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 a eulogy.
Resources Related to the Podcast
- Elliot’s novels
- Elliot’s “A Man Should Know:” columns:
- Fields of Fire by James Webb
- The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
- The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
- AoM Article: 100 Skills Every Man Should Know
- AoM Skills Archives
- AoM Podcast #307: Make Your Bed, Change the World
- AoM Article: 10 Ways to Be a Better Husband Today
- AoM Article: How to Choose a Watch
- AoM Article: How to Give a Eulogy
- AoM Article: A Eulogy for My Grandfather, William D. Hurst
- The Poetics of Manhood: Contest and Identity in a Cretan Mountain Village by Michael Herzfeld
- AoM Article: MacGyver Manhood and the Art of Masculine Improvisation
- Free Press discount code: subscribe at thefp.com/manliness, and save 10% off your first year
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Transcript
Brett McKay:
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” column at the free press that explores the small but significant skills that shape a man’s life. 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 and to how to give eulogy. After the show’s over, check at our show notes at aom.is/competence. All right, Elliot Ackerman, welcome to the show.
Elliot Ackerman:
Thanks so much for having me on.
Brett McKay:
So you’ve got an interesting background. You’re a Marine who 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?
Elliot Ackerman:
Yeah, no, I didn’t have a family history of military service. I guess I’d say there are really three reasons why I joined. I’d say first is I grew up overseas for a while, 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 many of the benefits that we have in our life as Americans, and that 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. Then 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 this fascination with the military. So when the time came, I think those three forces kind of led me into the Marines.
Brett McKay:
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?
Elliot Ackerman:
Well, when I was getting out of the service, I searched for about eight years, had a positive experience when 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 along the way had encouraged me, said, Hey, maybe you should write a book. Have you ever thought about writing a book about some of your experiences? And I didn’t really want to write that type of kind of like a, “Hey bro, there I was” type memoir. That didn’t really seem, I dunno, it wasn’t really my style, but there’d 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 novels, books like Jim Webb’s, Fields of Fire, if you know who Jim Webb is, he was the Secretary of the Navy and a senator. But before that, he was a young marine infantry officer in Vietnam and he wrote a novel about his experiences or books like 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 and I just sort of sat down, wrote one book and then another, and then the rest is history.
Brett McKay:
And so the themes that you write about, are they based around war?
Elliot Ackerman:
I think conflict is a reoccurring theme in many of my books as are other themes like marriage, brotherhood, 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. And the pages of my books,
Brett McKay:
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 looked to for inspiration?
Elliot Ackerman:
I think one of the things that’s remarkable when you look at American letters in particular is how much there is that is written about war. But we don’t necessarily consider a war novel you like Jim Webb’s Field of Fire, that’s a war novel or The Things They Carried or Karl Marlantes’ Matterhorn. But you can see war shot through so many of our books. So inspiration for me, sure, 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. There’s a book that’s about war, think of it, a book about this guy named Holden Caulfield, and 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, 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, 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. And 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 for me, many of the writers who also inspire me are ones who found different ways to write about conflict and process conflict like Salinger did.
Brett McKay:
That’s interesting. Yeah, I never would’ve thought of Catcher on the Rye as a war novel.
Elliot Ackerman:
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 like Tim O’Brien when he says, 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 you’re writing about war, it sounds like you’re going to write a book that’s just all about tank movements and aircraft battles in my books. It’s not necessarily what’s going on. The war is there, it’s present, it’s impacting the actions of the characters. But fundamentally, the books are about those characters themselves. And the types of books that I enjoy reading are usually pretty character driven, are not just about the technical aspects of war.
Brett McKay:
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. Every week you’re taking on a topic or an idea, a skill that you think a man should know. What was the impetus behind this column?
Elliot Ackerman:
Well, I do a lot of work as a journalist. So I write pieces from time to time. Usually my kind of forte is 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 and went to go work at the CIA was 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 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 ’em. And they were really well-made suits. And my father 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 when people seem 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 cuff 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, Hey, why it’s worth investing in a nice watch that you’ll wear through your whole life. And so these are all little things that are always framed to me like, Hey, a man should know how to do this. And I think oftentimes 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
Brett McKay:
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?
