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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
There's a lot of debate these days about what it means to be a man, but maybe the answer is simpler than we think.
And a lot of masculinity just comes down to confident competence, a broad set of know-how, the ability to get stuff done, the capacity to move through the world with purpose and skill.
As someone who's lived several lives in one, Elliot Ackerman certainly embodies that ethos.
He's a decorated Marine, a former CIA paramilitary officer, a National Book Award-nominated novelist and now the writer of A Man Should Know, a column at the Free Press that explores the small but significant skills that shape a man's life.
Today on the show Elliot and I talk about why young men are struggling, how intention, discipline and competence can change the way a man carries himself, and a few of the specific skills a man should know, from how to wear a watch to how to give eulogies.
After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash competence.
Elliot Ackerman, welcome to the show.
Thanks so much for having me on.
So you've got an interesting background.
You're a Marine who's served multiple tours in the Middle East and then Southeast Asia.
Then you went on to work as a CIA officer, and now you... write literature, you're a fiction author.
Let's talk about your military career.
Why did you join?
Was it something where you had a family history of military service or was it something else?
Yeah, no, I didn't have a family history of military service.
I guess I'd say there are kind of really three reasons Why I joined.
I say first is I grew up overseas, for a while as well, in the UK.
But even being in the UK I think it kind of gave me a little bit of an outsider's perspective of you know, many of the benefits that we have in our life as Americans and that
It made me want to give back and serve.
So that was part of it.
Another part was I think I wanted a job.
Whether I was good at my job really mattered, and the stakes were high.
So I guess in another way I want to say I wanted responsibility at a young age and you certainly get that in the military and in the Marine Corps.
And I would say the last thing was I was kind of like that kid who never stopped playing with his GI Joes.
I always had like this fascination with the military.
So when the time came, I think those three forces kind of led me into the Marines.
So as a Marine, you earned the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, Purple Heart.
And then, after the military, you joined the CIA Special Operations Unit as a paramilitary operations officer.
And then after that, you transitioned to being a fiction writer.
How and why did you make that shift?
Well, when I was getting out of the service I served for about eight years, had a positive experience.
I mean, they were tough eight years, but my experience was very positive.
But it just sort of made the decision that it wasn't the only thing that I wanted to do with my life.
There were other things I wanted to do, even though I wasn't entirely sure what all of them were.
So I got out.
I went out working in politics for a couple of years.
And a few folks on the way had encouraged me, you know, and said Hey, you know, maybe you should write a book.
You ever thought about, you know, writing a book about some of your experiences.
And I didn't really want to write that type of kind of like a.
You know Hey bro, there I was like type memoir.
That didn't really seem.
I don't know it wasn't really my style, but there've been a lot of books that meant a lot to me when I was heading into the service.
And most of those books actually had been, had been novels, books like Jim Webb's Fields of Fire.
If you know who Jim Webb is, he's the secretary of the Navy senator, but before that he was a young marine infantry officer in vietnam and he wrote a novel about his experiences, or books, like you know, tim o'brien's the things they carried.
So i sort of had this inclination that okay, i do want to write about my experiences, but i want to try to write a novel about them, And so that got me into writing fiction.
I just sort of sat down, wrote one book and then another, and then kind of the rest is history.
And so are the themes that you write about, are they based around war?
I think conflict is a reoccurring theme in many of my books, as are other things you know, like marriage, brotherhood.
You know politics.
I've certainly written a couple of political thrillers at this point in my career.
But yes, oftentimes you'll find sort of conflict or the aftermath of conflict lurking around in the pages of my books.
You know, besides Jim Webb and some of these other writers who wrote specifically about war and maybe had a military background, were there any other authors that you look to for inspiration?
No, I think you know, one of the things that's remarkable when you look at like American letters in particular, is how how much there is that is written about war but we don't necessarily consider like a war novel, like you consider yeah, like jim webb's field of fire, that's a war novel, or the things they carried, or carl marlantis's matterhorn, but you can see war shot through so many of our books.
So like inspiration for me, sure.
Like for my money.
I think the greatest war novel ever written out of the second world war is the catcher in the rye.
And a lot of people don't think of The Catcher in the Rye as a book that's about war.
You know, think of it about this book about this guy named Holden Caulfield.
And, you know, he is a boarding school kid and he's wandering around New York City.
And it's this sort of novel that's about youthful disaffectation.
But if you know anything about jd salinger, who wrote the catcher in the rye, you know he, he landed on d-day, he fought in the hurricane forest and he liberated the concentration camps.
And when you read Catcher in the Rye, a book that's sort of known for the voice of Holden Caulfield, you know that voice of that disaffected young man is really the voice of an American veteran.
I mean you can hear how disaffected JD Salinger is in Holden Caulfield's voice in the last line of that book is don't tell anybody anything, otherwise you start missing everyone.
And that is definitely the voice of a veteran.
So, you know, for me and any other writers who also inspire me, you know, are ones who found kind of different ways to write about conflict and process conflict, like Salinger did.
That's interesting.
Yeah, I never would have thought of Catching the Ride as a war novel.
If you look up on Salinger, you can see the war is sort of all over his writings.
In a few places he takes it head on, but mostly he doesn't.
It's always sort of adjacent.
And you know, like Tim O'Brien, when he says, you know, he says that he writes about war so that he can write about other things.
And I've certainly felt that in my work.
I mean, when you tell someone you're writing about war, it kind of sounds like you're going to write a book that's just all about, like tank movements and aircraft battles.
