouldwhat you would expect a
well-read student to come upwith.
(04:26):
But I've been asked by a lot ofparents who have professional
jobs.
You know, these parents havemaster's degrees, they're
doctors, lawyers, you name it.
And some of these parents arevery much introverts and they're
perfectionists.
And they're saying, is theresome way I can combine what
you're teaching my child to thatI can apply it for work using AI
(04:49):
to make it a lot faster?
And I said, absolutely.
So, and here's the thing aboutthe process once you understand
the craft of research.
You don't need to learn how toprompt engineer every time they
come out with a new AI modelbecause I'm showing you how to
prompt engineer your brain.
So we're going to focus oncontext and problem.
(05:11):
What do we do with context?
When I'm teaching itacademically, I have the
students find three quotes.
All right.
So how we do that is I have ahero.
(05:34):
Each reason we turn into asimple universal theme.
And then I go and we have thestudent find a quote that deals
with that.
All right.
And then for each quote, weanswer the basic questions who,
what, when, where, how, why.
All right.
Now that's for school kids.
(05:56):
For working professionals, bestthing I could do is that take
your data, the documents thatyou want to make a decision on,
feed it into your artificialintelligence model.
I don't care which one you use.
And what you're going to want tofind is you want context, you
want to talk with the AI andfigure out how we can get people
(06:18):
on the same page.
I usually like to use the ruleof three.
So find three quotes that youcan deal with.
Well, how do you find a quote?
Well, first of all, who's thehero?
What does the hero want to do?
Take the I once you write outwhat the hero wants to do, have
the AI convert that down to auniversal theme.
(06:41):
All right.
Then there's going to be aperson or concept that's going
to be in your way that'spreventing you from doing what
you want it, what the hero wantsto do.
Have the AI figure that one out.
Put it into a basic sentence.
All right.
And then from there, what youcan do is then come up with
three good reasons.
The AI can do this for you.
(07:03):
And then from each reason, haveit reduced to a simple universal
thing.
And then have that go throughyour data and find a quote.
All right.
Once you find the quote, havethe AI go through your data and
answer who, what, when, where,how, why, and turn it into a
paragraph.
If there's if it doesn't answerthose questions, then it can ask
(07:25):
you, what's how, what's why, andthen you can tell it.
Once you've done it for allthree reasons, I can't have the
AI rewrite things on its own.
This is a hiccup.
Even when I use the mostadvanced, I'm I pay 200 bucks a
month for ChatGPT, aprofessional.
And even this, their advancedmodels can't do it.
So what I do is I'll copy andpaste those three paragraphs
(07:47):
into a Word document, then dumpit back into Chat GPT.
Then I'll tell the artificialintelligence look at what the
hero wants to do, keep the core,dump the fluff, cut this down in
half.
And I'll do that until you getdown to about three sentences if
AI is doing it.
If you're doing it yourself, youwant to knock it down to one
(08:10):
sentence, which gets reallyhard.
So I have the AI generally do itwhen I'm doing working just for
me.
Knock it down to threesentences.
Then I ask the artificialintelligence to call to make a
one-word problem statement.
One word problem statement, andI do mention the craft of
research.
Craft of research, one wordproblem, I'm sorry, one
(08:32):
sentence, sorry, one sentenceproblem statement.
Does that, and I say, reducethat problem statement to a
single word, a single universalthing.
Now, why am I doing all this?
As you noticed, what we'retrying to do is to come up with
really good decisions that wecan implement immediately that
(08:55):
are well thought out andcompetent.
So now what we do is we takethat very specific context,
those three sentences, and Ihave the I have it run through
the one-word universal theme asa lens, and I ask the AI to come
up with three good reasons.
And I'll do it myself, and I'llsee if I can beat the AI with
(09:15):
good reasons.
Then I take a look at what Icreated, what it created, and I
figured out which ones I want togo with.
Once we have those threereasons, actually, what I'm
going to say, solutions, thosesolutions, when you have a very
specific context and you runthrough a very specific
universal theme, there's only afew answers that's going to kick
(09:37):
out.
And sometimes you're only goingto get one or two.
But that's probably going to fitwhat you need.
And you can look at thosesolutions and say, which one is
the best one?
Do I need all three?
Can I just use one or two?
And then that's it.
Once you practice this, you canget this down to less than two
minutes.
And people will understand howyou got it.
(09:59):
You can explain it.
Or better yet, I have the AIexplain it.
And I just fired off this is howI came to this decision.
This is it, this is what it'sbased on.
And it's a good, sound decision.
So, for example, one of myclients, she was, I don't know
how she fell into this, but shewas pretty introverted.
(10:20):
She worked in human resources.
Why?
She was the expert behind thescenes that dealt with all the
compliance issues because shesomehow had the ability to know
all the crazy rules andregulations that were around.
All the good ones, all the no,she just knew them.
(10:41):
So we had a situation where Ithink this is very common in the
workplace.
A 50-something senior managerwas trying to get too physically
involved with his young20-something female assistant.
And she was like, How do I dealwith this directly?
She ran it through this model.
She came up with a couple ofgood ideas.
(11:02):
She immediately had the AI writeup basically how to solve this,
flashed the whole thing out.
She was done in less than 10minutes, and it was presented to
the senior manager.
You either go through thesesteps or you're fired.
Solved it really fast.
And she was able to start comingup with really good technical
(11:23):
solutions.
Because when she came up with anidea, she's talking about this
law, subpark, this, thisdefinition of this, very
precise.
She was the one in the backoffice handling all this stuff.
And she said, This is a greatproblem solver.
I'm not bussing for three hoursover something I can now do in
10 minutes.
SPEAKER_02 (11:45):
And that's a base, that's a basic example on how to
go through that process.
Wow.
SPEAKER_01 (11:53):
I just dumped a lot of stuff on you.
So what can I do to clarify somethings?
SPEAKER_03 (11:58):
You did say that the whole process took two minutes,
but I imagine at the very start,when you are first learning to
prompt Chat GPT or any AI, itwould take some time to finesse
those sorts of questions andthen to hone it down to three
solutions or even one solution.
How do you make sure that thatit's not um hallucinating?
(12:20):
I imagine you would have toverify along the way or validate
those solutions that itprovides.
SPEAKER_01 (12:28):
Yes.
So as you're going through, Iassume that you are most of the
introverts that I know knowtheir subject matter cold.
Like pure cold knowledge.
So as it's going through, you'regoing to find that if it's
making a mistake, then youcorrect it.
(12:50):
Now, the nice thing is for thoseof us who use uh open AI
material, it just came out likeliterally a few days ago,
ChatGPT5.
Honestly, when I do it, I tendto use ChatGPT5 thinking.
It takes a little bit more time,but I find that it I do get a
lot better answers because ittakes like 10 seconds to come up
with something.
(13:11):
All right.
I stay away from pro unless I'mdoing really, really deep stuff,
uh deep original stuff.
And the original model, youknow, just five, uh, it comes
back really fast, but unless I'mdoing a quick edit, I don't use
it much.
I use the thinking, I use thethinking one, which is the
middle ground.
Uh and that hallucinationsthey're way down.
(13:31):
But if you spot it, you justtell it how to correct it and
then move on from there.
A lot of people who are notintroverts, they don't really
know their material very well.
And introverts, I find, know itexceedingly well, so they just
spot it.
SPEAKER_03 (13:46):
Great.
So this is a way to leveragethat deep thinking, reflective
as well as uh the subject matterexpertise together with AI to
reduce the time spentoverthinking and coming up with
solutions.
So cutting down from three hoursto a couple of minutes, that's
that's an amazing return oninvestment.
(14:09):
Now, what has been your ownexperience going through the
educational system as a personwith dyslexia?
SPEAKER_01 (14:19):
What have you Oh, it's impossible.
I have a very common past.
I went to college with a firstgrade reading and writing level.
When I interned for the New YorkState Assembly, um, it put me in
the programming counsel's officebecause there are three
administrative assistants, and Igave an oral presentation
instead of a written paper.
They recommended a 15 credits ofA.
(14:42):
Goes back to the politicalscience department at the State
University of New York atBuffalo.
They say we don't like theaccommodations.
Here's your 15 credits of F.
27 years later, still in mytranscript.
So I went to law school notbeing able to read and write.
And within a semester, I wasreading uh better.
I mean, we would take quizzesand property classes, and I
(15:04):
would be the first one.
You're supposed to think forthree to five minutes after each
question, and I wouldn't thinkfor three seconds.
I was done in lesson one.
And I was the first one donewith the highest grade.
And we're really paid offbecause this dyslectics are not
good K through college.
We excel in grad school becausethat's our speciality.
I went to Professor Collinsbecause I need his support.
