557: Stop Waiting for the Perfect Answer. Go.

>Join Jocko Underground Full Episodes< https://app.redcircle.com/shows/64a89f88-a245-4098-8d8d-496325ec4f74/exclusive-content Every decision has consequences—and the small decisions made repeatedly can eventually shape your entire life. Jocko and Echo break down how to make better decisions under uncertainty, when to trust experience and intuition, how to avoid paralysis through analysis, and why effective leaders take action, learn, and adapt. 00:00 — Decisions: The Choices That Shape Your Life 03:33 — How the Marine Corps Teaches Decision-Making 11:50 — Take the Initiative: Keep Them on Their Heels 18:14 — Logic, Intuition, and Emotion 24:57 — Analytical vs. Instinctive Decision-Making 26:28 — Stop Overthinking. Take a Small Action. 34:26 — Detachment: The Decision-Making Superpower 41:34 — The 70% Solution: Stop Waiting for Perfect 46:07 — The OODA Loop: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act 58:46 — Adapt Faster Than the Situation Changes 1:01:23 — Failure, Fear, and Learning Through Action 1:06:13 — Small Decisions, Fast Feedback, Constant Adjustment 1:15:37 — When Being Too Adaptable Becomes a Problem 1:17:59 — Wargaming: Prepare for What Could Go Wrong 1:20:38 — Jocko’s Extreme Ownership Leadership Loop 1:22:29 — Don’t Get Stuck. Make the Decision. Act. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 557 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:06Jocko Willink?

  Decisions, decisions, that's kind of what life is. Life is made up of a bunch of decisions that we make on a personal level, obviously, and we can see where that leads to. Right? Generally speaking, one decision that someone makes does not completely alter the trajectory of their life. Usually it's compounding decisions over time. I know you and I were discussing that a couple of weeks ago. You go into certain areas and you can see that there's been poor decisions made across the board.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  Yes, and vice versa too, by the way.

• 0:34Jocko Willink?

  Meaning in good areas?

• 0:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:35Jocko Willink?

  Yep. So, decisions, right? On a personal level, I mean, on a daily basis, you know, what are you gonna eat? What are you gonna say? What are you not gonna say? Are you gonna speak up in a certain situation? Are you gonna keep your mouth shut? Are you gonna stay in that job? You know, like, there's all kinds of decisions that we're making. The family, you're making decisions in your family as well. Which school should I send my kids to? Should, do we need a new car? Should we buy the two-year-old car that's already depreciated? That's generally the move.

• 1:05Jocko Willink?

  Then you got business. What, how much material do we order? How much stock should we build up? Where should we spend our marketing money? Should I give this individual a raise, right? And then, you know, the battlefield's clearly, it's filled with decisions to, do we attack? Do we retreat? What tactical maneuver do we utilize right now? Do we escalate the situation? Do we de-escalate the situation? So, I was reading through a Marine Corps document that's called Decision Making, and I thought there was some good information for us to be aware of, and I think there's, it's a pretty thorough document. A lot of times, the Marine Corps, quite frankly, knock stuff completely out of the park, grand slam, home run, right? What's it? No notes, as they say in Hollywood.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  No notes.

• 1:45Jocko Willink?

  No notes.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  Oh, right, right. No edits.

• 1:48Jocko Willink?

  No, no, notes. See the, yeah. Edits, notes?

• 1:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm sorry. I was totally just thinking out loud, like, when it's like, no notes, meaning, like, I don't have anything to add, or it's no feedback, and same thing with no edits, like, like.

• 2:00Jocko Willink?

  I think that's an actual Hollywood, the notes thing is like a Hollywood thing. And you know who I think the first person that I ever heard say it was Jamie Cochran?

• 2:09Speaker 01

  Oh, for real?

• 2:10Jocko Willink?

  She was like, oh, do you have any notes? And I was kind of like, like, I think she made a speech or something, and she was like, do you have any notes? And I was kind of thinking, well, did I take, oh, no, I didn't take notes on your speech. But then she meant it in a Hollywood way, because she was a singer and a Hollywood, Hollywood-ish.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, she was part of that.

• 2:28Jocko Willink?

  She was in the realm.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense.

• 2:30Jocko Willink?

  But then, but then I kind of knew it. I don't know if she explained it to me, or I just figured it out from context. But then, when I heard McG, McG would give notes, you know, to various, various people. And, and sometimes you hear the positive, you know, hey, you got any notes? It's kind of a, you got any feedback? It's a little bit softer than, than, you know, hey, do you got any feedback for me? Or like, hey, do you have any critique points for me? Those are, but when you just go, hey, you got any notes? It's sort of like, yeah, here's a little note.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:59Jocko Willink?

  As opposed to like, we're about, about to rip you apart right now.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  Right, right, right.

• 3:03Jocko Willink?

  Which, by the way, notes covers all.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:05Jocko Willink?

  Notes covers, hey, make this small adjustment to like, you're playing the wrong character.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 3:11Jocko Willink?

  So, I normally, with the Marine Corps, don't have notes, and by the way, this, this, the thing that we're going over today is just like a, like a student handout. It's not official piece of documentation that's been through the whole editing process that the Marine Corps normally does, but still, had some good, some good points in it, some good things that made me think. And so I figured, let's help everybody with their decision-making process. So, let's get into it. Decision making. As Marine Corps officers, we, we are primarily decision-makers. Our weapon is the unit we command. We decide on a course of action and then clearly communicate that decision to our unit. Our Marines translate that decision into action. As future leaders,

• 3:56Jocko Willink?

  you will be required to make decisions in combat. You must begin to understand the importance of how you make decisions and the importance of making risk-based decisions in time of competitive environment. And I think it's important, this is coming from the basic school, I think it's, I think it's important to remember that they're kind of giving people the fundamental process, right? Which is, hey, you're a junior officer, you're gonna be out there, you know, making decisions for your team, for your platoon. They're not really emphasizing, hey, decentralized command, you want your fire team leaders to make decisions, you want your squad leaders to make, I'm sure they're gonna get to that, but it's sort of,

• 4:37Jocko Willink?

  you know, you know, the, the old school OPA escape, trap and roll, jujitsu. Fundamentally, for me, I, I never do that escape. I haven't done that escape for 10 years, right? But you, I still teach it because it's something you have to understand to build upon. So, I think this is sort of the basic building block of, hey, there are, because there are times you're gonna have to make decisions. Hopefully, if you've done a good job as a leader, you don't have to make a lot of them because your team is making the decisions. That's the goal. That's decentralized command. But I just wanted to, to point that out because they're talking to junior officers, like, hey, you're gonna be in the field with a platoon, you're the

• 5:19Jocko Willink?

  platoon leader, this is what, you're gonna be making decisions. You know, it's, we decide on a course of action, which is true, you do ultimately decide the course of action. Where are you getting that course of action come from, right? So, just keep that in mind. Warfighting, which is their, their main manual, which is one of the, which is an incredible piece of literature, I'll call it.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 5:43Jocko Willink?

  We covered that a long time ago on the podcast, one of the earlier manuals that we covered because it's so outstanding. Warfighting introduced you to the nature of war, which is inherently violent and chaotic, which we mitigate through clear communication of intent and simple plans. It discussed maneuver warfare, the theory of which is to strike the enemy's critical vulnerability, the decisive time and place with mass fires to bend the enemy to our will. Good verbiage. This lesson, meaning this thing that we're covering, gives you a detailed study of how humans make decisions and how understanding the ways we make decisions will allow you to better employ your Marines. That's the crux of talking about this. If

• 6:24Jocko Willink?

  you understand what you're thinking about while you're making a decision and what components are in play, you're gonna be able to do a better job with it. And you're gonna, that's another reason why I thought it'd be interesting to study this, because like, the, unfortunately for me, but fortunately for you, they give this whole example, and it's all football. For some reason, I guess they, we're going, we're going, we want people to understand what we're talking about, and I guess they're figuring all these Marines played football at some point.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 6:52Jocko Willink?

  So, instead of using some combat example, they just go, go football. So, let's get into it. Here's this, here's the importance of decision-making. Let's say we are a football team. Consider the commander, the quarterback. The week before the game, the team will prepare focusing on the strengths and weaknesses of the opposing team. Because the team has a week to prepare, the preparation process is very deliberate, observing video, past games, and orienting on where they can most effectively defeat the opposing team. They will then decide on the plan to defeat the team and learn and employ that plan through practice sessions during the week. Accurate?

• 7:27Speaker 01

  Accurate, so far, yes.

• 7:30Jocko Willink?

  I was talking to somebody the other day that has, the AI is, is filming them in the sport, and they just get like a full condensed highlight reel where they're done from AI. Yeah, things, things are getting wild. When it comes to, when it comes time to conduct the game, early in the game, our team will observe the opposing team's strategy through the play of the game. With the aid of the coaches, the quarterback will orient on the gaps observed, make decisions before every play, and act on those decisions. And gap, I don't, is gap, gap's kind of a football team, a football term, like, there's a gap in the defense.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  A gap is a actual football thing.