And, you know, in my books, it's not necessarily what's going on.
You know, the war is there.
It's present.
It's impacting people, the actions of the characters, but you know, fundamentally the books are about those characters themselves.
And you know the types of books that you know I enjoy reading are usually pretty character driven and are not just about you know, just the technical aspects of war.
So you've got a new column out at the free press.
It's kind of different from what you've done with your fiction work.
It's called a man should know, and every week you're taking on a topic or an idea skill that you think a man should know.
What was the impetus behind this column?
Well, you know, I do a lot of work as a journalist.
So I write pieces from time to time.
Usually my kind of forte is, you know, national security stuff.
But I was actually, I was at a party And I bumped into Barry Weiss, who runs the Free Press.
And she and I have known each other for many, many years.
And I've written for her for many, many years.
And I was wearing a suit.
And she said, hey, that's a really nice suit.
And basically I told her the story behind the suit was that when I left the military I went to go work at CIA.
When I was back in the US, I was going to have to wear a suit to work every day.
And I had no suits.
I had nothing to wear.
So my father, who had a business career, basically said hey, it was a gift for you getting out of the Marines.
Go into my closet and, you know, pick out three suits and we'll go to the tailor together and we'll get them kind of fitted for you so you can wear them.
And they were really well-made suits.
And I, my father's has since passed away, unfortunately, but I still wear those suits to this day.
So Barry just asked me to write a column for her about why you should wear a suit, why it's worth putting on a suit and having tailored clothing.
So I wrote that column and people seemed to like it.
And so this series of columns sort of comes out of that.
And there's a lot of conversations about masculinity and what it means to be a man.
And I'm not trying to finger wag anyone and tell them how to be a man or that these little things like wearing a suit or how to buy a watch or any of that differentiate you and make you a good man or a bad man.
What I do know is that in my own life's journey, when I think about so many of the men and women who kind of taught me some of the skills that I just value as a man, they're often just these little things like my father taking me to the tailor being like hey, I'm going to get this suit cut for you.
Here's what you need to know when you buy a suit.
Here's the questions to ask.
Or a fighter pilot friend of mine who kind of taught me about watches and gave me the theory for the case of you know hey, why it's worth investing in a nice watch that you'll wear through your whole life.
And so So, these are all little things are always framed to me like Hey, you know, like a man should know how to do this.
And I think oftentimes we can, you know, we can talk about masculinity with real specific things, little skills that are just passed down from one generation to another.
And so that's sort of what I'm trying to do in this column.
Yeah, as I've read them, it seems to me like the overarching aim of this column is to encourage competency in men.
Why do you think competence is such an important aspect of a man's sense of self?
You know, I think it's definitely competence, Brett.
And I'd say in addition with that competence, it's also intentionality.
You know, like weighing up every day with a plan.
Like, what am I going to do today?
What am I going to accomplish?
How am I going to move the ball forward in my life?
You know, whether that's in my professional life, my personal life, just all of these little things of living with intention.
And oftentimes it starts with, you know, just with the very small things that we do.
You have to be competent in those small things.
You know it's worth knowing how to.
You know, just get yourself dressed so you present well understanding how to introduce yourself to somebody else.
You know, if someone invites you over to their home for a meal, understanding how to thank them properly, so they know how much you appreciate them having you over.
You know, and so often these are just you know.
These are little things like we know them when we're adults and we don't necessarily know how we know them.
But looking at maybe younger people today, I'm like I wonder if anyone is sitting down with that intentionality and talking to young men and saying like hey, this is how you tie a tie.
And if someone hasn't taught you how to tie a tie, You know I don't pick up my call and I'll teach you how, but it's worth knowing these things.
Yeah.
And the work I've done with the art of manliness for almost 20 years now.
One thing I've noticed is that men, but particularly young men, they want to feel like they're good at something.
They want to feel like they can take care of business.
They want to feel like they're useful.
And I I mean I think I've seen this sort of.
There's a sort of this sense.
I think that a lot of men feel like they're not useful anymore or they don't have the competency to navigate the world today.
I mean it really does something to your sense of self and your sense of ability to navigate, have an impact on the world.
And it's always amazing when I work with young men at my church and we have a Wednesday night activity where we're just teaching a skill.
And for some of these kids, it's like really basic stuff.
Like, man, why didn't you learn this at home?
But when they learn it, like their eyes light up.
They're like, oh my gosh, like I can do this now.
And it changes, it really does.
It changes how they approach the world.
Like they walk with a little bit more confidence.
Absolutely.
And I think, you know, that, competency.
I mean, I put in the word intentionality.
Another word I threw out there just yet is purpose.
I mean all of us to be happy in life, every human being, whether you're a man or a woman.
I mean you need to have a sense of purpose.
And sometimes, you know, men, we derive our purpose a little bit differently.
And a lot of times it's just in these sort of hard technical skills.
And so from sort of, it's like how you build a fire, you know, with a little spark.
And sometimes that little spark can be, you know, like Adam McRaven says, just make your bed.
You know, or in my life it's like and this is probably a habit from my military days, but you know I work out like I get exercise.
You know, six days a week I do a workout.
And at this point in my life, you know I'm no longer doing that because I need to be able to, you know, go on special operations missions.
But I do it now just for my psychological well being that once I've got that workout done, it's like I've tackled the first hard thing of the day.
And now I can go do other hard things during the day and accomplish my goals.
