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4 Star General J. Mattis’s Daily Routine Will Blow Your Mind (And Teach You A Lesson About Reading)

Updated: Dec 14, 2022


Mediocre ideas never elevate the heart rate.

Great ones make you break out in a sweat.

Here’s one I’ve been obsessing over.

MIT professor Peter Senge has made his life’s work the study of learning organizations.

In his 1990 bestseller The Fifth Discipline, Peter demonstrates that leaders must take purposeful actions to create a learning organization.


“The only sustainable competitive advantage is an organization’s ability to learn faster than the competition.” - Peter Senge

How do you learn faster than the competition?

Read.

Access to information has never been as readily available as it is today.

Never.

There's absolutely no excuse to be uninformed.

Reading today will set you apart from others tomorrow.

It opens you up to new ideas, it can transport you to faraway worlds and help you to see the world through the eyes of someone else.

But one of the best things about reading is that can challenge the perceptions you hold.

Buckminster Fuller pointed out in 1950 that human knowledge doubled approximately every century up until the 1900s.

By the end of World War II, knowledge was doubling every twenty-five years.

Today, depending on what field you’re in, knowledge is growing at a tsunami level of velocity and intensity.

According to the experts, it's doubling every thirteen months, with some arguing that it may actually be doubling every twenty-four hours.

Just think about that - by this time tomorrow, the world’s knowledge may have doubled.

The only way to keep up is by doing what Jefferson did every day.

He stayed on top of current trends, novel ideas and philosophical thought by reading daily - the best technology available in his time.


“There is only one kind of shock worse than the totally unexpected: the expected for which one has refused to prepare.” - Mary Renault

How many situations will you face that have not already been experienced by someone else?

Billions of people, thousands of years … probably not too many.

Luckily, sometimes those experiences are captured and so they become valuable tools for us to learn and prepare for similar situations.

In an email, U.S. four-star Marine General James Mattis candidly wrote about the value of this approach.

A colleague wrote to him asking about the "importance of reading and military history for officers," many of whom found themselves "too busy to read."


General James Mattis is typing now:


Dear, "Bill"


The problem with being too busy to read is that you learn by experience (or by your men’s experience), i.e. the hard way. By reading, you learn through others’ experiences, generally a better way to do business, especially in our line of work where the consequences of incompetence are so final for young men.


Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed (successfully or unsuccessfully) before. It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.


For all the “4th Generation of War” intellectuals running around today saying that the nature of war has fundamentally changed, the tactics are wholly new, etc, I must respectfully say … “Not really”: Alex the Great would not be in the least bit perplexed by the enemy that we face right now in Iraq, and our leaders going into this fight do their troops a disservice by not studying (studying, vice just reading) the men who have gone before us.


We have been fighting on this planet for 5000 years and we should take advantage of their experience. “Winging it” and filling body bags as we sort out what works reminds us of the moral dictates and the cost of incompetence in our profession. As commanders and staff officers, we are coaches and sentries for our units: how can we coach anything if we don’t know a hell of a lot more than just the [Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures]? What happens when you’re on a dynamic battlefield and things are changing faster than higher [Headquarters] can stay abreast? Do you not adapt because you cannot conceptualize faster than the enemy’s adaptation?


Perhaps if you are in support functions waiting on the warfighters to spell out the specifics of what you are to do, you can avoid the consequences of not reading. Those who must adapt to overcoming an independent enemy’s will are not allowed that luxury.


This is not new to the USMC approach to warfighting — Going into Kuwait 12 years ago, I read (and reread) Rommel’s Papers (remember “Kampstaffel”?), Montgomery’s book (“Eyes Officers”…), “Grant Takes Command” (need for commanders to get along, “commanders’ relationships” being more important than “command relationships”), and some others.


As a result, the enemy has paid when I had the opportunity to go against them, and I believe that many of my young guys lived because I didn’t waste their lives because I didn’t have the vision in my mind of how to destroy the enemy at least cost to our guys and to the innocents on the battlefields.


Hope this answers your question…. I will cc my ADC in the event he can add to this. He is the only officer I know who has read more than I.


Semper Fi, Mattis


This highly accomplished general, who went on to become President Trump’s defence secretary, credits his leadership success not to his fighting skills as a Marine, but to his reading habits.

Let that soak in for a minute.

General Mattis noted that as a warrior, he could avoid mistakes others had made, having read about them.

What for some were new tactics in the twenty-first century, he had already read about from writings in the third century or even from the time of the Peloponnesian War.

The ideas you consume determine the person you’ll become.

The more you read, the more you will build your repertoire.

Incrementally at first, the knowledge you add to your stockpile will grow over time as it combines with everything else you put in there.

Eventually, when facing a challenge, you'll be able to draw on this dynamic inner repository.

While heading Microsoft, Bill Gates would take “Think Weeks” - solo retreats where he read papers submitted by his employees on what they thought was trending in technology.

Warren Buffett when asked about the key to success pointed to a stack of nearby books and said he would read 500 pages like this every day.


“If you haven't read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren't broad enough to sustain you.” - Jim Mattis, Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead

How you get your daily dose of knowledge - what you read, listen to, or view is up to you.

But to act exceptionally today, you must stay in step with information and knowledge that is growing so quickly.

Read a lot.

Like, a lot, a lot.

Good books almost read themselves.

Bad books are a grind.

When you pick up a good book, you feel it instantly.

Not only are they well written and packed with ideas and insights, but they’re well organized.

They flow.

You sort of want to read the next page.

Last week I listened to an interview with Naval Ravikant.

What struck me the most was when Naval said he’s reading 10 to 20 books at a time.

20.

That number sounded absurd.

How can he keep up?

Well, I realized that I’ve already done something similar back in school.

I had about 12 different classes, each with its own textbook, and I never had a problem keeping up. (The only issue was I didn’t like most of them because I haven’t picked them myself.)

The key is to have real variety.

Books on different subjects, with different page counts and different styles.

Some more playful and light, others more dense and demanding.

Also, consider a variety of formats — Kindle, physical and Audio.

Skim a lot of books, read a few, and immediately re-read the best ones.

'Chance favours the prepared mind,' was Louis Pasteur's most famous quote.

Books are the best bargain there is.

They have a limitless amount to teach you if you’re willing to pay attention.

If you want to change your mind and your world, read.

If you really want to change your life and your world, read more.

Figure out where you are going and find out who has been there before.

Knowledge comes from experience, but it doesn’t have to be your experience.



P.S. Like what you’re reading here? Well, you have three choices really.

1. Get more stories straight to your inbox. Subscribe in the page footer below.

3. When you are ready to level up, hire me.

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