• 8:09Jocko Willink?

  Right. And it's also an actual military thing.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 8:13Jocko Willink?

  And in, in maneuver warfare, they have two things, surfaces and gaps. So, surfaces is like a defended position and gaps is a hole.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 8:24Jocko Willink?

  Probably something similar.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  It's the, actually, the, essentially, they don't have surfaces that I know of, but the gap or a hole interchangeable words, by the way, they even have numbers. When you're talking offense, which that's what they're talking, they're talking offense right now. But yeah, there's holes and gaps or whatever. Actually, in defense, they call them gaps more often than the holes.

• 8:45Jocko Willink?

  I would think, correct me if I'm wrong, a hole is like a bigger, more prominent, more exploitable gap. Like they got a hole in their defense versus they got a gap.

• 8:56Speaker 01

  Right. So that's not what the hole is used for. Maybe if you're saying, oh, their strategy or their team has holes in their game or whatever, that's different. But when you're, when you're a quarterback or you're on the offense, a hole is just the gap between two specific people. So the one hole, it depends on what team and how your offense is formulated. But for example, the one hole can be outside of the, the tight end. And then the two hole will be there, or sometimes it goes the odds on the left or even on the right, however it's formulated. But the holes have numbers. So it depends on the play. So let's say if it's a running play, they'll be like, and I remember a play called power thirty-four. The thirty, the thirty back is the half back. Power means you have a full back, a full back blocking.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  That's the power. And then thirty, so three, thirty, four, thirty, the thirty back, which is the half back goes into the four hole.

• 9:43Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  So power means he has a full back blocking. So basically quarterback gives the ball to the half back behind the full back who leads into that hole and blocks form power thirty-four.

• 9:52Jocko Willink?

  Leads into the hole or into the gap?

• 9:53Speaker 01

  Into the hole. The gap is defense usually depends, you know? But the gap is like, okay, the four, and sometimes they have numbers as well, but it's like, yeah, this guy's going to come in to fill that gap because we expect this running back to come in. So maybe you'll take out the blocker, maybe you'll, you know, whatever. It's like, depends on the defensive strategy. But yeah, that's how, in my experience, what I've seen it. But either way, it's, there's a, the full translation here that I'm seeing.

• 10:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I like it. So in this case, the decision-making process is less deliberate than during the preparation, the week prior to the compressed, due to compressed time of the game. Obviously, you have time to make a decision. You're a freaking quarterback. You're going to figure out what the, what play you're going to call. Another reason for the increased tempo of decision-making is the, the team realizes that if they do not observe, orient, decide and act on their opponents quick enough, they will be at a disadvantage throughout the game. If the opposition identifies our weaknesses faster than we identify theirs, they can quickly decrease the risk of our team scoring. Is now the last two minutes of the final quarter. We need one more score to defeat the opposing team and we have the length of the field to travel. How and why would the quarterback's decision-making process change?

• 10:59Jocko Willink?

  The answer seems elementary. With only two minutes left, time is now severely compressed. The quarterback must quickly observe the weaknesses of the defending team, orient on the gaps in that defense, decide on a play and act on that decision. If the quarterback is too slow in this regard due to over abundant caution or takes too long to make a decision and lead the team and its execution, then the time will run out and the game will be lost. In this case, the astute quarterback will assume the risk of acting without long deliberation so as to not run out of time. Additionally, the quarterback will hurry up the team to keep the defense on their heels, hoping to make the opposing team less responsive to fast tempo play. That's what we're doing.

• 11:46Jocko Willink?

  Success in combat is similar to our football example. Success becomes determined by a leader's ability to make time competitive decisions, communicate them clearly to his subordinates and impose his will in order to turn decision into action. Warfighting describes all actions in conflict as initiative to act or response to action. That's a good thing to keep in mind. Man, it is so much better to be on the initiative to act rather than on the response to action. And where you really feel that in a real way is in jujitsu. When you, when someone got the upper hand and they're attacking, attacking, attacking, like you were rolling with Coach Hannah the other day?

• 12:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:28Jocko Willink?

  Rana?

• 12:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:28Jocko Willink?

  And we were talking about afterwards, she's, she's just attacking.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:31Jocko Willink?

  She's just attacking.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:33Jocko Willink?

  She's attacking, attacking, attacking, attacking. That's what she's doing.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 12:35Jocko Willink?

  And it's almost like a, it's, it's, we trained, we, our minds are trained, I think, that we kind of do, you know, three moves. We got like our three move series. And then it's another three move series. And then it's another, and there's a pause and like a little comfort zone there. Coach, Coach Rana?

• 12:57Speaker 01

  No pause, no comfort zone.

• 12:58Jocko Willink?

  No, no, and tempo. Like it's just, there's another one, there's another one, there's another one, there's another one, there's another one. And it's a good way to end up with a winning scenario.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  It's a strong strategy. And funny enough, where what they, what this guy, this author was saying about the, basically he's describing the no huddle. Right? We got two minutes, you know, whatever. And people do no huddle for a bunch of reasons, but that's one of them. So yes, you want to keep them on their heels, right? No huddle, meaning like, because in football, it's the exact same thing where you run a play. Play's over, everyone freaking kind of relaxes, goes back to their huddle, comes up with their little plan, reset, boom, play, you know? Now the play goes down. But the no huddle gets rid of all of that. That's the Coach Rana scenario. Where it's like, even when people kind of think, okay, huddle, just even mentally, maybe even subconsciously, okay, huddle. So their brain goes into kind of like recovery mode almost or reset mode.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Oh shoot, no one's resetting. Now we got to scramble to accommodate these people who are literally attacking. And that's what it was. It's just attack, attack, attack. That's why they may have beat us that one time. I was telling you the other, this is like a few episodes ago. They beat us like right out the gate, no huddle. And we got tired.

• 14:04Jocko Willink?

  That was out of the gate? Like they started the game like that, no huddle?

• 14:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:08Jocko Willink?

  That seems smart because they could already have a pre-planned.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  They did. So they were talking, they were like, oh, we're just going to defeat them so bad. And it got around to all of Kawaii that they were saying they're going to beat us so bad. And I was like, how are they going to beat us so bad? Like, in fact, I think we beat them last time. And it was just uncanny the way they were saying it. And then sure enough, they beat us real bad because they came out the gate with that stuff where we weren't ready for that. Anyway. But yes, that's a, it's how you say it's the best comparison, best analogy, jujitsu? Like I would say yes. Like Coach Rana has a no huddle style of jujitsu.

• 14:42Jocko Willink?

  It always surprises me. Okay. You know, when you're, you see like trick plays in football? It always surprises me that there's not more trick plays because there's such a settled, like, okay, like you just said, hey, we all know that we're going to run this play. We're all know we're going to get, each team's going to get in the huddle. We know we're going to get, we're going to call a play, reset. And everyone kind of knows what's happening. And it surprises that they don't disrupt that more often.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. So a good way to, because I thought that too when I was young. Me and, me and JD used to like draw out plays for, as a hobby, you know? So the trick play is just like a trick play in jujitsu where it's like, yeah, if no one knows it and you're really good at it, you can trick and you can get a lot of people. But yeah, it's real easy to solve. You know, they're real easy to like shut down. So like one of the, a real common, quote unquote, common trick play is called a reverse. Where it's almost like you're doing a sweep or a running play and everyone goes to the side except for one guy comes and you give it. So all the defense, this is the theory is all the defense is going to see the momentum. They're all going to pursue. The one guy goes, very few blockers, by the way, for this guy. Cause if there's a bunch of blockers, everyone would see it, see the momentum, blah, blah, blah, they follow.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  So everyone goes to this one side of the field, like, you know, and the defense hopefully pursues, except the one, usually the tight end or something like this, will come full speed, the opposite direction, you know, people have to freaking change direction and they can get you if you're not ready for it. But like I said, it's one guy, zero blockers. So you get one guy hip to it, right? This guy's freaking no blockers, right? He's getting tackled behind the line every single time. See what I'm saying? So just like, you know, a trick plays in jujitsu, you know, like where you do like something in the counter or the reverse or whatever it's like. Or the escape is real easy if you know it.

• 16:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  And then on the other side of that is the tried and true plays. Where it's like, yeah, sure. We'll send a, you know, a full back up the middle to lead block for the running back. You got the line freaking bunching up, ready, you know, the counter is going to be on two or something where it's like, you know, where they can get the jump on it and they know the play. So they know, they know what kind of aggression to bring to the play. So they can almost guarantee, well, not guarantee, but in theory, almost guarantee to three yards, four yards, very little risk, you know? So it's like that. And the spectrum goes on and on. You see what I'm saying? Do that.