Elliot Ackerman:
Yeah, I think it’s definitely competence, Brett. And I’d say in addition with that competence, it’s also intentionality, waking up every day with a plan. 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, 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 just with the very small things that we do, you have to be competent in those small things. It’s worth knowing how to just get yourself dressed so you present well, understanding how to introduce yourself to somebody else. 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. And so often 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, I don’t pick up my column. I’ll teach you how. But it’s worth knowing these things
Brett McKay:
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 mean, I think I’ve seen this, there’s 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. And I mean, it really does something to your sense of self and your sense of ability to have an impact on the world. And it’s always amazing when I work with young men and my church and we have Wednesday night activity where we’re just teaching a skill. And for some of these kids, it’s really basic stuff like, man, why didn’t you learn this at home? But when they learn it, their eyes light up. They’re like, oh my gosh, I can do this now. And it changes. It really does. It changes how they approach the world. They walk with a little bit more confidence.
Elliot Ackerman:
Absolutely. And I think that competency, I mean, I put in the word intentionality. Another word I throw out there, just purpose. I mean all of us to be happy in life, every human being, whether you’re a men or a woman, I mean, you need to have a sense of purpose. And 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 it’s like how you build a fire with a little spark. And sometimes that little spark can be like Admiral McRaven says, just make your bed. Or in my life it’s like, and this is probably a habit from my military days, I work out, I get exercise six days a week, I do a workout. And at this point in my life, I’m no longer doing that because I need to be able to go on special operations missions.
But I do it now just for my psychological wellbeing 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 made that your daily practice, it’s difficult to understand abstractly the benefits of just doing these small things. And 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.
Brett McKay:
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, 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?
Elliot Ackerman:
Yeah, I mean, I can just say based off anecdotally, and 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. 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 young straight dudes with a lot of intentionality. It’s sort of almost become a faux pa to speak that way. And the reciprocal is you’ve got all these young men who are just 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 it through osmosis and they don’t know how. And it’s causing a lack of confidence. And I would also say 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, and 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.
Brett McKay:
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, 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.
Elliot Ackerman:
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.
Brett McKay:
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, alright, kid, you’re going to fly this B 17 and you can do it and you can do it. And they did it.
Elliot Ackerman:
I think HW Bush was 21 when he was shot down in the Pacific. 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.
Brett McKay:
And I think it’s one thing, it’s important to expect great things from young men, but I think what you’re talking about here is that you also have to show them how to do it. You can’t just be like, Hey guy, 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.
Elliot Ackerman:
Absolutely. And the column I’m writing, a man should know. I mean, listen, 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 little bits of kindling that if you 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. Just little bits of competence every day. That’s how you get big things done just gradually through little acts of intentionality.
Brett McKay:
Yeah. One of my favorite writers is Steven 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.
Elliot Ackerman:
Yes. And this is not new knowledge. I mean, 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 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 for people who are getting left behind or not having those opportunities, 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 I think for young people, it’s just the little things each day can get you to a really positive result.
Brett McKay:
How did your time in the Marines increase your own feeling of intentionality, competence, and confidence?
Elliot Ackerman:
Yeah, I mean, listen, when I decided I wanted to be a Marine, I was 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 long, curly hair almost down to my shoulders. And I sort of had this 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 the standards, the physical fitness standards that I would need to meet. And I said, this is what I’m going to have to do, and this is what I think I want to do. Going into the Marine Corps, which, oh by the way, 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. 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 either to do pullups pushups and some sit-ups. I could do like seven pushups, no, and maybe 15 sit-ups. And so 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 don’t just wake up and magically you’re this thing you want to be. 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 writing books, in my case, building a business, it just comes with the consistent practice of small things day by day by day. This idea that excellence is really just a habit. It’s a series of habits all strong together. And in my life, I found that to be very true. And it starts with the little things.
Brett McKay:
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.