And at the end of the day, of accomplishing goals, some small, some large, I feel a sense of satisfaction.
But if you've never done that, if you've never kind of made that your daily practice, it's difficult to understand abstractly the benefits of just doing these small things.
So in A Man Should Know, in the column I'm just sort of identifying some small things that are worth knowing how to do.
That will probably make you feel better about yourself and help you live a little more intentionality and a little more purpose.
As you've navigated, just rubbing shoulders with different people, in your career in the Marines and then your career as a fiction writer.
Are you seeing something in the wider culture that is maybe contributing to this sense, where a lot of younger men in particular don't feel like they have competence?
Have you looked at that big social issue and kind of diagnosed it?
Yeah.
I mean, I can just say, based on you know anecdotally, and you know I'm the father of three boys and I also have a daughter, and the way we speak to young men is sometimes different.
I think every young person, no matter where they are or who they are, whether they're a boy, a girl gay straight whatever, they need to be spoken to with intention by someone and they need to feel like they're seen, like someone sees who they are and speaks to that version of who they are.
And I think for whatever reason, in the last however many years our culture has shied away from speaking to just sort of young straight dudes with a lot of intentionality.
It's sort of almost become a faux pas to speak that way.
And the reciprocal is you've got all these young, young men who are just sort of walking around and no one's told them how to do all the things they need to know how to do.
People have just sort of expected them to learn through osmosis and they don't know how and it's causing a lack of confidence and Yeah.
And I would also say kind of a lack of purpose in their lives.
So there isn't one solution for all of this, but I certainly think that speaking to young men with more intentionality in our culture is a good thing.
And it's going to help us produce better men, which is good for everyone, which is certainly very good for women.
I mean, if you're a feminist, you should really want men to be spoken to with intentionality, because you want good men.
Yeah.
I mean, I know from my experience as a teenager.
I remember there's always those moments where you had another adult man treat you like an adult man.
Like you were capable of doing adult things.
And those moments are transformative.
And I think a lot of young men are lacking that.
I think a lot of times they're just being scolded and told, hey, something's wrong with you.
But I think if we have these higher expectations and expect more and talk to them and treat them as individuals who are capable of doing things, It goes a long way.
It sure does.
Listen.
One thing I got the memo on in a big way in my time in the Marine Corps is how much you can expect of a young person.
I mean, I saw 18 and 19 20-year-old guys taking on huge responsibilities in incredibly stressful situations and doing it with extreme competency.
So The idea that young people aren't ready for these types of responsibilities, or just aren't capable because of their youth, is a fallacy.
I mean, oftentimes the lack of capability is rooted in a lack of confidence.
So how do you start building that confidence?
And I think it's just sort of one little brick at a time.
And each one of those bricks is just doing something each day with some type of intention.
Going back to the military.
I'm always amazed whenever I read these histories of World War II about how 20 year old kids
They're like, all right, kid, you're going to fly this B 17 and you can do it.
And they did it.
I think HW Bush was 21 when he was shot down in the Pacific.
Yeah.
You know, it's yeah, it's crazy.
So, for whatever reason and we can talk about those reasons but the sort of the goalposts have moved in terms of what we expect of young people and holding a young man too long in this sort of childlike twilight.
It isn't good for them.
They might not be able to articulate it, but they want to have that responsibility.
It will make them feel a sense of confidence and happiness that might elude them otherwise.
And I think it's one thing, it's important to expect great things from young men.
And I think what you're talking about here is there, you also have to show them how to do it.
You can't just be like, Hey guy, like what's wrong with you?
Why aren't you doing this stuff?
Well, you got to show them how to do it along the way.
Absolutely.
And, you know, the call I'm writing a man should know.
I mean listen, do I do?
I think the world begins or ends if somebody knows how to pick the right suit.
No, I don't.
You know what I mean?
Or wear the right watch or tie a bow tie or write a thank you note.
No, I don't.
But.
These are like little bits of kindling that, if you like, adopt a few of these things into your life and you're trying to get your life to have more intentionality in it.
That's how you do it.
You know, just little bits of confidence every day.
That's how you get big things done.
Just gradually through little acts of intentionality.
Yeah, one of my favorite writers is Stephen Covey.
And he talks about in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, this idea of your circle of influence, which is the things you can control.
And then the things outside of that you can't control.
And one of his big ideas is that the way you increase your circle of influence is you do small things, just like the little things you have control over.
And then, as you do that, your sense of agency and efficacy increases, so that you can do bigger and bigger things.
And then your circle of influence expands.
Yes.
And, and, and, you know, and this is not, you know, this is not new knowledge, right?
I mean it's you know, the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.
But just because it's not new knowledge doesn't mean that there are young people who don't understand this or know any of these things.
And I think you know, as you were talking about the first time someone talked to you when you were younger, like a man.
That had a big impact on you.
And I think you know for people who are getting left behind or not having those opportunities you know they have to sort of find it on their own or look into the culture for it.
And I fear the culture hasn't been doing a good job on that account for quite some time now.
But you know, I think I think for young people it's just the little things each day can get you to a really positive result.
How did your time in the Marines increase your own feeling of intentionality, competence and confidence?
Yeah, I mean.
Listen, when I decided I wanted to be a Marine, I was like the furthest thing you could imagine from a Marine.
I was 17 years old.
I had never played a varsity sport.
I was like a skater rat who sagged his pants and had like long curly hair almost down to my shoulders.
And I sort of had this, like you know, revelation one summer between my junior and senior year of high school that I wanted to go into the service.