• 16:56Jocko Willink?

  Check. But yeah, initiative act goes a long way.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:02Jocko Willink?

  The purpose of making decisions is to adapt our action to the enemy's action, making and acting on effective decisions faster than the enemy in order to exploit fleeting opportunities, gain and maintain initiative, forcing the enemy to react to our influence. Like the quarterback above, we seek to keep the enemy on their heels and less responsive to our fast tempo execution. This is when, when General McFarlane was on. And we were talking about the fact that we were putting in full combat outpost like every three, four days. And he was like, yeah, I want tempo. Keep the tempo, keep the enemy guessing on what was gonna happen. It was very impressive. I was part of it and it was impressive. I didn't even realize how impressive at the time. I was like, oh, we're doing this again.

• 17:45Jocko Willink?

  As company grade officers, we operate at a tactical level of warfare. At this level, our opponents may frequently observe one another and react more quickly. At our level, the time critical nature of battlefield decisions is acute. And then we get into the decision-making stimuli, they call it. Decision-making is not a Marine Corps phenomenon, obviously. You have been making decisions for most of your life. It is important to understand what has unconsciously caused you to make decisions in order to consciously shape their influence on future decisions. When presented with information, we decide on courses of action based upon three general criteria. So we're making decisions and this is what we're talking about. You gotta kind of know why are you making decisions? Rational calculation. We have a natural aversion to uncertainty.

• 18:30Jocko Willink?

  We don't like to be wrong. In rational calculation, we try to be perfectly predict our results by analyzing and comparing large amounts of data. Frequently we construct make matrices and charts to compare different options available. Large staffs of subject matter experts plan using rational calculation. Rational calculation is the foundation of analytical decision-making. In many cases, rational calculation requires time to accomplish, so we generally see this type of decision-making prominently during the preparatory phase. That is not to say it is not used during a conduct or follow-up phase. In our example above, the week of preparation prior to the game is filled with rational calculation and analytical decision-making. So clearly, we all know what that is.

• 19:15Jocko Willink?

  This is the pre-planning, you're setting up, you're looking at the charts, you're trying to figure out everything out. And of course, game's still gotta be played. The game's still gotta be played. That's, it always, again, surprises me, you know, you get, you look at like the finance world and people will just talk about, you know, this crash is coming or this stock's gonna, gonna go to the moon and all this stuff. And like everyone's is wrong all the time.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then they continue to talk about it.

• 19:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  There's a lot of, there's a lot of little circles, like or what if, yeah, industries for like, you know, that are like that, where it's like, there's this whole thing about talking about it and watching a show that they're talking about it, you know? And then it reflects very little sometimes, you know, to the, to the actual.

• 20:00Jocko Willink?

  They run the track record on these dudes. It ain't good.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:03Jocko Willink?

  Well, when the big, did you see the movie The Big Short?

• 20:06Speaker 01

  Big Short, yeah.

• 20:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. But it was like, out of all the people, all these people, sitting in Wall Street, thousands and thousands of analysts and experts and people from the industries and they were all running the numbers. And there was like a handful of people that said, bro, out of all those people, just a handful figured it out. So despite all that rational calculation, still gotta play the game, don't know what's gonna happen. And then we have intuition and gut feeling. When making decisions by intuition, we base our actions on what just feels right or what we just know is the right choice. The driving force behind intuitive decisions is our experience base, available in subconscious and conscious memory for analysis and comparison.

• 20:50Jocko Willink?

  Often, we may not recall any experiences similar to our current situation. However, our mind will match the pattern we observe with one we have on file and then, and then to predict the most reasonable result. Intuition is the foundation of recognitional decision-making. In the football example, the quarterback may or may not employ gut feeling in varying degrees throughout the game in conjunction with rational calculation. And then it, then it, the other thing it throws in here is emotion. And I just view like intuition and emotion of much more closely related than they've got them broken out as two different things. But for me, it's like, part of that, part of the emotion that you're feeling is gonna

• 21:35Jocko Willink?

  push you to, to be instinctive and your instincts are gonna be emotional. You get like an aversion to something, I don't like that plan, like what is, what's making you feel that way? It's an emotion that's making you feel that way.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I've always thought, and you said the quarterback thing, so it kind of maps onto that as well, where intuition is almost like a subconscious almost, like, like, you're picking on, up on something small enough.

• 22:00Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  That you can't point it out necessarily consciously, but you can feel it.

• 22:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And by the way, your mind, like, I was talking about this up at council. When you meet someone, you are subconsciously measuring like the narrowness of their eyes, the size of their jaw ratio compared to their head, you know, their shoulders, their what, their height, their weight. You're analyzing if they're a threat or not.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I understand.

• 22:23Jocko Willink?

  And so that's happening there. And when little tiny, almost imperceivable expressions in someone's face, you subconsciously pick up on it. And they do have all kinds of experiments to prove the other show, picture of this and a picture of that and, you know, how does it make someone feel? But you can tell when, when someone's looking like shady, like there's specific facial expressions that give away some shadiness. And that's why you meet a guy and be like, hmm, that dude seems shady. You ever walked away from someone and told your wife or something like that, dude seems shady? That's coming from a real place.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, fully understand.

• 22:58Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's the way it is. So I, I kind of relate the emotion thing and the intuition thing very closely together.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can see it.

• 23:08Jocko Willink?

  And then, but what they say on emotion is whether we use rational calculation or intuition, it is important to note that emotions will always play some part in our decision-making process. For example, anger might cause a leader to make a reckless decision in haste, but it could also evoke physical courage. Fear or doubt could cause you to further examine in a situation and identify a preventable weakness, but it can also lead to hesitation or indecisiveness. The key is not to allow emotion to be the primary stimulus for decision-making. As leaders, we must be able to harness our emotions, use them to our advantage, and achieve a balanced strength of mind and character. And this I fully agree with, and you've heard me say many times, you gotta put the emotions in the calculus.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:50Jocko Willink?

  They gotta be in there. If your team is like all mad about something and you throw, dump some big giant task on them, they're only gonna get madder.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:57Jocko Willink?

  If they're scared and you put them in a situation where that fear is gonna be capitalized on, it's gonna be a problem. So you gotta put the emotions in the calculus, but you can't let it be the primary.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:07Jocko Willink?

  Decision-making process.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  I see what you're saying there about the emotion or whatever, that's how it makes it a little bit more separate where, yeah, like even on, off the battlefield, we'll say, you know, when you're in a good mood, I don't know if you've ever encountered this, when you're in such a good, we have such, we're having such a good time, you know? Then we start talking about our plans tomorrow, because we want the good time to go on or whatever, we're feeling, right? And it's just good, and then tomorrow, you're in a whole.

• 24:30Jocko Willink?

  Shoots, bro, let's do it again.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  We say hanaho. But they, so like the, so the next day, you're in a different state of mind, see what I'm saying? You're kind of like tired, hungover in some cases, you know, whatever, whatever the case may be, see what I'm saying? Or you got your other priorities you gotta do, or, you know, you're stressed about some thing that happened, whatever, and then your friend starts texting or calling, but whatever, what, you know, what up, what are we doing? You know, time to come out and you're like, bro, I'm not even close, bro.

• 24:54Jocko Willink?

  I know, I know, let's go, you said it.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  You said it, bro.

• 24:59Jocko Willink?

  And then it breaks down these two methods of decision-making, which are analytical and recognitional. So the analytical, this is the one that you use when time is not critical. And the advantages are, you can justify decisions to others, cool, because you went through, you ran the numbers, manages large amount of information, so you actually got the time to do it, relies on subject matter expert contribution, sure, you got the analyst putting in for information. The decision-maker can feel as comfortable as possible while dealing with uncertainty. The disadvantages, obviously time-consuming, consuming, requires a large amount of information input, does not develop decision-making abilities of those involved. I'll tell you what, what I've noticed for me was, a lot of times, I would, I can, I

• 25:44Jocko Willink?

  can look at something for like, one minute and make the call, and I'm gonna be like 80% of the time, I'm gonna be right. Like 80% of the time, and I would, and that's not just me, I'm saying, you know, you'd give anyone that I was working with, when I was in the SEAL teams, like, hey, we got this target, you know, where do you want to hit it from? And they, they'd say like, give me like a quick concept, we'll set up over here and blah, blah, blah. 80% of the time, that was the plan we'd go and execute. 20% of the time, they'd say, yeah, guess what, this route was fouled, or there was, you know, coalition forces over here that we had, couldn't de-conflict with, there'd be a reason, but 80%, 80% of the time, it's like, yeah, I can look at it for very quickly and kind of know. So if you think about, a lot of times, in low-risk situations, we're wasting a lot of

• 26:27Jocko Willink?

  time trying to get a perfect answer, and it's a waste, it's literally a waste of time.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:33Jocko Willink?

