543: Don't Wait to Get Punched in the Face. The Best Way to Adapt And Learn.

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• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 543 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. The US Army's competitive advantage directly relates to its capacity to learn faster and adapt more quickly than its adversaries. The current pace of technological change increases the Army's challenge to maintain the edge over potential adversaries. In the highly competitive global learning environment where technology provides all players nearly ubiquitous access to information, the Army cannot risk failure through complacency, lack of imagination, or resistance to change. Outpacing adversaries is essential to maintain the Army's global status and to fulfill its responsibilities to the nation.

• 0:43Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is a little quote from US Army Trade Doc 525 Tac 8 Tac 2, US Army Learning Concept 2015. And it's an interesting thing to think about because we, we all need to be learning all the time. And if you don't keep that front of mind, it's real easy to not learn anything and not progress, whether it's leadership, whether it's your professional career, whatever your professional career is, whether it's working with a new piece of gear, whether it's jujitsu, whether it's fighting, whether it's tactics, whether it's music, or art, or software,

• 1:28Jocko Willink?

  that's for you. Sure. Yeah, hell yeah. Right? Communication, how you communicate, language, like what's your vocabulary? We should be hopefully learning all the time and it's very easy, it takes effort, takes an effort to learn. So it's really easy to go in cruise control. But the fact of the matter is, in all these different spectrums, we have to outpace our adversaries, right? In jujitsu, in fighting, in software, like if you want to be productive, you've got to outpace your adversaries. So, interesting document, it had some interesting statements and I just want to talk about some of the things that are in there. Here's some assumptions that they make. "The Army will operate in an area of uncertainty and persistent conflict against a full spectrum

• 2:13Jocko Willink?

  of possible threats. This is what we call life." Right Eric, you don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow. There's gonna be persistent conflict.

• 2:24Jocko Willink?

  And there's a full spectrum of threats. What do you call that? An open game versus a closed game? What do you call those two things? Unkind and kind games, right? Oh, right, kind of like environment or something like that. Oh, kind environment versus unkind? Is that, is that the thing? Yeah, I forgot. Well, I was just talking about this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I forgot. But I think it's kind of. Yeah, so. Some things are constrained in some way. There's some kind of rules in place. There's some kind of finite. Provisions that you have to operate within, and then there's. Things that are just totally unconstrained. So.

• 2:59Jocko Willink?

  You gotta think about what kind of environment you're playing in. And by the way, there's spectrum there too, right? Cause like checkers, pretty limited chess, seems pretty unlimited because there's. Billions of moves you can make, but it is still, there's a, there's a finite number. And then you get to combat.

• 3:16Jocko Willink?

  Total war, there's all of a sudden, how, what is the person gonna do to you? There's no. Sure, there's rules of engagement, there's laws of armed conflict. But there's also like, we can think outside and get creative around those things even.

• 3:31Jocko Willink?

  So. Thinking about the uncertainty of the future. And the persistent conflict that we're in, you better, you better be learning. Next one, the army will continue to confront unexpected challenges from an adaptive enemy. And must respond rapidly in, in the development of doctrine, training and education. So as. Your competitors. Change, which they will, and they bring new things to the front, which they will. You have to be able to adjust, learn. Train. And move people forward.

• 4:06Jocko Willink?

  Uh, this is also life, right? Cause things aren't gonna go as planned. Next, the army must prevail in the competitive learning environment. Now, if you start thinking about it, you have an organization, your organization has to, we say, adapt, right? We say adapt and overcome. We say this all the time. What is adapt? What is adaptation? Essentially, what is this learning? You have to learn, and not only you have to learn, like what the enemy's doing, what the competition is doing, what your rival on the mats of justice is doing. You gotta learn what they're doing, and then you have to learn how to counter it. And then, by the way, in an organization, you have to teach

• 4:49Jocko Willink?

  and have everyone else on the team learn what you're doing to make adjustments. So, that's what we have to do. Next, the army's learning model must be clear in intended outcomes that are rigorous, relevant, and measurable.

• 5:05Jocko Willink?

  It's a good idea, right? I get it.

• 5:09Jocko Willink?

  I do think that you have to keep an open mind and be flexible. Because you don't know, it's very, in fact, it might be the most critical thing. Because let's face it, when you are trying to do something to counter someone, and you're doing what they expect, it doesn't, it's not gonna be effective. You have to do things that they don't expect. Well, how are you gonna do things that they don't expect if you have a closed mind and you're only responding with that one methodology? So, to really win, we wanna do things that they have no expectation of. That's the goal. That's, you can see this in sports.

• 5:51Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes someone will bring something to sports that has not been used before, low calf kick. Right? This is something that we got, you know, we got to see, I guess MMA and Jiu-Jitsu is, are very good examples of this. Number one, because they are very close to unkind, right? I mean, basketball, yeah, I mean, if you watch the evolution of basketball, certainly there, people are doing new moves. But not as radically new as what we've seen in Jiu-Jitsu and MMA over the past 30 years. So, you have to keep an open mind that you're gonna, you're gonna try and do things that maybe they don't expect at all.

• 6:35Jocko Willink?

  The less rules there are in the game that you're playing, the more opportunity you have to do that.

• 6:40Jocko Willink?

  So that's why business and wars vary. Those are probably the most open environments that you're going to have the chance to make adjustments and be flexible. So that's why I say if someone's talking about, hey, you got to be clear in the intended outcome. You know what the intended outcome? Win.

• 7:01Jocko Willink?

  Because if it is, oh, the intended outcome is to do this move right here to counter their move. Okay. They're used to being in that situation. What if you can completely bypass that? As Dean Lister used to say, you know, you go A, B, C, and then D. That's the move. Here's the counter. Here's the setup and then you execute the move. But ideally you just go A to D. Or maybe you go A, C, D. You can skip moves or maybe you just go A, D, C, B, back to D. So that's what we're trying to do. Next one, learning is best achieved at the point of need. And therefore must be accessible in career long continuum rather than limited to specific timeframes or locations. When I hear this,

• 7:45Jocko Willink?

  learning is best achieved at the point of need. You know what that makes me think of? I used to say in the teams, we don't care about anything until it punches us in the face. And this is true, so true for so many humans. We, we, we have an idea that this could be a problem or that could be a problem, but no one really cares about it. Until they get hit with it. Like, oh yeah, you know, at some point I'm gonna, I'm gonna, you know, put an emergency kit in my car just in case something goes wrong when I'm driving through the mountains. Some, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do that someday. They know it's a good idea, right? It's a good idea. But then they don't do it. And guess what? When the snowstorm hits and they get stuck in their freezing snow and they don't have anything to survive with.

• 8:29Jocko Willink?

  It's a problem and they're going dang it. And then they go home and immediately if they make it, if they survive, they're like, here's what we're gonna do. We used to run in that in the SEAL teams all the time. There'd be something like, we all know this is a problem. No one cares. No one cares. No one cares. No one cares. There's an incident. Also, everyone cares when we solve the problem.

• 8:45Jocko Willink?

  So you have to be careful that you don't do that. You don't. My recommendation is you don't wait till you're at the point of need to make adjustments in your world.

• 8:55Jocko Willink?

  You know that there are things that require, you know, I had an interesting conversation. You know, they have specific people to do the maintenance of an aircraft, of a jet aircraft. So Dave Burke.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  Good deal.

• 9:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You know, he's worried about flying the plane. He's got, and he does inspections, you know, they, the pilot does the cursory walk around. You know, they're out there kicking the tires. You know what I'm saying? He's not in the systems, right? But guess what? There is a guy that is, there's assignment is to make sure that that ejection seat is ready to eject and it's functional, it's maintained. If that's, if that fell on, you know, the pilot who's got all these other things to worry about, as critical as it is, he wouldn't be as focused as that individual that's making it happen. So, man, did you see those two airplanes collide, those two F-18s collide?

• 9:50Jocko Willink?

  And they ejected all four people and all four people survived. That was insane to watch. But I bet that maintenance guy.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Props.

• 10:00Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're saying. Same thing with like fire detectors. You know, it's like, oh, how often you check, how often you rotating those batteries like you're supposed to? It's not till your neighbor's house burns down, you're like, I'm gonna get in there. At least that's where a lot of people operate.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I feel like sometimes, I don't know, my mind kind of habitually goes to like, hey, but isn't that kind of a more effective way of learning a lesson, you know, the hard way?

• 10:31Jocko Willink?

  It's definitely a more effective way of learning a lesson, as long as there isn't some catastrophic price to pay for learning a lesson.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  Right. And, and even put even more simply, when it's like, Yeah, if you have to learn it that way, but if you don't have to, bro, like you don't want to learn like, hey, you should wear your seatbelt.

• 10:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  The hard way, you know?

• 10:51Jocko Willink?

  Well, I posted the other day, he who suffers remembers.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:56Jocko Willink?

  For Murph, right? We're all out there doing Murph, right? He who suffers remembers. It's like, yes, that is true. That is a term that I heard in buds. Because they would be making us suffer because we did something wrong. So to your point, oh, somebody didn't bring whatever piece of gear. We're about to do, you know, eight million freaking eight count bodybuilders at two o'clock in the morning.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:18Jocko Willink?

  Do you think we ever forgot that piece of gear again? Nope. So he who suffers remembers, you're right. But if it's a catastrophic situation, you know, you don't want to have somebody in your, in your business, do something that's going to get you sued. And now all of a sudden it's a catastrophic situation.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:36Jocko Willink?

  Cause you're like, oh, I bet they learned their lesson. Cool. We're bankrupt. So good point, Echo. However.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. When you don't have to learn it the hard way, let's not learn it. I got you.

• 11:45Jocko Willink?

  Let's not learn it the hard way. Uh, next, army learners must have the opportunity to contribute to the body of knowledge throughout their careers. Good. It's, it's a very good idea that people recognize when you're, when you're in an organization, you are not only going to have to receive and learn, but it's good to know that you should be teaching too, and you will be teaching. It's a good thing to recognize because then you start paying attention to how you learn. And what was helpful to you. Uh, next. Soldiering requires a foundation of comprehensive fitness. Army values the warrior ethos and professional competence.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 12:27Jocko Willink?

  What I, what I would say about that is.

• 12:31Jocko Willink?

  We become what we learn.

• 12:35Jocko Willink?

  I would say, is that 100% accurate? No, but you, I shouldn't say we become, we are highly influenced by what we learn. You've heard me say that you get a lot of your DNA in the SEAL teams from your first platoon. Cause what you learn in that first platoon, it's leaves the biggest impression. Cause you're learning the most. So what you learn is kind of who you become. Like when I, when I got to the SEAL teams, I went to SEAL Team One. Otherwise known as stalag Team One. And it was all like the professionalism and haircuts and stuff like that. And that's kind of how I maintained. I maintained that course.

• 13:12Jocko Willink?

  You get that DNA early. So you kind of, you are highly influenced by what you learned. So that's an important thing to keep in mind, not only as a person that is learning. What are you learning from? Cause are you learning from reels? You know what I'm saying? Are you being influenced by reels? Or are you being, are you being taught by social media? Cause if you're getting taught trash, what are you going to become? You're at a minimum, you're going to be influenced in that direction. Isn't it interesting to think that you technically, when you're doom scrolling, you are, you are learning something. You are being influenced by that thing.