(15:26):
Uh, he wrote this book, uh,Strategies for Struggling
Writers, Million Half DollarGrant from the U.S.
Education Department.
And in less than two weeks, Igot him to approve my new
curriculum.
I was told it was going to takefive years.
So dyslexics we fly through gradschool were not good below it.
SPEAKER_03 (15:49):
So this is where your program comes in to help
students at that lower level.
Is that right?
SPEAKER_01 (15:55):
Yes.
So we what the professors toldme when I presented this in New
York City is, you know, like,oh, you got some of your kids
scoring 70th percentile ofearning grad students.
We don't care.
We want the craft of research.
So what I just gave you is avery quick version of how we get
(16:15):
them to the problem level.
Now, where the difference comesin with the solution level is I
want you, I set it up now.
It can be used for other things,but we set it up for like
there's a famous for going overfamous books and coming up with
things that are truly original.
So are you familiar with Miceand Men?
No.
Okay.
Uh it's a book every Americankid reads in somewhere in middle
(16:38):
or high school.
Uh been around since I think the30s or 40s.
So what I do is we get to thecontext through the problem
statement and the universaltheme.
Same thing.
But then we add another severalsteps, and at the end we come up
with an original essay.
Then we that's when I reallystart running it through the PhD
(17:04):
artificial intelligence, for itsrecommendation on changes to
make, and then we re-edit it.
We do that a couple of times,and we have a truly original
essay at the graduate level.
So, students that use that, Iwant you to imagine 20 advanced
placement English students onRomeo and Juliet, you know,
Shakespeare, and the teacher'sbeen teaching for 25 years, and
(17:26):
then they get two originalessays in their life.
If they follow this, all 20 willproduce an original essay, truly
original.
And the teachers just they loveit.
And the students who can dothat, they then go out in the
workforce and they don't have toworry.
I had one student, uh, he's notintroverted so much, kind of
(17:47):
just a little just a little bit.
But he told me, this was lastyear, he hated artificial
intelligence, just couldn'tstand it.
And his boss loved it.
And he said, Okay, I'm not goingto, his boss said, I'm not going
to allow you to think and dothings uh the old way when I can
have you do it much faster withthe AI.
And he said, I want somethingoriginal, something we can use.
(18:09):
So he calls me up, he's in apanic.
I said, You're you've beentrained in the craft of
research.
So I said, Go do the context.
He does.
And he comes back.
I said, okay, go do the uh prop,go do the problem.
He comes back, he's talking toit, he's writing, he doesn't,
he's going back and forth, hehates it, but he's finding ways
(18:29):
to make it work.
And he says, I hate this.
And I said, Welcome to thegrown-up world.
Then he goes ahead and does thesolution.
His boss is flipping throughwhat the other kids come up
with.
Can't use this, can't use this,come to his.
We can use that.
That's a great idea.
Within a week, he was trainingother people in his class at the
(18:51):
job how to use artificialintelligence.
He says, I don't have a freakingclue what's going on.
This is what I did when Iapplied the craft of research,
this is what works, um, justtrial and error.
And he helped his colleagues outtremendously.
And this is the kid who hatesusing it.
But that's how powerful it is.
(19:12):
Once you understand the craft ofresearch, I just found a way to
make it much more efficientusing the overactive front part
of the dyslexic brain.
Works great with gen ed studentsas well.
Um, I just found a way to makeit more efficient.
SPEAKER_03 (19:28):
What about people who like your student find it
uncomfortable from an ethicalperspective because they think
they are cheating or takingshortcuts?
SPEAKER_01 (19:38):
Oh, you're not cheating.
Because remember what I said.
The first thing we do in anacademic sense is you're getting
quotes.
And then you're just discussing,you're just answering who, what,
when, where, how, why.
And then we're going to a muchdeeper level of analysis once we
get into the body paragraphs.
Um, and then if we're doing thesolution, You're coming up with
(20:01):
original things to say.
Essentially, for a dyslexic, solet me give you an example.
When I went back to the New YorkState Assembly, was it cheating
for me to have threeadministrative assistants help
edit my work when I had toproduce something in writing?
That's what the AI is doing.
People think that the AI canwrite a book.
It can't.
(20:21):
It's really good at getting youto that first draft.
But as any uh introverted uhcurrent or former A student
knows, once you get to the firstdraft, then you got to rip it
apart and rewrite it to getbecause you have to put in three
times the effort to get the Afrom an A- to get that truly
(20:44):
hard-earned A.
So all it does is get you to thefirst draft a lot quicker.
That's all it's good for.
And if you don't know how totake it from that to the final
area, then say it, I don't knowwhat you've been doing in higher
education, but you didn't dowhat you were supposed to do.
So again, it's just there tohelp get do the grunt work.
SPEAKER_02 (21:06):
Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_03 (21:07):
Yes, that makes sense.
That's um probably from anethical and personal integrity
point of view that will answerthe question that some people
might have who are listening tothis episode.
SPEAKER_01 (21:18):
But also my other well, let me just give you a
quick example.
I'm writing a book now on how toteach parents and teachers to go
through what I just showed you.
All right.
I drafted it out with artificialintelligence.
Then I hired a ghostwriterbecause I want this to be
really, really good.
And I send her, instead of herasking me a long list of
(21:41):
questions, I said, Well, here'sa draft.
So instead of us taking sixmonths to a year to write a
book, we're gonna do it in sixto eight weeks.
It's just really good at goingover the draft and redoing
things.
But I can tell you what shesends me back after I send her
what from the from the AI, it'scompletely rewritten and it's a
(22:05):
hundred times better.
People that just write bookswith artificial intelligence,
you don't have to worry aboutthe ethics of it because
nobody's buying it.
And you're darn right that theteacher knows what's going on.
And when they follow, I havestudents going in saying, here's
how I did each step.
They show their work.
And teachers are okay with that.
If they have some issues withit, they can tone it back a bit.
(22:26):
And I had teachers do thatsaying, I'm not comfortable with
this use of artificialintelligence.
I say, okay, what would you liketo do?
And then they said, here's how Iwant to tone back.
I said, the ethical use of AI ineducation is defined by
teachers.
You can disagree amongstyourself, but if one teacher,
but if you if the student'steacher said this is ethical, I
think it's ethical.
(22:47):
If they think it's wrong, then Ithink it's wrong.
SPEAKER_02 (22:51):
And that and people tend to be able to agree with
that.
SPEAKER_03 (23:00):
In terms of, I'm not sure if this is within your
expertise, but do you have anyinsights as to introverts, the
way their brains function, andany intersection between that
and how a person with dyslexiathinks?
SPEAKER_01 (23:18):
Yes.
I'm gonna give you one of mymost controversial uh things
that I found.
Again, so I'm just gonna hold upbecause we're gonna go right
into this.
You see the brains, the two thebrains there?
SPEAKER_03 (23:31):
Yes.
So just for the for the benefitof the listeners, because this
is an audio-only podcast, um,this textbook is called
Overcoming Dyslexia.
Is that right?
SPEAKER_01 (23:41):
Yes, yes, by Sally Shewitz.
SPEAKER_03 (23:43):
Yep.
Okay.
SPEAKER_01 (23:44):
Okay.
And what it describes is theback part of the dyslexic brain
has like almost zeroneuroactivity, but the front
part is two and a half timesoveractive.
SPEAKER_02 (23:54):
Yep.
SPEAKER_01 (23:54):
And the back part of it, the normal brain's going
crazy.
Yep.
I would say for introverts thatthey're what I like to call
generally full brain people.
Okay, so let me give you anexample.
I'm gonna use you as an example.
How far did you go in youreducation?
SPEAKER_03 (24:13):
Bachelor's.
SPEAKER_01 (24:14):
Okay.
When you were taking your juniorand senior level classes, did
you look around and wonder, howdid some of these people get in
here?
SPEAKER_03 (24:25):
Not really.
SPEAKER_01 (24:26):
Not really.
All the students in your youruniversity were good.
SPEAKER_03 (24:31):
Yeah, they were they were all better than me.
SPEAKER_01 (24:34):
Oh, okay.
Well, in the United States, it'svery common to look around and
going, how the heck do thesepeople get in there?
All right.
What I found, and let me see ifI here's the book.
I'm going to this is where thisis a long answer because you
asked a complicated question.
This is a book, post-war Japanis history.
SPEAKER_02 (24:53):
Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_01 (24:54):
This first essay, it's Peace and Democracy in Two
Systems, External Policy andInternal Conflict by John W.
Dower.
All right, he won the Pulitzer,he won the National Book Award,
he's the best writer in hisfield.
This first paragraph, which hesaid is for 10th grade to second
year college, you should be ableto read this.