  Because you had an 80% chance and there's nothing catastrophic's gonna happen anyway, so it's all good. Just go and execute.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I figured that out, that you had like, you have this, I don't know if you had it on purpose or what, but I figured that out about you. And I asked you about it and you said, oh, it's like, it's called iterative decision-making, but I was like, oh, but I found out the other element that. It was more a discovery of myself more than it was of you. It was just you were just part of that discovery. Okay, so it was, um, we were talking about something. I, I forget. It happened a few times where we're talking about something and I'm over here nerding out on how it works, you know? And that's what we do sometimes. We nerd out about, oh yeah, but.

• 27:09Jocko Willink?

  When you say we, you mean you.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  Me and people like me. Yes. Not you.

• 27:14Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna say, guys, I don't, I don't nerd out a lot on like how we're gonna get there.

• 27:19Speaker 01

  I found out you do the exact opposite. You ta- you get as much information as you need to take the first iterative step, which is very little, by the way. So that's why, and then later on you'd actually say this. And I was like, bro, that falls right into my little theory. When you're like, oh, I, um, I make iterative decision, make, uh, iterative decisions to take action and then that way you don't commit too much or whatever. And I was like, oh, okay. So basically you nerd out on taking action, which is not most people, by the way. Like a lot of people are like, you know.

• 27:53Jocko Willink?

  And I nerd out on the feedback I'm about to get after I dig out. And then by the way, that's the, this is all just the Uda loop.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly right. But so someone like me will say by default is gonna like, when I say nerd out, I mean, you know, we're talking about like, what should we do? And be like, oh, well, this could happen. This could happen. It's kind of fun. It's a cool little formula to like talk about, you know? Meanwhile, taking no action or whatever. But you're the exact opposite. So you'll be like, okay. And I remember figuring this out because when I, we were talking about something, you were talking about what actions to take. And I, for whatever reason, was pumping my brakes on the action. I was talking about how it works and, you know, maybe this, I, oh, kind of hypotheticals, all this stuff. And you were just, okay. And you were just saying, okay, under that circumstance, you'd say you'd do this then. And I'd be like, well, yeah, that under, that's true. But, you know, sometimes this will happen. You go, okay, in that case, then you do, you do this. Like you would always like steer me right back to the action.

• 28:42Jocko Willink?

  To do, do the thing.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. Do like, take a small action, you know? So you had all these actions like ready to go for all these circumstances that I was just wanting to talk about. And I was like, oh, me? I was thinking to myself in the moment, oh, you're not getting what I'm doing. You're not getting it.

• 28:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  Right? Like, no, I wanna talk about. No, no.

• 29:01Jocko Willink?

  No, no. Meaning, meaning like, oh, you don't understand how important this information is, right?

• 29:06Speaker 01

  No, like, I, I probably thought that too. But what, when I figured out what was going on, I'm like, oh, you're over here trying to actually get stuff done. And I'm over here just wanting to talk about it. Literally was that what was going on in the conversation. So I'm like, okay. And then from then on, I started recognizing that pattern. You always have some action to take. See what I'm saying? So I'm like, oh, okay, that's why. Cause one, you don't over commit. And two, you're always over indexing on what action to take and taking it. Rather than like nerding out about how it works.

• 29:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Which is really a good way to just not do it.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  Yes. A hundred percent. Yes, you're correct.

• 29:43Jocko Willink?

  Which is, which is sometimes feel, feels good because there's no risk involved, right? Well, you don't recognize there's obviously risk involved because now you don't progress. But yeah, taking action is a very good move and doesn't have to be a big action. In fact, I don't recommend taking big action. I recommend taking small action and you'll get feedback and you can then adjust. Uh, then the other method here that they talk about is recognitional. And this is, this is when time is critical during crisis situations, requires little time, requires little, relatively little current information, requires less planning time, leads to increased tempo and increases ability to maintain the initiative against the enemy.

• 30:22Jocko Willink?

  The disadvantages requires large experience based on the subject before the crisis, requires moral courage. And the decision maker assumes increased risk without group absolution from staff planning. You know, and again, to me, that, one of the key components that's going in there is the instinctive part of beyond. Look, I, you may or may not have experience. Obviously, the more experience you have, the better your instincts are going to be. But sometimes you're in a situation that you haven't been in before, but you go, hmm, something's not right here. We, we're not doing this. Or hey, you know what? Let's stop the car. Let's, let's pull over.

• 31:05Jocko Willink?

  You know, like what, whatever that situation is, I think it's very smart to pay attention to your instincts.

• 31:13Jocko Willink?

  Analytical decision making, we're gonna dig into these just a little bit more. Analytical decision making is the most comprehensive and accurate type of decision making. And again, we, we put so much faith in this. But you're, you're assuming that you can predict the future and you can't. This is, this is where we make mistakes with wars. We go, oh yeah, we'll run the numbers. There's an 80% chance that this will happen. And then there's a 90% chance that this will happen. Guess what? And there's a 99% chance that this will happen and we're gonna be good to go. Guess what? It's gonna be that 1% that you didn't expect. We over index on analytical. We over index on it. And what it makes us do is first of all, it makes us commit too much when we shouldn't. Cause you go, oh, this will be good to go. No, it won't be.

• 32:00Jocko Willink?

  You, you make those, the, the classic assumptions. Dude, you, the, the, you make a some, assume means make out an ass out of you and me. You've seen that, right?

• 32:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:11Jocko Willink?

  A silly little thing, but it's a fully accurate.

• 32:15Jocko Willink?

  Analytical decision making is the most comprehensive and accurate type of decision making. The reason is the time available allows for a detailed review of the situation, which subsequently leads to a decision and resulting action. What it also allows you to do is focus on a bunch of small little things that actually don't really matter. It allows you to get a bunch of more numbers and things to analyze and charts and all this stuff. But there's really only like three things that matter or two things that matter, not 17. So now you've got a bunch of these other things that you're thinking about. You really shouldn't be thinking about any of them.

• 32:50Jocko Willink?

  Your tactical planning classes will take you through the methods and tools we use to conduct analytical decision making process prior to execution. However, analytical decision making is not limited to preparation phase of an operation. It continues into the conduct and consolidation phases as well, albeit to a lesser degree due to the nature of those environments. Yeah, check. Recognitional decision making, and this is where they put a little bit more focus because this is what our platoon leaders are more likely to be doing is, you know, out there recognizing and trying to make a decision. Recognitional decision making or recognition primed decision making is a model of how people make quick, effective decisions when faced with complex situations. It often occurs subconsciously. Recognitional decision making inherently assumes more risk

• 33:35Jocko Willink?

  as less than perfect information is rapidly processed and acted upon. To ensure that unnecessary risk is mitigated during recognitional decision making, training and experience is paramount. Repetitive training rehearsals and experience allow for faster recognition of key variables that will drive one toward a particular decision. Take our football game example above, the, during the hurry up offense, what increases, what increases the quarterback's ability to conduct good recognitional decision making and lead the team in that action? The practice during the week is preparation for the game, trains the quarterback to pick up opposing team patterns and subsequent actions faster. There are two types of decision making strategies for what we consider recognition primed.

• 34:19Jocko Willink?

  And one of the key things that you better learn to be able to do this is detaching and not getting caught up in, in the freaking action that's happening. You have to be able to take a little bit of a step back. You have to. That's the superpower here. I'm telling you, that's a superpower all day. Feature matching. The decision maker identifies that he or she has personally experienced the elements of a given situation. This experiment can be a result of past actions, training or rehearsals, rehearsing a plan. Comparison based on the previous personal experience allows for quicker decision making, given the same situation, but different time and place. And that's also a cautionary tale because you, you know, in jujitsu, you got that you develop a pattern.

• 35:04Jocko Willink?

  You're almost somebody who never rolled them before. You will, you, you develop a pattern with them and you gotta be careful. Cause your experience was, oh, when I did this, they didn't do anything. Oh, when I did this, they didn't do anything. Oh, and they, oh, they catch you. So you gotta be, you gotta use caution there. Reason by analogy. The retrieval of stored information derived from a similar situation. This is a comparison of the elements and results of a similar situation that the decision maker has previously observed or read about. This usually occurs as a result of past studies. For example, a football player has watch tape of an opponent in preparation for an upcoming game. When the player sees a similar situation emerge, the decision capability increases with speed. Yeah, check. Both types require pattern recognition to occur.

• 35:47Jocko Willink?

  We identify patterns based on experiences or by historical references. Pattern recognition improves in speed and accuracy. The more we experience a certain collection of events, we accomplish this through training. Yes, you do. And it was really, it's always incredible to watch people get better at things. And get better at decision making and be able to recognize what's happening. And they only do that if you get put them in those scenarios. I would talk about detachment with like a young, with a SEAL platoon. For four hours, explain it to them, you know, she'll go walk them through it, do every story I could think of about detachment. And then go out and just watch them brain lock and freaking get target fixation.

