The other day I came across an innocuously titled Word document Dr. Jordan B. Peterson crafted to help his students write essays. It was linked in a comment from another thread, but can be found on the web with little effort.
As I read through the document, I was blown away. In all my experience over the past decade working and studying in English departments, JPB’s guide contains the most useful, practical advice on essay writing I’ve ever come across. Not only that, I was staggered by how casually he delivers deep wisdom and profound psychological insights.
JBP points out that essay writing is more than just a thing to do get grades in college. It’s a practical method for clarifying your thinking and learning to articulate yourself. This planet needs people (especially men) who are not only willing to enter into the chaotic fray of beliefs and ideologies, but who have the skill to articulate what matters most to them at all costs. At least this is a skill I’m trying to personally develop.
So I reposted Dr. Peterson's entire guide here to bring his method some visibility, and in the hopes that others might find it helpful.
That's because it's his entire way of life!
First of all, this guy has an insane knowledge of both personality and the connection between stories and the human condition. He has, from this, deduced what he thinks is the historical understanding of "how to live your life."
And what he was able to learn from how we learn, being a teacher, is what he calls his "self authoring suite." Basically you write essays about yourself, with the intention to start changing your life or at least get perspective about changing your life by way of finding out where you are and where you want to go.
Add a bullet journal and get ready for a whole new you.
I read that in Peterson's voice.
And that was the end of that!
Yeah? Well... NO! Think again, sunshine.
Probably my favorite line of his in the university debate against the SJWs.
That's his goto besides "NOT GOOD."
Is it Kermit or Peterson? Hard to tell sometimes.
Got sources for any o that?
Watch his videos, then search for "self authoring suite."
At the same time, start a bullet journal.
Sorry for my ignorance, but what is a bullet journal? Just a journal with bullet points?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm15cmYU0IM
My two cents though is that using evernote or any online notetaking system is better. All of these systems come from the book Getting Things Done. https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Productivity/dp/0142000280
Here's a guide on using evernote in a more systematic way.
http://www.thesecretweapon.org/
Did you do a pen and paper one yet?
If you haven't, DO IT. TRUST ME.
First I've seen this. I'm all for pen and paper journaling but this system does feel complicated. I'll have to watch a couple more videos to see where all the pieces fit together.
Does this work, just watching the video now.. I use trello and kind of have the same system.
What does this system to, how does it handle emails?
Too much to talk about, google it.
I and a friend of mine have been watching his most recent Maps of Meaning lectures which I really recommend. Specifically this years course, it is filmed better and there is a true sense of urgency the way he speaks. It's scary how many times you "wake up" with some of the things he says. It's terrifying the stuff he is saying yet he still ultimately believes it can change, there is a sense of cautious optimism.
He has also come up is a Self Authoring technique to help people live a more goal oriented and successful life.
I did the Past Self Authoring one completely and it didn't help that much, I started the Present Self Authoring and I couldn't finish it. I just felt like I wasn't getting anything out of it.
So lastly I tried the Future Self Authoring and BAM, I could feel it helping. I did the first part of it and it has already started to really help just in clarifying what it is I want out of life.
Interesting to note as well, he was talking with a few other people about studies with the Self Authoring and they said that really you don't need to do all of them, that the benefits were seen as the same if you only did the one that works for you, so some people who did all 3 of the authorings saw about the same level of success as those who just did the Future authoring.
For me I'm pretty self aware of my past, of my shortcomings and my good virtues, so the past and present didn't do anything for me, but as I say, just in start and getting halfway through the Future and I already feel some major improvements.
Can you breakdown the future self authoring techniques?
https://youtu.be/qa9u5t3C0AI
There will be ANOTHER talk with Dr. Jordan and Joe Rogan tomorrow. Stay in tuned!
WHAT!? I was JUST listened to the most recent one for the 2nd time just out of pure enjoyment of the conversation. You just made my fucking day, man.
I'm pretty sure it's on Tuesday.
I used to journal every night in a spiral bound notebook, and while I occasionally had long entries of two or three pages, I eventually got tired of writing, or my thoughts began to dissipate before I could get them all on paper.
I started journaling again last year, but in a Word document, and with a keyboard that was extremely comfortable to use. Just by doing that I was writing one or two full page pages in size 10 font, almost every night. Sometimes three. And I noticed that the day after I did so, my mind was clearer, and I felt more at-ease with both myself and the world. Even though I'm no longer doing it every night, despite thinking I should, I'm up to over 19,000 words and twenty-eight pages since starting last November. I construct each entry sort of like an essay, but each paragraph can stand on its own as a unique train of thought while tying into the rest. I find it incredibly cathartic to do it that way, since that's how my internal monologues (And external, since I talk to myself damn near constantly) tend to flow.
