Jocko Podcast
Hosted by Jocko Willink
Original podcast
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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
Discipline equals freedom, episode three with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. We're doing the deaf reset, the discipline equals freedom reset.
This is a new year's evolution. So January 1st is when this thing starts. And people have asked me in the past with two stories. Number one, my wife used to always say, what's your new year's resolution going to be? And I have said the same thing, still say it to her to this day. I always say, I'm gonna get better at jiu jitsu and surf more.
And this is coming like, I used to train like every spare moment. And she's at home with kids, they're screaming and diapers and I'm like, I'm going to train. So she would maybe not be the happiest wife at that moment in time.
And of course, the secondary thing was surf more, right? Get better jiu jitsu and surf more. Two things, neither one of them had anything to do with my poor wife. So the fact of the matter is always, you know, I was always joking when I said that. Kind of, because I always was trying to get better at jiu jitsu and surf more. But also, you know, people like would ask me that now, past few years, what are you going to do? You know, what's your new year's resolution? What? No, just live, just do the same thing. I'm not waiting. If I got something I gotta change, I'm gonna do it today. That's what I'm doing. Well, a couple of years ago, a few years ago, we did this deaf reset. I think the first one we did, we actually did internal at Echelon Front. It was just, you know, some of the team was, hey, we're gonna do this thing, we're gonna do these challenges.
And I was kind of like, yeah, well, of course you're doing that's what I do all the time. Like, let's go. And then maybe the following year, they kind of announced it to people. And a bunch of people did it. And we started to get like really good feedback from people that did this deaf reset, this discipline equals freedom reset. Got a bunch of good feedback, got a bunch of people saying like, oh yeah, I lost this weight. I gained this weight, you know, trying to get stronger, they put on pounds or they lost pounds. Or they, they got better at guitar, or they got promoted at work, like just people squared themselves away. They got better.
And so.
I said to myself, well, that's kind of awesome. You know, when you see results from people and their lives being changed and the trajectory of their life being changed, to me, that's awesome. And then I said to myself, well, when you, when you are going to go on a mission, do you just go on the mission without any planning? No, no, you're going to come up with a plan. You're going to set the conditions for victory. That's what you're going to do. So it's the same thing here. Look, oh, if you want, you gotta make a change, start doing it now. Well, hold on a second. If you're gonna, if you're gonna do a true reset, a def reset, you gotta do some planning, you gotta do some preparation. And so that's what this is about. So there's some protocols that we're going to do every day during def reset. Number one, we're going to wake up, we're going to wake up early.
We're going to wake up early to give us enough time to do exercise first thing in the morning. That's one of, two of the things that we're doing. Waking up early and we're going to exercise. Before we go to bed, we're writing down what it is we need to do tomorrow. Like the main things you gotta get done, we're writing them down. And then when we wake up in the morning, we get done with our exercise, we're going to prioritize next year. We're going to do the things we said we were going to do.
And this is something that I've said for a long time. Imagine if you wrote down what you were supposed to do tomorrow, tonight, and then you woke up and you did it. And then imagine if you did that for a week and then imagine if you did that for a month. And then imagine if you did that for a year, or three years, or five years. Your whole, you're lit, your whole life is different. So that's what we're doing. We're writing down what we need to do. And when we wake up the next day, early, we exercise, then we do what we're supposed to do.
Prioritize and execute.
We're gonna have clean fuel. That's what we're going to do during def reset, 100% clean fuel. That means no junk food. That means no Cheetos. That means no Doritos.
That means hell no donuts.
When's the last time you had a donut?
Wait, did you kill a box of donuts? You did, you told me this the other day by your car. You killed a box of donuts. What the hell happened, bro? What happened?
You're laughing. How many donuts did you have?
I think I told you what happened.
Tell me what went down. How'd it go down?
I got eight, um, and it was one of those things. So this, within the last year, this happened two times, three times. But I didn't eat them all, all 12.
Okay, well, just tell me what went down.
Just, it was just one of those, you know, those, uh,
What are you doing buying donuts?
Yeah, I know, right?