(25:15):
He scrunches what more than whatpeople say in books into the
first paragraph.
Okay.
So if I gave it to you to read,you would just read it and say,
you know, what is he trying tosay?
And you would tell me.
I go to at major dyslexiaconferences, reading
specialists.
They have a four-year undergradand two years master's degree in
(25:38):
reading.
They can't read that.
There's 17 pieces ofinformation, and their brains go
off, just go off the rails, likea train going off the rails.
So, what I find with introvertedpeople is that they're mostly
what I call full brain people.
They can think creatively like adyslectic in their niche, in
(26:02):
their very focused area, wherethey know everything.
And they can read and write likean like an advanced placement
gen ed student.
Okay?
So they can do both as a generalrule.
So I gave if I gave you this toread, you'd look it over and
(26:22):
say, What's the big deal?
You may not know a lot aboutpost-war Japanese history, but
you can understand what he'ssaying because he's the best
writer in his field.
But when I give it to let's justcall them the party animals, the
frat boys and sorority girls incollege, they graduate.
They can't read this.
And according to ProfessorDauer, if you can't read that
(26:45):
essay and tell them what itmeans, he got he got furious.
He said you should go back toyour college and get a refund
because he didn't know what youwere doing there for four years,
but you certainly weren'tgetting an education.
You should have your diplomataken away.
Okay, and that's from a fullprofessor at MIT.
(27:05):
All right.
So again, so for introvertedpeople, what I'm finding is that
generally, once you stop tryingto be a perfectionist and just
go through a process based onthe craft of research, you can
produce very good work much moreefficiently, and you can you can
(27:30):
actually come up with somethingoriginal.
I can't tell you how many timesI see people going through a
PhD.
The dyslectic walks in, theysay, Can you contribute to the
field?
Yes.
Within a within that day or veryquickly, they have something
that'll advance the field.
I have seen so manynon-dyslections go through and
(27:50):
they're all but dissertation.
Or they do a dissertation,nobody cares.
A lot of the introverted peoplewho just kind of live in the
library of students, rememberthose days?
You know, they came up withsomething that matters.
Not as easy as a dyslectic, butthey can do they can do
everything.
They come up with a good idea,it takes them usually a couple
(28:11):
of years, and then they gothrough the process and they
come out with a good, soliddissertation.
And they do fantastic.
And I find that they tend to besome of my better teachers in
college because I sought themout, because they know they're
the world expert in what theycame up with.
They're excellent.
So, yeah, that's a huge thing.
(28:34):
This introverts tend to be havethe ability to think creatively
like a dyslexic, not quite asgood, but still very good, and
then they have all the benefitsof being a top A student.
SPEAKER_02 (28:50):
Thank you for that.
That's very enlightening.
SPEAKER_03 (28:53):
That's the first time I've ever heard it placed
in that in that way.
SPEAKER_01 (28:58):
I when I hand this book postwork, I when I hand it
out a con I embarrass people.
I mean, think about it, you're areading teacher with six years
of higher education, and youcan't read something that a
college freshman should be ableto read.
I I it it turns non it turns thenon-introvert into a dysleptic.
SPEAKER_02 (29:20):
And they don't like how it makes them feel.
Just for interest, how long isthat first paragraph?
SPEAKER_01 (29:30):
Oh, it's it's really quick.
Oh read you the first sentence.
Ever since Japan's seclusion wasruptured by the Western nations
in 1853, democratic and internalpolitics have been interwoven
for the Japanese.
SPEAKER_02 (29:47):
What does that mean?
SPEAKER_01 (29:51):
Democratics and Yeah, let me read again.
Yeah, it's really dense.
Ever since Japan's seclusion wasruptured by Western nations in
1853, democratic andinternational politics have been
interwoven for the Japanese.
SPEAKER_03 (30:08):
Okay.
SPEAKER_01 (30:09):
What is that basically saying?
SPEAKER_03 (30:11):
That's basically saying in 1853, you know, Japan
had been until 1853, Japan hadbeen existing in this particular
way.
And then the Western powers camealong, they disrupted that, and
thereafter it's no longer justJapan functioning in a silo,
it's now got to considergeopolitical issues and what
else is happening in the Westernworld.
SPEAKER_02 (30:33):
Was that hard?
SPEAKER_01 (30:36):
Do you wonder if somebody has a master's degree,
they can't say what you theycan't give me a description of
what you just said.
SPEAKER_02 (30:45):
Does that count sign a count sound of weird?
SPEAKER_03 (30:50):
Maybe it'll take a look at a few more.
I don't know.
Some people might take a fewmore seconds to digest that
because it's a lot of No, no,they they they they simply can't
do it.
Is that true?
SPEAKER_01 (31:00):
Really?
Yes, they have master's degreesin reading, and the most of them
can't do that.
I just read a few more sentencesand they just they can't do it.
It's like and then I say, well,if you can't do this, why don't
we take your master's degreeaway?
Why don't we have you lose yourprofessional position and work
in McDonald's?
(31:22):
All right, imagine if I had thatpower.
Read it, tell me what it means,and they can't do it.
I said, now you're beginning tocomprehend what it's like to be
dyslectic.
And for introverts like you andme, no, you looked at that and
you just told me if people willget two more years of higher
education than you had, far moreintense than an undergrad.
SPEAKER_02 (31:44):
Master's degrees are far more intense than
undergrads, and yet they can'tread that, they can't understand
it.
SPEAKER_01 (31:54):
And you weren't even reading, you listened to my not
so good pronunciation.
If I put this book in front ofyou, you would have read and
just got it right, you know, onepass.
You got it.
And it makes you feel likewhat's going on here?
What's going on is you're a fullbrain and they're a half a
brain.
SPEAKER_02 (32:14):
They can't do the evolved stuff.
So then what's your advice forpeople who are listening?
SPEAKER_03 (32:23):
What what's the best thing they can do for
themselves?
SPEAKER_01 (32:26):
The best thing that I need you to understand is
again if you want to try thisagain.
It's uh the book is titledPostwar Japan as History.
The first uh the first uharticle is written by Professor
Dowler.
Okay, just as the rest of thewriters are horrible.
He's the best in his field.
What I want you to understand isdysleptics have an advantage
(32:51):
over you in coming up withcreative ideas.
Okay, but we can't write worth adarn.
So we match up with anintroverts like yourself.
But you can come up with goodideas yourself, it just takes a
little longer.
If you want to know how to dothe solution side, best thing to
do is go to dyslexiaclasses.com.
That's dyslexiaclasses with an Sdot com and fill out the contact
(33:14):
me page, and I can set up toshow you how to do that.
It's a lot, it's too evolved fora podcast.
All right, but it's the samegeneral process.
You go through you go throughwhat I showed you here, and
that'll get you your day-to-daygood decisions.
All right, you can do thecreative stuff if you need to.
Most people honestly don't.
But if you're in a positionwhere you have to come up with
(33:36):
some, how am I going to redo thecompany or how can I create a
better hiring process orwhatever I do, something that's
going to move the bottom line.
All right, that's the solution.
That's the one, that's the onenext step.
But for everybody, but forgeneral, just focus on what
you're doing here, those thesteps that I showed you.
Realize that your value to thecompany is that quiet expert.
(34:02):
What I can tell you when I gointo meetings, that's the person
I'm looking for.
They don't have the title, theyhave very little formal power.
But when it comes time to theperson who makes the decision,
that's the person.
How do I know who they are, whothe introvert is?
They ask me the really hardquestions.
(34:25):
And when I go to pitchorganizations that show them how
to do this, I know if I'm notgetting tough questions, they
don't care.
And I spent all my time focusingon that introvert, not the
former frat guy who actuallyruns the division.
Because they don't knowanything.
They got there because they'regood socially.
(34:46):
But heaven helped them if theyhad to actually come up with
something themselves.
SPEAKER_02 (34:51):
Generally doesn't work out very well.
Wow.
So context problem solution.
SPEAKER_03 (35:03):
And that can be applied across any any subject,
any specialty, any context.
SPEAKER_01 (35:09):
Yes, just look at the craft of research literally
says if you can't come up withsomething original, don't write
the paper.
What I found is most decisionsmost of the time don't require
the solution.
The context and problem, runningthe context through that you
that universal theme as a lens,coming up with three good
(35:29):
reasons, three good solutions,okay, is good enough for most
day-to-day issues.
And then I and this is I can Ican just hear the introverts in
your audience now.
Well, I got people that reallywant to know where it came from.
That's why I told you to get thequotes.
Remember then we did the who,what, when, where, how, why, and
(35:50):
then we condensed it down.
You can go back and say, well,this is where I believe the
problem was, and here's thequotes.
Oh, you disagree with me.
Okay.