This is what I wanted to do with my life.
And again, I went to my father.
And I had this the standards, the physical fitness standards that I would need to meet.
And I said, this is what I'm gonna have to do.
And this is what you know, what I think I want to do going to the Marine Corps which Oh, by the way, you know, it takes a lot of courage to say you want something that you don't seem like you're able to do, right.
Say, I want to be something.
And I think for young people, it's tough to actually say what you want, but I managed to say what I want.
And we looked at those physical fitness standards and he said okay well, let's see where you're at.
And I think I went down, I went, I had to do like pull-ups, push-ups, and some sit-ups.
I could do like seven push-ups, no pull-ups, and maybe 15 sit-ups.
And so, you know, I sat down with my father.
He said, let's make a workout plan and you need to stick to it.
And I did.
And every day I made sure, without exception, without excuses, that I did those workouts and day by day, by day, I just got stronger.
And that transformation.
For me that took about six to nine months when I was a teenager to see that, just through each of those little victories every day, the victory being that I did my workout that day and I got stronger I slowly understood Oh, this is how you accomplish something in life.
You know, you don't just wake up and magically you're this thing you want to be.
You know?
No, it comes with every day, just chipping away, chipping away, grinding away at something, until you get there.
Whether that is becoming a Marine, getting your degree.
You know writing books, in my cases building a business.
It just comes through the consistent practice of small things day by day by day.
You know, this idea that excellence is really just a habit.
It's a series of habits all strung together.
And in my life, I found it to be very true.
And it starts with the little things.
So it sounds like your service in the Marines.
It prepared you for your writing career just by developing that capacity to be disciplined, to be consistent.
Yeah, my wife is a writer too, and I often joke with her that A being Marine was a fantastic preparation for being a writer, because so much of being a writer is just having the discipline to get your work done every day and work on the projects as much as you need to to finish them.
And also because so much of being a writer is just suffering.
You know, sitting at your laptop trying to figure out how you're going to put something together.
But I think those skills, I know those skills are transferable into all other life pursuits, but they have to be taught.
They have to be talked about honestly.
It's not something.
Again, it's not something that if you're 13 14 15, 16 years old, you're just going to know how to do.
You know, you'll see the end state.
You'll see someone who's very successful, maybe out in the media space or wherever in your community, but you'll have no idea how they got there, unless someone sits you down and says you know, this is how it gets done.
And in my experience the way it gets done is usually just a steady grind of lots of discipline and lots of little victories every day.
What about your career at the CIA?
Were there skills or mindsets or mental models that you learned there, that you were able to carry over to your writing career?
I think one of the things you certainly you need to know it's showing up but you certainly have to double down on there is empathy.
And what I mean by empathy is sort of your ability to stand in somebody else's shoes and try to understand the world according to their experiences, even if you don't agree with them.
And unfortunately in our culture today, we seem to increasingly have less and less space to disagree with one another amicably.
You know, it's the idea that That there are bad ideas and there are bad people with ideas.
That usually it's just a bad idea.
The person doesn't have to be bad as well.
So I think, having that capacity to you know, in my case at CA yes, sit down and like, try to understand what's going through the head of a member of Al Qaeda and landing at the place.
Okay, I understand why this person is engaging in these behaviors.
I don't agree with them, but I certainly understand how they got there.
That has been a skill.
That has definitely, you know It helps me as a writer, because so much of my job is understanding the characters and their motivations, who I'm writing.
But I think that goes for all walks of life.
I mean, if you're certainly if you're in business, you need to understand your customer.
You need to understand the people you're negotiating against.
And empathy is crucial, and cultivating a sense of empathy is crucial for being successful in those spheres.
Yeah, empathy helps you develop social competency.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
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So we've been talking about how competency intentionality, can help a young man, or a man's sense of self, their sense of agency, like they need stuff done.
There's a lot of talk in the online world ether.
And then also just talking with friends about the struggles young men are having.
I guess all young people are having this problem in the romance department.
I have a friend who has been putting on some barn dances at his place because he's trying to revive dance culture.
And he noticed that there's all these young women at these things and there's these young guys and they're just sitting there on the sides with their hands in their pockets.
And they're not asking these girls to dance.
And then they'll go to him and complain about Oh, I'm just having you know dating so rough out there.
And he's like, you idiot.
Like they're all these great, young women here, you could ask to dance, but you're not doing it.
Why aren't you doing it?
He's like, well, I don't know how.
I said, well, I can show you how.
What I'm getting at here.
Do you think competency can help a man's success in his romantic or family life?
Absolutely.
And I think, just a sense of confidence know, and the confidence comes from the competency right.
I mean i was talking a little bit before about, you know, getting in shape to go into the marines.
I mean i can't overemphasize how much confidence that gave me that when i did the work i got the result, and that you can have faith and if you do the work you get the result.
Just like you can have faith in the fact that if you clean yourself up a little bit, you make an effort and you go talk to the girl Chancellor, you might get a nice result.
You might get a date, you know, but you have to kind of find the courage to say this is what I want.
I'm going to go do it.
I'm going to put myself out there.
And I think that comes from competence and it comes from confidence as well.
Women are attracted to a guy who can get stuff done.
They can take care of business.
I remember when my wife and I were first dating, she had to put together something in her apartment.
And I came over and I did it.
It wasn't that hard.
But I remember she was like, wow, that was... that was really attractive.
You being handy, that's really attractive.
