Loading video...

Video Failed to Load

Go Home

Jordan explains the importance of choosing a topic that matters. Writing is thinking; your thoughts define who you are. So why would you waste your time writing and thinking about something that doesn’t matter to you? Make every word matter at Sign up to Essay: Use promo code BLKFRIDAY24...

153,369 views • 1 year ago •via X (Twitter)

10 Comments

Joe Rogan News's profile picture
Joe Rogan News1 year ago

If your words don’t reflect what truly matters to you, then what’s the point of speaking at all? Make every word count.

Corey Sutton's profile picture
Corey Sutton1 year ago

Absolutely! Choosing a topic that resonates with you is crucial. Writing is a reflection of your thoughts and passions, so make every word count. Excited to check out Essay and take advantage of the Black Friday deal! 📝✨

Steve Mcbeth🇨🇦's profile picture
Steve Mcbeth🇨🇦1 year ago

@jordanbpeterson Where was Mr Jordan when I went to school - every teacher should watch this clip & incorporate this theory - we would be better off & if the teachers don’t think so - get out of teaching!

Deb's profile picture
Deb1 year ago

@jordanbpeterson I want to stop Sharia Law from becoming more prominent in the UK than it already is. This is my drive. Not necessarily for me (tick tock) but for the younger generations. This absolutely matters!

Pierre-Boris K.'s profile picture
Pierre-Boris K.1 year ago

@jordanbpeterson Writing reveals our identity, and beyond.

Ashwini Kumar's profile picture
Ashwini Kumar1 year ago

@jordanbpeterson Thanks for sharing

Ellie Dee's profile picture
Ellie Dee1 year ago

@jordanbpeterson So many things matter....

THE Savage's profile picture
THE Savage1 year ago

@jordanbpeterson

Ronny Bruknapp's profile picture
Ronny Bruknapp1 year ago

@jordanbpeterson You make a great point - our choice of topics reflects our inner thoughts and values. Writing forces us to crystallize our ideas.

Michael Henry's profile picture
Michael Henry1 year ago

As someone who respects you greatly and has been following you for a long time I have to ask an honest question. Just before you fell ill and during your illness, all your content was available on YouTube, and you expressed pride in having it accessible for free to everyone. I recall a video in which you stated that your penchant for indulgence and luxury is limited to savoring sparkling water and using stylish toothpicks. What advantages does Jordan Peterson Academy offer over utilizing a library or self-learning through YouTube for individuals looking to enhance their career?

Related Videos

Conor Neill: "If you can't write it clearly, the thinking was weak, not the writing" "To believe that something that feels clear in your head is thinking that's a very dangerous thing. When you try to put it down on a page, when you try to lay out your ideas in a structured order that someone else can digest, and you realize that you can't, I suggest the thinking was weak, not the writing." Neill explains his philosophy: "Writing is thinking. The process of taking a notepad, capturing thoughts, laying out the things that I'm thinking about, that is thinking. Sitting and staring out a window, maybe with a cigarette, whatever it is that you think is philosophizing that is not structured thinking. It's only when you're writing down and structuring, getting order into your thoughts on a page so that another person is able to get into the context, the perspective, the different things that you are pulling in to have your worldview." He shares a simple technique: "No matter what you are writing, whether it's an email, a Word document, when you've got a blank sheet of paper, start with the word 'This.' T-H-I-S. Starting with the word 'This' forces you to explain what the document is. It forces you to articulate to the reader what it is that they are holding. It forces you to describe why this document exists, what the objective is. And if you begin with the objective, it helps the reader, and it helps you articulate clearly why you are taking the time to write." Neill shares the most-read post on his blog: "The one post that has got far more views than any other is a post I wrote called 'Why Amazon Banned PowerPoint.' In Amazon, if a presenter wishes to ask people to agree to a budget, to agree to give them resources, they don't use PowerPoint. They write a six-page Word document that states why they are asking for the money and the resources." He explains Jeff Bezos's reasoning: "PowerPoint is easy for the presenter, but it's hard for the people who listen. Writing a six-page essay is hard for the presenter, but it's a lot easier for the people that get to read the document." And there's a second part to the Amazon method: "In the management meeting, the first 20 minutes is reading time. If you have gone to the effort to write six pages explaining your proposal, you deserve to see your work read. You deserve to sit there and see people reading through your work. People will not read before the meeting. The only way you get people to fully digest the six pages is by holding them there for 20 minutes, reading through, noting down their questions. No debate, no discussion until everyone in the room has read all six pages, has taken in the context, has time to think about what they would like to question. After 20 minutes of silent reading, they can have a discussion but an informed discussion." Neill shares a second insight about writing: "Divide writing from editing. Writing is producing words. Editing is improving words. These two processes — you cannot run at the same time." He explains his approach: "Most writers just vomit out a bad first draft. I personally have learned to produce 500 words in one straight blast. If something's wrong, if I need to check a fact, if I want to go back and fix something, I don't. I go 500 words of just getting it out onto the page. When I've got 500 words, then I'll stop and begin the process of editing." Neill shares what great writers understand: "All great writing is rewriting. It's editing. It's the crafting of taking a bad, crappy first draft and slowly iterating it, improving it 1% each time through. But if you haven't got that first draft, there's nothing to improve." He explains how separating these processes changed everything: "Learning to separate these two was one of the most powerful things to get rid of writer's block, to get rid of getting stuck, to get rid of procrastination. My mission when I sit down to write is: decide, am I writing or editing? If it's writing, get 500 bad words down on the page in the next 20 minutes. If it's editing, take the time to go through, improve sentences, change the order, change the structure. But these are two separate processes." Neill reveals the truth about good writing: "Some of my best articles started out as a bad blog post. Then I rewrote it as an article to give out to students. Then I rewrote it to share on another blog. Then I rewrote it to provide to a magazine. It's the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth time of rewriting where it starts to be something that other people read and say, 'Wow, you're quite good at writing.' And the answer is I'm not good at writing. I vomit out a bad first draft and then go through this iterative process. One time, two times, three times, four times through slowly improving. But if you have no first draft, there's nothing to improve."