Well, what do you want to do?
What does the hero want to do?
Reduce it to a universal theme.
Who or what can stop us?
Okay, come up with the threegood reasons, reduce it to a
(36:11):
universal theme, find yourquotes.
Maybe your quotes aren't aaren't a sentence, maybe it's a
paragraph.
Then you answer the who, what,when, were, how, why, instead of
three-body paragraphs, you got12.
We still reduce it to aboutthree sentences.
If the cot if the artificialintelligence can do three
paragraphs, well, then we can gothat high.
All right.
(36:32):
Ask them what it is and then runit through.
And say, okay, here are my threesolutions.
Do you like any of these?
Oh, you like this one?
Oh, you don't like the othertwo?
Let's go back and run it againand focus on this change.
Once you get good, you can runthis through very quickly, and
then just come up with a lot ofdifferent reasons and solutions
(36:53):
and find out what they like.
Invite them to be part of theprocess.
And then you can say, yes, well,this deals with, and you run it
through your data.
Uh, from you, this is where itcomes from this paragraph.
And the harder the questions,good.
Because then you know when yougive them an answer that they
like, they're going to rememberyou.
(37:14):
Because remember, as introverts,we're not the former frat boy
running the division.
But when it comes time to makingthe critical decisions, they
come to us.
SPEAKER_02 (37:30):
Some of the most powerful things I can tell you.
That's extremely reassuring.
SPEAKER_03 (37:44):
For our introverts and quiet achievers, you now
have a framework to startgetting disentangled and getting
clearer and getting faster andcutting down the time you spend
than you would otherwise spendoverthinking and getting into
all kinds of mental spirals.
So this is a way to usetechnology combined with that
(38:05):
deep thinking, the intelligence,the shall we say, complicated,
complex, complex thinkingprocesses of the quiet achiever
to generate more solutions andat the same time combining
people's skills, because thenit's also about who we are
working with, what is theiragenda, what are their
(38:26):
objectives, what do they want.
And combining all of that togenerate the solutions that are
appropriate and faster.
That being summary.
SPEAKER_01 (38:36):
Just so you know, when you're looking at the
neuroscience, generally how itworks is dyslexia tends to be
the innovative way.
And then it spreads out to gened students.
All right.
And the main thing that I wantthe introverts out there to
understand is as a general rule,we can we are full-brained
(38:57):
people.
You can think like a dyslectic,the uh not quite as good, but
close to it as far as coming upwith a creative ideas.
But then you have that massiveneuroactivity in the back part
of your brain.
Let's face it, when it was aSaturday night and all the frat
boys and girls were out going toparties, where were we?
(39:17):
We were in the library becausethat's what college required.
All right.
So they may be the bossesbecause they they know how to
interact with people so well andthey get promoted because they
know because their Uncle Bob ortheir fraternity brother is the
president or some othernonsense.
But when it comes time to makingthe decisions, it's that quiet,
(39:39):
introvert, introverted expertthat they go to.
I deal in the world ofeducation.
I'll ask when I walk in, who'sthe teacher?
No, what do you mean?
I said, Who's your teacher thattells you yes or no?
How do you know that?
Because I know the system.
And then I find that person.
I say, good.
I uh I tell them.
(40:00):
Run me through the hardestquestions you have.
Don't worry about being rude.
Just shoot it at shoot it at meas hard as you can.
And then they say, Well, it'sgonna take me three months for
me to cut get around this.
It's fine.
I'll work with you for threemonths.
But I can tell you once I get itthe go-ahead from that teacher,
it applies right up to thesuperintendent.
SPEAKER_02 (40:23):
That's their expert.
That's who they listen to.
SPEAKER_01 (40:27):
And I connect them with other experts that I've
worked with, their peers.
Oh, that really helps.
Connect, find out who, if you'redealing with another
organization, find out who yourpeer is in that organization.
Go to them directly.
Find out other people that theytrust.
You and that's how you get aquicker decision out of them.
(40:49):
But it takes a long time to getan introvert to make a decision.
SPEAKER_02 (40:52):
But once you make it, people listen.
Beautiful.
And on that note, what is thebest way for people to contact
you, Russell?
SPEAKER_01 (41:04):
Best thing to do is just go to dyslexiaclasses.com.
That's with an SpluralDyslexiaClasses.com.
There's a contact form there.
Just fill it out and I'll getright back to you.
SPEAKER_03 (41:13):
Fantastic.
Thank you so much, Russell VanBrockland, for sharing your time
and your wisdom with us today.
SPEAKER_02 (41:20):
Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_03 (41:21):
If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to
leave a five-star rating andreview to help the Quiet Warrior
Podcast reach more introvertsand quiet achievers around the
world.
And for my recommended resourceson how to thrive as an
introvert, make sure you'resubscribed to the Visible
Introvert newsletter atserenaloe.com.au.
See you on the next episode.
(41:44):
I'm so grateful that you're heretoday.
If you found this contentvaluable, please share it on
your social media channels andsubscribe to the show on your
favorite listening platform.
Together we can help moreintroverts thrive.
To receive more upliftingcontent like this, connect with
me on Instagram at SerenalooQuiet Warrior Coach.
(42:05):
Thank you for sharing your timeand your energy with me.
See you on the next episode.
Hi, I'm Seren.
If you're used to hearing thatintroverts are shy, anxious,
antisocial, and lack of goodcommunication and leadership
skills, then this podcast is foryou.
You're about to fall in lovewith a calm, introspective, and
profound person that you are.
Discover what's fun, unique, andpowerful about being an
(00:22):
introvert and how to make theelegant transition from quiet
achiever to quiet warrior inyour life and work, anytime you
want, in more ways than youimagined possible.
Welcome.
Hello and welcome.
Today's guest on the QuietWarrior Podcast is Russell Van
Brockland, dyslexia researcherand founder of
(00:46):
dyslexiaclasses.com.
Funded by the New York StateSenate, a specialty first
literacy blueprint propelled acohort of dyslexic high
schoolers from grade sevenwriting to graduate entry level
in one 45-minute class per day.
And he is here to tell us thatthe same brain-based habits let
(01:08):
introvert professionals like youand me write tighter, read
faster, and conserve socialbattery.
Welcome, Russell, to the QuietWarrior Podcast.
Russell, can I first ask what isthe correct terminology to use?
Do we call a person withdyslexia dyslexic, or do we just
(01:31):
say a person with dyslexia?
SPEAKER_01 (01:34):
Um either one works because dyslexia is not really a
scientific term.
Um I generally just say uh youcan use dyslexia or neurodiverse
uh is a more broader range termnow.
Um but just so people understandwhat the science is, where I'm
coming from, this is the topbook in my field.
(01:55):
It's brain research out of YaleUniversity.
And this one graph will show youdyslexia.
Do you see how in the back partof my brain there's like almost
no neuroactivity and yours isgoing crazy?
Yes.
But the front part of my brainis two and a half times
overactive?
SPEAKER_03 (02:13):
Yes.
SPEAKER_01 (02:15):
Okay.
So what I did initially, I justwanted to prove a point that we
could do things so much better,faster, and cheaper.
So I took a bunch of dyslectichigh school students that were
highly motivated, highlyintelligent, college-bound with
excellent family support, theideal.
And they were 16 to 18, writinglike they were 12.
(02:36):
So we gave them one class perioda day for the school year, and
at the end of that, they werewriting in the average range of
entering graduate schoolstudents.
They all went on to college,they all graduated with GPAs
between 2.5 and 3.6 on a 4.0scale, no accommodations, cost
New York State less than$900.
(02:59):
Compared to my best competitionat the time, Landmark College,
we were less than 1% of the costand 3x the performance.
So, but then when I presented atmajor dyslexia conferences, the
professors told us we don'tcare.
We want the craft of research.
(03:21):
And this is what I'm going toshow your audience tonight.
What is the craft of research?
It came out in 1995 becausestudents, the PhD students at
the University of Chicago didn'tknow how to write advanced
research papers.
So they showed you how.
Now it's in its fifth edition.
The youngest students are reallyadvanced high school kids.
(03:42):
I've dropped it to uhnine-year-olds, fourth grade.
So it's divided into threeareas: context, problem,
solution.
The solution is coming up withsomething extraordinarily
original.
But for most day-to-day issues,you don't need that.
You simply need context, geteverybody on the same page, and
(04:05):
solution.
I'm sorry, uh problem.
Okay, so context and problem.
And what we're looking for forwhen I do this with school kids,
we're looking for the well, whata well-read student would say in
any given situation.
Nothing original, but you wouldwhat you would expect a
well-read student to come upwith.
(04:26):
But I've been asked by a lot ofparents who have professional
jobs.