• 36:29Jocko Willink?

  Until they went through, you know what's very similar to is standing up on a surfboard. Like you, you, you have to just keep trying to stand up. Until you get it. And once you get it, you're kind of good to go. Or like riding a bicycle, you could teach your kids how to ride a bike, right? They fall down, they fall down, they fall down, and then they get it and then they're okay. So it's like a breakthrough moment that people have to have in order to learn how to detach. But you can't, you can, you can point it out to your kid, the bicycle, you can even have him sit on the bike while they're sitting there and kind of let them balance and. But they're not going to know how to do it until they do it. And they have to kind of get it right on their own. You set up all the conditions, you get them going, you push them from behind, you put them on a slight decline. So there's a little bit of momentum.

• 37:14Jocko Willink?

  You know, like you do all those things, you already work the training wheels, but at some point they gotta feel that thing on their own. And that's what detachment, teaching someone detachment is very similar to that.

• 37:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a good analogy. Actually, even the, so, you, your kids learning to ride bike was probably a long time ago. But there have been developments. So they went away from training wheels to what's called a balanced bike. So a balanced bike is just a little bike that you give the kid that doesn't have any pedals.

• 37:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. We had those. Yep. I think my youngest had it. Actually, no, my son had it too. You kick your feet and go.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I never heard of it until.

• 37:52Jocko Willink?

  And you kind of glide. Eventually glide and eventually you're balancing.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, because that they, they figured out that no, that helps them train their balance. The training wheels do not. They don't, because you don't have to balance at all. You're not like, you're not influenced to balance to achieve success on a training wheel bike. You know, the training wheels just whatever. So it doesn't really technically teach you. You know, so the balanced bike apparently, like I remember when we first found out about it, you'd see all the little videos or whatever. And they're like, this is a breakthrough. This is like the biggest deal. It's like such a cheat code for teaching you. And I'm like, oh, that makes sense. But apparently now, because I just saw something recently. It's like training wheels, they know now is not a thing. They like, it doesn't work.

• 38:33Jocko Willink?

  Like, before it was a theory and now it's fact, is what you're saying?

• 38:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Like it's a, we'll say, I don't know about fact, but just more widely accepted that, oh yeah, training wheels, that's like the old school antiquated like way.

• 38:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the bike thing is really a good comparison because I'm trying to think of other things that are comparable, but even free fall. Like skydiving, when you do that, I'm sure there's certain positions, like I'm not, I'm not a good free fall guy. But I'm sure there's certain positions, you've seen the guy like vertically, like I'm sure there's some positions that are like that, like you kind of got to do it until you get it. But even free fall, you kind of have the body, you put your body a certain way and you'll kind of, you'll kind of be, most people will kind of be okay. When you get coached, you know, you hard arch and you lay on this little freaking, like a, like a little table. And you go in the position and they'll like, point out what you're doing right, what you're doing wrong. And you're kind of okay.

• 39:27Jocko Willink?

  There's very few things that, standing up on a surfboard is, is also the same thing. And guess what? It has to do with balance. Those are two balanced things. Snowboarding? Kind of, but it's not quite as extreme, I don't think. It's a little, it's a little bit more, it's a little bit easier to stand up on a snowboard. Like it's, you're basically standing.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Like the balance is way less intensive, you know, like the, yeah, surfboard. You, you're on water. That's why. So you can't really like snowboard. Yeah. You gotta like lock in and get the technique down until it's natural. But that's when you're moving, you know, and all this stuff. But yeah, even surfboard though, like, bro, you can stand up one time and then like the next 10 times, like you can't get it.

• 40:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's true, but you'll at least, yeah, you'll have a bit of a breakthrough.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I feel like, yeah, it registers in your brain, like in that way where it's like, okay, this is what it feels like. And you can sort of like replicate it in the near future.

• 40:22Jocko Willink?

  So that's what it is like training people to detach. It is not easy and it's very difficult to do in the classroom. One thing that you can do with it is you can kind of, you get somebody in a stressful situation, you can kind of pull them out of it a little bit. You can literally like, oh, hey, hold on, come over here, look around and they go, oh, I can see it now. So you can manually do that. It's kind of like, like helping them on their bike, pushing them along, maybe, maybe. Keep keeping them up a little bit so they get the feel for it. But they gotta eventually break through the threshold and detach. And that's what we're doing. Decision making variables in either analytic or recognitional decision making when faced with a likely prospect of failure amidst a sea of uncertain, vague and contradictory information.

• 41:07Jocko Willink?

  Most people are extremely hesitant to make a decision. That's true. We tend to forget that the enemy is also facing a similar information shortfall. That's important. Always think, man, when it's cold, wet and miserable for you, it's cold, wet and miserable for them too. The terrain is bad for you, it's bad for them too. Understanding the factors that degrade our decision making ability on the battlefield and realizing that they will never be absent. Are absolutely vitable to relevant decisions in a conflict. So there are things that are always going to be there, that are always going to screw up your decision making process. They're always going to be there. As leaders, we must guard against waiting for the perfect sight picture, which may never come, leading to inaction.

• 41:49Jocko Willink?

  That's a critical one. You know, when you're shooting, whether you're shooting archery or you're shooting a pistol or you're shooting a rifle. You cannot just hold the sight right where you want it to be. It moves a little bit. And if you wait for it and wait for it and wait for it, it'll never get there and you won't take the shot. So you gotta hold it in the general vicinity and then you slow squeeze on the trigger and let that thing roll. The below variables are those commonly seen in all types of decision making. Understanding these variables allows us to plan and execute in uncertainty, although the plan will be less than perfect. This is known as the 70% solution. They demoted my 80% solution to a 70% solution.

• 42:33Jocko Willink?

  Okay. First one, chance, the absence of any cause of events that can be predicted, understood or controlled. No other human activity is subject to chance more than combat. Facts. It increases uncertainty and risk. Risk. This is the expectation that the future holds the possibility of more than one result. It is inherent in every decision as well as indecision. So there's risk and indecision and there's risk and decision. Information, the sum of all inputs, often from multiple sources in a given situation, we must learn to identify exactly how much information we need. To make an effective decision. Too much information will slow down our processing time. Too little information will cause unnecessary risk. And I should talk more about the prioritize and execute when it comes to information, which I just kind of hinted at.

• 43:17Jocko Willink?

  Like you gotta, we got a bunch of information coming in, some of it doesn't matter. Some of it doesn't matter. Some of it matters critically. And being able to decipher what matters and what doesn't matter is a huge part of being a leader. Not getting wrapped around the axle about something that really doesn't matter that much. And I see that all the time. Wrap it up. Just wrapped around the axle about something that literally doesn't matter. Time is always my, this is my most important one. The only one we have no control over, that that clock is ticking. A constraint imposed by either the mission or the enemy requiring action to occur at a certain instant. It will often drive information accumulation and risk threshold.

• 44:01Jocko Willink?

  Uncertainty, decisions will never be made without doubt. Or with complete protection from error. The goal is to attain the highest degree of precision relative to the amount of information and the given time constraints. You gotta be really comfortable with uncertainty. The way to become more certain is to move. If I'm not sure what you're going to do, I can stand here and wait for you to do something. And I don't know, even know when I'm going to find it out. But when I start attacking you, I'm going to, I'm going to become more and more certain.

• 44:35Jocko Willink?

  Experience, knowledge gained through exposure to an event or idea that has been stored in your memory. It drives information comparison and analysis. The larger experience database, the more we reduce risk, uncertainty and the amount of information necessary to make a decision.

• 44:50Jocko Willink?

  But you just gotta be careful because we get caught in ruts, mental ruts. Human factors, external factors that influence decision making, often without preconceived realization is it is happening. We must learn to recognize these external factors and mitigate the or control their influence in our decision making process. This is why you gotta know what your biases are. This is what you gotta know what your tendencies are. If you know that you tend to be slow to react, then you better lean in and react faster. If you know that you sometimes overreact, you better lean out and not react so passionately and so stupidly.

• 45:29Jocko Willink?

  These are our human factors. And by the way, everyone on your team, you know, if I, if I got you working for me and I know we got a timeline that we need to meet. I know I gotta apply a little more pressure than I do to carry. You know what I'm saying?

• 45:41Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 45:41Jocko Willink?

  This is not a shot at you.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  No.

• 45:43Jocko Willink?

  Well, maybe it is, but it's true though. We gotta, we gotta make sure that everyone has tendencies. And you gotta lean in or lean out depending on which direction you're trying to head.

• 45:55Jocko Willink?

  And then we get into the Boyd cycle here, the, uh, the Oodle loop. You know, we, we know these observe, orient, decide and act. And you know, observe, look around, check your surroundings, check where the enemy is. You know, any changes in the situations, what are the variables? That's observe, orient, decide. Uh, orient means develop a mental image of this, of the scene. Gain awareness, how do you fit into that picture? Then decide, make your decision on what we're gonna do and then act, take action. So there's almost a one to one. You've heard my saying, relax, look around and make a call. So relax, look around and make a call. You know, look around, see what's happening.