• 13:54Jocko Willink?

  So important to try and maintain some level of control of what you are allowing yourself to be taught.

• 14:04Jocko Willink?

  Um, next, fundamental competencies must be reinforced by maximizing time on the task. Cool. Always fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. I, in the SEAL teams, I changed the, we used to say basics. We wouldn't go through the basics today. And I changed that terminology to fundamentals. Because everyone hears basics and they go, oh, this is no big deal. This isn't important. Fundamentals is actually the most important thing. And there are, there are skills that you have, leadership skills and operational skills that you have that are truly fundamental. If you don't have them, you're doomed. But when people hear, oh, this is just, you know, just the basics. Yeah. It's like, no, no, no, we're not doing just the basics. We're actually learning the fundamentals.

• 14:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, it's more like that, like the foundational. Cover and move. Do we call cover and move basic? No, call it fundamental. Cause if you're not, everything that you do is cover and move in the teams, in the, in the military. It's cover and move, cover and move, cover and move, cover and move. That's what it is. One person is covering, the other person is moving. You have to learn that. That is a fundamental skill to learn how to do that. It's not just a basic skill. Is it basic? Yeah, it's basic. Is it fundamental? Absolutely. Next, continually, continually evolving complex operational dilemmas over extended time in culturally diverse joint interagency, intergovernmental and multinational operational environments will continue to challenge leaders.

• 15:29Jocko Willink?

  Again, this is a, dude, this is such military terminology here. Complex operational dilemmas. So these are like different types of missions. Extended over time, they're long. Culturally diverse, they're in different countries with different humans there. Joint, that means we're working with Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, working together. Interagencies, that means you've got other government agencies. Maybe you've got the State Department, maybe you've got the, the CIA, you've got other people working with you. Intergovernmental, so now we got their government too. So now you're working with the government of another country. Multi- and multinational, so now we have different countries and their military and their government.

• 16:13Jocko Willink?

  There's a lot of different players involved. Well, guess what? This is what life is. This is what business is. You got your neighbors, they have a different culture than you.

• 16:22Jocko Willink?

  They have different goals than you. You got your business, you got different scenarios going on. You gotta work with different regulatory environments.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  This is kinda interesting to me because as a non military person and not non law enforcement person will say.

• 16:41Jocko Willink?

  We call you a civilian.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, civilian.

• 16:44Jocko Willink?

  Civvy.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  But you know how like, I'll, I'll watch movies sometimes. And it'll be like, um, I don't know, the local cops, right? And they're investigating some crime and then they'll run into like.

• 16:57Jocko Willink?

  The feds.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  The state, yeah, exactly right. The feds come in and they're gonna, you know, even remember, you know, a movie was on the other day, Die Hard. Remember Die Hard, the OG? First it has the one beat cop there kinda handling business and then some superior, you know, some superior comes that dude, I forget his name in the show, but. And then the FBI come, you know, and then they're like contending with each other. And I remember when I was young, I was like, bro, aren't they all, to me, they're all cops. They all should just be like adding to the team, but for some reason they have different agendas and they're.

• 17:26Jocko Willink?

  Jurisdiction.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, like all this stuff.

• 17:29Jocko Willink?

  Rambo has that too, right?

• 17:31Speaker 01

  Jurisdiction.

• 17:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because it's like the local cops.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  Oh, first blood, first blood.

• 17:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I'm sorry, first blood.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, and then they have like these points of contention. It's like, bro, that doesn't make sense to me because you guys are all cops or whatever, but. No, different cops have different like responsibilities and goals within their, I don't know, department or whatever, at their level or whatever. And this is essentially a more complex version of that same thing. See what I'm saying?

• 17:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  So it's like, okay, our government has all these different like, different groups in it that have different goals in it with this one big situation. So yeah, sometimes you can step on each other's toes a little bit and you know, little points of contention.

• 18:12Jocko Willink?

  Oh, for sure.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  But from the outside, we, I don't, that's not intuitive to me. To me, it's kinda like, oh, that's the USA. The USA is gonna roll in and they're all just pointing in the same exact direction and we're gonna go in, we're gonna, you know, but it's not like that.

• 18:24Jocko Willink?

  You know what was weird when I got in the military is I just thought, kind of in line with what you're saying, I thought the military just kinda did what it wanted.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:34Jocko Willink?

  Meaning like, have you ever thought about when you go on a trip in the military, let's say you're driving out to the desert training facility, that you gotta get gasoline for the vehicles? Well, where's that gasoline come from? Have you thought about that?

• 18:45Speaker 01

  Me, no.

• 18:46Jocko Willink?

  Like you have to use a certain.

• 18:50Jocko Willink?

  Card, it's like a credit card, but it's a, it's a more like a debit card that you use to pay for the gas. Now it's coming from the fund that is your team, but you're paying for this gas and you're going to get charged for it. So why? Because your team has a certain amount of budget. So when you book, you know, you're using this card to pay for things, just like your ammunition, the batteries for your, for your radios or for your night vision, like you have to actually pay for it. I thought it was all just.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  Provided.

• 19:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. That's, that does, I mean, you're asking me that for some reason, I feel like we, you've brought that up before, but. Yeah, it feels like that. When I played football at University of Hawaii. It's, everything's provided, everything, all your clothes, all your equipment, your socks, shoes, like everything. You just go to the little window and you get it. See what I'm saying? I was, I am under that impression. Yes. Like you get, here's the keys to your Humvee. Maybe you sign for it. There's already gas in it. See what I'm saying? Like the gas is magically disappears.

• 19:50Jocko Willink?

  And there is like an element of that when you get your gear issue, right? You don't give them a card for that. But if you lose a piece of gear, you might have to pay for it. So. Check. Uh, next, time, manpower and resources available for learning will continue to be limited. Isn't that just the way it is? Everybody needs more time and more money to train. And we don't have enough. And by the way, the army trains over half a million people a year. So. Getting you back to the doc here. Current learning is typically instructor-led, timed to predetermine course lengths and not synchronized to meet individual learner needs. That's something to think about. People are going to learn at different paces.

• 20:36Jocko Willink?

  And you just get that, hey, this is how long the course of instruction is. This is how long I'm going to teach you for. Current instruction is based on individual task conditions and standards, which worked well when the army had a well-defined mission and a well-defined enemy.

• 20:50Jocko Willink?

  Similarly, critical thinking is frequently a course objective instruction. Oh, sorry. While critical thinking is frequently a course objective, instruction primarily delivers only concepts and knowledge. Passive lecture-based instruction does not engage learners or capitalize on prior experience. Learner assessments are frequently routine, open book tests that lack rigor and fail to measure actual learning levels. So this whole thing here, right? First of all, how are we teaching?

• 21:22Jocko Willink?

  Because by the way, when you teach something,

• 21:27Jocko Willink?

  you, you have to use multiple elements, teacher, right? You got, you can tell people what's going to happen. There's your audio. Maybe you gave them a pamphlet to read about it. There's visually showing them how to do something. And then there's physically having them do the thing, whatever that thing is. So it's, it's like you listen or you absorb information or you're presented information.

• 21:49Jocko Willink?

  And then you watch people do the thing and then you have to do the thing yourself. So whether it's doing mag changes on a weapon, like someone will, you will initially get taught, because it seems like, you know, when you do a mag change, Echo Charles, on your Desert Eagle 50 cal.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 22:05Jocko Willink?

  When you do that, you do it. I haven't watched you do it. But I bet that it's not, have you, did you, how'd you learn how to do a mag change?

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Oh, I, I took a course with our boy, Brian Sargent.

• 22:17Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay. Well, then you do know. If you didn't know that, if Sarge didn't tell you how to change a mag, you would kind of just be fumbling through it, right? So you have to learn how to do it. And Sarge taught you how to do it. Doing a kickflip on a skateboard. Like you have to learn how to do it. Then you have to try it. If there's a new vocabulary word, you can, by the way, if you learn a new vocabulary word, and you just memorize the meaning of the word, that's different than actually putting it, using it in a sentence. And reading it in multiple senses and understanding the context of each one of those. Room clearance is doing a room clearance. Did Sarge teach you any, uh, room clearances?

• 22:56Speaker 01

  CQB or whatever.

• 22:58Jocko Willink?

  CQB, now called CQC? No, but that's a thing. You gotta watch, you gotta learn, and then you gotta do it. Arm lock.

• 23:08Jocko Willink?

  Guitar chord, different guitar chords. Somebody has to show you what it is. Prioritize and execute. This is something, a skill that we teach at Essekam Front. You gotta learn how to do it. You gotta, you hear the concept. It's funny when you do the FTX, when people do the FTX at Essekam Front. Dude, people that show up to the FTX, they can recite exactly like what the laws, what the laws of combat are. Combat moves simple, prioritize, execute, decentralized command. They'll, they'll kind of be able to talk through them very well. And then you see them trying to do them. It's very, very different. Cause you have to actually do these things. Same thing with decentralized command. People can, people can talk about it, but a lot of times they can't do it.

• 23:53Jocko Willink?

  So it's very important to keep that in mind. And then you have to keep in mind as a teacher that people learn differently. So I might be able to talk you through a mag change and you might be able to do it within, you know, 10 tries, you can get pretty smooth at it. Someone else, I talk them through it. And I have to talk them through other details of it that I didn't have to tell you. You kind of like figured it out. So everyone's going to learn a little bit differently.

• 24:26Jocko Willink?

  And you know, I, I talk about this example with um, Jiu Jitsu.

• 24:32Jocko Willink?

  Cause Jiu Jitsu is certainly a learning sport.

• 24:37Jocko Willink?

  Probably one of the highest levels of amount of things to learn. Because it's such an unkind game with so many variables. Not just the variables of the move, but just the variable of you as a human, the human that you're going against. Like there's, it's just, it's just very infinite. But to make a Jiu Jitsu move work, let's say, let's say for instance, I don't know if I'm going to use percentages, but

• 25:05Jocko Willink?

  let's say there's 10 things that you have to do to make a move work. An instructor can show you maybe three of those things, four of those things, maybe five of the things, the physical movements they can talk you through, they can show it to you.

• 25:19Jocko Willink?

  And then even still, the first time you do it, it's not gonna, I just learned a move today. From Kynan. It's something that I had never done before. It's like a guard retention. Uh, um, guard retention move. It was a move, straight up. And dude, when he's, when, so I'm watching him do it and I was like, oh, that's, I'm literally thinking, oh, that's dope. And I fully understood it.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:44Jocko Willink?

  Mentally.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:46Jocko Willink?

  When we started doing it, it was like, I might as well have been a white belt.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:50Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm saying? I'm like, oh, I'm a white belt. And. Yeah, so. I had to do it. I had to do the physical move. A bunch of times to even start to, and I still didn't, I need, I need to do it another. I probably need to do another 100 times.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:09Jocko Willink?

  Of static drilling, we'll say, right? Where it's just like, hey, this is just the motion I have to go through. So. Three to five things you can kind of get from an instructor telling you what the move is.