And then last year, we did this article about how you can be a better husband today.
And so I talked to a bunch of different women about what is it about your husband that you really appreciate about him, attracted you to him, and still you just love about him.
And a common occurrence is just like how he just takes care of stuff.
Like he knows how to get stuff done.
If I have a problem, he'll help me fix it.
And I think yeah, I mean I think that if you're a young man and you want to increase your success in the romance world, like learn skills
It wasn't Napoleon Dynamite says chicks dig guys with skills or something like that.
About fighting skills, staff skills.
He's got skills.
Yeah.
It's kind of obvious though, right?
I mean, it's very sort of traditional.
It's very to me evident that yes, like you know, if I'm at home and like the sink breaks, I know I'm the guy who's fixing the sink.
Like, I'm not going to come home and have my wife fixing the sink.
I mean, she could do it.
I'm sure she'd do a fine job, but like, she doesn't want to fix the sink.
And that might sound, you know, like that's very sort of conventional and traditional.
But these conventional and traditional divisions of labor evolved that way because For the majority of folks that's sort of just what feels natural.
Now that doesn't mean there can't be a minority of folks.
That doesn't feel natural and they want to do things differently and divide, work differently.
Hey, that's totally fine.
You know, you do you.
But I think what gets confusing for young men is they just don't know what to do, because they don't know if they're allowed to just do the traditional thing.
So.
So I think part of it is just you know whether that's an interpersonal level or at a societal level just giving them permission to like.
Yes, if you're at the dance buddy, you should probably go ask her to dance.
Now, if she wants to ask you to dance, that's fine.
But, you know, you should be the one asking her to dance.
And just someone I think needs to tell young men that sometimes.
I had people tell me that, and I appreciated them telling me that and giving me that expectation, because then I at least knew what I was supposed to do.
Yeah.
All right, so let's get the specific skills you talk about because this is fun.
I think one thing guys appreciate is talking about skills and how to do things, even if they don't necessarily have to use them in their day-to-day life.
Because on the Art of Manliness, the website –
We cover lots of skills.
We've got things like how to escape from a sinking car.
Probably gonna have to use that every day in your life.
But we also got stuff that you can use in your everyday life, like how to make small talk.
You know, guys just like to talk about all sorts of skills.
You mentioned that some of the skills you've talked about so far in your columns.
They're small, like how to wear a suit, how to introduce yourself.
And, as you said earlier, it's not gonna make or break you being a man if you don't know how to do these things, but they add up.
And if you do those small things, it kind of creates this snowball effect in your life.
As you're going through and deciding which skills to cover, how are you deciding which ones to highlight?
Yeah, I think ones that are sort of practical and also have sort of a larger meaning.
So, you know, One of the columns which just came out was just about watches.
You know, why it's worth investing in a watch that maybe you can have for a while.
And I tell the story of my watch, which I got in the Marine Corps and have worn every day for 20 years, and how valuable it is to me.
So, you know, that has sort of a larger meaning.
I think you know how to introduce yourself was the first column that I wrote, which is you know about how, how we carry ourselves in the world, how we interact with other people, the importance of you know even someone you don't like.
You know, maybe if you have a chance to meet that person, meeting them is good.
Cause you know you might not wind up as friends, but I think in our kind of onscreen culture we're so quick to demonize each other.
So you know, all of just these little skills that often kind of lead to larger skills or can impact your life in larger ways.
Well, let's talk about the watch.
Any advice there on selecting a watch?
Well, I mean, there's certainly many, many options.
I think it's less the specific watch.
I think a person should buy a watch that kind of works for their life.
So I have a Rolex Explorer II that I bought recently, in 2006, with my combat pay when I was deployed with the Marines in the Middle East.
And we pulled into port in Dubai.
I spent most of my combat pay on this watch.
It was a great investment.
I've had it ever since.
And this watch will go down to my son.
But I think it's more just that I would pick something that you think can last, that you can take care of and that you'd want to wear enough that, through wearing it, you imbue it with more value.
Did you wear that Rolex in combat?
Yeah.
That's okay.
That's crazy because I think most people think like man why would I wear an 8000 watch in combat?
Well, you'd be surprised actually, sort of and particularly like special operations culture and pilot culture too.
Most guys wear nice watches and many of these watches high-end watches were originally designed for military purposes.
Because, you know, the watch I have doesn't require battery.
It's mechanical.
It's never broken down.
And actually a lot of people don't know this the face diameter of a Rolex.
A mag light was made to be the exact same face diameter of a Rolex.
So that when you take your mag light and you flash it on the face of your Rolex, it charges up the luminescent dials without any light escaping.
So There are lots of little military sort of parallels with some of these higher-end watch companies.
Okay.
I've thought about buying a high-end watch.
I can never bring myself to do it.
The most I've spent on a watch, I think, is like $500.
You know, and it's not about a watch.
It's more just about like...
You know, is there something you can have in your life that you carry with you, that can be passed down?
Because I bet the person you pass it down to will be very, very grateful that they have.
Yeah.
And it's got a story.
Yeah, it's got a story.
Like my wife has two very nice watches that were her father's. and they'll go down to our kids.
And we're so glad to have those.
So whatever it is, it could be a watch, it could be a ring, it could be anything.
But just to think as you get older hey, maybe it's worth investing a little something in an object that I could pass down.
So another skill you talk about is how to be a friend.
I think a lot of men don't think of friendship as a skill.
What makes being a friend a skill?
Well, again, right, it's that idea of intentionality.