• 46:39Jocko Willink?

  Relax means freaking chill, take a breath. The one thing that I don't have in relax, look around and make a call is act. But there's a reason. The reason is because when I was telling Seth Stone to make a call, his platoon was ready to act. He just need, I didn't need to tell him to execute. When he made the call, the platoon's gonna freaking tell the platoon's gonna get after it. They're gonna make it happen.

• 47:06Jocko Willink?

  So I didn't need, I didn't need to write that up there. If I was, would have been talking about him as an individual, I would have had to say, once you make a decision, execute it. But all he needed to do was say the decision and the boys were gonna execute.

• 47:18Jocko Willink?

  But the, the, the Oodle loop, this is what we're trying to do and process faster than, than our enemy. We're trying to observe, orient, decide and act, observe, orient, decide and act, observe, orient, decide and act. And they use the term here, they, they say like your, the smaller your decision loop is, the better. And so, well, this guy's got a big one. I always use the term or heard the term like, wanna get inside their decision making loop, which, which technically I guess means that yours is smaller. The Oodle loop is applicable throughout the phases of any operation. Revisit our football example, in the case of the preparatory phase, the team observes and analyzes their opponent by viewing past footage. The team orients the situation, gaining awareness of the apparent, of the opponent, identifying where the preparatory actions can affect the opposing team.

• 48:03Jocko Willink?

  The team then decides on a course of action or series of plays to exploit the opportunities oriented on. Finally, the team acts on this decision, practicing and rehearsing the plays prior to execution. This preparatory phase is heavy on rational calculation and analytical decision making because the time is available to conduct the analysis. Check. So even before you're in the game, you're running the Oodle loop. When the game time comes around, the Oodle loop remains and is continuous occurring with each play. The team observes actions taken by the opposing team throughout the course of play. They orient the, on the fleeting opportunities by gaining awareness of how the opposition is playing. The quarterback then decides on the next play to run, communicates the play to the teammates and leads them through the execution.

• 48:42Jocko Willink?

  In this case, analytical decision making is decreased while recognition of decision making is increased due to the compressed time. Note that if the play is not effectively communicated, the action may fail. Also note the decision made by the quarterback is inherently riskier than it would be if the quarterback had time available to be more analytical. And that's what I'm telling you, probably not. In a lot of cases, it's like, you know, you give him half an hour to make a call.

• 49:10Jocko Willink?

  Well, the defense is gonna adjust too, so you're kinda just wasting time.

• 49:15Jocko Willink?

  I'd rather be proactive and make things happen. The practice increases the quarterback's recognition by observing opponent actions over and over again, for which the quarterback can identify patterns, orienting faster on those patterns through feature matching or by reasoning, by analogy. We should do this with fighters too. We'd get like someone in camp to simulate who someone was gonna be fighting. Get some wrestler, we bring in a wrestler. Get, we brought in Max Holloway one time to help train Jeremy Stevens, cuz he was fighting.

• 49:48Jocko Willink?

  Who was it that threw that crazy kick off the fence? Like a highlight reel of highlight reels.

• 49:53Speaker 01

  Pettis, right?

• 49:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anthony Pettis, yep. So we brought in Max Holloway when he was, I think he was 17, dude.

• 50:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I remember that. That's when I met him.

• 50:02Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. Beast. He were like, I wish I could have invested in Max Holloway when I met him as a 17 year old. Because he was, for a 17 year old, first of all, he's in a man camp, right? He's in man camp. And second of all, he's, he's there just to spar. He doesn't need to do the camp. He did the camp. And by the way, he did the camp hard. Like when it was time to sprint or do conditioning, bro, he was, he was in it to win it. And he had, you know, obviously striking, I wish I could have invested in him as a, as a 17 year old. But any great attitude and obviously ended up having an outstanding career. But my point is, it's, you bring someone in that's gonna give you those looks and you're gonna start to see the pattern recognition.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, fully.

• 50:48Jocko Willink?

  And that's gonna make you more prepared for it. That's why we talk about role playing, you know, when you're role playing, got, got a tough conversation with someone, do some role playing. Let's see what those looks like. Let's see what some of those possible contingencies we might have to deal with. At the most recognition level, think about the quarterback who receives the ball and steps backward to make a pass. Before the pass is thrown, the quarterback recognizes that gaps are beginning to form in the team's perimeter, allowing the opposing force to access the quarterback. In this case, the opposing team has the initiative over the quarterback. If the quarterback is unable to observe, orient, decide and act quick enough, the quarterback will stay in place, frozen by inaction and will be tackled.

• 51:25Jocko Willink?

  In this case, the quarterback's Oodle loop is larger than the opposing team as it is long, as it takes longer for him to make a decision on the course of action. If the quarterback's Oodle loop is smaller than the opposing team, then the quarterback will observe the gaps forming, orient on the danger they represent and the opportunities available to regain the initiative, then decide to run out of the perimeter and act on the decision quickly. So even in the football game, they're doing that Oodle loop. The whole time from the, from the pregame to the last two minutes, the last play.

• 51:54Jocko Willink?

  Note the applicability of the Oodle loop to both preparation and conduct of the action. Also note the quarterback's ability to adapt action to what is being observed and oriented on. If the quarterback fell in love with his plan of a pass, then adaptation to the situation may not have happened. A decision to change course would not have been made and the quarterback would not have been tackled.

• 52:17Jocko Willink?

  This brings us to the relationship between the Boyd cycle and adaptive decision making. So adaptive decision making in the Boyd cycle. According to warfighting, the military profession is thinking, is a thinking profession. Since war is a fluid phenomenon, its conduct requires flexibility of thought. It's always so classic, I always have to remind people. This is the United States Marine Corps. Everyone thinks the United States Marine Corps is automatons, just following orders. And everyone's been trained in this rigid authoritarian mindset, but it's not true. The Marine Corps doesn't want that. They're not supposed to want that. Sometimes you think, see a Marine, you go, man, is that really what you want? Nope, you don't want that. You want flexibility of thought.

• 53:03Jocko Willink?

  They run through the six tactical tenants and the nine principles of war, six tactical tenants, achieving decision. And that means when you're doing something, you want it, you want a definitive outcome. Right? I'm not, I'm not entering this game to, for half measures, trying to get something to happen, achieving a decision. Gaining an advantage.

• 53:24Jocko Willink?

  That means we're gonna strike where the enemy's weak. That means we're gonna stack the deck in our favor. I'll tell you what it is, it's kinda like we should be cheating. Right? We should be cheating. There's a, there's like never fight fair. I heard that in the SEAL teams when I was going through BUDS, never fight fair. Why would you fight fair? Do not fight fair. If you can stack the deck in your favor, stack the deck in your favor. Be faster, right? Speed, speed is an advantage. Adapt, you have to adjust.

• 53:55Jocko Willink?

  And, and then, um, cooperation, right? We're working together.

• 54:02Jocko Willink?

  And then the last one is exploiting success. When something happens, you gotta take advantage of it. You gotta take, when you got an advantage, you gotta take advantage of it.

• 54:09Jocko Willink?

  And if you don't,

• 54:12Jocko Willink?

  you, you, you wasted it. You wasted it. So you have to, that requires, by the way, that requires speed, that requires adapting quickly to an opportunity that presents itself.

• 54:25Jocko Willink?

  We gotta break the enemy, that's what we're trying to do. And then the nine principles of war, mass, which is concentrate, like concentrate your forces, is prioritize and execute.

• 54:34Jocko Willink?

  I didn't know these when I wrote down prioritize and execute. I didn't know these.

• 54:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for real. So when I went back, I, I wrote down, you know,

• 54:45Jocko Willink?

  cover move, simple prioritize, actually decentralized command. But then when I learned about them, I was like, oh, so this, this is all matches up.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, a little parallel.

• 54:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, parallels. Be on the offensive, right? That's default aggressive.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:58Jocko Willink?

  Objective, make sure there's a defined goal, that's simple.

• 55:02Jocko Willink?

  Uh, security, protect your, protect your information, protect your troops.

• 55:08Jocko Willink?

  I don't really have like a, a, a perfect one for that. And that's because it wasn't really, um, for me, that was always, that's like. Um, not quite protect your neck, but like it's, it's like what we're doing. It's almost like the water, right? You know, the thing about the fish in the water, like for me, security is, and you, you should think about it. But it wasn't top of mind for me because it was just a natural part of the way things were.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, in and of itself.

• 55:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 55:37Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, security. I mean, cause cover and move kinda has an element of security to it, you know?

• 55:41Jocko Willink?

  It does.

• 55:42Speaker 01

  You know, I'll cover you, like I'll secure you, you know, while you may take action. But yes, just in and of itself, yeah.

