Anyone following the Field Grade Leader knows the importance of reading. Anyone short on material or motivation can find dozens of book lists and a stream of articles that support professional reading. Everyone knows we need to read, but rarely do we talk about how to read. We assume that because we can see and comprehend words and the order they are in, we can read. But is that true? Everyone knows what a map looks like, but not everyone can use it for land navigation.

There are many reasons military professionals must-read, but they all boil down to two: mentorship and self-improvement.[1]  Field grade officers shoulder the heaviest mentorship burden in the officer corps. Good mentors are experts, but expertise requires experience and education.[2] The former provides a grounded understanding of reality and the latter provides the broader context to properly situate, reflect on, and re-evaluate our experiences. Reading for self-improvement allows us to map our professional landscape, both what is there and what is not. Knowing what is there and what is not illuminates people and concepts outside our personal experiences and identifies gaps we could fill with our own writing. Further, self-improvement helps us become better mentors.

Reading well is a three-step process not unlike preparing for a mission. First, understand the terrain—identify the minor and major terrain features and their significance. Second, select the appropriate equipment—determine how to record what you will learn. Third, execute—read.

Search

In mapping the professional landscape, trusted national security websites are the “minor terrain features.” They help situate experience in and build an understanding of, the character of war. Many websites have outstanding bases upon which to layer personal interests.[3] Email distribution lists from think tanks, war colleges (of all services), and other trusted sources broaden and deepen that understanding. These minor terrain features make us better mentors by enabling us to answer the immediate question of “what is there.” This question helps us link our experiences, which can only ever be limited, with the landscape’s “major terrain features.”

The major terrain features are those foundational in the professional landscape. These time-tested sources provide enduring lessons about the nature of war and are often—though not always—written by experts with both practical military experience as well as education. Jomini, Grant, Slim, Luttwak, Gray, Murray, Howard, and above all Clausewitz are the highlights of this group. These sources are primarily for self-improvement, helping us answer the longer-term question of “how things got there.” They are often abstract and therefore rarely of immediate use, but without them, the significance—or lack thereof—of the rest of the landscape is impossible to discern.

Record

There are dozens of professional websites and hundreds of well-researched books to read. Collectively, there is far more information than any one person can remember, yet forgotten information is useless for mentorship and self-improvement. However, as one of my mentors told me, the paper never forgets. Nor do digits, to update the adage for 2020. The next best thing to being able to immediately recall information is the ability to record information and revisit it later. This requires an organized, searchable structure.

One useful piece of equipment is a citation manager. Citation managers are programs, many of them free, that allow users to save documents and webpages directly from a browser to a local drive, then access them offline. They also often automatically record critical information such as authors, dates, and URLs, and enable organized notetaking. Everything in the program is searchable, meaning that the answer to “didn’t I read something about X?” is only ever a few keystrokes away. Better-informed officers are more effective mentors and receive better-quality mentorship from their mentors. As an added bonus, citation managers properly format citations with just a few clicks, a huge time-saver if you intend to write and publish.

Organized, structured information records have the salutary benefit of enabling “spaced repetition.” Spaced repetition is a learning and teaching technique that uses a series of reviews of content over a long period of time to reinforce learning.[4]  In short, repeated engagement with the material helps people learn it better. Such continual learning and reinforcement of that learning enable better mentorship and builds individual expertise. It also supports the Army’s explicit guidance from DA PAM 600-3 on self-development.[5]

Read

As with any “mission,” thorough preparation makes execution relatively simple. Having mapped the landscape and selected the right equipment, the reading itself is straightforward, albeit sometimes time-consuming. First, read the headline. Second, assuming the headline is interesting and relevant, skim the article to determine whether the author’s assertions are valid; at this stage, the evidence matters less than assertions. Consider reading just the topic sentences of each paragraph. Finally, if the assertions seem valid, read thoroughly to see if the author supports the assertions and makes a sound argument.