The few times I've basically just done monologuing and getting my thoughts out in front of somebody (My old teachers, my therapist, a newspaper reporter doing a story on me for my job) I've always been described as highly articulate, so there is definite validity to just Writing Shit Down in some sort of structured format. Hell, look at professional writers. Charles Bukowski, a sort of favorite around here, wrote poetry and stories in much of his spare time. Stephen King says he writes at least 2,000 words a day, and like him or not, he's pretty damn articulate.
However, just writing stuff down alone isn't going to reshape your modes of thinking. You have to do it in a style and structure that makes sense to both you AND someone else, even if it's never meant to be shared. I try to always consider how my writing would appear to someone if they managed to find and read my journals. Would it make sense? Would it flow? Would the ideas be easily understood? And would they enjoy reading it? By doing this, I also reinforce that style into my daily life and way of thinking, and hopefully improve my general communication skills. This is what you have to always keep in mind and strive for, even when just writing for yourself. The way I do it is by imagining how it would sound if spoken aloud. I find a lot of writing boring, and a lot of speech boring, simply because it doesn't sound good. If you can make it sound interesting, people will listen, regardless of what you're saying. And that's what gets you heard.
You might even hear yourself when you do it.
I just use blogger.com, and make a private blog. Now you can journal anywhere with an internet connection and access old entries. Add grammarly extension if you want to have grammer/spelk check on chrome. You can tag your posts or search key words to find old entries. Super useful after years of journaling.
I'm not a huge fan of online journals ever since a blog site I used to use went defunct (ModBlog) and took all my entries with it. I see the appeal of access from anywhere, but I just throw my Word file onto Dropbox for online access. I also like how I can do all kinds of extra things in Word, like bullets and adding images and extra word processing stuff. Sometimes I have a particular thing in mind, and even if it's just for me, it helps tickle my creativity and lets me practice my Word skills.
Not knocking the online version, it's just not my cup of tea. If it works for you that's great, keep using it. So long as you do it that's the important thing.
Good point. I Never considered the possibility of loosing access. Blogger.com is owned by Alphabet I believe, so I think my entries will be safe for the time being.
I am diving deep into his recommended list of books. Just finished The Gulag Archipelago and I am now into The Kingdom of God is Within You. He stresses how it is important to obtain knowledge in order to gain power in negotiating and holyshit is he right.
What did you think of The Gulag Archipelago? I've heard him mention it at Rogan's podcast with the mention that it is a complicated book. I assume you still advice it?
It is complicated on the basis of gruesomeness. It is not a book you read before bed. References to Tolstoi and Shakespeare can make it difficult for some as an example..(i.e) his claim about evil and ideology. He references Iago and Macbeth. Some dots need to be connected. Highly advice it.
Cool, I'll put it on the list. Thanks for advice.
Nice. I can't wait to get into that stuff too especially the fiction. I'm glad that I haven't read much classic fiction yet because now I'll have a better basis for getting more out of it.
How is The Kingdom of God is Within You?
This guy reminds me of Robert Langdon from Davinci Code series. I love it. Just started the 17 some odd lecture series on personality on youtube. Lecture one was literally the first day of class at University of Toronto Pysch 230. He had a link to his website up with a syllabus and everything. I'm thinking about ordering that selected readings book and basically auditing the course. All at my own pace too.
Can't beleive this stuff is free
Omg yes. Totally agree on Langdon.
These are the helpful kinds of posts I like to read on here. Things that can help us become smarter, better thinking men. Not just some guy that finally got laid trying to tell everyone how to do it.
Thanks for sharing that.
Another resource readers might find useful for achieving coherence:
http://www.peirce.org/writings/p119.html
"How To Make Our Ideas Clear" by C.S. Peirce
Quite similar to the Stoic practice of daily writing to help meditate on and understand life. A lot of stoics keep a journal to help them reflect on life.
"Marcus Aurelius, the emperor of the Roman Empire, the most powerful man on earth, sat down each day to write himself notes about restraint, compassion and humility."
The Subreddit Stoicism is worth checking out for anyone who hasn't.
I was fortunate enough to get a free version of his self-authoring future vision suite. I did it over this past weekend by luck and it's amazing/wonderful for setting up goals.