• 55:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I never really thought about it too much, you know, and, and I was very, uh, strict with security. You know, we, we, we had contractors, my first deployment to Iraq. And I remember the Vietnam guys telling me, we had Vietnamese people like cleaning our rooms and stuff. And we had a leak and we kicked them all out. And so I was like, dude, I'm in Nam. And we kicked all these, these, uh, contractors out. We moved our, we had porta potties, we moved them outside of the compound. Cause they used to come in and clean and empty them. And I was like, no, no, we don't, we don't know who those people are. We're not gonna know what's going on inside our base. So we moved the porta potties out there. That's what we're doing. Uh, economy of force. Again, this is like prioritize and execute. Minimal force with maximum impact.

• 56:33Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're trying to do. Maneuver. Clearly. Unity of command.

• 56:40Jocko Willink?

  There's like, needs to be one person in charge. Um, very important. When we have multiple people in charge, we have problems.

• 56:49Jocko Willink?

  I didn't see enough of problems with that where it was front of mind for me. And then surprising simplicity. So those are the principles that we're thinking about. At the very heart of how the Marine Corps conducts war is the concept of maneuver. And then there's an interesting term here. Temporal maneuver. Temporal maneuver, maneuver achieved in time by building an ever increasing tempo. So as to gain an advantage, act faster and steal the enemy's initiative. Steal the enemy's initiative. So everything we were talking about earlier, like I'm gonna make that move. But isn't it interesting how? When you feel that happening to you? It gets worse and worse.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 57:31Jocko Willink?

  It's you, it's not like, it gets worse. It's each time is, is exponential. You know, it's like, I'm one second behind. Now I'm two seconds behind. Now I'm four seconds behind. Now I'm eight seconds behind. Now I'm 16 seconds behind and I'm, I'm tapping out. Like that's what it feels like. It's not like I'm one second behind, I'm one second behind, I'm one second behind. No, it gets worse and worse. The little more time goes on, it, it compounds.

• 57:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's true. And I'm more tired too, by the way.

• 58:01Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. The exhaustion is part of the whole factor. Just people moving so much. Dr. Luke, freaking stop moving, bro. Just stop moving. Why are you moving so much? You know, like it's so annoying, Dr. Luke. Stop. If we can just chill. Um, part of this concept, that's what he does. Temporal maneuver. That's what he's doing. Trying to just keep moving, keep moving, keep moving. Part of this concept is the ability to adapt to the ever changing environment, allowing us to observe changes, orient on opportunities, decide on a plan, exploit these opportunities and act. In this case, our adaptability is allowing us to achieve a decision, gain an advantage and act faster by adapting to the environment.

• 58:44Jocko Willink?

  This happens through all phases of the operation, preparation, conduct and consolidation.

• 58:50Jocko Willink?

  And then it gets into this, uh, previously discussed, the goal of decision making in the Marine Corps is to be able to make time competitive decisions. Based on a keen awareness of the situation to turn those decisions into action faster than your enemy. Boy, that's just jujitsu all day. As such, the concept of adaptive decision making is nothing new in the Marine Corps. We have always sought to achieve an advantage over our enemies by seeking to adapt to changes in the situation faster than them. Succinctly, adaptable decision making can be defined as the decision making originating from an effective change to an altered situation. So the situation is gonna change. You better be ready to make decisions quickly to adapt to it.

• 59:33Jocko Willink?

  An effective adaptive leader employs a continuous OODA loop throughout all phases of an operation that allows for an advantage gain over opponents. Adaptive leaders all often display the following characteristics.

• 59:47Jocko Willink?

  They are self-sufficient. They are resilient. They are open to change. They are motivated by achievement. They are tolerant of ambiguity and they are willing to learn. Now, if you take a stereotypical military leader, they're probably like, everyone would say self-sufficient, yes. Resilient, definitely. Open to change, maybe not. Motivated by achievement, yes. Tolerant of ambiguity, no. And willing to learn, not really.

• 1:00:21Jocko Willink?

  So it's like three for three is what the stereotype is. But the most important ones in my mind are open to change, tolerant of ambiguity and willing, willing to learn. The next one, cognitive ability and problem solver. Okay, those make sense. Communicates well, well, that's definitely needed. Awareness of self and others. Hmm. Hmm. Sometimes we're not so self-aware. Sometimes we aren't so aware of what other people are thinking or going through. Man, this, I should, I force rank these things at some point, cause that'd be way up there at the top. Awareness of self and others.

• 1:01:01Jocko Willink?

  A knowledge of material and experience with material. Okay. Those make sense. These characteristics are important to develop in order to become an adaptive leader. For example, someone who is intolerant of ambiguity will wait for the perfect sight picture and squander an opportunity to adapt to a situation faster than the enemy. In other words, the leader will fail to orient and decide fast enough to take meaningful action. Waiting for the perfect thing, it ain't gonna happen. A leader who's unwilling to make mistakes or has an unhealthy fear of failure will often not learn from their mistakes or adopt a zero defect mentality. And therefore will not take the chance of adapting due to the fear that the result, the resulting action will fail.

• 1:01:45Jocko Willink?

  You know who's like down to fail is Elon Musk. Like just launching rockets or just exploding. And he's making progress so much faster than everyone else. It's trying to get every rocket to be perfect. Just, just billion dollar rockets just igniting. And I mean, it's awesome now, but you remember in the beginning, people like, oh my gosh. And he was like, no, no, of course it's, I'm just trying it. What are you doing? He's like, what are you doing? You're sitting over there like mocking me, cause I freaking just launched a rocket and it blew up. Cool. Watch this in three weeks, I'm gonna do it again. It's gonna blow up 30 seconds later and that's a win.

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, better than 10. You ever, um, you ever seen that? So it's a movie clip from the show called Succession. And so they, it's been, you can see it as like a, it's like a meme now, right? It's like, out of context, it sounds real funny. So it's like, two guys are

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  in front of a lake and one guy says, success doesn't really interest me anymore. It's too easy. You know, it's a, it's like, uh, with a capital plus analysis plus execution. It's, you know, anyone can do that. You, you ever seen that clip?

• 1:02:50Jocko Willink?

  I haven't seen it.

• 1:02:51Speaker 01

  Okay, so he was like, this guy, he's up. He's saying that to this other guy, right? As he's in this.

• 1:02:56Jocko Willink?

  Like success is just too easy.

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that's literally what he said. He's like, success doesn't interest me anymore. It's too easy. You know, analysis plus execute or plus, you know, capital plus execution is freaking, anyone can do that. And he said, it's just, but if you watch that whole part, he was making a different point. He was like, uh, he's like, but failure, like failure, that interests me, you know? He's like, failure, like over and over and over and over again, or whatever. Then that's what, what you're talking about. Like where it's like, you're taking so many actions and constantly analyzing like, okay, how can I iterate and make it better after, after every failure? Whatever that like grows things way bigger rather than these one-off successes that you get. You see what I'm saying? But yeah, that's funny. That, uh, that clip out of context is real funny.

• 1:03:40Jocko Willink?

  There's, did you ever watch the show Billions?

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:43Jocko Willink?

  Because they have a scene in there where everyone's, they like hedged against basically an Elon Musk type character. And this rocket is launching. And if the rocket launches and it's successful, this company's gonna be huge and, and they bet against it. And they're all kinda watching it. And I, if I remember correctly, the thing blows up. And they, and some of the people feel bad. They're like, dude, how could we bet against this guy? He's trying to like, like save the human race and go interplanetary. And this mother just betting, hedging against him, bro. Instead of just trying to support a brother.

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. Perverse incentives.

• 1:04:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, check. Uh, going on here, a leader that cannot communicate well will not adapt to a situation because their communication to subordinates will not facilitate action. Have you seen the thing of Elon Musk where he's giving some random person a tour of like the rocket things? And the guy asked a question like, hey, well, wouldn't it make sense to do that with the fuel? And he, Elon Musk like, actually, oh, yeah, that would. And then they did it. It was like some major.

• 1:04:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I heard that.

• 1:04:44Jocko Willink?

  Progression. It's on video. It's like, it's real time, you can watch. And I, I don't want, maybe I'm calling the, I don't know if the random guy may have been like a nuclear physicist or a rocket scientist, but it seemed like a random dude.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  Right, right, right.

• 1:04:56Jocko Willink?

  It seemed like a, like not, he wasn't even part of the company. He was like, it seemed like somewhat of a random dude.

• 1:05:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:01Jocko Willink?

  And even what he was saying was one of those things, you know, when there's something, when you're working on something really hard, it's really close to you, you can't see everything. It seemed like he was asking one of those questions like, well, wait a second, why wouldn't you just do this?

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:12Jocko Willink?

  And Elon Musk like, hmm.

• 1:05:13Speaker 01

  Actually, I did see that video.

• 1:05:15Jocko Willink?