• 26:22Jocko Willink?

  Maybe point five or 1.5 you get from doing the movement physically.

• 26:29Jocko Willink?

  And then there's a couple, because I remember I said, you gotta do 10 things to make a move work. There's a couple of these things you have to do now. It's not really static drilling. It's like, I have to, you have to actively participate. In. Some kind of a, we'll call it a constrained in like, um. CLA. And ecological training, they call it a constrained environment, meaning like, okay, Echo, in order for me to get this guard recovery movement going. Here's what you need to do to me. Do this to me. If you get to this point, we're going to start again. If I get to this point, we're going to start again. And by the way, you can't do this thing or that thing. Like for instance, oh, I'm working on guard retention.

• 27:13Jocko Willink?

  You're not allowed to just fall back on a footlock, right? Okay, that's a constraint that I've put on you. And you're not allowed to, let's say, smash pass because this isn't a guard retention for a smash pass. So I give you some constraints. But you're allowed to move within the box that I built for you. So I gotta do that a little bit.

• 27:31Jocko Willink?

  I can, I can figure out one or two more elements of the move by doing that.

• 27:38Jocko Willink?

  And then I have to do it live because guess what? In real life, you can fall back on a footlock. In real life, you can go to a smash pass instead. So there's one of the last one or two things that I have to learn.

• 27:51Jocko Willink?

  I there's no way way to learn it unless we're doing it fully unrestrained. So that's what we kind of have to do to get somebody to learn. Um, you want to hear a funny story? Yes. I will tell you. So I I was recently doing a movie. Yeah, yeah, hell yeah. And I'm doing this movie and um, I have one line.

• 28:18Jocko Willink?

  I have one line and but in the scene, I'm in the scene for probably like a few minutes. But all I'm doing is listening. Yeah. And in fact, I'm listening and kind of giving no response. I'm kind of just being me. Yeah, yeah, in real life. In real life. But the other character is like yapping.

• 28:41Jocko Willink?

  Saying all kinds of funny stuff. I had to keep it professional because she's being hilarious and I'm trying to keep it professional. And so, speaking of being professional, having made the way of the warrior kid, I know that you you wanna you don't want to waste everybody's time. And when you mess up your line. Or you mess up, yeah, you mess up your line like everyone tries to be cool because they don't want to add pressure, but everyone's pissed. Yeah, yeah. So I know that going in. So I'm like, okay, I'm gonna do my best and I I had one line, bro. So I memorize it. But I memorized it in my head. Keep this in mind. I memorized it in my head. So it takes a long time to film and we're there. We do all the different camera setups.

• 29:23Jocko Willink?

  And the other actor, she's yapping and she's doing her lines and she's improv and funny, awesome. And I don't have to say anything. And it keeps going and keep going. It takes like three, four, five hours. And I haven't said a word yet. All I'm doing is my expression, which is expressionless, by the way. Try not to crack up because she's hilarious. So finally, then we turn the cameras around and now it's the closing of the scene and it's time for my line, which I memorized.

• 29:52Jocko Willink?

  And and so we get to that point, she delivers the line that like, uh, what is it cues me? Is that what it's called a cue? Sure, the setup. She gives me the setup. And it's my turn. After five hours, everyone's looking at me, that's my time. And I had memorized that line, but I had, but I hadn't physically spoken the words yet. And when it came time for me to say the line, I was like, it took me a second. I got it out. I like, I had to go team guy mode. I just had to like muscle through it. I had to muscle through it. But I hadn't physically rehearsed it. And when you don't physically rehearse it, you're, there's something that you're missing. And I hadn't said the words, so I, I, I muscled through it.

• 30:35Jocko Willink?

  And then we cut and I said it like, I said it out loud, like to myself whispering it like 19 times in the next, in the next three minutes. I was just like, I said, because I didn't want to get choked up. I got choked up. I choked. Didn't get choked up. I choked. You know, um, this is very similar. You've heard this story about when I started playing basketball. When I started playing basketball, my dad, I told my dad I wanted to play basketball. And my dad's like old school Hoosiers. You ever seen the movie Hoosiers? Yeah. Bro, my dad's a hundred percent Hoosiers. Like, okay, oh, you know flashy, you're going to be defense. You're going to learn ball handling, you're going to learn to pass, you know, you, you don't want to worry about scoring. Scoring's like, we're, you know, so he got me going in that mode.

• 31:19Jocko Willink?

  Didn't really, didn't, all we did was drill. This is a case where you, if you go too far with drilling. And then my, I get to, this is seventh grade or eighth grade. I get, now I try out for the team. I make the team. My dad, my dad worked with me for, you know, two months, just Hoosiers, man, Hoosiers. So now I get to my coach and my coach, guess what kind of attitude he has? Hoosiers all day. We're not worried about looking flashy and scoring points. We're going to play defense. We're going to pass, we're going to ball handle. So we did that and we did almost no live basketball games in practice. So the first game that I went into, oh, by the way, because I was good passing and was ball handling, left hand, right hand. I became the point guard, seventh grade or whatever, eighth grade, right? Hell, yeah.

• 32:03Jocko Willink?

  The first game I'm dribbling down the court. I hold up the signal for like, oh, we're going to run play number two. Yeah. And I, you know, boom, walk, boom, I pass the ball, totally get picked. The, the ball gets picked off, the dude runs down the court, scores a layup. I was like, well, damn, well, play two sucked. I come down again. I call play one, you know, better play. Pass it off, gets picked off, the same guy just picked it off again. Because I had never actually played. I mean, I might have played like one scrimmage. We never scrimmaged. So you have, you have to drill. You have to play. That you have to, you have to play games to get good at it. And then you have to actually play in an unconstrained environment.

• 32:47Jocko Willink?

  So these things are, are, are, are very important. And you have to do all of them, even when it comes to like delivering a saying words. If you, because let's face it, when you're saying, oh, oh, like when I, I did that show Billions.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, hell, yeah.

• 33:03Jocko Willink?

  They, all the lines that those guys gave me were just shit that I said anyways. You know, it was just, it was just me.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  You had some rap.

• 33:09Jocko Willink?

  It was me and it was just me, right? And so even though I, it was pretty easy for me to say those words. Oh, you want me to say, uh, hey, keep knocking them out? Like, that's some shit I would normally say. What, but this line was like a little different.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:23Jocko Willink?

  And so I didn't, so I forced it out. No one said anything. I think people that they're like, oh, that's the first one, we'll give them a little breather.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:33Jocko Willink?

  Cause it sucks when the director comes up and he's like, hey, actually it's a female director, you know? She didn't come up to me and say, I was so thankful she gave me a little, uh, grace.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  Grace.

• 33:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. But that's what we gotta watch out for.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  Is this movie out?

• 33:47Jocko Willink?

  No, no, it's not out yet.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  When does it come out?

• 33:48Jocko Willink?

  Uh, it comes out, I think in December.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  Oh, hell, yeah. Alright, okay.

• 33:53Jocko Willink?

  I forget if I'm allowed to talk about it.

• 33:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what it feels like.

• 33:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I, I forget, I don't wanna, I don't wanna get in, you know, get in trouble.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, leaking the.

• 34:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, leaking the stuff.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  Or whatever.

• 34:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the tea, exactly. But, yeah, you gotta be careful with that one.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it um, it's, I mean, as far as the idea, the concept, um, it seems obvious when you just sort of look at it. But if you understand it, then I feel like, yeah, you can be like way more effective in like when you progress through learning. So if you, let's say, uh, like golf, let's say basketball, basketball is a good one. Where if it's like, okay, hey, Jocko or whatever, young Jocko, you've never played basketball ever before. But I'm gonna teach you how and you're gonna become good at basketball. I could be like, okay, first things first, this ball right here goes in that net, see it? See the net, see the ball and you're like, bruh, that makes perfect sense to me. The ball going in the net, hell yeah, I know basketball, right? I know that part of it. It's okay, cool, you know that, okay, here's this or whatever, but you didn't do anything, I just explained it to you.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  Brother, you try to throw that ball in the net, right, you can't, it's almost impossible, actually. No, you know with 100% certainty what the ball going in the net is. Yet you can't do it.

• 35:02Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  Because you have no reps doing it. Because there's like millions of little variations in there.

• 35:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  See what I'm saying? So yeah, you gotta, same thing with the talking thing in your line.

• 35:11Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  Like, there's so many little variations that you have to experience for them to get locked in. No matter, I mean, yeah, you said the word the and um, so called or whatever the words are. You've heard those words, you said them, but not in that progression, under that circumstance. So you gotta replicate that circumstance and get that experience.

• 35:29Jocko Willink?

  In real life.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, same thing with like juggling, for example, you ever, you ever, um, you know, you can watch tutorials on how to juggle.

• 35:37Jocko Willink?

  The technique.

• 35:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like, oh, bruh, that's, I didn't know that. And you're like, bruh, I think I can try, bruh, try to do that.

• 35:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 35:42Speaker 01

  It's impossible, you gotta do like.

• 35:45Jocko Willink?

  Yep, exactly. And by the way, I got, uh, in this movie, I'm playing a pilot.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, hell yeah.

• 35:51Jocko Willink?

  A helicopter pilot. And I get in and I'm kinda like, I want, I literally went on YouTube and watched some videos about like, see what the helicopter pilots are doing.

• 36:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:01Jocko Willink?

  But I got in there and I said, you know, I'm kinda got, they're kinda like, what are you gonna do? I'm like, well, I'm gonna look at the instruments and look around. And I said, uh, and they said, yeah, you know, you, that'll be fine. They said, well, the thing is, when we get pilots, real pilots, sometimes they don't know how to act.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:16Jocko Willink?

  And I said, well, unfortunately for you, I'm neither a pilot nor an actor, so you're just gonna have to deal with it.

• 36:21Speaker 01

  The worst of both worlds.

• 36:22Jocko Willink?

  To, going back to your basketball example, is if you just said, hey, all you gotta do is put the ball in the net.

• 36:30Jocko Willink?

  And you, so now you take a shot, like what is your form? If what I should do is like, hey, you gotta put the ball in the net. Here are some basic points of performance that you need to utilize. Port your, point your elbow at the basket. You know, use the other hand to guide, cause if you say put the ball in the basket, a lot of people would do a two-handed set shot like they used to do in the 50s. You know, like, oh, just two hands. But it's known that there's a better technique now. Not that some people couldn't hit good shots with a two-handed set shot, but it's just not as effective. You can't do it from a jump, like there's all kinds of reasons why it's not good. So that's why we need to give people the, that's what those things are. That's what the, um, when I say that three to five things can be shown by the instructor, it's a perfect example. A jump shot in basketball.

• 37:15Jocko Willink?

  Like I need to give you the fundamentals of the movement. Now, listen, you might, you know, have a specific way, you know, you see this with pitchers sometimes in baseball, like a sidearm pitcher. Like they didn't get taught that way, but they figured it out. And it works for them. And there's, that's an extreme example, but a lot of times, you know, your jump shot might be a little bit different. Well, it's gonna be a little bit different every, everyone else's, based on your body and based on the way you calculate the distance and how much backspin you put on the ball. It's gonna be a little bit different, but there is, there is a line. There is a guide that you can give someone. And then how well, or how much they need to deviate from that line is kind of up to them.

