How To Be A Better Communicator

[Listen to an audio version of this blog here.]

The other day I was running up a mountain, with this podcast in one ear and clean mountain air in the other. Jordan Peterson was interviewing Jocko Willink, an author/podcaster, and retired Navy Seal officer. They were talking about how Willink studied English because he knew that being a good Navy Seal would require the ability to clearly communicate. The two men do a sort of deep dive into why English is such a useful thing to study, and the idea that struck me in a soft spot was that the ability to write well is priceless, because the ability to write well is directly correlated with the ability to think well. If you can communicate your thoughts and articulate them well, nothing can stop you.

I studied English at Bradley University, and at the time, felt a certain inclination to justify my studies. The humanities were known as “easy” majors, and pathways to certain destitution. How many times have you heard someone make a joke about an Art major working at a coffee shop? I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do with my life as far as a career went, and I liked that my degree didn’t corner me into any one specific life path.

Students of the humanities have long felt the urge to justify its use, and I may be inadvertently doing that here. But my primary point in writing this blog isn’t to…