Elliot Ackerman:
Yeah. My wife is a writer too, and I often joke with her that 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 finish them. And also because so much of being a writer is just suffering, 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’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, 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.
Brett McKay:
What about your career at the CIA? Were there skills or mindsets or mental models that you learned there that you’re able to carry over to your writing career?
Elliot Ackerman:
I think one of the things you certainly, you need to know is 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. It’s the idea 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, in my case at CIA, yes, sit down and try to understand what’s going through the head of a member of Al-Qaeda and landing at the place, I understand why this person is engaging in these behaviors. I don’t agree with ’em, but I certainly understand how they got there. That has been a skill that has definitely, 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, 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.
Brett McKay:
Yeah, empathy helps you develop social competency.
Elliot Ackerman:
Absolutely. Yeah.
Brett McKay:
So we’ve been talking about how competency and intentionality can help a young man’s or a man’s sense of self, their sense of agency, they need stuff done. There’s a lot of talk in the online 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. 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 dating is so rough out there. And he’s like, you idiot. There are 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 what I’m getting at here. Do you think competency can help a man’s success in his romantic or family life?
Elliot Ackerman:
Absolutely. And I think just a sense of confidence and the confidence comes from the competency, right? I mean, I was talking a little bit before about 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, you might get a nice result, you might get a date, 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.
Brett McKay:
Yeah, I think 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 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 and attracted you to him and still you just love about him. A common occurrence is just like how he just takes care of stuff. He knows how to get stuff done. If I have a problem, he’ll help me fix it. I think that if you’re a young man and you want to increase your success in the romance world, learn skills – wasn’t it Napoleon Dynamite says chicks dig guys with skills or something like that
Elliot Ackerman:
Yeah, it’s kind of obvious though, right? I mean, it’s very sort of traditional. It’s very, to me, evident that yes, if I’m at home and the sink breaks, I know I’m the guy who’s fixing the sink. 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 she doesn’t want to fix the sink. And that might sound 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 to buy work differently. Hey, that’s totally fine. You do you. But I think what gets confusing for young men is they just dunno what to do.
They don’t know if they’re allowed to just do the traditional thing. So I think part of it is just whether that’s in 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 she wants to ask you to dance, that’s fine, but 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.
Brett McKay:
Yeah. Alright, 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 not 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. 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, how to wear a suit, how to introduce yourself. And as you said earlier, it’s not going to 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?
Elliot Ackerman:
Yeah, I think ones that are sort of practical and also have sort of a larger meaning. So one of the columns which just came out, just about watches, 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 that has sort of a larger meaning. I think how to introduce yourself was the first column that I wrote, which is about how we carry ourselves in the world, how we interact with other people. The importance of even someone you don’t like, maybe if you have a chance to meet that person, meeting them is good. 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 all of just these little skills that often kind of lead to larger skills or can impact your life in larger ways.
Brett McKay:
Well, let’s talk about the watch. Any advice there on selecting a watch?
Elliot Ackerman:
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 works for their life. So I have a Rolex Explorer too that I bought in 2006 with my combat pay when I was deployed with the Marines of the Middle East, and we pulled into Port and Dubai. I spent most of my combat pay on this watch. But 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.
Brett McKay:
Did you wear that Rolex in combat?
Elliot Ackerman:
Yeah.
Brett McKay:
Okay. That’s crazy because I think, man, most people think like, man, why would I wear an $8,000 watch in combat?
Elliot Ackerman:
Well, you’d be surprised actually. And particularly 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 the watch I have doesn’t require battery. It’s mechanical. It’s never broken down. And actually a lot of people dunno, this, the face diameter of a Rolex, a maite 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 luminous and dials without any light escaping. So there are lots of little military parallels with some of these higher end watch companies.
Brett McKay:
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 it’s like $500.
Elliot Ackerman:
And it’s not about a watch. It’s more just about is there something you can have in your life that you carry with you that can be passed down? I bet the person you pass it down to will be very, very grateful that they have.
Brett McKay:
Yeah, and it’s got a story.