• 37:56Jocko Willink?

  And that's why they have to do the drilling, the static drilling, the constrained environment. Like I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna teach you a jump shot and then say, okay, go ahead and take one and I swat you. You know, like I'm not gonna get in your face. No, you gotta learn the technique. And then I start, okay, let me put a little bit of pressure on you. Oh, here's what you gotta do. Here's a little head juke you can, and you start, and then you start using it in a game. And you start realizing, oh, I can do this. Here's how I can do it specifically. So those are all really good examples and it's important to remember too.

• 38:27Jocko Willink?

  It varies for different people. Like I said, some people are visual learners. Some people are audio learners. Some people have to feel it. There's a bunch of different types of learners. And then on top of that, there's context. How much context do you have? Because if you have no context and I try and teach you an arm lock, it could take an hour. If you know how to do an arm lock and I want to teach you how to finish with a wrist lock, I can teach you that in seven minutes, maybe even five minutes. If you know how to do a straight foot lock and a heel hook and I want to teach you the aoki lock, I can teach you that very quickly. But if you don't know the heel hook and you don't know the foot lock,

• 39:09Jocko Willink?

  it's going to take me longer and I have to show you more to get you there. And it's same with the guitar chord. Like if I know the D minor and I want to teach you D major, like you already know them. I can, if you already know one, I can very easily teach you the other or a weapon system. Once you know a particular, once you know what, like how a rifle works, it's going to be much easier. When I hand you a new rifle, I go, here's the safety. Here's what this type of site looks like. Here's what your site picture should look like. As opposed to if you've never shot a rifle before, I'm like, okay, this is called the safety. Here's how you're supposed to manipulate it. This is what you're gonna look on the, on the site picture. Here's the front sight. You should focus on the front sight. The other thing's going to become a blur. The, your target, you're going to see it, but that's going to become a blur too. And you're going to keep your focus on the front sight.

• 39:55Jocko Willink?

  And then you're going to slowly pull the trigger and you're going to let it surprise you. Like all those things I'm going to have to teach you. If you already know all that stuff and I hand you a new weapon, here's how the safety works. Here's what the site picture should be. Go kill and you can make it happen. And even this, this is true even with leadership skills.

• 40:11Jocko Willink?

  Like depending on how much context you have, I can give you a little, a little note, bro. Hey, you were a little bit aggressive when you, when you walked in and you really didn't, you took partial ownership, but you also said, you know, this is probably my fault. And you go, yeah. Whereas if you've never taken ownership before and you're like, dude, this I had nothing to do with this. We have a lot of work to do. So the, the amount of context that you have impacts how, how well and how quickly people can learn something.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  So when I watch movies back in the day as a kid, you know, okay, so you know, a typical typical movie scenario. We'll say, let's say it's a cop, cop movie or a lawyer movie or whatever, whatever. Say a cop movie. And you get the story about the new, young, freaking bright eyed, enthusiastic, gifted new rookie. Right out of the academy. Then you get this old guy who his kind of claim to fame or whatever is his quote unquote experience. He's like, you know, he, he's, he doesn't read very fast. Uh, he's not very like, good on his weapon, but he has a lot of experience.

• 41:25Jocko Willink?

  Point break. We're talking point break, right?

• 41:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep, exactly.

• 41:27Jocko Willink?

  Keanu Reeves and then who? Keanu Reeves and Gary Busey.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  Gary Busey.

• 41:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. It's a good matchup of what you're talking about, right?

• 41:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot of experience. And I used to think like, what the hell does that mean? A lot of experience? Like, bro, he sucks. You know, he has a lot of experience, like, uh, what, like, why is that valuable? But really it's this. It's like you have so many reps in this context that you're talking about. He's seen so many different scenarios that like details just formulate themselves and paint like this very clear picture of, of what's going on. If you're an investigator, we'll say, but if you're new, you just know this contextless list of skills kind of that you have. So you can't like, you can't place these skills onto anything yet. Meanwhile, this guy can place everything onto everything. Sure, he might not run the fastest, but the criminals running away, he can't chase them or whatever, but he knows exactly what's going on.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  I just had one look at a situation. See what I'm saying? Like, um, you ever heard of a show called Forensic Files? It used to be called Medical Detectives. It's basically like some crime happens and they, and they kind of.

• 42:30Jocko Willink?

  Is it real?

• 42:31Speaker 01

  It's a real show. Yeah, yeah.

• 42:32Jocko Willink?

  Uh, documentary or is it?

• 42:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:35Jocko Willink?

  What does ish mean?

• 42:36Speaker 01

  Like, it's a, it's a show. It's a series show, right? So you got episodes of it.

• 42:41Jocko Willink?

  Are you, is it real forensic people?

• 42:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:44Jocko Willink?

  Looking at real crime scenes?

• 42:45Speaker 01

  Exactly, right. Real crimes and the actual investigators, the actual medical.

• 42:49Jocko Willink?

  It's not like CSI Miami.

• 42:51Speaker 01

  Right, right. Correct, correct. It's real. Um, so.

• 42:55Speaker 01

  They interview a lot of times, they interview these cops with a lot of experience and they they reveal little secrets that you would know only if you have experience, right? So one of them, that that was pretty cool, was they're investigating this guy, they're questioning him and they saw a cut on his, on, oh, on this part of his hand, on the back of his, on the outside of his pinky, right, right by that first knuckle. There was a cut there. And he's like, and most of us know that when you're stabbing someone, through experience, when you're stabbing someone, the knife gets bloody and blood is very slippery. Like, if you're not, if you don't have experience with blood all over your hands, probably you don't know that. I didn't know that. Blood's slippery like motor, like motor oil. So it gets slippery and then when you're stabbing someone, the impact of the knife

• 43:39Speaker 01

  makes the knife slide, your hand slide down the knife onto the blade, you cut yourself right there. That happens freaking like 90% of the time or whatever, as far as what he's saying, you know? But if you don't have experience, like that wouldn't, oh, he has a cut on his hand. Hmm, I wonder what that cut is for. But if you had a lot of experience, you're like, I know exactly what that cut is for. I've seen a million of those things. See what I'm saying? Does it happen every single time? No. But all the context, all the situations that I've seen, that thing was present. See what I'm saying? So it's like that kind of stuff, you can just like see it right at an instant.

• 44:08Jocko Willink?

  Context and experience are very closely related, for sure. The, so when it goes back to instruction, what percentage of instruction? Like telling you, what percentage of static drilling, what percentage of active resistance constrained training and what percentage of live should we do? Well, there's a lot of variables there and you can't set that in stone. You can't say, oh, if you're training guitar, you should do this much, you know, finger picking, this much scales. No, because guess what?

• 44:52Jocko Willink?

  There's some people that are just naturally good at scales and they're naturally bad at finger picking. If you're training in jujitsu, you can't be like, oh, I taught a new move today. We're gonna drill it 22 times each and then we're gonna do four minutes each side of constrained drilling.

• 45:10Jocko Willink?

  Or game and then we're gonna do live like you you well how complex was the move? Jeff Glover taught a move the other day and he gets done teaching it and he's like alright let's give it a try. Good luck, he says, good luck because it was a wild ass move, you know? And I I would probably have to learn that move from him, you know? Let's say five classes in a row. Five classes in a row cuz cuz I had no context around this particular move. Now, someone that has a lot of context around the move, they probably got it that day or they at least started figuring it out. So how complex is the move that you're teaching? How well, how much context does your each student in the class?

• 45:53Jocko Willink?

  How much context do they have around that type of move? So it's not gonna be, there's no miraculous percentage that you should always teach to. What you do need to do, you have to observe, orient, decide, and act as an instructor. You might have to go, hey?

• 46:14Jocko Willink?

  You know, Echo and Greg Train, you guys go over there, start actively cuz this is whatever, Mount Escape. You're really good at Mount Escape, you, I just want you to add this finishing touch on it. Meanwhile, I got a couple people that are, they might still be black belts, but they don't have that Hawaiian, what do you call the Hawaiian shuffle? They don't have the Hawaiian shuffle down. They've never even seen it before. If they've never seen it before, it's gonna be, it's gonna take some time. The uh, the deep, the deep arm. I think he calls it the deep arm drag, the deep arm drag by Jeff Glover. Bro, I'm still trying to figure that shit out.

• 46:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:53Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm saying? And this is a guy, Jeff Glover actively will do this to me. I know exactly what he's doing.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:59Jocko Willink?

  He's a hundred pounds less than me. And he can do this deep half, this deep arm drag to me and he's like, okay, well, I'll do it too. Can't do it to him. Can't do it to him. I've gotten my back taken a hundred times by trying deep, deep arm drag. But I have no context. That's like, okay, so Jeff Glover, what does Jeff Glover do? He turns his back on people all the time. He doesn't give a shit. He doesn't care. I hardly ever turn my back on someone. So for me to actively start incorporating a move where part of the move is turning your back on someone, it's going to take me a long time to figure that out.

• 47:35Jocko Willink?

  So as an instructor, and probably there's, you know, just, just like I said, the, the move I was learning today from Kynan, just the mechanics of the move, it was going to take, because it was oddly enough, it was a guard retention where you kind of turned your back. This is unfamiliar to your territory to me. I don't, how many times do you think you've gotten my back?

• 47:56Speaker 01

  Got in your back?

• 47:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, gotten.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  I can't remember. Once, actually that I can remember.

• 48:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. I'm like very protective of having my back taken. Comes from the old days in MMA, having your back taken was, having your back taken in jujitsu was bad, but having it taken in MMA was horrible. Now those, now that things have evolved and it's actually, if you watch Sean, Sean Strickland, his last fight, he gave up the back no factor. Because, because again, things have evolved. He knows how to defend better. But for my upbringing, we didn't give up the back. And so now I got Kynan telling me, you kind of turn your back. Took me, I didn't even get it, you know? And I was drumming with Noah and Noah was like, oh, I got this. He started doing it pretty quick.

• 48:43Jocko Willink?

  And so that's what you gotta deal with. The discrepancy between each student is a real thing. And so you gotta take that into account. And the context you gotta take into account. And then you gotta provide a little bit of.

• 49:00Jocko Willink?

  Um modulation, like I just said, hey, Echo and Greg, you guys go over there. You guys got this. You guys could start working, but you two over here, let's start with this basic. All I want you to do is, all I want you to do is get the person moving back and forth. That's the game we're gonna play. All I want you to do is just move, get the person moving, but just disrupt their balance. Once you've, because if I'm trying to get you the whole movie, you don't even have to dis, you don't even know how to disrupt their balance. We've got a problem.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:25Jocko Willink?