You know, these parents havemaster's degrees, they're
doctors, lawyers, you name it.
And some of these parents arevery much introverts and they're
perfectionists.
And they're saying, is theresome way I can combine what
you're teaching my child to thatI can apply it for work using AI
(04:49):
to make it a lot faster?
And I said, absolutely.
So, and here's the thing aboutthe process once you understand
the craft of research.
You don't need to learn how toprompt engineer every time they
come out with a new AI modelbecause I'm showing you how to
prompt engineer your brain.
So we're going to focus oncontext and problem.
(05:11):
What do we do with context?
When I'm teaching itacademically, I have the
students find three quotes.
All right.
So how we do that is I have ahero.
(05:34):
Each reason we turn into asimple universal theme.
And then I go and we have thestudent find a quote that deals
with that.
All right.
And then for each quote, weanswer the basic questions who,
what, when, where, how, why.
All right.
Now that's for school kids.
(05:56):
For working professionals, bestthing I could do is that take
your data, the documents thatyou want to make a decision on,
feed it into your artificialintelligence model.
I don't care which one you use.
And what you're going to want tofind is you want context, you
want to talk with the AI andfigure out how we can get people
(06:18):
on the same page.
I usually like to use the ruleof three.
So find three quotes that youcan deal with.
Well, how do you find a quote?
Well, first of all, who's thehero?
What does the hero want to do?
Take the I once you write outwhat the hero wants to do, have
the AI convert that down to auniversal theme.
(06:41):
All right.
Then there's going to be aperson or concept that's going
to be in your way that'spreventing you from doing what
you want it, what the hero wantsto do.
Have the AI figure that one out.
Put it into a basic sentence.
All right.
And then from there, what youcan do is then come up with
three good reasons.
The AI can do this for you.
(07:03):
And then from each reason, haveit reduced to a simple universal
thing.
And then have that go throughyour data and find a quote.
All right.
Once you find the quote, havethe AI go through your data and
answer who, what, when, where,how, why, and turn it into a
paragraph.
If there's if it doesn't answerthose questions, then it can ask
(07:25):
you, what's how, what's why, andthen you can tell it.
Once you've done it for allthree reasons, I can't have the
AI rewrite things on its own.
This is a hiccup.
Even when I use the mostadvanced, I'm I pay 200 bucks a
month for ChatGPT, aprofessional.
And even this, their advancedmodels can't do it.
So what I do is I'll copy andpaste those three paragraphs
(07:47):
into a Word document, then dumpit back into Chat GPT.
Then I'll tell the artificialintelligence look at what the
hero wants to do, keep the core,dump the fluff, cut this down in
half.
And I'll do that until you getdown to about three sentences if
AI is doing it.
If you're doing it yourself, youwant to knock it down to one
(08:10):
sentence, which gets reallyhard.
So I have the AI generally do itwhen I'm doing working just for
me.
Knock it down to threesentences.
Then I ask the artificialintelligence to call to make a
one-word problem statement.
One word problem statement, andI do mention the craft of
research.
Craft of research, one wordproblem, I'm sorry, one
(08:32):
sentence, sorry, one sentenceproblem statement.
Does that, and I say, reducethat problem statement to a
single word, a single universalthing.
Now, why am I doing all this?
As you noticed, what we'retrying to do is to come up with
really good decisions that wecan implement immediately that
(08:55):
are well thought out andcompetent.
So now what we do is we takethat very specific context,
those three sentences, and Ihave the I have it run through
the one-word universal theme asa lens, and I ask the AI to come
up with three good reasons.
And I'll do it myself, and I'llsee if I can beat the AI with
(09:15):
good reasons.
Then I take a look at what Icreated, what it created, and I
figured out which ones I want togo with.
Once we have those threereasons, actually, what I'm
going to say, solutions, thosesolutions, when you have a very
specific context and you runthrough a very specific
universal theme, there's only afew answers that's going to kick
(09:37):
out.
And sometimes you're only goingto get one or two.
But that's probably going to fitwhat you need.
And you can look at thosesolutions and say, which one is
the best one?
Do I need all three?
Can I just use one or two?
And then that's it.
Once you practice this, you canget this down to less than two
minutes.
And people will understand howyou got it.
(09:59):
You can explain it.
Or better yet, I have the AIexplain it.
And I just fired off this is howI came to this decision.
This is it, this is what it'sbased on.
And it's a good, sound decision.
So, for example, one of myclients, she was, I don't know
how she fell into this, but shewas pretty introverted.
(10:20):
She worked in human resources.
Why?
She was the expert behind thescenes that dealt with all the
compliance issues because shesomehow had the ability to know
all the crazy rules andregulations that were around.
All the good ones, all the no,she just knew them.
(10:41):
So we had a situation where Ithink this is very common in the
workplace.
A 50-something senior managerwas trying to get too physically
involved with his young20-something female assistant.
And she was like, How do I dealwith this directly?
She ran it through this model.
She came up with a couple ofgood ideas.
(11:02):
She immediately had the AI writeup basically how to solve this,
flashed the whole thing out.
She was done in less than 10minutes, and it was presented to
the senior manager.
You either go through thesesteps or you're fired.
Solved it really fast.
And she was able to start comingup with really good technical
(11:23):
solutions.
Because when she came up with anidea, she's talking about this
law, subpark, this, thisdefinition of this, very
precise.
She was the one in the backoffice handling all this stuff.
And she said, This is a greatproblem solver.
I'm not bussing for three hoursover something I can now do in
10 minutes.
SPEAKER_02 (11:45):
And that's a base, that's a basic example on how to
go through that process.
Wow.
SPEAKER_01 (11:53):
I just dumped a lot of stuff on you.
So what can I do to clarify somethings?
SPEAKER_03 (11:58):
You did say that the whole process took two minutes,
but I imagine at the very start,when you are first learning to
prompt Chat GPT or any AI, itwould take some time to finesse
those sorts of questions andthen to hone it down to three
solutions or even one solution.
How do you make sure that thatit's not um hallucinating?
(12:20):
I imagine you would have toverify along the way or validate
those solutions that itprovides.
SPEAKER_01 (12:28):
Yes.
So as you're going through, Iassume that you are most of the
introverts that I know knowtheir subject matter cold.
Like pure cold knowledge.
So as it's going through, you'regoing to find that if it's
making a mistake, then youcorrect it.
(12:50):
Now, the nice thing is for thoseof us who use uh open AI
material, it just came out likeliterally a few days ago,
ChatGPT5.
Honestly, when I do it, I tendto use ChatGPT5 thinking.
It takes a little bit more time,but I find that it I do get a
lot better answers because ittakes like 10 seconds to come up
with something.
(13:11):
All right.
I stay away from pro unless I'mdoing really, really deep stuff,
uh deep original stuff.
And the original model, youknow, just five, uh, it comes
back really fast, but unless I'mdoing a quick edit, I don't use
it much.
I use the thinking, I use thethinking one, which is the
middle ground.
Uh and that hallucinationsthey're way down.
(13:31):
But if you spot it, you justtell it how to correct it and
then move on from there.
A lot of people who are notintroverts, they don't really
know their material very well.
And introverts, I find, know itexceedingly well, so they just
spot it.
SPEAKER_03 (13:46):
Great.
So this is a way to leveragethat deep thinking, reflective
as well as uh the subject matterexpertise together with AI to
reduce the time spentoverthinking and coming up with
solutions.
So cutting down from three hoursto a couple of minutes, that's
that's an amazing return oninvestment.
(14:09):
Now, what has been your ownexperience going through the
educational system as a personwith dyslexia?
SPEAKER_01 (14:19):
What have you Oh, it's impossible.
I have a very common past.
I went to college with a firstgrade reading and writing level.
When I interned for the New YorkState Assembly, um, it put me in
the programming counsel's officebecause there are three
administrative assistants, and Igave an oral presentation
instead of a written paper.
They recommended a 15 credits ofA.
(14:42):
Goes back to the politicalscience department at the State
University of New York atBuffalo.
They say we don't like theaccommodations.
Here's your 15 credits of F.
27 years later, still in mytranscript.
So I went to law school notbeing able to read and write.
And within a semester, I wasreading uh better.
I mean, we would take quizzesand property classes, and I
(15:04):
would be the first one.
You're supposed to think forthree to five minutes after each
question, and I wouldn't thinkfor three seconds.
I was done in lesson one.
And I was the first one donewith the highest grade.
And we're really paid offbecause this dyslectics are not
good K through college.
We excel in grad school becausethat's our speciality.
I went to Professor Collinsbecause I need his support.
(15:26):
Uh, he wrote this book, uh,Strategies for Struggling
Writers, Million Half DollarGrant from the U.S.
Education Department.