That's a bad move out of the gate. Okay, but go on. What happened? You bought, first of all, you brought, you bought donuts.
Yeah.
Kind of a loser move.
Well, yeah, big time.
So why'd you do it?
Because it was like one of these interstitial, uh, I'm, okay, I'm gonna give you the facts right now. I'm not saying justification. I'm not saying anything like, I'm giving you the facts. It was, uh, my state of mind was, the family was all out of town. I did a work, uh, these are the conditions that allowed this interstitial state of weakness.
Would you feel guilty if you brought those donuts into your house with your family there? So is that, is that why this, the condition made a difference?
Yeah, exactly. Right. Where, you know, like, Mike, I don't like the idea that like junk food is this like centerpiece of celebration. Like, I don't like that idea, even though I've accepted it as part of our, our culture, but I don't like that idea. And anytime I bring it up, I get in trouble for it. Cause you know, the kids, they don't, you know, the kids, they take stuff kind of personal, you know, like if it's like, if I'm, if they're, yeah, if they're eating like some ice cream or something at a party and I'm like, oh, that's junk. It's like, they feel like you're saying what they're doing and who they are is junk. So I get it. I get it. Hey man, it's a big, it's a system. I get it.
That's definitely, we gotta pay attention to what we're doing.
Yes, we do. Um, now, at the same time, nobody's perfect.
Meanwhile, the brother's going out and does donuts for himself.
Yes, sir.
Cause the family's out of town.
You are correct.
This is more of a, condition was, you could get away with it.
Get away with it in this sense where, look, everybody's a person. No one's perfect, right? Like that, in that whole spirit. Um, but if I'm gonna be imperfect, I'm gonna try my best not to den-
Go hard?
Yeah, that's, that's the second part. But I'm gonna do my best not to do it in front of the kids to, to normalize it, you know? Where, let's face it, man, if you're like, hey, don't do this, and it's good advice, and then meanwhile, they see you, wait a second, you're doing it. It's like, it kind of makes it like a wash a little bit. So if I'm gonna have these moments of weakness, they're gonna slide in at times that are more opportune in that sense where, you know, the kids aren't gonna witness it and it slowly becomes normalized. That's A. Uh, B, uh, you know how like you kind of mentally gauge like if you're into fitness and while that, you know, and if you, if you're conscious of your health and what you've been eating, what you've been doing for exercise, you know? If you had a slow week, like a shitty week, you're busy, whatever, you feel that, you know? Like if you're into, if you're in touch with it.
So I had a good, I had a good week. I'm on a freaking streak. It's one of those times where I was like, hey, if I were to have a whole box of donuts right now, it would be kind of no factor. Cause not only have I been having these massive streaks of greatness as far as like performance and, you know, discipline. I'm going right back to that same streak right after this kind of a thing. So it was that, that was the conditions. And then I was like, you know, the kind you're sitting and you're like taking a break. You just finished a bunch of stuff you had to do, kind of like over the long term or the short or long term, medium term. Like literally you had a month of shit that you had to just get done and it's done, you know? You know, just that feeling of freaking-
Reward, you want to reward yourself.
So you did.
So you got a box of donuts from where?
I got a delivered Krispy Kreme.
You had the donuts delivered to your house?
Yep, sure did. Second time in the year.
So a box of what, 12? What flavor?
12 regular.
What, what kind or whatever?
Regular.
What is that? What's a regular donut?
I don't know. What do they call it? Glazed, glazed, traditional, the regular Krispy Kreme donuts. They're like, yeah, I think they're glazed, right?
Okay.
That's what it's called.
And, and so you got 12 of them delivered to your house?
Yep.
From who? Uber Eats or something like this?
Like a DoorDash scenario.
Okay. And how many did you eat in one sitting?
Eight.
That's real.
This is totally anti-def reset.
Yes.
So we're not doing this during def reset. We're not ordering donuts, we're not looking at donuts, we're not having donuts, we're not talking about donuts.
Yeah, don't, yeah, yeah.
Other than we're gonna hate on donuts.
Look, I hate on donuts in general. Donuts are not-
Until they get delivered to your door.