  It's the same thing we used to do in the SEAL teams. You don't, we would start immediate action drills. Immediate action drills are what you do. They're like coordinated plays like you do on the football field. Someone makes a call and then you execute the play, right? You do that when you get enemy contact. Well, when you start your, when you start doing immediate action drills, what you do is you start them on a big, flat, open range. And the targets are down there and you can all see each other. And there's no terrain to deal with. You just go through the motions. You're going through the mechanics of the move. And if a platoon has worked well, if they did, before they went out to land warfare, if they already went out on the beach

• 50:06Jocko Willink?

  and they did a bunch of walkthroughs and everyone starts getting the mechanics down. By the time they get out to the desert training facility, you, hey, do a, do a center peel. Oh, they're knocking it out. First, they're actually will knock it out on the first try. If you have a platoon that didn't get together and didn't do walkthroughs, they're a soup sandwich, even on the flat range. So, once you get done with the flat range, once you get them up to speed, then you start putting them in terrain. The first terrain will be very obvious. Then the terrain gets a little bit more complicated. And then guess what you do? You start doing it at night. And once you're doing it at night on nods, well, guess what? Now we start using rockets and grenades and you're gonna start escalating things. And by the way, then you start hitting them multiple times. And when they're really good with all that live fire, all that, by the way, it's all live fire.

• 50:52Jocko Willink?

  Then, once they're solid there, live fire, then you can say, okay, now we can go force on force, which means you're gonna go against real people that are shooting fake bullets at each other, right? It's ammunition. So, that's what we as leaders have to do as instructors. We have to figure out all these things and we have to apply them correctly.

• 51:13Jocko Willink?

  And that is can be challenging, but it's also the way you can make the most progress with everyone that is trying to learn. All right, next, all course proponents can start now by taking the following three steps. So this is going back to this army manual, it's trying to tell people, to help people change their learning method or their teaching methodology. Convert most classroom experiences into collaborative problem solving events led by facilitators, vice instructors, who engage learners to think and understand the relevance and context of what they learn. So it's much better. You know, if you, if you, if your kid, you want to teach your kid the times tables, if

• 51:58Jocko Willink?

  you, you have to make it a flashcard and you can't see the answer when you say two times four. If they see that it's eight, it doesn't help them at all. They have to come up with that solution themselves. And that's what I like about this, like you, you have to get the people to think. You can guide them and if they miss it, you can tell them, but then you got to flip it back over and try it again. Tailor, tailor learning to the individual learner's experience and competence level based on the results is what we just talked about. Dramatically reduce or eliminate instructor led slide presentation lectures and begin using a blended learning approach that incorporates virtual and constructive simulations, gaming technology, or other technology delivered instruction. So you can't just read through them, you can't just show them, you have to, you have to

• 52:43Jocko Willink?

  interact. And this is funny because when we used to teach close quarters combat, you'd have different instructors. So you got two, you got, let's say we got a, a troop, a task unit and they got two different platoons. And so you take two different platoons and they're going with two different instructor groups. And for a while, we would just be like, okay, you're go this guy all day, you go this guy all day. Well, one of those instructors really like to talk a lot. And so he's going through all these details. The other instructor like talked, kind of gave the fundamental concepts and then started, all right, start doing it, start doing it, start doing it. 10 times out of 10.

• 53:24Jocko Willink?

  The talking instructor made less progress than the guy that talked probably one-third as much.

• 53:33Speaker 01

  That makes sense.

• 53:34Jocko Willink?

  And then one-third, you still, you, like I said, I'm not going to say, hey, here's a ball, put it in the basket. No, I'm going to say, hey, here's how you should position your foot, here's what your elbow should do, here's where your hand placement on the ball. That's all good stuff. Now, if I start telling you about the physics of the ball and the physiological alignment of your elbow and stuff like that, doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. So when you start talking about room clearance, you start getting into these things that are beyond the necessary knowledge for the shooter, you're, you're kind of wasting their time. So let them start to do. Shout out to, uh,

• 54:15Jocko Willink?

  Slow, Cal Poly Slow, where my daughter, Coach Rana, went. Their motto is learn by doing. So they do a lot of stuff there. They do. And that's definitely a great way to learn. Next section, full spectrum operations. Counterinsurgency and stability operations dominate the current fight. Again, this is written 2015. However, forces must be prepared to execute full spectrum operations. And this means you got to be ready for anything. And this means you have to train in different environments for things that are less likely. And putting in a little bit of time on things that are less likely, instead of waiting

• 54:58Jocko Willink?

  for you to get punched in the face with that problem, is, is the way to do this. And also means you got to look at different variables that you train in. Different environments, different tools. Uh, gi, no gi in jiu-jitsu. Gloves. Like, hey, you know what you should do in jiu-jitsu sometimes? Put on gloves. Once a week, someone puts on the gloves and is punching you in the head as you're working your guard. It's a real thing. Striking for takedowns. Somebody puts on big 16-ounce boxing gloves or 18-ounce boxing gloves, and they try and punch you as you're trying to hit a, hit a takedown. Just, and then with what else you're doing, you know? You're doing pistol work. What about nighttime?

• 55:43Jocko Willink?

  What about low light? What about mid-light? What about backlight?

• 55:48Jocko Willink?

  You gotta, what about with noise happening? What about when it's cold outside and you're wearing gloves?

• 55:55Jocko Willink?

  Little things are gonna be different. So you gotta be prepared for those things. Next, soldiers and leaders must learn to rapidly transition between offensive, offensive, defensive and and stability operations or civil support operations while understanding that many military fundamentals remain the same in any type of operation. Preparation for future operations must include complexity, uncertainty, continuous transition between operations, protracted time, information complexity and adaptive enemies that are anticipated in future conflict. You, what this means is you have to be ready for uncertainty. And you get, let me tell you what, you get better at dealing with uncertainty by dealing with uncertainty. Believe it or not, it's a skill and it's a skill that you can improve over time.

• 56:39Jocko Willink?

  We used to throw the most random shit at platoons, random. Want to hear the most random thing?

• 56:48Jocko Willink?

  So my guys would be setting up targets, you know, for a big hit to go down, big target assault to go down. But I generally wouldn't go out and see like the details that they were doing. I would be with the platoon as the platoon's planning to go to the head, I'd be sitting and listen to the brief and listen to their platoon interactions, see what kind of frictions and fault lines there were. But the boys are out in the field, the trade at boys are out in the field, they're setting up the targets. Putting in the pyro and all the special effects and all the craziness can go down. So anyways, the guys are out there setting up target and we're always trying to surprise the guys, give them something they didn't know what to deal with. Or how to deal with something. So we're, I'm standing there in like a hallway, watching the platoon clear.

• 57:29Jocko Willink?

  And all of a sudden, like a couple of guys open a door and they kind of enter a room and I can see that like the, the reaction is like, kind of confused and shit. And then there's like, I hear like weird noises coming out, like commands, like normally go, get down, get down or whatever. And I hear like, hey, uh, what's it, uh, you know, just weird stuff. And I see like someone else kind of stumbling back out of the room. It just was bad.

• 57:55Jocko Willink?

  And so I kind of go down there and I kind of peeked what's going on there and they had, they had, my trade out guys had dressed two dudes up like clowns and they were having a pie eating contest. That's funny, right? It's funny, dude, those guys, it tripped guys up.

• 58:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:13Jocko Willink?

  It tripped them up. They're like, what are we, what are you supposed to do? Is that a weapon? The guy's holding a pie, getting ready to hit someone else in the face with a pie. Is that, do we shoot him?

• 58:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 58:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 58:22Jocko Willink?

  Well, at least that's what the guys were thinking. I don't, what am I doing? Are they gonna throw the pie at me? Is that now a weapon?

• 58:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:27Jocko Willink?

  Is the pie a bomb? So, doing that kind of thing is a good way to give people things that they're not expecting at all. Giving someone something that is so uncertain, they have to deal with it, will help them in dealing with, because it'll help them learn to detach, it'll help them learn to assess quickly, it'll help them move through the decision-making process quickly. But you have to deal with uncertainty and learn, in order to learn how to deal with uncertainty.

• 58:54Jocko Willink?

  Uh, did you notice at CJI 2, one of the rules implemented was you,

• 59:03Jocko Willink?

  you, they just, you didn't know who was getting sent out on the mat from the two teams. Remember that? So, when someone got beat or when the round started, because it was, it was team jujitsu, which didn't work out well.

• 59:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:18Jocko Willink?

  But, you didn't know, each team didn't know who the other guy was sending out, remember that?

• 59:23Speaker 01

  Yep, I remember.

• 59:24Jocko Willink?

  So, you might be getting ready to go against that 170-pound fast guy, but all of a sudden the 280-pound, slow, big smasher comes out, you gotta be ready to deal with it.

• 59:35Speaker 01

  There was some.

• 59:35Jocko Willink?

  There's an interesting aspect, it wasn't, I don't, even though I'm using that as an example, it's not a good example for a tournament.

• 59:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. A good example of this, that, the unexpected weirdness that can happen, even though it's rare, is, okay, you have to have seen this clip, and I didn't know who this person was until later on, I found out it was Andrus Brunovskis. Um, okay, so he was in a tournament and... How he start, you know, some guys they'll pull guard or they whether this guy freaking starts upside down. Did you see that?

• 1:00:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  Did you know that was on just?

• 1:00:08Jocko Willink?

  Yes, I did.

• 1:00:09Speaker 01

  I I didn't know till later, but yeah, he's upside down.

• 1:00:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  Like on his.

• 1:00:14Jocko Willink?

  He's inverted. Inverted guard pole followed by moving like towards the person in the inverted.

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  He was very unusual, we'll say.

• 1:00:24Jocko Willink?

  And he won, by the way.

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly right.

• 1:00:27Jocko Willink?

  By the way, the master of all unexpected shit is Jeff Glover.

• 1:00:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:31Jocko Willink?

  Well, hands down.

• 1:00:32Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, the, you know, him, the thing he invented donkey guard or whatever. No one starts like that. So it's like, bruh, through all my training, I've never had to deal with this right here, you know? Um, so yeah, it makes sense. Just the idea of this is unusual. This is unfamiliar to me. Just that idea is just one big obstacle in and of itself.

• 1:00:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  So if you deal with like unpredictable stuff, you can kind of mentally navigate your way through that obstacle that that that would be there.

• 1:00:58Jocko Willink?

  For sure. And the other example that is the way John Donahue explained when they started using leg locks against people that had weren't familiar.

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:09Jocko Willink?

  And as Dean Lister said, you know, when they started calling the position that we called cockerel, which is called the 50 50. You know, Dean would say Dean's Dean was hear someone say 50 50 and he's like 90 10. Cause Dean spent so much time there. If you know what's, if you don't know what's going on there, bro, you're screwed.

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:26Jocko Willink?

  You're screwed. So, yes, do getting put into unfamiliar situations will make you better at dealing with unfamiliar situations. Also, if you can do something that's completely unfamiliar to someone, it's going to confuse them at least momentarily.

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:01:42Jocko Willink?

  So keep that in mind. Back to the doc. The learning model must provide opportunities to experience a full spectrum challenges through a balanced mix of live, virtual, constructive and gaming environments. And again, this is like static drill, resistance, game, constrained game.

• 1:02:03Jocko Willink?