Doesn't he have a whole site dedicated to it? I also have a youtube video saved for later where he walks through at least some of it. Damn, I really need to get to that...
Kerrigan's Writing to the Point is pretty amazing and worth taking a look at if you treasure instruction on methods of clear writing.
Thanks for sharing bro . I also wanted to cultivate skill of essay writing not merely for grades but to develop clarity of thought and specificity.
This is genius, I too often avoid talking about my ideologies and beliefs cause I don't think I have them completely figured out. Writing essays would require me to be clear on what I believe.
Jordan Peterson has a lot of great wisdom to share.
JBP has some interesting TRP-related thoughts about dominance hierarchies and women.
On an unrelated note, OP: is it wise to post links to your personal page on TRP?
Why is this professor getting so much attention recently?
He stood up against some of the crazy liberal feminist types and does so in a very sensible relatable way.
He said it's wrong make it the law to abide by someone's pronouns because messes with freedom of speech. Ie. If a non-binary person asks you to call them they/them. He argued that if he doesn't know the person, why should he have to give them respect? He also said if someone asked nicely, he'd use their pronouns, but feels that it's dumb to make that the law. Then, a shit ton of SJWs went batshit, he got gained a ton of popularity, and all his wisdom on YouTube came to light
streisand effect at its fullest
Apart from his open opposition to Bill C-16 in Canada, he's an informed voice of reason in a sea of brainwashed academia. This recent talk is worth watching if you want to see him articulate his position.
It was a protest of his stance on Bill C-16 in Canada where SmugglyPuff was born.
He claims the attention he's gained lately is indicative that he embodies a viewpoint that we've unconsciously yearned for as a culture. IMO An articulate and charming sage who's willing to question, ridicule, and deconstruct the PC bullshit, proverbially slap us upside the head for our arrogance and idiocy, and even give credit where it's due for what the state and traditional values have to offer.
Yes, he is a Socratic gadfly, stinging us awake from our ignorant slumber.
She's a really nice person.
This is amazing and it blown my mind. Thank you very mucn.
I personally Love Dr. Peterson he is a really good teacher and i watch his lectures all the time
What the fuck. Saved this to read it later and now it has been removed? Come on OP, 622 up votes, your feelings were offended by someone who disagreed with you? Fuck.
Dude what are you talking about? Nothing has been removed. Are you ok?
The content of your post is [removed] to me. That's weird. Sorry then, I guess it's not your fault? I'll check if it is on my end.
Your post has been removed. When a mod deletes your post or comment then to the poster everything seems normal. Nobody else can see it however (all I see is [removed]). Your post has been deleted probably due to not meeting the posting guidelines.
Seriously? Wouldn't I be notified by mods if I've broken some rule?
Hey,
I found your post useful, however while the content is good it does break the rules:
Since you didn't intentionally break the rules, I believe that they just deleted your content instead of banning you (I can still see your username; if you were banned then your name would appear as [deleted]).
Thanks for this. The content is extremely useful for men, and JPB attracts an audience that is 90% men. Now correlation is not causation but he fact that it got so much traction in his sub, to me, validates its appropriateness.
That and it was un-deleted by a mod this morning.
Peace brother!
JP's twitter link to the essay template is producing an error. Can someone else provide a link to the document please?
The link to the document is in my post. I also posted it on twitter in response to the his tweet with broken link
Don't need no stinking pencil for lucid thought! https://youtu.be/R1PMKJpR8Q8
Found point about stupidity of markering just read lines in guide source and instantly remembered my classmates with dozens of color markers and rainbow sheets on every lections. They spend so much time for coloring, instead of trying to really understand what they read.
There are another blog on custom writing service, which newcomer authors may find useful, especially articles that focusing on argumentative essay writing and gcse course works.
Jordan Peterson is an opportunist and a fraud in so many ways. Nobody in the field of psychology takes him seriously. I am a psychologist. Please don't take his advice seriously.
Could you elaborate on your position in some way other than mere ad hominem and appeal to authority?
I know many psychologists are dubious of Carl Jung's work general, who Peterson was heavily influenced by, but he has also found with patients it's those who are high in creativity/trait openness that draw the most benefit from the archetypal approach. It seems possible that many psychologists are not as creative and therefore wouldn't see the whole "aspects of our psyche are like characters in our own story" thing that Jung came up with and that Peterson is carrying on.