So how do we treat our friends?
How do we invest time with our friends?
How do we show up for our friends when it's inconvenient for us, but they might need us.
So I write in that piece about one of my best friends and we met in the Marines.
But the way we really keep up is we run together probably a couple of times a month early in the morning.
About 5 a.m., we'll go run seven or eight miles.
And we've been doing this for years.
And that is very much like the foundation of our friendship are those runs.
And that kind of led me to an observation.
Actually my wife made this observation, pointed out to me that you know, as men, When we think about how we spend time with one another, the activities we select are typically not like face-to-face activities.
They're typically activities we can do together shoulder to shoulder.
So like, think about it, right?
Okay.
I go running with my buddy.
You know, like what's this sort of classic father, son activity, right?
It's fishing.
You're shoulder to shoulder when you go fishing.
Or, you know, I have another friend I play squash with.
We're shoulder to shoulder when we play squash.
Or even like two teenage boys playing video games together.
There's something about shoulder to shoulder activities that feel more natural for men as opposed to like sitting across from one another at lunch.
So I think it's, you know, understanding the type of activity to suggest with a new friend, you know, what's going to feel natural and something you can keep up.
You know, and then also just sort of how, over the long haul you know, you make sure that you take really good care of those friendships that mean the most.
And I would categorize those as like, if you know you had called that person you know at three in the morning with a dead body in your trunk, they'd say, all right, let me get a shovel.
I mean, that's the type of friend you want to really take good care of, because we all need a few of those in our life.
Yeah, I think the idea of the importance of being intentional about maintaining friendships is really key.
Guys can be bad about that.
Because you're just like, oh, it'll just kind of happen.
It's like, no, it's not going to happen because life's going to happen.
And if you don't make the date or the appointment, you're never going to see your friend.
And I think when you're younger it's tough to know that sometimes, because these are like new friends.
When you're older, I can see, you know, he and I haven't friends for, you know, 25 years.
Of course, I'm going to show up.
But when you've got a new friend, you know it's important to do that work, to really build the friendship to.
Hey, I'm going to show up for this person, even if we've only known each other for like six months or a year.
Yeah.
Also, I think what makes it hard when you're older is that you subconsciously still think that making friends will work the same way it did when you were younger.
Because when you're younger, It just kind of happened, right?
You're in high school and college.
You're seeing people all the time.
It's automatic.
It's like it's built into the structure of your life.
But then once you hit 30, 40, you know, you got a wife and kids.
That's not going to happen.
It's like the opposite of being built into your life.
So you have to make it happen.
You have to be deliberate about it.
Yeah, you really do.
And then, and that goes, you kind of have to find the activities or the way to keep up that friendship.
And I think oftentimes as men, we're not that great about it.
And we can kind of let these things fall by the wayside when they're put up against the conflicting obligations of work and family.
And in the long arc of our lives, particularly when you get older, you don't want to be in a position where you kind of look around and realize you don't have any good male friends.
Yeah.
So yeah, I guess the key there in making friends is just go and do stuff that you enjoy, because guys like doing stuff together.
So if it's Brazilian jujitsu, I know a lot of guys have made friends that way.
CrossFit gym.
I know a guy who joined like a bagpipe band.
Awesome.
And he plays the bagpipes with these guys regularly.
So yeah, start doing stuff.
That's how you make friends.
Yeah, I just did doing stuff.
Yeah.
So another skill that you've talked about is introducing yourself.
And that was the article you used to introduce yourself.
How do you think a lot of guys... fumble this?
I think it oftentimes it's, you know, not being present in that moment.
You know, you kind of introduce yourself to someone, you make some small talk with them.
They tell you their name.
You sort of forget their name over the course of the small talk.
And you know, maybe they give you their business card or their contacts and you don't follow up, you don't take good care of it.
And I think that when introducing yourself to someone, it's important to make yourself present.
You know, look that person in the eye when they tell you their name, like make an effort to remember their name.
You know, listen actively to them.
And if you kind of put your whole self into those conversations, those first moments, you'd be surprised what you can get out of a first meeting that you might not get if you're just sort of more passive about it.
And again, you think you're just going to learn this stuff, but you got to be intentional about it.
Yeah.
I mean someone hands you their business card.
Hold on to the business card, look down at it, read it, thank them.
Put it in your pocket.
You know, like, again, try to remember their name.
Remember what they do.
You know, if you're at a party and you meet someone at the beginning of the party who you like talking to, and then you mingle around and then you leave at the end of the party just go up and say hey, it was great meeting you.
We'll all follow up.
I mean, just sort of basic, again, intentionality.
Just look at people in the eye shaking their hands.
It's very basic stuff.
But, you know, sometimes we need to say it out loud to make sure that it's actually taught.
One skill you plan on covering in the future is how to give a eulogy.
Have you done that before?
Have you given a eulogy?
And who was it for if you did?
I have.
One I gave was for a friend of mine in the Marines who was killed in Afghanistan.
So I gave a eulogy at his funeral.
And That was the first proper eulogy delivered at a funeral I'd ever had to give.
And I was wrestling with what to say.
And my wife said to me, she said, well, you know who the eulogy is for, don't you?
And I had to admit that I actually didn't know who it was for, who was the audience of this eulogy.
And she said, you know, it's for his children, just write this for his children.
And that really helped me understand, okay, who am I speaking to here?
And he had young children.
So I was trying to, you know, tell them who their dad was when he was lost.