And in less than two weeks, Igot him to approve my new
curriculum.
I was told it was going to takefive years.
So dyslexics we fly through gradschool were not good below it.
SPEAKER_03 (15:49):
So this is where your program comes in to help
students at that lower level.
Is that right?
SPEAKER_01 (15:55):
Yes.
So we what the professors toldme when I presented this in New
York City is, you know, like,oh, you got some of your kids
scoring 70th percentile ofearning grad students.
We don't care.
We want the craft of research.
So what I just gave you is avery quick version of how we get
(16:15):
them to the problem level.
Now, where the difference comesin with the solution level is I
want you, I set it up now.
It can be used for other things,but we set it up for like
there's a famous for going overfamous books and coming up with
things that are truly original.
So are you familiar with Miceand Men?
No.
Okay.
Uh it's a book every Americankid reads in somewhere in middle
(16:38):
or high school.
Uh been around since I think the30s or 40s.
So what I do is we get to thecontext through the problem
statement and the universaltheme.
Same thing.
But then we add another severalsteps, and at the end we come up
with an original essay.
Then we that's when I reallystart running it through the PhD
(17:04):
artificial intelligence, for itsrecommendation on changes to
make, and then we re-edit it.
We do that a couple of times,and we have a truly original
essay at the graduate level.
So, students that use that, Iwant you to imagine 20 advanced
placement English students onRomeo and Juliet, you know,
Shakespeare, and the teacher'sbeen teaching for 25 years, and
(17:26):
then they get two originalessays in their life.
If they follow this, all 20 willproduce an original essay, truly
original.
And the teachers just they loveit.
And the students who can dothat, they then go out in the
workforce and they don't have toworry.
I had one student, uh, he's notintroverted so much, kind of
(17:47):
just a little just a little bit.
But he told me, this was lastyear, he hated artificial
intelligence, just couldn'tstand it.
And his boss loved it.
And he said, Okay, I'm not goingto, his boss said, I'm not going
to allow you to think and dothings uh the old way when I can
have you do it much faster withthe AI.
And he said, I want somethingoriginal, something we can use.
(18:09):
So he calls me up, he's in apanic.
I said, You're you've beentrained in the craft of
research.
So I said, Go do the context.
He does.
And he comes back.
I said, okay, go do the uh prop,go do the problem.
He comes back, he's talking toit, he's writing, he doesn't,
he's going back and forth, hehates it, but he's finding ways
(18:29):
to make it work.
And he says, I hate this.
And I said, Welcome to thegrown-up world.
Then he goes ahead and does thesolution.
His boss is flipping throughwhat the other kids come up
with.
Can't use this, can't use this,come to his.
We can use that.
That's a great idea.
Within a week, he was trainingother people in his class at the
(18:51):
job how to use artificialintelligence.
He says, I don't have a freakingclue what's going on.
This is what I did when Iapplied the craft of research,
this is what works, um, justtrial and error.
And he helped his colleagues outtremendously.
And this is the kid who hatesusing it.
But that's how powerful it is.
(19:12):
Once you understand the craft ofresearch, I just found a way to
make it much more efficientusing the overactive front part
of the dyslexic brain.
Works great with gen ed studentsas well.
Um, I just found a way to makeit more efficient.
SPEAKER_03 (19:28):
What about people who like your student find it
uncomfortable from an ethicalperspective because they think
they are cheating or takingshortcuts?
SPEAKER_01 (19:38):
Oh, you're not cheating.
Because remember what I said.
The first thing we do in anacademic sense is you're getting
quotes.
And then you're just discussing,you're just answering who, what,
when, where, how, why.
And then we're going to a muchdeeper level of analysis once we
get into the body paragraphs.
Um, and then if we're doing thesolution, You're coming up with
(20:01):
original things to say.
Essentially, for a dyslexic, solet me give you an example.
When I went back to the New YorkState Assembly, was it cheating
for me to have threeadministrative assistants help
edit my work when I had toproduce something in writing?
That's what the AI is doing.
People think that the AI canwrite a book.
It can't.
(20:21):
It's really good at getting youto that first draft.
But as any uh introverted uhcurrent or former A student
knows, once you get to the firstdraft, then you got to rip it
apart and rewrite it to getbecause you have to put in three
times the effort to get the Afrom an A- to get that truly
(20:44):
hard-earned A.
So all it does is get you to thefirst draft a lot quicker.
That's all it's good for.
And if you don't know how totake it from that to the final
area, then say it, I don't knowwhat you've been doing in higher
education, but you didn't dowhat you were supposed to do.
So again, it's just there tohelp get do the grunt work.
SPEAKER_02 (21:06):
Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_03 (21:07):
Yes, that makes sense.
That's um probably from anethical and personal integrity
point of view that will answerthe question that some people
might have who are listening tothis episode.
SPEAKER_01 (21:18):
But also my other well, let me just give you a
quick example.
I'm writing a book now on how toteach parents and teachers to go
through what I just showed you.
All right.
I drafted it out with artificialintelligence.
Then I hired a ghostwriterbecause I want this to be
really, really good.
And I send her, instead of herasking me a long list of
(21:41):
questions, I said, Well, here'sa draft.
So instead of us taking sixmonths to a year to write a
book, we're gonna do it in sixto eight weeks.
It's just really good at goingover the draft and redoing
things.
But I can tell you what shesends me back after I send her
what from the from the AI, it'scompletely rewritten and it's a
(22:05):
hundred times better.
People that just write bookswith artificial intelligence,
you don't have to worry aboutthe ethics of it because
nobody's buying it.
And you're darn right that theteacher knows what's going on.
And when they follow, I havestudents going in saying, here's
how I did each step.
They show their work.
And teachers are okay with that.
If they have some issues withit, they can tone it back a bit.
(22:26):
And I had teachers do thatsaying, I'm not comfortable with
this use of artificialintelligence.
I say, okay, what would you liketo do?
And then they said, here's how Iwant to tone back.
I said, the ethical use of AI ineducation is defined by
teachers.
You can disagree amongstyourself, but if one teacher,
but if you if the student'steacher said this is ethical, I
think it's ethical.
(22:47):
If they think it's wrong, then Ithink it's wrong.
SPEAKER_02 (22:51):
And that and people tend to be able to agree with
that.
SPEAKER_03 (23:00):
In terms of, I'm not sure if this is within your
expertise, but do you have anyinsights as to introverts, the
way their brains function, andany intersection between that
and how a person with dyslexiathinks?
SPEAKER_01 (23:18):
Yes.
I'm gonna give you one of mymost controversial uh things
that I found.
Again, so I'm just gonna hold upbecause we're gonna go right
into this.
You see the brains, the two thebrains there?
SPEAKER_03 (23:31):
Yes.
So just for the for the benefitof the listeners, because this
is an audio-only podcast, um,this textbook is called
Overcoming Dyslexia.
Is that right?
SPEAKER_01 (23:41):
Yes, yes, by Sally Shewitz.
SPEAKER_03 (23:43):
Yep.
Okay.
SPEAKER_01 (23:44):
Okay.
And what it describes is theback part of the dyslexic brain
has like almost zeroneuroactivity, but the front
part is two and a half timesoveractive.
SPEAKER_02 (23:54):
Yep.
SPEAKER_01 (23:54):
And the back part of it, the normal brain's going
crazy.
Yep.
I would say for introverts thatthey're what I like to call
generally full brain people.
Okay, so let me give you anexample.
I'm gonna use you as an example.
How far did you go in youreducation?
SPEAKER_03 (24:13):
Bachelor's.
SPEAKER_01 (24:14):
Okay.
When you were taking your juniorand senior level classes, did
you look around and wonder, howdid some of these people get in
here?
SPEAKER_03 (24:25):
Not really.
SPEAKER_01 (24:26):
Not really.
All the students in your youruniversity were good.
SPEAKER_03 (24:31):
Yeah, they were they were all better than me.
SPEAKER_01 (24:34):
Oh, okay.
Well, in the United States, it'svery common to look around and
going, how the heck do thesepeople get in there?
All right.
What I found, and let me see ifI here's the book.
I'm going to this is where thisis a long answer because you
asked a complicated question.
This is a book, post-war Japanis history.
SPEAKER_02 (24:53):
Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_01 (24:54):
This first essay, it's Peace and Democracy in Two
Systems, External Policy andInternal Conflict by John W.
Dower.
All right, he won the Pulitzer,he won the National Book Award,
he's the best writer in hisfield.
This first paragraph, which hesaid is for 10th grade to second
year college, you should be ableto read this.
(25:15):
He scrunches what more than whatpeople say in books into the
first paragraph.
Okay.
So if I gave it to you to read,you would just read it and say,
you know, what is he trying tosay?
And you would tell me.
