How Can I Prepare For SFAS? (Part 4)

Let’s talk about the Reading Lists. I’m not sure what it is about Reading Lists but this seems to be a topic of endless discussion and seems impossible to research within the sub. There are so many reading lists already published. The USSOCOM Commander maintains a list. So does the USASOC Commander. Even the JSOC commander publishes a list . They do this almost every year and you can easily find it with a little google-fu. Just search “USASOC Commanders reading list 2022” and off you go down the rabbit hole. It seems like most of the prominent SOF social media types have a list and it seems like we beat this horse every few weeks right on this sub. The crossover of the lists is pretty exhaustive. There are enough lists to keep you in letters for years. Stop asking and start reading. I consider this horse dead. Well beaten. I’m much more interested in you doing some writing…

That’s right, I said writing. If you’re an avid reader you probably have a metric shit ton of ideas constantly flowing through your head. You want to make sense of these ideas so you read more stuff. You get more ideas you struggle to make sense of. You read more. Rinse and repeat. You would be better served doing a little writing.

Writing forces you to organize your thinking. It makes you put your thoughts on paper, where those thoughts must be reckoned with. You can actually see what you think. You can debate the logic and the evidence and the merit. You can be judged. That’s right…you can be judged. I think this is one of the inherent reasons most folks don’t write. They’re afraid of being judged. SFAS is a three week long comprehensive judging process.

If you sat down and penned some obtuse thoughts about, say…”How do I prepare for SFAS?”…people might judge you. If you fucked it up they might laugh at you. If you were inaccurate you might get corrected. If you were truthful you might get exposed. Imagine putting that on the internet and allowing anonymous trolls to pepper you with insults about fucking your wife, or kicking your ass, or calling you an Air Force guy (please note that the weirdos who do that stuff always delete their posts and often delete their entire accounts as soon as they work out how retarded they sound). Hell, half of the posts just asking questions get deleted because guys are so afraid of getting judged.

But you should write your thoughts down. Make sense of what you read, and put it to good use. How are you going to apply it? What is the next step? What could it mean if you combine it with this other thing you read? Check your notes? Cross reference. Make sense. Write it down. You don’t have to share it with anyone, but if you aren’t writing then you probably aren’t making sense.

I’ll add to this the need for journaling. I’m not talking about your Hello Kitty diary. I’m talking about performance journaling. You can ease into it with just keeping track of your workouts. That’s manly, right? I can’t tell you how many guys DM me asking for advice but can’t provide any real data to get started. If you want to get better I need to know where you are or we’re gonna stay lost.

Keep track of your workouts, then add in your nutrition data. How much water you drank. How much sleep you got. How do you feel. Not, your feelings…but how do you feel. You did X workout with these times/weights/reps and you ate this and drank that and slept this. Now how do you feel. Are you getting faster, stronger, better? What if you adjusted this food or slept more or whatever. If you’re not writing it down then how are you keeping track of all of this data? Are you serious about your performance or not?

If you keep a training log of your diet and exercise, add in some thoughts about some stuff you read, and add a to do list…you’d be performance journaling. And just like that you could organize your thinking. You could plan your growth. You could maximize your gains. You would get smarter and more formidable. But you’d rather ask Jocko about his gi, or listen to another podcast about other guys doing shit that you wish you could do, or spend another afternoon setting up your larping kit instead of going to the range.

Which brings us back to Reddit. I’m not a moderator and nobody owes me any fealty. But I’m begging you. I’m fucking pleading with you…please spend a few minutes doing a little research before you post a question. You have access to hundreds of Subject Matter Experts on this sub. Guys that are on teams right now, guys that just got selected, guys that are going to selection. Team leaders, team sergeants, juniors, seniors, you name it. If you’re shooting your shot with reading lists, sock choices, and “wHy diD yOu gO sF?!?” then you’re missing the mark.

So that’s that. I’m probably forgetting a bunch of stuff but I can always add another part. Because I wrote this all down…