  Less constrained games and then live unconstrained live training. That's what we gotta do and we gotta mix those things up appropriately, depending on what it is you're trying to teach, how you're trying to teach it, what the context and knowledge that the individual has is. Got to put all those things into play. That's what we have to do. Adaptability. Leaders at all levels must have opportunities to develop operational adaptability through critical thinking, willingness to accept prudent risk, and the ability to make rapid adjustments based on a continuous assessment of the situation. They must be comfortable with ambiguity and quickly adapt to the dynamics of volume evolving operations over short and extended durations.

• 1:02:47Jocko Willink?

  You, you have to learn to adapt and the way that you learn to adapt is by adapting. And it's the same thing we just talked about. It's like uncertainty, you get better at dealing with uncertainty by going through uncertainty. And what do you do? You learn how to adapt. And the way that you train this is by different situations, different tools, different scenarios, different people.

• 1:03:14Jocko Willink?

  That's what we have to do. We have to try different things and continue to make people adapt. When you force people to adapt, they get better at adapting.

• 1:03:27Jocko Willink?

  Leaders must be adept at framing complex, ill-defined problems through design and make effective decisions with less than perfect information. The learning model must develop adaptability at all levels through a foundation of operational competencies and then increase the type of intensity, the type and intensity of stressors and ambiguity.

• 1:03:49Jocko Willink?

  So, that's what we need to do. We need to get people good at reframing complex things. So here's a couple of notes on this. Talking through potential contingencies. Like, hey, if this happens, what would you do? Talk through them. That is a, that is a step that you now don't have to, you know, discuss options. If we just say, hey, if this happens, hey, if our competitor does this, here's the two things we're going to do immediately. Just, just that right there. You took, and it might take you an hour or two hours or three hours to come up with, hey, here's our immediate response to this. It might take you three hours to come up with that. But now when it happens, boom, you just save yourself three hours of response time.

• 1:04:35Jocko Willink?

  So you talk about it, you discuss the various options and then run some scenarios, like actually run through it. And if we actually run through it, when you add in a new scenario and you don't have time to talk, you don't have time to discuss, you will be better at problem solving. So you learn problem solving and you become more proficient at problem solving over time and the more you have to problem solve. And part of that is what we, what you mentioned earlier, just the context of it. You know, you have a cop that's been to a thousand crime scenes. He's going, and it looks a little bit different. He's still going to adapt faster and say, hold on

• 1:05:18Jocko Willink?

  a second. Wait, don't go in that other room. I see this sign and that thing. Just hold what you got. Like he's going to be able to adapt faster than someone's like, well, the protocol that I just learned in the academy was this. Like, so you get better at it. But you have to, you have to put people in problem solving situations so they get better at problem solving. Next, master fundamentals. Currently, the army has extensive combat experience that provides an in-depth understanding of the fundamentals that contributed to mission success in counter insurgency operations. Mastering and sustaining core fundamental competencies better support operational adaptability than attempting to prepare for every possibility.

• 1:05:58Jocko Willink?

  So we were not going to be able to prepare for every possibility. But first of all, our standard operating procedures can and should cover most contingencies. There's a lot of contingencies you have in combat that you don't need to prepare for because you already have standard operating procedures to prepare for it. Like if we are approaching the target and we start taking fire, everybody knows what's going to happen. This is takes no, it's a standard operating procedure. If we have already guys entered the first floor and we take contact from the building, we have a standard operating procedure. Like we have things in place in immediate action drills. Like if you patrol them through the desert and you take contact, we, everybody knows the immediate action drill that we're going to do. When you have a company,

• 1:06:43Jocko Willink?

  when you have a business, there should be protocols you have in place. If this happens, here's where our immediate response doesn't take any thought, doesn't take any leadership. This is what we're doing.

• 1:06:57Jocko Willink?

  The, the, the standard operating procedures, the better you have them wired, they give you a line to deviate from. Now, if I gave you a book of eight football plays, how many football plays did you think you had in your book that you had to know?

• 1:07:16Speaker 01

  In any given year, um, well, you know, from 10 to 20, maybe something like that.

• 1:07:24Jocko Willink?

  10 to 20 and you have to memorize those.

• 1:07:28Jocko Willink?

  So how much do you think, do you think is a lot more in the NFL?

• 1:07:32Speaker 01

  Hmm. Yeah. Good question. No, I don't think so. I, I think because it's, and then even then that's hard to even say because a lot of the plays are like, so simple and there's just like this much difference between one play to the next, you know, so.

• 1:07:46Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  It's, it's easier to memorize, but yeah, I'm, I'm sure there's more dynamics in the NFL.

• 1:07:52Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  You know how they, they call audibles probably more and they do, you know, they, there's probably more. Yeah.

• 1:07:57Jocko Willink?

  The, but they didn't have you memorize 250 radically different plays.

• 1:08:04Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:08:04Jocko Willink?

  Right. And the same thing in the SEAL teams, like you're not going to memorize, you don't have, you don't have 342 standard operating procedures. You're not trying to prepare for every contingency. You, you can't do that. And that's what they're saying here. But what we do know is that you have to train. And if you know the fundamentals well, you'll be able to adapt the fundamentals because the fundamentals exist for a reason.

• 1:08:31Jocko Willink?

  You know, it gives you the opportunity to be flexible because you already have a standard operating procedure, not just rote memory or fundamentals of Jimmy Page, right? He played, he's a studio musician that just had to play what they told him to play. He, his fundamentals were, were incredible. So that way, when it came time to make a rock and roll music, he could, he could get after it. He could do things that no one was doing.

• 1:08:59Jocko Willink?

  Next, the fundamental competencies must be clearly identified to support executing future full-spectrum operations and must and time must be allotted to attain proficiency through repetition and time on task. So just make sure that your fundamentals connect to everything that you're doing. If you're learning fundamentals, you know, if you're playing football and you're learning how to do a tennis serve, it's not going to help you. It's not going to help you. So you've got to have those SOPs that make sense. Next, nearly a decade of conflict has shown the army that it is extraordinarily difficult to prepare soldiers for every battlefield contingency. Instead, soldiers and leaders

• 1:09:43Jocko Willink?

  must master a set of critical core competencies that provide a foundation for operational ability. And this is, this is how we need to train. And by the way, this is like in, you know, let's go, let's go jujitsu street fight. By the time you're learning a go-go plata, the chances that you have to use a go-go plata in the street are, are very, very, very, very small. Very, very small. If you're, if you're at the point where you know how to do a go-go plata, you, your fundamental already handled the problem. Your fundamentals

• 1:10:23Jocko Willink?

  of jujitsu already handled the problem. So if you never learned the fundamentals and you only learned a go-go plata, there's a chance you get your ass beat in the street because there's a whole bunch of things that that other person can do to stop you. So you need to train the fundamentals. And if your fundamentals are good, this is like, this is why we see sometimes, you know, the fundamental jujitsu guy, Hadra Gracie, just take the back or ta, you know, get them out and do just a, a gi cross choke, you know, like he's doing things that you literally learned as a white belt, but he's a master.

• 1:11:05Jocko Willink?

  Hicks and Gracie, you'd see him in the, in the old days. It's like, oh, what's he going to do? Take the person down, get their back and apply a rear naked choke. You can learn those, all those moves in one month of jujitsu. Now you, but you might not be proficient at that. And there's a big difference there. But if you learn these fundamentals, and by the way, there's also times where the someone tries fancy moves that aren't fundamentally sound and they're not functional. But you can do fancy moves that are based and rooted in fundamentals and that's fantastic all day.

• 1:11:45Jocko Willink?

  So it is important that your fundamentals are strong.

• 1:11:51Speaker 01

  There's this movie called The Program back in the day.

• 1:11:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's when the dude's like got a skull face and stuff.

• 1:11:58Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, football, college football.

• 1:12:00Jocko Willink?

  That's Ogre, right? From Revenge of the Nerds?

• 1:12:03Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, that's a different dude.

• 1:12:06Jocko Willink?

  Is it different dude?

• 1:12:06Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, those are actually, I want to say a whole generation apart. Ogre from, that's the guy from Bloodsport. What it was, he just died recently, actually.

• 1:12:14Jocko Willink?

  Bummer.

• 1:12:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, Jack, Ray Jackson, right from Bloodsport. That's what that is. Anyway, no, no, the guy from The Program is the same guy. He's on like that movie called Higher Learning.

• 1:12:26Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:12:27Speaker 01

  Big buff dude. Anyway, college football movie, right? But this new up and coming rookie goes to, you know, it was Florida State, but they called it ESU. But anyway, uh, one day in practice, one of the early days in practice, he fumbles the ball, right? Just fumbles it, loses the ball when he's carrying. So the coach, what the coach does, because holding on to the ball, that is as fundamental as fundamental can get. You're a freaking nine year old kid playing football, like you gotta hold on to the ball, right? Can't just drop it. So he made him carry that ball with him to class everywhere. So, and he said, if anyone, the coach goes, if anyone brings this ball to me other than you, you're, I forget what the punishment was or whatever, some big punishment, but that's it.

• 1:13:10Speaker 01

  He had to train his fundamentals to hold on to the ball 24 hours a day. See what I'm saying? That's how important it was. Made sense to me. That coach was wise too, by the way.

• 1:13:19Jocko Willink?

  What was the crux of the movie? Like what was the, did they win the championship or something?

• 1:13:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, basically that.

• 1:13:26Jocko Willink?

  Spoiler alert.

• 1:13:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, no, not to swear.

• 1:13:29Jocko Willink?

  Check. Uh, next, advances in learning science, cognitive psychology, educational psychology, neuroscience and other related fields provide new insights into improved learning strategies and applications of technology to learning. Yet years of research show that there's no single learning strategy that provides the most effective solution to every learning problem. That's why when people get.

• 1:13:52Jocko Willink?

  Totally bought into like one system and you gotta watch out. Cause it's, there's, there's just years of research, so there's no single learning strategy. And, and when you talk about all the variables that I just talked about, who that person is, what the context is, how long they, what type of learner they are, how long they've been training for. Like, there's so much to think. If you think, no, no, we're just gonna use this methodology. It's not a good, not a good plan. Teaching requires an open mind and teachers and instructors have to continually monitor and adjust what they're teaching and how they're teaching it and what they're doing and how they're doing it. Everybody's gonna be a little bit different. And this doesn't mean you have to teach nine different classes, cause there's nine different people in the class.

• 1:14:33Jocko Willink?

  You know, but it does mean you gotta pay attention, cause there's, generally speaking, bell curve. You got knucklehead over here, he's gonna have to, you're gonna have to explain it to, he's gonna have to go a little bit slower.

• 1:14:45Jocko Willink?

  Genius over here, get right into it. Everyone else gonna be all, you got, you're gonna have your, you got one, you got seven people that are kinda like, okay, there's gonna be a general sort of modality you can use.

• 1:14:58Jocko Willink?

  But you still gotta pay attention. And by the way, again, that's with this move, that's with this guitar chord. But tomorrow I might teach a guitar chord that these guys have never seen before. None of them, no context to it. It's gonna take, or it's very tricky with the fingers. Gotta pay attention to that one.

• 1:15:17Jocko Willink?

  Next, adult learning is promoted when the learner's prior knowledge is activated prior to learning new knowledge. Yep, there you go. You're gonna, you're gonna teach something, let's have them play the chord that's close to it a bunch of times, so we're bringing it out.