I go to at major dyslexiaconferences, reading
specialists.
They have a four-year undergradand two years master's degree in
(25:38):
reading.
They can't read that.
There's 17 pieces ofinformation, and their brains go
off, just go off the rails, likea train going off the rails.
So, what I find with introvertedpeople is that they're mostly
what I call full brain people.
They can think creatively like adyslectic in their niche, in
(26:02):
their very focused area, wherethey know everything.
And they can read and write likean like an advanced placement
gen ed student.
Okay?
So they can do both as a generalrule.
So I gave if I gave you this toread, you'd look it over and
(26:22):
say, What's the big deal?
You may not know a lot aboutpost-war Japanese history, but
you can understand what he'ssaying because he's the best
writer in his field.
But when I give it to let's justcall them the party animals, the
frat boys and sorority girls incollege, they graduate.
They can't read this.
And according to ProfessorDauer, if you can't read that
(26:45):
essay and tell them what itmeans, he got he got furious.
He said you should go back toyour college and get a refund
because he didn't know what youwere doing there for four years,
but you certainly weren'tgetting an education.
You should have your diplomataken away.
Okay, and that's from a fullprofessor at MIT.
(27:05):
All right.
So again, so for introvertedpeople, what I'm finding is that
generally, once you stop tryingto be a perfectionist and just
go through a process based onthe craft of research, you can
produce very good work much moreefficiently, and you can you can
(27:30):
actually come up with somethingoriginal.
I can't tell you how many timesI see people going through a
PhD.
The dyslectic walks in, theysay, Can you contribute to the
field?
Yes.
Within a within that day or veryquickly, they have something
that'll advance the field.
I have seen so manynon-dyslections go through and
(27:50):
they're all but dissertation.
Or they do a dissertation,nobody cares.
A lot of the introverted peoplewho just kind of live in the
library of students, rememberthose days?
You know, they came up withsomething that matters.
Not as easy as a dyslectic, butthey can do they can do
everything.
They come up with a good idea,it takes them usually a couple
(28:11):
of years, and then they gothrough the process and they
come out with a good, soliddissertation.
And they do fantastic.
And I find that they tend to besome of my better teachers in
college because I sought themout, because they know they're
the world expert in what theycame up with.
They're excellent.
So, yeah, that's a huge thing.
(28:34):
This introverts tend to be havethe ability to think creatively
like a dyslexic, not quite asgood, but still very good, and
then they have all the benefitsof being a top A student.
SPEAKER_02 (28:50):
Thank you for that.
That's very enlightening.
SPEAKER_03 (28:53):
That's the first time I've ever heard it placed
in that in that way.
SPEAKER_01 (28:58):
I when I hand this book postwork, I when I hand it
out a con I embarrass people.
I mean, think about it, you're areading teacher with six years
of higher education, and youcan't read something that a
college freshman should be ableto read.
I I it it turns non it turns thenon-introvert into a dysleptic.
SPEAKER_02 (29:20):
And they don't like how it makes them feel.
Just for interest, how long isthat first paragraph?
SPEAKER_01 (29:30):
Oh, it's it's really quick.
Oh read you the first sentence.
Ever since Japan's seclusion wasruptured by the Western nations
in 1853, democratic and internalpolitics have been interwoven
for the Japanese.
SPEAKER_02 (29:47):
What does that mean?
SPEAKER_01 (29:51):
Democratics and Yeah, let me read again.
Yeah, it's really dense.
Ever since Japan's seclusion wasruptured by Western nations in
1853, democratic andinternational politics have been
interwoven for the Japanese.
SPEAKER_03 (30:08):
Okay.
SPEAKER_01 (30:09):
What is that basically saying?
SPEAKER_03 (30:11):
That's basically saying in 1853, you know, Japan
had been until 1853, Japan hadbeen existing in this particular
way.
And then the Western powers camealong, they disrupted that, and
thereafter it's no longer justJapan functioning in a silo,
it's now got to considergeopolitical issues and what
else is happening in the Westernworld.
SPEAKER_02 (30:33):
Was that hard?
SPEAKER_01 (30:36):
Do you wonder if somebody has a master's degree,
they can't say what you theycan't give me a description of
what you just said.
SPEAKER_02 (30:45):
Does that count sign a count sound of weird?
SPEAKER_03 (30:50):
Maybe it'll take a look at a few more.
I don't know.
Some people might take a fewmore seconds to digest that
because it's a lot of No, no,they they they they simply can't
do it.
Is that true?
SPEAKER_01 (31:00):
Really?
Yes, they have master's degreesin reading, and the most of them
can't do that.
I just read a few more sentencesand they just they can't do it.
It's like and then I say, well,if you can't do this, why don't
we take your master's degreeaway?
Why don't we have you lose yourprofessional position and work
in McDonald's?
(31:22):
All right, imagine if I had thatpower.
Read it, tell me what it means,and they can't do it.
I said, now you're beginning tocomprehend what it's like to be
dyslectic.
And for introverts like you andme, no, you looked at that and
you just told me if people willget two more years of higher
education than you had, far moreintense than an undergrad.
SPEAKER_02 (31:44):
Master's degrees are far more intense than
undergrads, and yet they can'tread that, they can't understand
it.
SPEAKER_01 (31:54):
And you weren't even reading, you listened to my not
so good pronunciation.
If I put this book in front ofyou, you would have read and
just got it right, you know, onepass.
You got it.
And it makes you feel likewhat's going on here?
What's going on is you're a fullbrain and they're a half a
brain.
SPEAKER_02 (32:14):
They can't do the evolved stuff.
So then what's your advice forpeople who are listening?
SPEAKER_03 (32:23):
What what's the best thing they can do for
themselves?
SPEAKER_01 (32:26):
The best thing that I need you to understand is
again if you want to try thisagain.
It's uh the book is titledPostwar Japan as History.
The first uh the first uharticle is written by Professor
Dowler.
Okay, just as the rest of thewriters are horrible.
He's the best in his field.
What I want you to understand isdysleptics have an advantage
(32:51):
over you in coming up withcreative ideas.
Okay, but we can't write worth adarn.
So we match up with anintroverts like yourself.
But you can come up with goodideas yourself, it just takes a
little longer.
If you want to know how to dothe solution side, best thing to
do is go to dyslexiaclasses.com.
That's dyslexiaclasses with an Sdot com and fill out the contact
(33:14):
me page, and I can set up toshow you how to do that.
It's a lot, it's too evolved fora podcast.
All right, but it's the samegeneral process.
You go through you go throughwhat I showed you here, and
that'll get you your day-to-daygood decisions.
All right, you can do thecreative stuff if you need to.
Most people honestly don't.
But if you're in a positionwhere you have to come up with
(33:36):
some, how am I going to redo thecompany or how can I create a
better hiring process orwhatever I do, something that's
going to move the bottom line.
All right, that's the solution.
That's the one, that's the onenext step.
But for everybody, but forgeneral, just focus on what
you're doing here, those thesteps that I showed you.
Realize that your value to thecompany is that quiet expert.
(34:02):
What I can tell you when I gointo meetings, that's the person
I'm looking for.
They don't have the title, theyhave very little formal power.
But when it comes time to theperson who makes the decision,
that's the person.
How do I know who they are, whothe introvert is?
They ask me the really hardquestions.
(34:25):
And when I go to pitchorganizations that show them how
to do this, I know if I'm notgetting tough questions, they
don't care.
And I spent all my time focusingon that introvert, not the
former frat guy who actuallyruns the division.
Because they don't knowanything.
They got there because they'regood socially.
(34:46):
But heaven helped them if theyhad to actually come up with
something themselves.
SPEAKER_02 (34:51):
Generally doesn't work out very well.
Wow.
So context problem solution.
SPEAKER_03 (35:03):
And that can be applied across any any subject,
any specialty, any context.
SPEAKER_01 (35:09):
Yes, just look at the craft of research literally
says if you can't come up withsomething original, don't write
the paper.
What I found is most decisionsmost of the time don't require
the solution.
The context and problem, runningthe context through that you
that universal theme as a lens,coming up with three good
(35:29):
reasons, three good solutions,okay, is good enough for most
day-to-day issues.
And then I and this is I can Ican just hear the introverts in
your audience now.
Well, I got people that reallywant to know where it came from.
That's why I told you to get thequotes.
Remember then we did the who,what, when, where, how, why, and
(35:50):
then we condensed it down.
You can go back and say, well,this is where I believe the
problem was, and here's thequotes.
Oh, you disagree with me.
Okay.
Well, what do you want to do?
What does the hero want to do?
Reduce it to a universal theme.
Who or what can stop us?
Okay, come up with the threegood reasons, reduce it to a
(36:11):
universal theme, find yourquotes.