Jaynit

18,165 views • 3 months ago

Watch this game-changing dissertation on "expert writing." Expert writers write to "think" about the world. 99% of experts write and think at the same time. They use the writing process to help themselves think. This is how they do their best thinking. Write to think about the world. Do this because you care, because you want to be part of progress, because you want to make a dent in the universe. Write to inspire and influence. And when you are finished writing, and you click publish, think about your work this way... the intent of your text is to cause readers to change the way they think about the world. Engagement metrics don't really matter in comparison. Whether or not your text is valuable, depends on whether or not your readers perceive that you have valuably changed what they think, or what they do, or how they decide. One of the reasons it's so hard for smart people to write well is because they don't write to change the way people think about the world. They write to complete a project, to earn a grade, to be assessed. Or they write to publish *their* thoughts without going through a mental and soulful exercise of writing to think about the world, without writing to change how people think about the world. Write to think about the world. Change how people think about the world. In an era of #GenerativeAI, content isn't the end game. Your goal isn't just to get someone's attention, generate reactions, or show up in search. Your mission is to change how people think about the world. Change How People Think About the World. Thank you, Larry McEnerney (now-retired former Director of the University of Chicago's Writing Program).

Brian Solis

113,698 views • 3 years ago

BREAKING: We're launching an AI writing partner infused with our taste Every 📧. Spiral will help you write great short-form content in your style that sounds like you—not a model. We’ve loaded it with everything we know about writing—writing that feels alive and honest, and that spreads—and put it at your fingertips. Spiral v3 is a multi-agent system that takes you from idea to post in a few simple steps: 1. Collaborative interviews. When you ask Spiral to write a piece of content, it won’t start writing immediately. Instead, it will chat with you to figure out what you’re really trying to say and what’s most interesting to you. 2. Many drafts at once. Once Spiral begins to draft, it will write three different versions that you can see and interact with simultaneously. You can explore the space of possibilities and mix and match between different drafts easily. 3. Principled and taste-driven. We’ve spent hundreds of hours baking everything we know about writing into Spiral’s thought -process. It has a library of principles that it draws from—like always using the active voice, and always putting the most interesting idea in the hook—that make Spiral feel like a great ghostwriter, not an AI. 4. Collaborative and team-ready. Spiral has Workspaces that allow you to share product and company information and styles between members of your team—so all of your writing is on brand, all the time. You can buy Spiral standalone or if you're an Every 📧 subscriber you get it for free as part of your subscription along with access to all of our writing, our live AI-coding workshops like Claude Code Camp, Cora, Monologue, Sparkle, and our subscriber-only Discord. Try Spiral v3 now:

Dan Shipper 📧

82,903 views • 9 months ago