Jocko Underground: Future Operations | Psychotronic Weaponry

Future Ops. What to do if you think you're a victim of psychotronic weaponry. Lessons from the world over that last 7 years. Valuable employee but is late all the time. What to do if you think you're autistic. How to surround yourself with productive, like-minded people. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is the Jocko Underground Podcast number 106, sitting here with Echo Charles and also me, Jocko Willink.

• 0:10Jocko Willink?

  So, in the military, you have, and this is, this is going to tie into our pre-pressing record conversation that we were just having, and you didn't know what the topic was, because you never do. You just roll in here, you just roll in here, ready to receive and expound.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 0:30Jocko Willink?

  That's how you roll.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 0:31Jocko Willink?

  You're not even, do you even think about what we're going to talk about?

• 0:36Jocko Willink?

  Do you spend one second of your time? Are you even curious?

• 0:40Speaker 01

  Let's just say I'm thinking about other stuff.

• 0:43Jocko Willink?

  Are you even curious? Are you like, hmm?

• 0:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm curious.

• 0:45Jocko Willink?

  You know, we've done 106 underground episodes, we've done, what have we done, 400 of the other podcasts?

• 0:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, more, 408, whatever.

• 0:55Jocko Willink?

  And you're still not like, hmm, I wonder what this is going to be about? Or what do we spend the next three hours of my life talking about?

• 1:02Speaker 01

  I wonder what we're doing here?

• 1:05Jocko Willink?

  All right, well, speaking of that, so in the military, you have a person that is actually assigned to think about the future. It's called future operations in the Navy, I think the code is like N35. In the Navy, they have all these different codes for different things. One is admin, and three is operations, and three, five, and six is communications. So they have like all these codes.

• 1:36Jocko Willink?

  N35 is, is future operations, and you kind of have to have it.

• 1:43Jocko Willink?

  And there's a reason that it exists. The reason that it exists is because everyone's, just about, everyone's natural instinct is to focus on what is in front of them right now.

• 1:57Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're doing. That's how we stay alive, by the way, from minute to minute. I mean, in caveman times, if you were thinking about, you know, what you're gonna be doing next month, and meanwhile, the saber-toothed tigers like jacking you.

• 2:12Jocko Willink?

  You gotta like be in the present, right?

• 2:14Speaker 01

  Yes, sir. You do. Yeah.

• 2:16Jocko Willink?

  So that's what most people are focused on. What are we doing right now? Maybe, maybe they're thinking about like this afternoon. And then sometimes maybe, just maybe they'll be thinking about tomorrow. After that, no one really cares. Now, look, if you, if you don't, if you're not under any pressure, then cool, you can sit around and contemplate all kinds of stuff. But most people don't think about what's going on in the future. In fact, the SEAL teams and the military in general would get bit by this. And I, I used to say like, nobody cares about anything until it slaps them in the face. Like, there would be some problem, you could see, like, hear rumblings of it in the future. I don't think we're gonna have enough radios for this op that we're gonna be doing in a month. Like, we got this big exercise in a month. It doesn't seem like we're gonna have enough radios.

• 3:01Jocko Willink?

  No one does anything about it, and then boom, you're on the exercise. You're like, we don't have enough radio. It's just slapped you in the face.

• 3:09Jocko Willink?

  So, that's true. And, you know, you think about like preparedness, you know, like,

• 3:15Jocko Willink?

  that's like Mike Glover, what Mike Glover's doing, right? With Field Craft Survival, he's begging people to care about things before they get slapped in the face with them. Sheepdog Response with Tim Kenny, they're begging people to think about things and prepare for things before they get slapped in the face. Whether it's fire, whether it's crime, whether it's car accidents, whether it's being attacked, just everything. And that's, that's when you're starting to get into kind of like contingency planning, which in some ways is almost more understandable.

• 3:50Jocko Willink?

  But it's not quite the same thing. Contingency planning is not quite the same thing as just future operations. There's almost something fantastical about contingency planning, right? You ever met someone that was highly prepared for disaster?

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:06Jocko Willink?