Elliot Ackerman:
Yeah, it’s got a story. My wife has two very nice watches though, or her father’s, and they’ll go down to our kids and we’re so glad to have those. So whatever, it’s, 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.
Brett McKay:
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 of skill?
Elliot Ackerman:
Well, again, 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 times a month early in the morning, about 5:00 AM 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 or those runs. And that kind of led me to an observation, actually, my wife made this observation pointed out to me that 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. Think about it. Okay, I go running with my buddy. What’s this sort of classic father son activity? It’s fishing. You’re shoulder to shoulder when you go fishing. Or I have another friend I play squash with. We shoulder to shoulder when we play squash or even two teenage boys playing video games together. There’s something about shoulder to shoulder activities that feel more natural for men as opposed to sitting across from one another at lunch. So I think it’s understanding the type of activity to suggest with a new friend what’s going to feel natural and something you can keep up. And then also just sort of how over the long haul you make sure that you take really good care of those friendships that mean the most. And I would categorize those as if you called that person at three in the morning with a dead body in your trunk, they’d say, all right, lemme 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.
Brett McKay:
Yeah, I think the idea of the importance of being intentional about maintaining friendships is really key. Guys can be bad about that. Just like, oh, it’ll just kind of happen. It’s like, no, it’s not going to happen. Life’s going to happen. And if you don’t make the date or the appointment, you’re never going to see your friend.
Elliot Ackerman:
And I think when you’re younger, it’s tough to know that sometimes because these are new friends. So when you’re older, I can see he and I have been friends for 25 years. Of course I’m going to show up. But when you’ve got a new friend, 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 six months or a year.
Brett McKay:
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, it’s built into structure of your life. But then once you hit 30, 40, 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.
Elliot Ackerman:
Yeah, you really do. And that goes this idea. You have to find the activities or the way to keep up that friendship. 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 work 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.
Brett McKay:
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 a bagpipe band and he plays the bagpipes with these guys regularly. So yeah, start doing stuff. That’s how you make friends.
Elliot Ackerman:
I just did stuff. Yeah.
Brett McKay:
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?
Elliot Ackerman:
I think oftentimes it’s not being present in that moment. You kind of introduce yourself to someone. You make some small talk with ’em, they tell you their name. You sort of forget their name over the course of the small talk, and 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. Look that person in the eye when they tell you their name. Make an effort to remember their name. 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 more passive about it.
Brett McKay:
And again, you think you’re just going to learn this stuff, but you got to be intentional about it.
Elliot Ackerman:
Yeah, I mean, someone hands you their business card, hold onto the business card, look down at it, read it, thank them, put it in your pocket again, try to remember their name. Remember what they do. 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, go and say, Hey, it was great meeting you. I’ll 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 sometimes we need to say it out loud to make sure that it’s actually taught.
Brett McKay:
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?
Elliot Ackerman:
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 was the audience of this eulogy. And she said, 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 tell them who their dad was when he was lost. So some of these things are things that when you’re going to need to know it, you’re going to want to have already put in a little bit of the work. So it’s part to know how 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 of these.
Brett McKay:
I had to give eulogy from my grandfather years ago when he passed away, and I thankfully got that bit of advice about knowing your audience. Sometimes when I’ve heard eulogies, it feels like the people are just writing it for themselves, and 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. So the spouse, their siblings, their best friends, longtime colleagues, especially their children, they all want to hear a remembrance of this person they love. And the other bit of advice I did that helped out a lot was I practice a lot. 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 how I wanted to give it. That’s not, 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.
Elliot Ackerman:
No, and I mean, instead, 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.
Brett McKay:
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?
Elliot Ackerman:
I plan on, some of these are, I don’t know what we put in the category of like brass tacks or not brass tacks, but I mean, I’m going to cover 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 are 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.
Brett McKay:
Here’s a question. Do you think improvisation is a skill a man should develop? And if so, how do you develop it?
Elliot Ackerman:
Improvisation in life.
Brett McKay:
In life, yeah, just sort of general improvisation.