Well, yeah, momentarily. It's one of the, yeah, what?
How'd you feel afterwards?
I shouldn't even say this, but I did not care at all. Like it didn't, it didn't affect me at all. Like what? Eight, eight donuts? What's that gonna do? Ruin my, what's that gonna do? Take me off the path? I don't know. Maybe it didn't. It never did actually in my life. I've brought the donuts or, or, I'm no stranger to donuts.
The next day? Did you, did you, did you clean up the next day? Like a little bit extra?
Yeah. And even to call it clean up, it's like, that's not even really as accurate as the reality of it. Yeah. Like I just didn't eat donuts and my normal stuff is good. So yeah, you don't, it's not one of those things where you get a delivery of donuts and now you're freaking in the gutter eating donuts every day. It's not like that.
Hey, some people are like that.
Yeah, I get it.
Some people are like that. Some people like, it might as well be methamphetamine. You know, you get that sugar and that fat and that whatever combination they put that together.
And they get it in your veins. You're like. You're actually. Lose their mind, bro. They lose their mind.
As funny as that is, that's actually pretty accurate. And it's more in the sense beca- and then also.
I mean, even just the fact that you ate eight of them.
That's not, you're not hungry for eight. No, you're, a human is not hungry for eight donuts.
Generally speaking, no.
No. You were just eating them because you were, you lost your mind for a little bit.
Yeah, exactly right. Cause there's so many psychological factors that come into it. You're like, you're like, hey, these donuts will not be here tomorrow. Even if I don't finish them, like what am I gonna do? Save the donuts?
You save the other four? What'd you do the other four?
I gave them to my nephew. My nephew stayed back.
Oh, okay.
Um, he, he had, I think he only had like two though. And then I threw the la- the last two away. Yeah. Cause he's normal. Yes, exactly.
Cause eight donuts is freaking disgusting.
It's a lot. It's like a pile of them, you know?
That's disgusting.
Kind of. That's debatable, the disgusting part of it, but overall.
Kind of disgusting. It's disgusting to eat eight donuts.
It's not a good move for sure, but.
Did you feel lethargic afterwards? No. What'd you do afterwards? Went to sleep?
No.
What time of day did you have?
Sat on the couch.
Two, third afternoon-ish.
Did you fall asleep a little bit?
I did not.
A little bit?
Uh, I don't remember that I fall, fell asleep.
Called falling asleep.
So yes.
That's called. When you're on a couch and you don't remember what happened, that's called sleeping.
It was a very mellow day, we'll say that.
But you're, but you're correct though, because there's all these psychological factors that come into play with that kind of stuff where it's like, this sounds ridiculous, but this is literally how your mind can work with this kind of stuff. You eat eight donuts, right? And then the next, you didn't gain any weight. The next day, you're still living. The next day, you're still like, I can go right back to eating good. So it look, it's kind of like alcoholism in a way where it's like, bro, it's not ruining my life right now. So kind of the door is kind of open a little bit more to it, you know, as far as the activity. So, so now, hey, next weekend, let me do that same thing. And then slowly it's like, oh, let me get that on Wednesday. You know, it's not ruining my life. You see what I'm saying?
Well, check this out.
It's real.
No donuts during def reset. Zero, zero donuts, no junk. We're hydrating, drinking water. What is it? 70% of your body's made up of water, something like this?
Probably more than that.
So you gotta hydrate. And then, read and write every day. Read or write every day. And the last is, oh, remembrance. Remember, you know, we, we talked about this on the, on the first episode, or the second, actually the second, second episode of Discipline Equals Freedom, was remember, remember why you're doing what you're doing. So, so that's def reset. But here's the thing, like I said, you can't just roll into a mission without, like, any planning, any preparation, without reviewing how you're gonna do this thing. So I got some recommendations, as we're heading towards January 1st. Some areas of discipline in your
life, some moves that you can make right now, that will prepare you, because you don't want to go cold. It's the opposite of cold turkey. You don't want to go, how would you say that? You don't want to start January 1st, like with no preparation. You want to be prepared to going into it.