  And yet their checkbook wasn't balanced? You know what I mean? Like, there's people that they, there's something fantastical about, you can chase being prepared. And be like, well, I'm not going to worry about this because I'm worried about what might happen. And look, that's not normal, but it can happen. My point is that they're two different things. And people generally don't prioritize things that are in the future. And that's because when you look at like a contingency, like a crime or an attack, it's like this huge catastrophic thing. Whereas your future doesn't really, if you're not thinking about it, doesn't seem catastrophic. It's just there and you don't really think about it too much.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:43Jocko Willink?

  So, once again, in the military, once you get to a certain level, they literally assign someone to think about the future. And that's a luxury. And where I realized it was a luxury is when I started working with companies and I get to the companies and I'd be talking to them. And after spending time with a company, I'd say, well, who's thinking about that? They'd be like, what? I mean, like where you're going to be in nine months or what's going to happen with the market? And they'd be like, hmm, they wouldn't have an answer. And I realized that it's a luxury to have someone that's assigned to think about the future. I had a great conversation. Do you know what EOD is?

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, end of day.

• 5:28Jocko Willink?

  No, there's a different kind of EOD. It's explosive ordinance disposal. Yeah, EOD guys. Noah, Noah's EOD. So EOD, they're bomb technicians, but then they also become, you know, where they explode, dispose of explosive ordinance. And what they became in the Iraq and Afghanistan war, they became the people that were looking for booby traps and IEDs, right? And I had this conversation with my commanding officer when I was at Team Seven. And I was like, look dude, we don't need these EOD guys. Just let me send some of my guys to EOD school. We'll know what's up. We don't need to have some strap hanging EOD. And this was my prejudice against anyone that wasn't a SEAL.

• 6:14Jocko Willink?

  Come to find out that EOD guys are awesome and that we eventually like got EOD guys. I lost my argument. So let me, let me just explain the rest of the story. So I said, hey, but hey, sir, you know, we don't need to, don't, you need to assign me an EOD guy or two EOD guys. Just give me a couple of slots in the school. I'll send a couple of guys and we'll have SEALs that are doing this job. And he said, you know, that's cool, Jocko. Here's the deal. You actually want to have someone whose whole job is just to focus on that. And I was like, as soon as he said that, it's like, you are a hundred percent right. Because think about it, you don't want your guy that's a machine gunner, that's worried about where he's going to shoot the enemy. And his collateral job, his secondary or tertiary job is looking for things that might blow you up. No.

• 6:59Jocko Willink?

  You want somebody or a couple of people, that's their primary job. Is like keeping us from getting blown up. And anyways, long story short, EOD has been the, the EOD that in the Navy that eventually came in and worked with the SEAL Teams guys were awesome. And they would be in your platoon with you. I mean, they would just be like in the train on the, they'd go through workup with us. They're awesome. But that was a great point. When you have something that's critical, like getting blown up or something critical, like what's going to happen in the future. It's very advisable to assign a person that that's just their only job.

• 7:38Jocko Willink?

  Now, it's a luxury. Businesses don't always have enough money to pay someone forty eight thousand dollars a year to think about the future, but we got stuff going on today. You know what I mean? Look, you need to work on what's going on right now. We got a client, we got a project, we got a task, we got a construction job, we got cement to deliver. Like we got stuff going on today. So get over here and start doing this and then it's lost.

• 8:05Jocko Willink?

  And, and guess what? All of the things that I'm saying apply to us as individual human beings as well.

• 8:12Jocko Willink?

  So as I thought through this, working with companies, this, I have been teaching this now for all, uh, probably.

• 8:21Jocko Willink?

  Nine, 10 years. What you have to do in business and in life is you have to set aside some time where you are going to think about the future and you're going to plan for it. You, you have to set aside time. You can do it a half an hour every Tuesday. You can do it during lunch on Friday, bring the team together, you're going to talk, talk about the future. You can do it the last Friday of every month before you head home for the, there's a bunch of choices.

• 8:52Jocko Willink?

  But you have to figure out a time to actually think about the future. And it's good to get you do this with your family. It's good to get to do this with your kids, like what, you know, when a kid is like 16, what they're not, many of them are not thinking about the future.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:08Jocko Willink?