So you know, some of these things are things that when you're going to need to know it, you know you're going to want to have already put in a little bit of the work.
So, you know, it's important not to give a toast.
It's also important to know how to give a eulogy, because chances are, in each of our lives we might be asked to deliver one.
Yeah, I had to give eulogy for my grandfather years ago when he passed away.
And I thankfully got that bit of advice about knowing your audience.
Because sometimes, when I've heard eulogies, it feels like the people are just writing it for themselves.
Yeah.
I get it.
You feel a connection to this person.
You want to have your own reminiscence.
But you have to realize, no, the eulogy isn't for you.
You got to think about your audience.
And that's everyone in the room.
But in particular it's the deceased inner circle, their spouse, their siblings, their best friends, longtime colleagues, especially their children.
They all wanna hear a remembrance of this person they love.
And the other bit of advice I did that helped out a lot was I practice I just did it over and over again so I could get the cries out, because we've probably all seen those eulogies where someone just gets choked up with emotion and they just sob and they can't get through it, which I understand.
I'm completely empathetic to that, but I wanted to be sure that I could keep my composure so I could give the eulogy, like how I wanted to give it.
I did still get choked up at a few parts, but I tried to keep it together.
I got all those big cries out before I actually delivered the final eulogy.
No, I mean.
You know it's one of the most important and impactful types of public remarks anyone can be asked to offer.
So you want to make sure you get it right.
So a lot of the skills you've talked about so far, you kind of classify them as soft skills.
It's like style, how to dress, how to socialize.
Are there any brass tacks, concrete skills you think a guy should know or that you plan on covering?
I plan on.
I mean, some of these are I don't know what we put in the category of kind of like brass tacks or not brass tacks.
But I mean I'm going to cover like how to travel.
I think is an important one, how to pick a book.
I don't know if I'll necessarily get into how to file your taxes, but I think each of these little skills, they become cumulative.
And if you're taking all the little things in your life and executing them with a lot of intention, those will bleed into the larger parts of your life and you'll be executing those with intention too.
Here's a question.
Do you think improvisation is a skill a man should develop?
And if so, how do you develop it? improvisation in life.
In life, yeah, just sort of general improvisation.
Well, I think the ability to pivot in your life is very important.
So you know, if you're working at a job and you thought it was going to be great and suddenly it really isn't great and you have to acknowledge that things are not working out, the ability to reinvent oneself, to improvise and move in a different direction is hugely important.
And that's like what I would say is like a big skill.
So someone who's good at improvisation is probably good at many, many other things that allow them to be good at improvisation.
They probably have great imagination.
They probably are a good strategic thinker.
So those are all big things that we cultivate in small ways.
You know, how do you become someone who's got a great imagination and is a good strategic thinker.
Well, you're probably somebody who reads.
So you may want to figure out how to, you know, incorporate reading into your day every day.
So again, you know, the big things come from the little things, at least in my opinion.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm sure you learned improvisation in the Marines.
Like stuff never went to plan.
Never.
And the way you learn improvisation is just sort of, you know, repetition.
You've run the plays enough times that you can improvise off of them.
So the moment you actually need to improvise is usually.
You never know when that moment's going to occur, but you have to be prepared, and that preparation just comes from doing the little things right every day.
Or in the Marine Corps, we would call it brilliance in the basics.
Brilliance in the basics is what would allow you, in a very complex situation, to improvise, adapt and overcome.
As we also say in the marines.
Yeah, it's like jazz musicians they're just constantly doing that wood shedding, where they're just doing their scales over and over again so that they can improvise when they need to.
Yeah yeah, Absolutely.
And there's this idea of improvisation, sort of a manly trait.
There's this great book, written it's like 30, 40 years ago, called The Poetics of Manhood, where this anthropologist goes to this village in Crete.
And he looks at their culture of manhood there.
And in this culture, they were shepherds.
Improvisation was highly valued.
Like you weren't a man if you didn't know how to improvise.
And the way they improvised it was like, it could be things like telling a story.
Or telling a joke that was sort of different than what you'd expect.
Dancing in a deft way.
Doing a raid on another village for their sheaf with some style.
They really wanted to see a guy who could do that.
And i think i mean in my own life and here in, you know, the united states in the 21st century.
I always respect a guy who can add a bit of style to the things that they do, like you don't expect it, or whenever something doesn't go according to plan, like it just rolls off them like one on a duck and they just do something else.
Absolutely.
I mean, in the military, we call that, you know, Ilan.
Yes.
Like the units that sort of have that dash to them.
And I think that's fantastic and critically important.
You know, I think it's also important that, to do something every day that scares you a little bit.
If you want practice at improvisation or being able to tackle something.
That's a crisis.
That's really terrifying.
Like you need to be practiced at overcoming fear little bits every day.
So, I mean, you know, it doesn't have to be something that terrifies you.
Like you don't have to go swim with great white sharks every day but, you know, scares you a little bit.
Like, you know, I, I don't know.
I woke up this morning and went on a long run and it was freezing out.
I really didn't feel like going on my run this morning, but like I did it, you know it scared me a little bit.
And so much as like, I'm like, Oh, this is going to be cold.
And the first, you know, 15 minutes are going to hurt.
And then you do it and you feel great.
I think the repetition, doing things that are hard, doing things that feel frightening, that take you a little bit out of your comfort zone that is just, it's just critically important to building a fulfilling life where you feel like you're able to point yourself towards a goal and have the joy of seeing yourself progress and then eventually achieve a goal.