Yeah, going in cold.
You don't want to go in cold, right? So here's some things you can do to prepare mentally and physically for def reset. Number one, I want to talk about fuel.
Get the junk food out of your house. That's number one. Get it out. Get it out of your house. The junk food, get it out. The donuts, get them out. The Cheetos, get them out. The Doritos, get them out. Get this stuff out of your house. The chocolate chip cookies. Now, if you have malt cookies in there, cleared hot. But if you have chocolate chip cookies in there, you, you, you don't need them in there. Get rid of them. Go down and give them to the food bank. Or the homeless person. Or your dog. Be careful, because I get dogs aren't supposed to eat chocolate. My wife, like, if my dog eats like a little tiny chocolate chip, she goes into full havoc mode. You know, we need to call the vet, bruh. It's a dog.
So, get the junk food out of your house. Get that done ASAP. So that you don't have the temptations. Why put them in your house? Why have, Peter Tia talks about this. Peter Tia is like, if there's something good in his house, he's just going, he's going for it.
It's there. And look, if you're a little bit hungry, and you're in your house, and all you have in there is some beef jerky and some mixed nuts, what are you gonna eat? Beef jerky and mixed nuts, no factor, all good. If you're a little bit hungry, and you're in your house, and you got a sleeve of Oreo cookies, and a freaking big giant bag of Lay's potato chips, what are you gonna eat? Oreos and Lay's potato chips. So don't put yourself in that situation.
Don't do it. Get that stuff out of your house. When you're eating, like, first of all, drink some water before you eat. And eat the good stuff. Eat like stuff that's good for you. Start now. You're gonna start to change your, your taste buds a little bit. You know, this happened when we started making Go, the drink. The first versions that we had, they barely had any sweetness to them, because I hadn't had a soda of any kind in like decades, in decades. So to me, it tasted like the sweetest thing I'd ever had. And come to find out, it was an inaccurate assessment. And we needed to get it out to the masses to, to see what it tastes like to a normal person. Because to me, it tasted super sweet, but it wasn't.
So you can actually, you want to put, push your taste buds in that direction. If you're eating,
Cake right now with frosting on it, your taste buds think that that's normal. It's not normal and you don't want them to think it's normal. You just use the term normalize. Don't normalize cake. Don't let your, any part of your mind or body think that cake is a thing that you should compare anything else to. Just get it out of there. Get it out.
Portion control, but start thinking about how much you're eating. Right? In America, well, guess what we do? We invented some, some pretty interesting things, a super size. Large, medium, wait, small, medium, large wasn't good enough. We had to go big gulp. Super big gulp. Super and super big gulp. Double gulp, by the way. So. Hey, think about that. That's not normal. It's not normal to have that much soda. It's not normal to have that many french fries. It's not normal.
It's not normal. Get it under control and we'll go through this conversation again. If I'm eating a steak and I'm down to my last bite and you say to me, hey, Jocko, can I have a bite? That really pisses me off. Yes. And I'm not going to give it to you. But if I'm two bites into a giant steak and you go, hey, can I have a bite? I'm like, oh yeah, of course. So if you can set the expectations in your head correctly, that you're not going to have a giant gulp and you're going to have a normal sized portion of something, that's going to be beneficial to you. And that way, the last bite, it doesn't, if you're going to have
12 bites or 17 bites, the last bite's the one that counts. So just have 12 and then know that the number 12 is the number 12. You don't need five more to get to 17, you don't need it. So get your portion under control. And here's another thing about fuel is pay attention to leading indicators and not lagging indicators. What do I mean by that? Well, in the business world, we wanna, we wanna pay attention to leading indicators that are showing us what's happening before it happens. Not lagging indicators, which showed us that something bad just happened. We wanna know that something bad is going to happen. What do I mean by that? When we're out to eat and you go to the all-you-can-eat Brazilian place, it's called?
Fogo.