Yep. And stating what my field of work is is not appeal to authority. Get your fallacies straight. Jung's ideas have been discredited completely for at least five decades. Furthermore, Peterson bases his advice on the Big Five personality type profile, which has been shown as invalid over and over again. It's as good as reading a horoscope. That's why I am saying he is a fraud.
Jung has been discredited? How?
You make bold claims but provide no evidence.
http://www.economist.com/node/2498706 https://www.vox.com/2014/7/15/5881947/myers-briggs-personality-test-meaningless Just a couple of articles online. There is a lot more if you have access to a university library. And don't get me wrong, I'm here to make friends, not enemies. Cheers.
The big 5 and the Meyers-Briggs aren't the same thing, are they?
The big 5 doesn't categorize people into tidy types in the same way M-B does from what I understand.
A 13 year old article from the Economist? I'm convinced.
And Vox is peer-reviewed now? Impressive.
And you state there's no difference between Meyers-Briggs and Big 5, yet they work on entirely different mechanics.
So, being that you know Peterson is a fraud, based on his study of Jung, show us the error of our ways by producing YouTube lecture series so we can watch you dismantle this opportunistic fraud.
"Nobody in the field of psychology takes him seriously" is an appeal to authority.
argumentum ad verecundiam. (also known as: argument from authority, appeal to false authority, appeal to unqualified authority, argument from false authority, ipse dixit) Definition: Using an authority as evidence in your argument when the authority is not really an authority on the facts relevant to the argument.
A psychologist telling you that nobody in the field of psychology takes a particular practitioner seriously is not appeal to authority.
It's not an appeal to authority, it's your opinion that "no one" in the field of psychology takes him seriously. You have no evidence to support you claim.
He has tenure at the University of Toronto, and has taught at Harvard, so that's at least two institutions in the field of psychology that take him seriously.
How many of his lectures did you watch? And are you a Clinical Psychologist? What did you specialise in?
I watched 3 or 4 before completely losing interest. Yes, I am a clinical psychologist and I treat mainly anxiety and depression. His mythology based theories do not impress me. He also fancies himself a political theorist, but severely lacks knowledge of history of topics he tries to discuss. He makes up for it with his dogmatic prescriptive tone. For somebody like me, it just doesn't do anything, I write him off. But many young vulnerable guys with low self esteem are susceptible to such tactics. People like him are dangerous.
Fair enough. You do make some cogent points. I think, or I would imagine that you would appreciate that psychologists and psychoanalysts, can have very different ideas / approaches towards how they approach their clients. There's dogmatism on all sides of this particular debate. I think efficacy is more important than approach. Naturally, you don't want to leave your client worse off than when you first found them. It is very difficult to ascertain how he is when he takes on the role of therapist. The bombast and intensity of his talks, which are an amalgam of ideas, might appear to be quite combobulating. I think he's got the sort of approach you might expect from R.D. Laing. I would not rush too hastily to say that he doesn't know what he's talking about, because I think that we're only getting glimpses. I've listened to a few of his talks, where he does take a deep dive and he does come across with some authority. The first time I listened to his talks, I couldn't stand his approach. I decided to give it another chance, after listening to some of his other talks. And he seemed to have some interesting ideas. It was once I could get a handle on his style, that I could listen to his lecturing. That's my 2cents.
Doesn't your field have less consensus in general? My understanding is that the field of psychology is hardly astrophysics or chemistry and different schools of thought can exist independent of each other and still have merit.
If his work on personality types is not generally accepted, fair enough. But his appeal to me, at least, is treating the study of literature as a means to learn how one ought to navigate through life, as a repository of moral wisdom. He articulates this in a way that is eminently and practically useful. I teach lit. and classical languages myself and find that myth and certain stories tend to touch upon universal truths about the human condition and that the study of such stories affects people in an incredibly positive way (and in just the way J. Peterson states).
His position to favor the value of free speech over the value of kindness and his warning against idealogues (and their symplistc forms of explanation) of all types also seems well-reasoned and persuasive.
Do you / those in your field object to these aspects of Peterson's teaching/positions?
It's the opposite.
His work on literature and mythology is completely original and there are very few if any people who do anything remotely similar.
He also does some mainstream psychology research mainly in psychometrics which seems to be highly regarded judging by the number of citations.
His advice is "get your shit together". What are you doing in this sub?
Also, google says he has some 12k citations of his research papers. Looks like there are lots of nobodies in psychology.
"Get your shit together" is not very useful advice.