Sometimes, the assertions and evidence are unremarkable and part of or even a whole document can be easily skimmed or ignored. This is often the case with “hot takes” on ongoing events—they are often interesting, but they are only rarely insightful. Other times, the evidence and the assertion will be truly insightful and worthy of considered thought.[6] Such material contains the greatest potential for self-development. Being conversant on evolving doctrinal and conceptual thought requires engaging with bold, well-supported assertions because practical change follows conceptual change. Field grade officers, as the future strategic leaders of the Army, must know where the Army is going in order to shape the future field grade officers—now the captains and lieutenants—who will run it.

Conclusion

Approaching self-development as if it were a mission helps provide structure and focus. Ideally, this process is circular, with reading begetting further searching, all of it consistently resulting in self-development and writing for publication and to add your mind to the discourse. There are many articles on that subject already.[7] If you do not read to write to publish though, read to be a better mentor. It is a lot of reading if you do it. If not, expertise will be elusive. The Army, your unit, and your subordinates need you to be the best mentor you can be. Don’t let them down by taking an amateurish approach to your—and their—self-development.

MAJ Dzwonczyk is a Strategist assigned to the Joint Task Force-North J5. Formerly a Quartermaster/Logistics Officer, he has served in operational assignments in Airborne and Stryker BCTs, to include deployments to Iraq, Haiti, and Afghanistan. He holds a Master’s Degree from Penn State University and is a graduate of the Basic Strategic Arts Program and the Command and General Staff College.

Works Cited

Beaumont, David. “Every Logistician Must Write.” Logistics In War, February 7, 2019. Accessed February 7, 2019. https://logisticsinwar.com/2019/02/07/every-logistician-must-write-2/.

Byerly, Joe. “Blogs I Follow.” From the Green Notebook. Accessed March 7, 2020. https://fromthegreennotebook.com/blogs-i-follow/.

———. “Think, Write, and Publish: An Army Captain’s Perspective.” Small Wars Journal (October 27, 2013). Accessed June 13, 2017. http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/think-write-and-publish-an-army-captain%E2%80%99s-perspective.

Byrnes, Mike. “Synchronizing Change and Air Force Culture: Modernization and the Dirty Secret of Aircrew Shortages.” War on the Rocks. Last modified March 9, 2020. Accessed March 26, 2020. https://warontherocks.com/2020/03/synchronizing-change-and-air-force-culture-modernization-and-the-dirty-secret-of-aircrew-shortages/.

Doctrine Man. “On Writing – Beyond the Objective.” Medium, November 20, 2014. Accessed December 16, 2016. https://medium.com/the-smoking-gun/on-writing-10c2f650109b#.ysjntagxz.

Marlow, Rebecca. “Start. Just Start – PME and the Fear of Writing.” Logistics In War, March 1, 2019. Accessed March 4, 2019. https://logisticsinwar.com/2019/03/01/start-just-start-pme-and-the-fear-of-writing/.

Michaels, Joseph. “Why We Read.” The Field Grade Leader. Last modified April 25, 2020. Accessed April 30, 2020. http://fieldgradeleader.themilitaryleader.com/read/.

Nichols, Tom. “The Death Of Expertise.” The Federalist. Last modified January 17, 2014. Accessed February 11, 2020. https://thefederalist.com/2014/01/17/the-death-of-expertise/.

pptsapper. “Why Do We Write?” The Angry Staff Officer, January 22, 2018. Accessed January 24, 2018. https://angrystaffofficer.com/2018/01/22/why-do-we-write/.

Stavridis, James. “Read, Think, Write, Publish.” Proceedings of the US Naval Institute 134, no. 8 (2008): 16–19.

Tabibian, Behzad, Utkarsh Upadhyay, Abir De, Ali Zarezade, Bernhard Schölkopf, and Manuel Gomez-Rodriguez. “Enhancing Human Learning via Spaced Repetition Optimization.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116, no. 10 (March 5, 2019): 3988.

“DA PAM 600-3 Officer Professional Development and Career Management.” Department of the Army, April 3, 2019. Accessed June 7, 2020. https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ARN14707_DA%20Pam%20600_3_FINAL.pdf.