Yeah. You go to that place, they're bringing steak, they're bringing sauce, they're bringing a bunch of food to you. At a certain point, you go, hmm, I feel like I might be getting full. That's a leading indicator. What that actually means is you're full. You're full. And in another seven minutes, you're gonna be completely full. If you don't eat anything else, you're gonna be full. Seven minutes, but you didn't listen to the leading indicator, so you kept going. And then guess what happens? Now you pay attention to the lagging indicator, which is, I'm gonna puke.
And so now you're, you, you, you leave the restaurant, uh, you go home, you sit around, you're in food coma, because you waited for the lagging indicator, which is, if I have one more bite, I'm gonna throw up on the table. So pay attention to the leading indicator, which is, I'm starting to feel like I'm pretty, pretty good to go.
So that's what we're gonna do for fuel. Those are some things to prepare for fuel. Start to prepare by getting the crap out of your house, by eating good food, by paying attention to how much you're eating and not going supersize me. And then pay attention, start to, start to pay attention to the leading indicator of when you've had enough freaking food to eat. That's what we're doing.
Next thing, next area of discipline I wanna talk about, time.
How can we make more time? How can we control our time? How can we get more free time? Okay, first of all, get up early. And, and this is what we're doing in, in preparation for the death reset. Start getting up earlier now. Start getting up 15 minutes earlier every day, or 10 minutes earlier every day. And so, and then that'll mean, should mean you're more tired at night, which means you can go to bed earlier, as long as you're not freaking engaging on your, uh, Insta Twitter. Because if you're doing that, that thing's freaking getting your dopamine all fired up and the lights going in there, your eyes, Andrew Huberman cannot save you at this juncture. You're doomed. You're letting the freaking, the evil light in your eyes and the dopamine's firing.
So wake, start waking up a little bit earlier now.
Every day, wake up a little bit earlier and then don't do the, the damn social media at night. Or the email that you don't need to do.
Don't do it.
Make a schedule. Schedule. Make a schedule of what you're gonna do. Seems obvious. A lot of times we don't do it. But make a schedule for what it is you need to do. And then the last thing is, set a timer for things. I know I personally am infinitely more efficient when I'm on a timeline.
The real obvious example is working out. If it's a Sunday and I know I don't have to go to open mat until nine or 10 o'clock.
Workout. Rest between sets is like Echo Charles level. You know what I'm saying? It's everything. I'm warming up, I'm stretching, I'm doing a couple extra this, couple extra that. I'm checking, I'm taking a few, taking three, four minutes just to do music selection. Oh yeah. Haven't heard this album in a while. What's the reviews on that thing? Oh, I'd like to see. Oh, by the way, I haven't seen that album cover art in a while. You know what I mean? You're just doing stupid stuff. Set a freaking timer.
That's what, uh, Jason Kalipa was talking about, right? You set a freaking timer. How much work can you get done? And when you have to get work done, that's when we get the most work done. And when we don't have to get work done, that's when we get the least amount of work done. So set a freaking timer. And if you gotta give yourself some kind of a little reward when you're done with it, cool, do it. Hey, when I get done with this, I'm gonna go, uh, hang out with my dog for, take a quick walk with my dog. 10 minutes. Cool. Dog's happy. I'm happy. All good. But instead, no, if you don't set a timer, you're like, supposed to be writing an email and instead you're looking at some stupid YouTube video. So don't do that. Set a timer, get your shit done. That's what we're doing.
Those things will help you manage your time and be more disciplined with your time. Get up early, make a schedule, don't spend, don't waste time on the screen.
The screenager, have you heard that yet? No. Yeah, that's like a teenager. Yeah, they call, right now they call them screenager. Cause they're just on that screen, freaking walking around. That's real. Just numb. So don't, screen control. And finally set a timer for yourself. So that's what we're doing. That's that, that's gonna help you with your time. Start that stuff now. Start making those in runs now. Cause you don't wanna be January 1st, you're starting defreset and you don't even, you don't, you haven't used the schedule program on your phone, or you haven't, you haven't gotten a calendar together where you can write down the stuff you gotta do. You don't do that. Start to be ready for it now. Next thing, exercise. Start doing it first thing in the morning when you get up. That's what we're doing. That's part of defreset. That's the first thing you do. You get up and then you, then you exercise. That's why we have to get up a little bit earlier.