Maybe your quotes aren't aaren't a sentence, maybe it's a
paragraph.
Then you answer the who, what,when, were, how, why, instead of
three-body paragraphs, you got12.
We still reduce it to aboutthree sentences.
If the cot if the artificialintelligence can do three
paragraphs, well, then we can gothat high.
All right.
(36:32):
Ask them what it is and then runit through.
And say, okay, here are my threesolutions.
Do you like any of these?
Oh, you like this one?
Oh, you don't like the othertwo?
Let's go back and run it againand focus on this change.
Once you get good, you can runthis through very quickly, and
then just come up with a lot ofdifferent reasons and solutions
(36:53):
and find out what they like.
Invite them to be part of theprocess.
And then you can say, yes, well,this deals with, and you run it
through your data.
Uh, from you, this is where itcomes from this paragraph.
And the harder the questions,good.
Because then you know when yougive them an answer that they
like, they're going to rememberyou.
(37:14):
Because remember, as introverts,we're not the former frat boy
running the division.
But when it comes time to makingthe critical decisions, they
come to us.
SPEAKER_02 (37:30):
Some of the most powerful things I can tell you.
That's extremely reassuring.
SPEAKER_03 (37:44):
For our introverts and quiet achievers, you now
have a framework to startgetting disentangled and getting
clearer and getting faster andcutting down the time you spend
than you would otherwise spendoverthinking and getting into
all kinds of mental spirals.
So this is a way to usetechnology combined with that
(38:05):
deep thinking, the intelligence,the shall we say, complicated,
complex, complex thinkingprocesses of the quiet achiever
to generate more solutions andat the same time combining
people's skills, because thenit's also about who we are
working with, what is theiragenda, what are their
(38:26):
objectives, what do they want.
And combining all of that togenerate the solutions that are
appropriate and faster.
That being summary.
SPEAKER_01 (38:36):
Just so you know, when you're looking at the
neuroscience, generally how itworks is dyslexia tends to be
the innovative way.
And then it spreads out to gened students.
All right.
And the main thing that I wantthe introverts out there to
understand is as a general rule,we can we are full-brained
(38:57):
people.
You can think like a dyslectic,the uh not quite as good, but
close to it as far as coming upwith a creative ideas.
But then you have that massiveneuroactivity in the back part
of your brain.
Let's face it, when it was aSaturday night and all the frat
boys and girls were out going toparties, where were we?
(39:17):
We were in the library becausethat's what college required.
All right.
So they may be the bossesbecause they they know how to
interact with people so well andthey get promoted because they
know because their Uncle Bob ortheir fraternity brother is the
president or some othernonsense.
But when it comes time to makingthe decisions, it's that quiet,
(39:39):
introvert, introverted expertthat they go to.
I deal in the world ofeducation.
I'll ask when I walk in, who'sthe teacher?
No, what do you mean?
I said, Who's your teacher thattells you yes or no?
How do you know that?
Because I know the system.
And then I find that person.
I say, good.
I uh I tell them.
(40:00):
Run me through the hardestquestions you have.
Don't worry about being rude.
Just shoot it at shoot it at meas hard as you can.
And then they say, Well, it'sgonna take me three months for
me to cut get around this.
It's fine.
I'll work with you for threemonths.
But I can tell you once I get itthe go-ahead from that teacher,
it applies right up to thesuperintendent.
SPEAKER_02 (40:23):
That's their expert.
That's who they listen to.
SPEAKER_01 (40:27):
And I connect them with other experts that I've
worked with, their peers.
Oh, that really helps.
Connect, find out who, if you'redealing with another
organization, find out who yourpeer is in that organization.
Go to them directly.
Find out other people that theytrust.
You and that's how you get aquicker decision out of them.
(40:49):
But it takes a long time to getan introvert to make a decision.
SPEAKER_02 (40:52):
But once you make it, people listen.
Beautiful.
And on that note, what is thebest way for people to contact
you, Russell?
SPEAKER_01 (41:04):
Best thing to do is just go to dyslexiaclasses.com.
That's with an SpluralDyslexiaClasses.com.
There's a contact form there.
Just fill it out and I'll getright back to you.
SPEAKER_03 (41:13):
Fantastic.
Thank you so much, Russell VanBrockland, for sharing your time
and your wisdom with us today.
SPEAKER_02 (41:20):
Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_03 (41:21):
If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to
leave a five-star rating andreview to help the Quiet Warrior
Podcast reach more introvertsand quiet achievers around the
world.
And for my recommended resourceson how to thrive as an
introvert, make sure you'resubscribed to the Visible
Introvert newsletter atserenaloe.com.au.
See you on the next episode.
(41:44):
I'm so grateful that you're heretoday.
If you found this contentvaluable, please share it on
your social media channels andsubscribe to the show on your
favorite listening platform.
Together we can help moreintroverts thrive.
To receive more upliftingcontent like this, connect with
me on Instagram at SerenalooQuiet Warrior Coach.
(42:05):
Thank you for sharing your timeand your energy with me.
See you on the next episode.
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The Burden
The Burden is a documentary series that takes listeners into the hidden places where justice is done (and undone). It dives deep into the lives of heroes and villains. And it focuses a spotlight on those who triumph even when the odds are against them. Season 5 - The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance On April Fools Day 1999, 26-year-old Yvonne Layne was found murdered in her Alliance, Ohio home. David Thorne, her ex-boyfriend and father of one of her children, was instantly a suspect. Another young man admitted to the murder, and David breathed a sigh of relief, until the confessed murderer fingered David; “He paid me to do it.” David was sentenced to life without parole. Two decades later, Pulitzer winner and podcast host, Maggie Freleng (Bone Valley Season 3: Graves County, Wrongful Conviction, Suave) launched a “live” investigation into David's conviction alongside Jason Baldwin (himself wrongfully convicted as a member of the West Memphis Three). Maggie had come to believe that the entire investigation of David was botched by the tiny local police department, or worse, covered up the real killer. Was Maggie correct? Was David’s claim of innocence credible? In Death and Deceit in Alliance, Maggie recounts the case that launched her career, and ultimately, “broke” her.” The results will shock the listener and reduce Maggie to tears and self-doubt. This is not your typical wrongful conviction story. In fact, it turns the genre on its head. It asks the question: What if our champions are foolish? Season 4 - The Burden: Get the Money and Run “Trying to murder my father, this was the thing that put me on the path.” That’s Joe Loya and that path was bank robbery. Bank, bank, bank, bank, bank. In season 4 of The Burden: Get the Money and Run, we hear from Joe who was once the most prolific bank robber in Southern California, and beyond. He used disguises, body doubles, proxies. He leaped over counters, grabbed the money and ran. Even as the FBI was closing in. It was a showdown between a daring bank robber, and a patient FBI agent. Joe was no ordinary bank robber. He was bright, articulate, charismatic, and driven by a dark rage that he summoned up at will. In seven episodes, Joe tells all: the what, the how… and the why. Including why he tried to murder his father. Season 3 - The Burden: Avenger Miriam Lewin is one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At 19 years old, she was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from a cargo plane into the ocean. Miriam, along with a handful of others, will survive the camp. Then as a journalist, she will wage a decades long campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. Avenger is about one woman’s triumphant battle against unbelievable odds to survive torture, claim justice for the crimes done against her and others like her, and change the future of her country. Season 2 - The Burden: Empire on Blood Empire on Blood is set in the Bronx, NY, in the early 90s, when two young drug dealers ruled an intersection known as “The Corner on Blood.” The boss, Calvin Buari, lived large. He and a protege swore they would build an empire on blood. Then the relationship frayed and the protege accused Calvin of a double homicide which he claimed he didn’t do. But did he? Award-winning journalist Steve Fishman spent seven years to answer that question. This is the story of one man’s last chance to overturn his life sentence. He may prevail, but someone’s gotta pay. The Burden: Empire on Blood is the director’s cut of the true crime classic which reached #1 on the charts when it was first released half a dozen years ago. Season 1 - The Burden In the 1990s, Detective Louis N. Scarcella was legendary. In a city overrun by violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. “The Hulk” was his nickname. Then the story changed. Scarcella ran into a group of convicted murderers who all say they are innocent. They turned themselves into jailhouse-lawyers and in prison founded a lway firm. When they realized Scarcella helped put many of them away, they set their sights on taking him down. And with the help of a NY Times reporter they have a chance. For years, Scarcella insisted he did nothing wrong. But that’s all he’d say. Until we tracked Scarcella to a sauna in a Russian bathhouse, where he started to talk..and talk and talk. “The guilty have gone free,” he whispered. And then agreed to take us into the belly of the beast. Welcome to The Burden.