• 1:15:33Jocko Willink?

  Let's have them shoot the pistol or shoot the rifle, the way that we have, that they, the way that they know how to shoot it, before you give them this advanced technique.

• 1:15:43Jocko Willink?

  The learner observes demonstration, the learner applies new knowledge, demonstration, application are based on real world problems, the learner integrates new knowledge into everyday practices.

• 1:15:54Jocko Willink?

  You gotta, you gotta, gotta finish with that real world thing. Gotta finish rolling.

• 1:16:01Jocko Willink?

  Soldiers must acquire the habits of lifelong learners. Soldiers must become expert, self motivated learners who are capable of asking good questions and possess digital literacy skills that enable them to find, evaluate, and employ online knowledge, whether in learning or operational environments. This is pretty focused on the Army. But the fact that we need to have people with the mindset of being a lifelong learner, that's going to pay off in spades inside of our organization. If we've got people on the front lines that do a certain task and they are continually trying to learn how to do that task better and what technology they can use and how they can make it more efficient, that's what we need.

• 1:16:45Jocko Willink?

  If we have a person that's not a lifelong learner and they're just doing what we told them to do, or the way it's always been done, we're not making progress. Army Training, Education, and Experience Domains require a holistic integration and clearly defined paths to achieve outcomes at each stage of a soldier's career. The Army's learning model can facilitate a lifelong learning culture by encouraging critical thinking, complex problem solving, and providing tools that allow soldiers to access relevant performance related information. And by the way, that's what we have to force ourselves to do. We have to, force might be a strong word, but we have to pay attention to it.

• 1:17:26Jocko Willink?

  We have to be forced, as instructors, we have to force people to do things that they wouldn't normally do. So like me working on triangles in jujitsu or dart strokes, moves that I just don't do, but I need to do them. Finger picking on guitar, I suck at it, but should I do it? Yes, absolutely. This is why we have people do offhand shooting and mag changes. People don't want to do that. They're not like, hell yeah, let's do some offhand. Most people aren't. They want to hear that, that, that steel plate go ping, and they want to hear that thing go beeping. They want to hear, they want to get it.

• 1:18:09Jocko Willink?

  As a leader, forcing yourself to either be quiet, if you have a tendency to talk too much, or forcing yourself to speak because you're usually too quiet.

• 1:18:21Jocko Willink?

  You gotta force yourself using words you don't normally use. You want to prove your vocabulary, you can't just look at the vocab. You gotta force yourself to integrate these new words to expand your vocabulary.

• 1:18:36Jocko Willink?

  And then finally, it says, well, the last thing I want to cover from this document. The continuous adaptive learning model is not static, but is responsive to operational changes and evolving trends and learning technologies and methods.

• 1:18:51Jocko Willink?

  It's important to frame the things that you're doing in life as training. Kind of everything is training.

• 1:19:00Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 1:19:01Jocko Willink?

  And there's a whole philosophy like, uh, like the Russian weightlifting thing. It was all, it was like all practice and everything is practice.

• 1:19:13Jocko Willink?

  That being said, you, you have to be intentional in what you're doing as well. Which to me intentional, the yoga foo foo word. What it means to me is plan, execute, debrief. That's what intentional is. We're going to have a plan, we're going to execute the plan and we're going to debrief. Even real time, as you train, you should be doing that. What do I need to adjust as an instructor right now? Is this too little? Is this too much? Are they overtrained? Are we at the point of diminishing returns, which you can get to from time to time?

• 1:19:45Jocko Willink?

  But you have to be paying attention to that.

• 1:19:48Jocko Willink?

  You have to be intentional. What's my plan for today? Now, can you say, hey, plan for today is we're going to do six hard rounds? And you get out there, you see everyone lagging and by round three, you see people like, they're overtrained. Can you make an adjustment? Absolutely. Did you reach a point of diminishing returns? Perhaps.

• 1:20:07Jocko Willink?

  That's what we have to do. To both be lifelong learners ourselves and be able to teach.

• 1:20:17Jocko Willink?

  So that other, so that other people can learn. Life.

• 1:20:23Jocko Willink?

  Is training.

• 1:20:25Jocko Willink?

  So go get after it. And with that, speaking of getting after it, we are shooting, running, lifting, boxing, surfing, playing guitar. How's it, how's the ukulele coming?

• 1:20:41Jocko Willink?

  How, how many hours a day do you practice?

• 1:20:43Speaker 01

  Zero. I've been off it for a while.

• 1:20:46Jocko Willink?

  I taught you two chords.

• 1:20:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:48Jocko Willink?

  And you were pretty good at them.

• 1:20:49Speaker 01

  I, yeah, you know.

• 1:20:52Speaker 01

  I got into digital music making too, by the way.

• 1:20:54Jocko Willink?

  I know, we're, we're tracking.

• 1:20:56Speaker 01

  But I'm kind of off that.

• 1:20:57Jocko Willink?

  How come?

• 1:20:58Speaker 01

  I'm not off it, but.

• 1:20:59Jocko Willink?

  Do you need more riffs from me?

• 1:20:59Speaker 01

  I haven't. Yeah, I do need more from you, actually. I've been, it's been like two weeks since I've done it. But, yes, I'm always into something though. Actually, you know what I'm into right now?

• 1:21:09Jocko Willink?

  Learning.

• 1:21:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's learning what I picked up and I'm actually, it only took like two days. Uh, solving a Rubik's Cube.

• 1:21:18Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:21:18Speaker 01

  Have you ever solved a Rubik's Cube before? Yeah, there's like a, there's like a technique to it. Actually, more than one, there's a bunch of techniques to it.

• 1:21:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's like, uh, what are they, it's an algorithm or it's a, what is it called? Like to get that piece back, there's a certain protocol that you have to, and you just memorize these various protocols.

• 1:21:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, yeah, yeah, basically, yeah. Um, there is the first method is, I think it's, it's called layer by layer. So you go, it's like, you know, yeah. And so there's like a little method to move any one piece or two, you know, whatever.

• 1:21:48Jocko Willink?

  And you memorize a, a, a protocol.

• 1:21:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, per step.

• 1:21:53Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:21:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:21:53Jocko Willink?

  But, but, but, but, because I remember seeing when I was a kid, because I was around with those things, I think when they, when they were invented.

• 1:22:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:00Jocko Willink?

  And when people would get into the, solving them. You know, of course I learned how to like turn it quarter way and then break the piece off and disassemble the whole thing and put it back together.

• 1:22:13Speaker 01

  A little bit different.

• 1:22:14Jocko Willink?

  I learned how to just manhandle that, that thing and overcome. So how long has it taken you to solve the Rubik's Cube?

• 1:22:19Speaker 01

  My best time, layer by layer, which is not the speed way to do it. Layer by layer is a minute fifty nine.

• 1:22:26Jocko Willink?

  And do you, have you got your kids into it as well?

• 1:22:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:28Jocko Willink?

  Are they beating you?

• 1:22:29Speaker 01

  My son, no, no, no. It's.

• 1:22:31Jocko Willink?

  Okay, bro. The kid's nine over here. Jesus. Sorry, sorry.

• 1:22:38Speaker 01

  Why you over here having them beat me all of a sudden? Bro, it's my freaking jam right now. Bro, leave me alone. Nah, it's, it's, you gotta for real commit to it. It's not like you're gonna learn it in one day and then, okay, you know how now, you know?

• 1:22:51Jocko Willink?

  But you said two days.

• 1:22:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz I nerded out on it. Like, basically, to the point where within that two days, my wife was already mad at me because I had, I have like four Rubik's cubes now. There's like one in every room, you know, kind of a thing. So like, if I'm not doing anything, or if I'm quote-unquote done with the things I have to do, I'm like on it, you know? So she's like, is this gonna be your thing now, you know? Like chess was for that flurry. But, so I nerded out on it, so that's why I picked it up, whatever. But, um, yeah, my son, he knows how to do like the first two layers, you know? But it starts to get progressively a little bit more complex.

• 1:23:26Jocko Willink?

  There's more moves that you have to make.

• 1:23:27Speaker 01

  Exactly, right. So you get to a certain stage, it's like, okay, you gotta do this and then, and it's based on like the configuration. So you gotta react to it, you know? So it's not like, oh, you just do it and it does it. It's not that. You gotta do, do the right thing and it gets a little bit more complex.

• 1:23:43Jocko Willink?

  I remember seeing like a, basically some kind of instructional, and it would just have like arrows, like down, down, down, right, right, left, up, across or whatever.

• 1:23:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:57Jocko Willink?

  And is that still a thing?

• 1:23:59Speaker 01

  I've seen those before and there's way more to it than that. A lot of times those, especially if it's on like Instagram or something, that's like if you had, take a solved Rubik's cube and you want it to look like a American flag or something, you know, like little tricks you can do. But to solve it, no, cuz it, it, those moves are gonna kind of depend on what you're presented with, you know?

• 1:24:21Jocko Willink?

  But there is a move. There is moves.

• 1:24:24Speaker 01

  Yep, yep, yep. Yeah, for example, yeah, it'll be like-

• 1:24:27Jocko Willink?

  That you kind of memorize.

• 1:24:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, so like clockwise, clockwise, counterclockwise, and you, but at the same time, it's right top, right, you know, like, yeah, yeah, there's that. But then when you do it, when you finish it, you have to evaluate what you're presented with.

• 1:24:39Jocko Willink?

  And then you do another series of moves.

• 1:24:41Speaker 01

  Another series of moves, or move on to the next one. See what I'm saying? It just depends on what, what you get, and it all depends on where it started. Yeah, it's a thing, but it gets good fun. Nonetheless, yes.

• 1:24:52Jocko Willink?

  It's good learning.

• 1:24:53Speaker 01

  It, it is, yeah. It makes your, um, you know, it's weird, like, I think as you get older, I'm more in touch with this, where- You know, like this idea of warming up, right? Let's say before you lift like heavy, you go through a warm up process. You can't just jump under the bar, start lifting heavy, right? Cause your body's like, oh, I don't think your body can even produce the force yet. See what I'm saying? You gotta activate the whole system.

• 1:25:15Speaker 01

  But doing that Rubik's Cube and sometimes even chess or whatever, it'll activate your brain. So you'll feel like way more like loose and like sharp during the day.

• 1:25:26Jocko Willink?

  For this kind of activity, you need fuel.

• 1:25:29Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 1:25:29Jocko Willink?

  And I recommend Jocko Field, but I'm not the only one. There's a dude that does reviews. And he, he's actually a San Diego dude and he did a review of brain power. And he did like a memorization, uh, memorization tasks. And measured his effectiveness and it was much more effective on brain power.

• 1:25:54Speaker 01

  Straight up.

• 1:25:55Jocko Willink?

  Straight up.

• 1:25:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:56Jocko Willink?

  And he, you know, it was, it was cool because he did it and then he like took brain power. And then he's like, oh yeah, he's like, I feel, you know, cause you do feel brain power. You start feeling all sharp. You start, you start seeing like numbers and you start understanding things more clearly.

• 1:26:12Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:26:12Jocko Willink?