Go to the gym no matter what. No matter what, there's no excuses. No matter what, go to the gym. And, and by that, I mean, if you don't go to a gym, but you've got your workout area in your house, or you got your kettlebell, you got the, the alley where you do farmer's walks with weights, whatever, whatever it is you do, go there no matter what and do something.
You have to go and do something.
Because you're gonna feel better when you get done. And as per usual, if you feel tired, exhausted, you can't take today off. You're not allowed.
If you still feel exhausted and tired tomorrow, look, you can back off a little bit. You, you can listen to your body and be like, well, I don't feel very strong. I feel kinda weak. I'm gonna just do a mobility workout, where I'm just gonna stretch. That's all you can do. Okay, do it. But you still have to go do it. There's, there's not doing something physical is not allowed. So get that right out of your head.
So that's what we're gonna do from an exercise perspective to prepare for defreset. Work out some way first thing in the morning. Go and do it no matter what. Go to the gym no matter what. And do not take today off. You can only take tomorrow off.
And finally, execution. Part of death reset is execution. Execute, execute, execute. So before you go to bed at night, write down what you need to do tomorrow.
I want you to do the hardest thing first.
Whatever's like looming over your head, that's the thing I want you to do first. The only kind of exception to that is, and this is a big one. Do strategic things first. So you want to do things that aren't immediately gratifying. Do those things first.
So if you've got a, if you're got a project that's not due for six months, but it's a big project. And you've got another thing that's due tomorrow. Do the, the big project work on that first, even if it's for a half an hour. Even if it's for 45 minutes, work on the strategic things first. And do the tactical things, the short term things. Do those after. And by the way, this is one of the reasons why we work out first thing in the morning. That's the ultimate strategic thing that we're doing is maintaining our health. So we do it before anything else because that way we, we pay it. That way it's paid off.
If every day we're like, well, I'm not, look, you don't get in shape today. You don't get healthy today. So why do you have to do it today? Well, I'll put it off till tomorrow because I didn't do it this morning. It's kind of late tonight. My kids just got home from school. I want to be a good dad and hang out with them. So I'll just, I'll start tomorrow. I'll work out tomorrow today. That's what we do. We, we put strategic things off every day, every day, every day. We put them off, we put them off, we put them off. We look up in a year, two years, three years, we haven't done anything. Our health is bad. We haven't accomplished anything that we wanted to accomplish on a strategic level.
So do the strategic things first. And then do the hard things next. That's what we're doing. We're doing that every day. We write them down. We do the hard, we do the strategic things, then we do the hard things. And then we work on down the road until we've got everything done that we've written down to do. Also, if you need to execute things, do them fast. Like, like 20 minute meetings.
The world should be broken up into 20 minutes, not one hour. An hour should be 20 minutes. Cause pretty much anything you could do in an hour, you can do in 20 minutes.
Exaggeration, maybe, but a lot of meetings that I have to go to, they're one hour long. There's nine minutes of content.
There's nine minutes of decision making. There's seven minutes of facts that everybody needs to know. We show up to a place, we need to do a walkthrough, could be done in seven minutes, but we spend an hour doing it.
We go to brief somebody on something, we spend an hour doing it, could be done in 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes. So tighten up your timelines.
Tighten things up. And then work, this is a little bit contrarian to what I just said, but work for 50 minutes freaking hardcore, and then take a 10 minute break. That's a good way to operate. It's a good way to execute things. Set that timer for 50 minutes. You'd be surprised how much you can get done in 50 minutes. If you're dragging somebody else into something, then do it in 20 minutes if you can.
This is how we're gonna execute. We're gonna execute in a disciplined way. We're gonna cut out all the fat that we don't need in our execution.
That's what we're doing.
That's the discipline.
And if you want some more discipline, thedefreset.com, we got jockofuel.com, we got originusa.com, we got jocko store.com, and we got echelonfront.com.
Until next time, stay disciplined. This is Echo and Jocko, out.
Page updated October 26, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