  So set aside some time and come up with a plan. And then, once you've come up with a plan, now you utilize this time that you've set aside to think about the future, to actually compare how things are going to the plan that you created. So you could be in the right place in the future. If you don't think about the future and you don't plan for it,

• 9:32Jocko Willink?

  you're living in the present, which pretty much means you're living in the past because the present is gone, right? The present just like you're never in the present, the present just happened, it's gone now.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:41Jocko Willink?

  So you end up being reactive instead of proactive and that's not good. So it is a very good move for you as a person in your individual life, in your family life, in your business. If you don't have the luxury of assigning someone to think about the future, set aside some time and let's go through some future operations and figure out where we're going to be. That's what I got.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Brad, that's a good point. Yeah, the future kind of seems like a. Almost like it doesn't exist, you know, like in real life. It's like, it's like a potential, like everything is potential, maybe, could be, could not be, you know, like it does, but it doesn't exist. When it becomes present, that's when it exists.

• 10:22Jocko Willink?

  That's when it slaps you in the face.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know, right. It's, and it's so distracting a lot of time when you have a lot of stuff, you know, or you're thinking about a lot of stuff. Where, you know, you got the, this, you gotta take care of this, you gotta take care of that, or whatever, and your plate is full, so to speak. You don't have bandwidth, right, to do that kind of stuff, even to think. You think, oh yeah, I think, just think, it's easy, whatever, practice, it doesn't work like that, you know? And then, and when you do start to think, it's usually about something going on right now, something pressing, something slapping you in the face. It's not about this future, the future doesn't even exist, why are you thinking about that right now? It's kind of like, that's how your brain is kind of working, you know? It doesn't, it, it didn't land on reality yet, you know, it didn't touch ground.

• 10:57Jocko Willink?

  And there's all kind of like, uh, little excuses that you can make. About, I mean, everything from like, well, you know, by that time, I'll probably have a good job. You know, if you're thinking, hey, where am I gonna live in the future? Well, you know, I can just keep kind of doing what I'm doing, because in the future, I'll probably get a good job, or.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, it's weird, that's what I always thought when I was young, like, I never, I remember my mom would be like, hey, you gotta like, bu- build your credit. I didn't even, she didn't explain really what that meant. Oh, I mean, I'm sure she did, but I didn't listen, you know? She's like, yeah, your credit, because if you ever want to buy a house and car, I'm like, no, I'll probably have a good job, I don't need credit, so I'll just buy a house. Or I'll just buy a car, that's literally the thought I had.

• 11:33Jocko Willink?

  The thing, if you, if you could put this into words now, you just thought your mom just was full of nonsense, right? It's, it's like, when you're a kid, you think stuff is just nonsense.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, bro, you're talking about credit, get real, you know, bro, we got a football game this weekend, so, bro, we're practicing over here, like, you fix your credit, how about that? Leave me alone with the credit thing. Yeah, fully, so, man, that, that's, um. That actually did kind of open my eyes a little bit.

• 11:57Jocko Willink?

  Well, your point that we, that we were talking about before we hit record is just the fact that. You have to actually schedule times or you have to take time where you're going to be able to free your mind from the immediacy of events that are unfolding now and be thinking about everything in the big picture. This is just strategic thinking, right? It's strategic thinking. And it's very easy in life to not think strategic because you're worried about the this week, tomorrow, got this due, got this other thing happening and that's what you're thinking about and you're not thinking strategic. So that's why, you know, we could have said, instead of future operations, this could be called, that is a little excerpt of what we

• 12:39Jocko Willink?

  are doing on the Jocko Underground Podcast. So if you want to continue to listen, go to JacoUnderground.com and subscribe and we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their control and we are doing this so that we can support the Jocko Podcast, which will remain as is, free for all, as long as we can keep it that way. But we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors and we're doing it so we can give you more control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us. And to do that, we are, we're building a website right now

• 13:20Jocko Willink?

  where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So thank you. It's JacoUnderground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you. Just email [email protected] and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.