The Men's Group Playbook
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 7
- Confidence
- —
Miller's open-source format for a recurring peer group, which he has run for eight or nine years and calls one of the most life-changing things he has done. Six men, meeting every two weeks for two hours, 6 to 8pm on a Thursday. The purpose is a place to be seen, heard, celebrated and challenged by four or five other men with mutual love and respect. Structurally it is three rounds — a check-in across mental, physical, emotional and spiritual, an integrity round with commitments for the next two weeks, then a prioritised topic round modelled on a mastermind. Its nervous system function is debt prevention: members frequently arrive not realising something is alive for them until it is their turn to speak.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Fix the container
Six people, every two weeks, two hours, a set evening slot. Miller's group runs 6 to 8pm Thursdays in Boulder. Consistency and a closed membership are what make the depth possible.
Pro tip Miller says he would love to be part of a group that stays together for eight, ten or twelve years.
Watch out Moving cities repeatedly is what has made long-term continuity hard for him.
- 2
Open with a four-domain check-in
Each person answers how they are doing mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually. This is the round that surfaces material people did not know was live.
- 3
Run the integrity round
Each person states whether they are in or out of integrity with themselves, and in or out of integrity with other people — which can include the group itself and their relationships.
- 4
Set commitments for the next two weeks
Concrete intentions stated to the group — publish the first YouTube video, have the difficult conversation with a partner. The two-week cadence means the next check-in is the accountability.
- 5
Prioritise the topic round by self-rated urgency
Spend 40 to 50 minutes on challenges. Each person rates their issue one to five — thinking of moving country might be a five, someone else's is a one — and time goes where the intensity is.
- 6
Let the person name what they want
Mastermind-style, the person sharing specifies whether they want reflections, advice, or simply to be seen and witnessed in the emotion they are struggling with.
Pro tip Asking to just be witnessed is the option most men never take and, per Miller, often the one that creates connection.
Watch out Defaulting to advice-giving turns the group into a problem-solving session and loses the vulnerability.
- 7
Close the session
A defined close every two weeks. The repetition is the mechanism — it prevents emotional debt from building up between sessions.
In the wild
Taking inspiration from Miller, Abdaal and his friend Chris started a mastermind in London a couple of months earlier, noting how few exist in Europe compared with the US. While drawing up the invite list they decided to make it men-only. Roughly half the conversation was business and half was life. Abdaal's assessment was that with even a single woman present, people would have been far less comfortable sharing struggles in their relationships.
→ Abdaal called it really effective and thanked Miller for the inspiration.
Abdaal described creators who tell him privately that their channel is failing, then perform having it together the moment other creators join the table. His point is that opening up about imposter syndrome, hating your analytics, or thinking of quitting is exactly what everyone else is feeling, and it connects people. Miller's image for the alternative is armour that creates a barrier between people. A men's group's value is the explicit permission to say the scary thing and ask for support.
→ Connection — which Miller calls the nourishment most people are starved of — instead of mutual performance.
Common mistakes
Treating it like a lads' trip
Miller notes it may be the same people, but the group only works because there is explicit permission for the deeper, vulnerable things that would never come up on a lads' trip.
Letting membership churn
The value compounds with commitment over years. Miller's regret is that moving between locations has repeatedly broken continuity, and he explicitly wants a group that lasts a decade.
Waiting until something is wrong to attend
Miller often arrives not realising anything is up, then finds on his turn that he is worried, angry or annoyed. Attendance is what surfaces the material, so skipping quiet fortnights defeats the debt-prevention function.
From the transcript
“there's six of us we meet every two weeks for two hours 68 p.m. on Thursday”
“we we have a like a check-in round like how am I doing mentally physically emotionally spiritually there's then a uh intentions round or we…”
“it it prevents that emotional debt from building up right because often I'll go into one of these men's groups not even realizing that the…”
From the episode
How to Master your Nervous System for Productivity and Joy - Jonny Miller
Jonny Miller