And if you aren't doing those things, you know chances are you're, you know you're probably not feeling a lot of fulfillment in your life and you're probably not feeling the type of happiness you deserve to feel.
So it sounds like you're encouraging men to be intentional about this skill development.
Don't just wait for it.
It's not just going to happen.
You have to go out there and make it happen for yourself.
You got to deliberately go about learning and practicing new skills.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
You can't just sit on your couch and think that the job or the girl or the you know anything is going to show up.
It's not.
You have to go out there and you have to do it for yourself.
And you have to be patient because it's not going to happen in one fell swoop.
It's going to take a lot of time, a lot of diligence, but there's joy in the daily accomplishment of the small tasks that you know are taking you towards a goal that you believe in and that excites you.
I mean, there's joy in that.
I think in some ways it's like the only real joy there is in life.
So get after it, you know, get after it with just a small thing.
That reminds me of a quote.
I've said it multiple times on this podcast, but I think it's really, I like it a lot.
That reminds me what you just said.
Nietzsche said, joy is the feeling of power increasing.
And by power, he doesn't mean like authoritative power.
He means the power to do things in your life.
And I think it goes to what you were saying.
It just feels awesome when you level up what you're capable of, when you increase your agency.
It does.
It feels great.
It's also this idea that joy is having something to look forward to.
And it's that idea of increasing power.
What you're looking forward to is the actualization of this goal of yours.
You know, people sometimes ask me like what it's like, you know, finishing and publishing a book.
I'm surprised to learn I actually get a little bit depressed.
I feel sad.
Obviously, I'm happy that I'm done with this piece of work and the book is out in the world and people are engaging with it.
But I feel a sort of sense of emptiness because I no longer have that thing on the horizon I've been looking forward to and working toward.
And I have to start all over again.
And then... you know, I start over again.
And yeah, like the quote you had from Nietzsche, I feel my power growing, the joy growing, as I'm like okay, now I'm working again towards a goal.
I believe that.
So the thing about skills is they often degrade if you don't use them.
How do you keep your own skillset sharp?
Well, I've built my life and I know sort of the things that I do in my life.
I'm a writer.
I know the things where I invest my time in trying to be better at my craft.
And so I spend the time every day doing that work.
And my work life, that's writing, reading, dedicating myself to the projects that I'm working on.
In my personal life, it's investing in my family relationships and relationships with friends.
I mean, those are what I would kind of qualify as my skills.
But those are, you know, different for anyone.
But I think it's just the daily practice of your profession and your personal life and making sure that you show up as much as you can with your full self each day to do that work, to keep those skills honed.
And through having those skills honed, you'll derive a lot of happiness.
Yeah.
So you mentioned that your father, you got some kids.
Is it three boys and a girl?
Yes.
What can fathers do to raise competent children?
What are you doing in your own life with your kids?
Speak to them with intention, you know.
Sit down, try to understand them, teach them things, just teach them little things, and let them feel their power increasing through learning those little things.
And then just pay attention.
Pay attention to how they're growing and talk to them.
Try to help them understand what they want.
And then, like my father did for me, when they tell you what they want and say who they are to you, help them find the pathway to become that version of themselves that they crave to be.
That's what my dad did with me when I couldn't do any push-ups or pull-ups, and he made me a workout plan and said here's the pathway go walk it.
Yeah, so you just gotta be intentional about it.
It's not just gonna happen.
No, it's not just gonna happen.
We've done that with our kids.
When they turn 12, they do this year-long challenge called the 12-Year-Old Challenge.
And each week they've got a different challenge.
It's going to push them physically, mentally.
They're going to learn a new skill.
So like one week they might be reading a specific book.
We have them read Man's Search for Meaning.
Or they might have to cook dinner for the family, or they might have to make a campfire, memorize a passage, tie knots, stuff like that.
My daughter's doing it right now.
My son did it a couple of years ago.
And it's been cool because you can see them experiencing that joy again as they figure out how to do something.
It's like, oh wow, I can actually do this adult thing that I didn't think I could do.
Yeah, that's the power increasing.
But your kids are lucky, and I think there are too many young people, and certainly too many young men, who might not be getting that degree of intentionality and they might have to go seek it out themselves.
But you can find it yourself.
It's just about taking those first steps and sticking with them.
Yeah, and that's another thing too.
If you don't have kids or even you do have kids, get out there and volunteer.
There's lots of opportunities for grown men to volunteer to work with young people, whether it's being a coach or a scout leader or whatever.
It gives them another touch point with an adult man.
They can experience that feeling that I had like wow, here's this adult treating me like an adult and showing me how I can become intentional and competent.
Yeah.
It's huge.
Yeah.
Well, Elliot, this has been a great conversation.
Where can people go to learn more about your work?
You know, I'm, I'm on social media.
You can find me, Elliot dot Ackerman, on Instagram and Twitter and my blog.
Books are sold wherever fine books are sold.
So I'm pretty easy to find.
Fantastic.
Well, Elliot Ackerman, thanks for your time.
It's been a pleasure.
Yeah.
Thanks for having me, Brett.
My guest today was Elliot Ackerman.
He's a novelist and the author of the new column at the Free Press called A Man Should Know.
If you want to read Elliot's columns, you can subscribe to the Free Press at thefpcom.
Slash manliness and save 10 off your first year.
Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash competence.
We find links to resources.
We delve deeper into this topic.
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast.
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This is Brett McKay.
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