Elliot Ackerman:
Well, I think the ability to pivot in your life is very important. So 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 what I would say is 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. 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 incorporate reading into your day every day. So again, the big things come from the little things, at least in my opinion.
Brett McKay:
Yeah, I mean, I’m sure you learned improvisation in the Marines’, like stuff never went to plan.
Elliot Ackerman:
Never. And the way you learn improvisation is just sort of 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 every day. Or in the Marine Corps, we’ll 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,
Brett McKay:
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.
Elliot Ackerman:
Yeah, absolutely.
Brett McKay:
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. You weren’t a man if you didn’t know how to improvise. And the way they improvised it, 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 sheep with some style. They really wanted to see a guy who could do that. And I think mean in my own life and here in 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. You don’t expect it. Or whenever something doesn’t go according to plan, it just rolls off them, like wander on a duck and they just do something else.
Elliot Ackerman:
Absolutely. I mean, in the military, we call that elan.
Brett McKay:
Yes.
Elliot Ackerman:
The units that sort of have that dash to them, and I think that’s fantastic and critically important. I think it’s also important 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. You need to be practiced at overcoming fear little bits every day. So I mean, it doesn’t have to be something that terrifies you. You don’t have to go swim with great white sharks every day, but it just scares you a little bit. I dunno. 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 I did. It scared me a little bit and so much as like I’m like, oh, this is going to be cold and the first 50 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 feels frightening and that take you a little bit out of your comfort zone, 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, chances are 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.
Brett McKay:
So it sounds like you’re encouraging men to be intentional about this skill development. Don’t just wait for, 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.
Elliot Ackerman:
Absolutely. Yeah. You can’t just sit on your couch and think that the job or the girl or anything. It’s going to show up, not you have to go out there and you have to do it for yourself, and you have to be patient. It’s not going to happen in one foul 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 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 that’s the only real joy there is in life. So get after it. Get after it with just the small things.
Brett McKay:
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 of what you just said. Nietzsche said, joy is the feeling of power increasing. And by power, he doesn’t mean 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.
Elliot Ackerman:
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. People sometimes ask me what it’s 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 I start over again. And yeah, the quote yet from Nietzsche, I feel my power growing. The joy growing is I’m like, okay, now I’m working again towards a goal I believe in.
Brett McKay:
So thing about skills as they often degrade, if you don’t use them, how do you keep your own skillset sharp?
Elliot Ackerman:
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 and 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 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.
Brett McKay:
Yeah. So you mentioned that you’re a father, you got some kids, is it three boys and a girl?
Elliot Ackerman:
Yes.
Brett McKay:
What can fathers do to raise competent children? What are you doing in your own life with your kids?
Elliot Ackerman:
Speak to them with intention. 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 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 pushups or pullups, and he made me a workout plan and said, here’s the pathway. Go walk it.
Brett McKay:
Yeah. So you just got to be intentional about it’s not just going to happen.
Elliot Ackerman:
No, it’s not going to happen.
Brett McKay:
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 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 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.
Elliot Ackerman:
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 just about taking those first steps and sticking.
Brett McKay:
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.
Elliot Ackerman:
Yeah, it’s huge. Yeah.
Brett McKay:
Well, Elliot, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about your work?
Elliot Ackerman:
I’m on social media. You can find me Elliot Ackerman on Instagram and Twitter, and my books are sold wherever books are sold, so I’m pretty easy to find.
Brett McKay:
Fantastic. Well, Elliot Ackerman, thanks for your time. It’s been a pleasure.
Elliot Ackerman:
Yeah, thanks for having me, Brett.
Brett McKay:
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 the fp.com/manliness and save 10% off your first year. Also, check out our show notes at aom.is/competence refine links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic.
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AoM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com where you can find our podcast archives, and make sure check out our new newsletter. It’s called Dying Breed. You can sign up dyingbreed.net. It’s a great way to support the show directly.
As always, thanks for the continued support. Until next time, this is Brett McKay reminding you to not only listen to the show, but put what you’ve heard into action.