  And so then he just rolls out and does his memorization task and wins like beats his time by, by a lot.

• 1:26:17Speaker 01

  Straight up.

• 1:26:18Jocko Willink?

  And so that's pretty, pretty dope. Brain power. I take brain power and I have to speak. And especially when doing Q and A, cause boy, you get sharp.

• 1:26:30Jocko Willink?

  So check out jockofield.com. If you have a Rubik's Cube to solve.

• 1:26:34Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:26:35Jocko Willink?

  If you have a memorization game to play, if you have a meeting that you gotta present in. Get, get yourself some brain power. Keep it in, keep it like I have some in my bag at all times, at all times. Didn't get much sleep, brain power. Feeling a little groggy, brain power. Need to perform, brain power. You'll feel it. Jacofield.com also we have protein. We have energy. I'm on my second go of the day. One before jujitsu, one before this podcast. Is that illegal? You know what I'm saying? Is that illegal? Technically it's not. Now, am I getting an advantage? Yes, I am. Yes, I am. Such a and also a muscle drive.

• 1:27:20Jocko Willink?

  Are you in the muscle drive activity? Good. I'll tell you what, for some reason muscle drive. It's got the amino acids in it and for some reason it makes me feel like a little full. Like your body's getting something that it needs. Do you ever have that with salt? Like sometimes like today, trained real hard. I know you didn't.

• 1:27:42Jocko Willink?

  But hydrate because you're you're missing like the electrolytes and sometimes you just want that. But it's sometimes you want food. But if you have the muscle drive, that's kind of one of the reasons we made it was for fasting slash cutting weight. So for cutting weight, you know, get yourself some muscle drive.

• 1:28:06Speaker 01

  Need to cut some weight.

• 1:28:08Jocko Willink?

  Do you?

• 1:28:09Speaker 01

  I feel like it.

• 1:28:10Jocko Willink?

  Jack, I thought you looked really actually kind of thin.

• 1:28:16Jocko Willink?

  Jack, Jacofield.com protein, everything that you need. Also, originusa.com. We're training jujitsu, at least some of us are.

• 1:28:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. Some of us.

• 1:28:28Jocko Willink?

  How come you didn't train today?

• 1:28:29Speaker 01

  Today I was caught up, you know, I got a lot of stuff I gotta do. Well, you know, of course.

• 1:28:34Jocko Willink?

  Is your foot still hurt or whatever that was?

• 1:28:36Speaker 01

  My foot is not sore, is hurting more. No, and my knee is better too. So, yeah, yeah.

• 1:28:41Jocko Willink?

  I had the strangest calf oddity. Like I've ne- I don't think I've ever hurt a calf before.

• 1:28:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, it seems kind of.

• 1:28:50Jocko Willink?

  It's a weird thing. And I'm not talking like, oh, I got I got foot locked and someone cranked and I hurt my calf. Like Dean Lister just getting you on an outside foot lock, just leaning into it. And you're like, yeah, I have a basically a bruise on my calf. And I'm not talking about getting calf kicked, which is another just way to get, this is a random, no, no combat engagement. And I had this like my just felt tight. And then believe it or not, I was I was lifting, doing some deadlifts and all of a sudden it just.

• 1:29:20Jocko Willink?

  And my point in telling you this is I was like, eh, maybe I shouldn't train today. But you know what? To maintain the discipline, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do what I can.

• 1:29:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:29Jocko Willink?

  And guess what I ended up doing? All of it.

• 1:29:31Speaker 01

  All of it.

• 1:29:32Jocko Willink?

  Got so.

• 1:29:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:29:33Jocko Willink?

  Was able to just compensate a little bit, no factor.

• 1:29:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:29:35Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're doing. So we're training jujitsu. We should be. By the way, jujitsu is fascinating. It's fascinating. But you need a gi when you train jujitsu. Origin USA makes communist free gees, communist free rash guards, 100% made in America. But we're not doing jujitsu all the time. That's why we make jeans, we make pants, we make shorts, we make everything that you need to wear on your body. OriginUSA.com, 100% American made, from American made materials. That's what we're doing.

• 1:30:07Speaker 01

  The boots, um, that, that, you know, the Chelsea boots or whatever.

• 1:30:12Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:30:12Speaker 01

  Are those, are those all in freaking stock or where, I mean?

• 1:30:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:17Speaker 01

  You know, those out?

• 1:30:18Jocko Willink?

  Yes, and we have a very fast production line. So yeah, they're out, they're in stock. And if they're not, if whatever particular size you didn't, you need, happens to not be in stock, it'll get made like in that day or two days.

• 1:30:33Speaker 01

  No, yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:34Jocko Willink?

  And it'll be to you stat.

• 1:30:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:36Jocko Willink?

  As they say, 100% American. You will be more patriotic when you put your boots on.

• 1:30:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:42Jocko Willink?

  You'll be a little bit prouder to be an American.

• 1:30:44Speaker 01

  Factually.

• 1:30:45Jocko Willink?

  So OriginUSA.com. Let's defeat slavery, tyranny, and communism. One pair of blue jeans at a time.

• 1:30:57Speaker 01

  Brother, I was just gonna say one pair of pants at a time.

• 1:30:59Jocko Willink?

  Let's go.

• 1:30:59Speaker 01

  Hell, yeah. Uh, also, Choco Store, Discipline Equals Freedom shirts and hats and hoodies on there as well. Summertime coming up. Is summer here?

• 1:31:09Jocko Willink?

  Uh, I heard Theo Von say June 1st.

• 1:31:13Speaker 01

  June 1st.

• 1:31:14Jocko Willink?

  Is summertime.

• 1:31:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what it feels like.

• 1:31:16Jocko Willink?

  Theo's saying it. Gonna say we're probably pretty good to go on that one.

• 1:31:19Speaker 01

  Summertime, hell, yeah.

• 1:31:20Jocko Willink?

  Summertime has hit.

• 1:31:21Speaker 01

  So, yeah, maybe, uh, maybe index on the tank tops or summer.

• 1:31:25Jocko Willink?

  We got tank tops then. Send me a couple of tank tops, will you?

• 1:31:28Speaker 01

  Alright, I got you.

• 1:31:29Jocko Willink?

  Every time I say that and you say, I got you, I never get shit.

• 1:31:31Speaker 01

  Well, let's not say never, but let's say rarely.

• 1:31:35Jocko Willink?

  Very rarely.

• 1:31:36Speaker 01

  From time to time.

• 1:31:37Jocko Willink?

  Can you throw me some, uh, tank tops?

• 1:31:39Speaker 01

  How about this, I promise I'll send you some tank tops.

• 1:31:42Jocko Willink?

  Promise?

• 1:31:42Speaker 01

  Promise over here.

• 1:31:43Jocko Willink?

  Within, do I, am I gonna have to remind you again?

• 1:31:45Speaker 01

  I got you, hundred percent.

• 1:31:47Jocko Willink?

  Hundred percent?

• 1:31:47Speaker 01

  Hundred percent, got you.

• 1:31:48Jocko Willink?

  What's the delivery time?

• 1:31:50Speaker 01

  Uh, anywhere from twelve hours to, well, you're here, so yeah, I don't know, could be twelve hours. I sent out some shorts to Shannon Gugerty.

• 1:31:59Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:32:00Speaker 01

  Because of you, by the way, I guess you like shamed him because he had some old shorts on. And you were like, bro, how old are those shorts or whatever?

• 1:32:07Jocko Willink?

  Dude, I got some old shorts too.

• 1:32:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, hell, well, yeah, I'm with you, brother. The ones I use, you gave me and they're from, yeah, back in the motherfucking day, very durable. Anyway, nonetheless, we got jocko store dot com, that's where you can get these things, but, uh, the, the reason I'm kinda understanding if it's summer right now, so we got, we got fourth of July coming up, kind of, in a way, in a month or so. So we got this year's fourth of July shirt. Being ready, it'll be ready. But if you wanna get the jump on that first, that first run, that first adish and not risk it being sold out when you go on there, you gotta sign up for the email list, boom, put your email in there on the, on the website on the front, the bottom there, don't worry, I won't spam.

• 1:32:51Speaker 01

  But you will get the heads up, so you can get your, get first, first dibs on that one, those ones seem to sell out.

• 1:32:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they do.

• 1:32:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, so anyway, there's a lot of stuff on there. Also, subscription scenario called the Shirt Locker, get a new design every month, it's fun. There, there is this, I called it a mosaic, but, um, like this, this month's one, it's a doll, it's like a famous artist that he, he paints this thing, it's a picture, but when you look at it from far away, it's like, it looks like Abraham Lincoln.

• 1:33:22Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:33:23Speaker 01

  But when you look, it's something else, when you look up close, you know, it's that. But it's something else, not Abe Lincoln, something else. That's this month's one, it's pretty good, came out good.

• 1:33:32Jocko Willink?

  Mystery.

• 1:33:32Speaker 01

  It's a mystery, you gotta go on jocko store dot com, you can click on there, you can see what it is.

• 1:33:35Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 1:33:36Speaker 01

  The sneak peek or whatever, um, but yeah, it's all on jocko store, some good stuff.

• 1:33:40Jocko Willink?

  Right on, right on. Uh, we got some books, Put Your Legs On by Rob Jones. Need to Lead by Dave Burke. We got steaks. Primalbeef dot com, steaks from the Shenandoah Valley.

• 1:33:53Jocko Willink?

  Sean Glass out there making some primal beef at primalbeef.com also ColoradoCraftBeef.com. We got, we got the best steaks and great people. So get in there. Primalbeef.com, ColoradoCraftBeef.com. Echelon Front, we have the muster in San Diego, July 8th through the 10th, 2026. This is our flagship event, by the way. This is a leadership conference where you learn the skills of leadership. Come and check that out if you want. We also have ExtremeOwnership.com where we teach leadership online. So you can check that out as well. Also, if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help

• 1:34:36Jocko Willink?

  their families, you want to help the Gold Star family, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. Check out her charity organization. It's absolutely incredible. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. Also, check out HeroesAndHorses.org and Jimmy May's organization, BeyondTheBrotherhood.org. We got warriors in need. So check that one out. And StrongholdRescue.org. Got a bunch of people out there doing amazing things. So check those out. If you want to connect with us, check out Jaco.com on social media. I'm at Jocko Willink, Echo's at Echo Charles. Just be careful because you don't want to learn things that you weren't intentionally wanting to learn. We have to be careful.

• 1:35:20Jocko Willink?

  That's called brainwashing and your algorithm is doing that to you. So don't let it. Be careful. Thanks to all of our military personnel who are right now, this moment staged around the world. Thank you for continually learning so you can stay ahead of our nation's enemies. Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, as well as all other first responders. Thanks for learning and training and adapting every day to keep us safe at home. And everyone else out there, speaking of learning, let's remember to keep learning.

• 1:36:02Jocko Willink?

  Try new things, try new technology, try new words, try new moves, try new chords on the guitar, or the ukulele, or the Rubik's Cube.

• 1:36:15Jocko Willink?

  Try new tools, and do everything you can to get better every single day. And you do that by going out there and getting after it. That's all we've got for tonight, and until next time, this is Echo and Jocko, out.