  It's a good clip.

• 1:05:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, people, um, think that he's closed minded is the reason I was thinking that. You think Elon Musk is like a authoritarian leader. And he's definitely aggressive in trying to set timelines and all that stuff. But he's also open minded when some random person.

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:34Jocko Willink?

  Sorry, if you're that random person and you're listening right now and you're actually, you know, a esteemed scientist, I apologize. But you seemed like you were kinda random.

• 1:05:41Speaker 01

  Right, right. The context of the video.

• 1:05:43Jocko Willink?

  It is weird though, but then again, I asked myself, why is Elon Musk giving a random person a tour? Okay, so anyways, this individual who's probably highly educated had a suggestion and Elon Musk took it. Adaptive decision making versus non-adaptive decision making, they got some pros and cons here. So with adaptive decision making, we got clear goals. We understand the components of the system, the relationships between them and how it fits into the larger system, larger system. It's more decision. Adaptive decision making is more decisions. This is iterative decision making. Smaller rather than larger adjustments is exactly what you noticed about me before I was talking about it, which is iterative decision. I'm gonna make a lot of small decisions very quickly. I'm gonna ask more questions. That's the next thing on here. More hypothesis testing.

• 1:06:29Jocko Willink?

  Again, Elon Musk, I'm gonna launch this rocket, we'll see. If it blows up, you're a loser. No, no, no, if it blows up, I'm gonna learn something, I'm gonna do it again in two weeks.

• 1:06:38Jocko Willink?

  And I'm gonna be able to put stuff into space 10 times cheaper than anybody else.

• 1:06:43Jocko Willink?

  Extra effort to find disconfirming information. That's kind of a cool lean, right?

• 1:06:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:06:50Jocko Willink?

  You're trying to see where you're wrong.

• 1:06:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:52Jocko Willink?

  You're trying to look for where you're wrong. More structured thinking. And then reflection of own thought process and performance. You kind of are thinking about what you're doing. You're self-aware. That's what it is, self-aware. Now, non-adaptive decision-making, vague goals, we don't really know what the hell we're doing. Looking for single causes.

• 1:07:14Jocko Willink?

  This is a big deal.

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:15Jocko Willink?

  It's a big deal. I've never heard that term. I've heard the term silver bullet. People are looking for a silver bullet. They think if they get their one breakthrough.

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:07:25Jocko Willink?

  They can just get, you know, the one breakthrough with their product. If they can just get the seed, if they can just get someone to read their script, if they, like, they think there's gonna be one single thing that's gonna change their world.

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:36Jocko Willink?

  Generally speaking, that doesn't happen. And sometimes when we think it happens, when you look at it from the outside, you're like, oh, bro, that wasn't, you know, like Pratt.

• 1:07:45Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:07:46Jocko Willink?

  You think, oh, well Pratt, he got discovered in Hawaii, he was out to, Chris Pratt I'm talking about. Chris Pratt was, you know, he was a waiter in Hawaii.

• 1:07:54Speaker 01

  Bubblegum shrimp.

• 1:07:55Jocko Willink?

  At Bubblegum Shrimp. And he meets a woman.

• 1:07:59Speaker 01

  Reed Hahn Chung.

• 1:08:01Jocko Willink?

  Who's a director, actress, famous person. And she decides like, okay, I'm gonna put you in a movie.

• 1:08:07Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:08:07Jocko Willink?

  And he does. And you think, okay, well, there it was, right?

• 1:08:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:10Jocko Willink?

  But that wasn't it, dude. That was, that was, that was early and it was, there was years and years and years and years and years and years and years of continuous pushing.

• 1:08:25Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, he was saying he didn't wanna, uh, audition for Starlord. Cause he'd been like rejected by, by Marvel movies a bunch of times. And he was like, whatever dude, I'm not doing it.

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:35Jocko Willink?

  And they convinced him. But he'd been rejected a bunch of times. So there's no, so, there's no single causes, but our, our, our non-adaptive brains look for like one reason.

• 1:08:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It's more, it's more in a bad way, efficient.

• 1:08:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:50Speaker 01

  Right? It's more less mental energy. And even for like issues that come up, I was listening to some thing about this very thing.

• 1:08:59Speaker 01

  Where like if something goes wrong, or if somebody, you know, I don't know, let's say your friend betrays you, or I don't know, this girl dumps you, or I don't know. You know, in a relationship or in a scenario, whatever, like, let's say it's a catastrophic failure.

• 1:09:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:11Speaker 01

  The more single, like, the more you get close to a single cause, the more comforting it is for you, you know, to understand it. You know, so it's like, um, like you'll see, let's say a guy, you know, a girl breaks up with you, right? And you're like, oh, well, she's whatever, she's a narcissist, you know? It's like a single cause, you know? When there's really a lot of causes, like almost infinite, you know? Just like how you were implying where it's like, hey, this is a long process that at any point.

• 1:09:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Both success and failure, generally speaking, are made up of a compound of things.

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  Just stuff. Exactly right.

• 1:09:44Jocko Willink?

  Um. See situation as a collection of independent elements. Again, same, same idea. Oversteering. That's that's classic. Classic oversteering. Oversteering is such a, such a normal human reaction.

• 1:10:01Speaker 01

  Is that the overcorrecting?

• 1:10:02Jocko Willink?

  Overcorrecting knee-jerk reaction, you know? Like, we have a name for it, we call it knee-jerk.

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:06Jocko Willink?

  Oh, it's just in your, you're, you're oversteering. Overplanning.

• 1:10:11Jocko Willink?

  Um, ballistic behavior.

• 1:10:14Jocko Willink?

  Look for confirmatory information only. We all know that deal. Well, if you look at the graph I have over here, shut up, bro. You, hey, you cherry pick that.

• 1:10:23Speaker 01

  Well, yeah. I mean, that's natural though. The, there's a, it's a bias, confirmation bias. That's how, right?

• 1:10:28Jocko Willink?

  You're right, you're right. But that doesn't make it okay, my brother?

• 1:10:31Speaker 01

  No, no, no, it's bad.

• 1:10:32Jocko Willink?

  Um. No metacognition or self-reflection. So you're not even thinking about what you're thinking about.

• 1:10:41Jocko Willink?

  And listen, I kinda support that, that, uh, idea, that like the stoic idea of kind of, you know, don't just sit around and think about thinking, right?

• 1:10:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:50Jocko Willink?

  That, I'm not, I'm not pro that.

• 1:10:53Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:10:53Jocko Willink?

  I don't wanna just sit around and think about thinking. I wanna do some shit.

• 1:10:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:56Jocko Willink?

  But to be totally unaware of how your thought processes are functioning, that's not good.

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:04Jocko Willink?

  And I think that is part of detachment, right? Part of detachment is like, oh, hold on a second. There's a program running in my head. And I need to be outside that program enough that I can see what the hell the freaking program is doing.

• 1:11:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I was talking to my son and he was, um, he was talking about something that one of his classmates was telling him. And he's like, hey, he said this and that. And I remember thinking like, okay, this is like a, for lack of a better term, a controversial opinionated question, you know? So I was like, hey, this is what you ask them.

• 1:11:38Speaker 01

  You ask them, hey, why do you think that? And then I was thinking, well, he's just a little kid, so I don't know if he'll be effectively learning the lesson, you know? And then it was coincidentally, I forget if it was right before or right after, we were at the park and we're riding bikes. And they're e-bikes. And we're at the park, no one's there. This couple comes. And the lady goes, um, to him, when I was way far away across the park. But he goes, she goes to him, no, uh, no electric bikes in the park, yells at him that, right? And he's all like confused, cause we've been going there for years, you know? And then he was like, hey, that lady told me no electric bikes in the park. And I was like, oh, okay. So I was like, don't worry about the lady. So I, I went and he was like, well, what if there is? I was like, well, why, why would she think that? There's no,

• 1:12:22Speaker 01

  there's no sign or nothing like that. So I was like, okay, this is what we're gonna do. We're just gonna go by them and see if she says it to me. So we go by them, we're riding, basically around them, you know? And of course she didn't say anything, whatever. And she was like, why, what were you gonna say to him? I said, I would ask her genuinely, like, why do you think that?

• 1:12:39Jocko Willink?

  Earn this question?

• 1:12:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly right. And, and he was like, oh, okay, like, maybe he maybe presumed that I might confront her, you know, or something like that. But it was legitimate, like for her sake and/or for my sake.

• 1:12:52Jocko Willink?

  There may have been a rule you're unaware of.

• 1:12:54Speaker 01

  Exactly right. What if there's a sign? What if that's the principle? Cause there's a school right there, you know? Like, I don't know. Yeah, maybe there's something I don't know. I mean, chances are, you know, if he, he was like, that Karen, he called her a Karen. Like the Karen yelled at me, whatever. And that could be the case too, you know? So me asking, why do you think that, might put her in a weird awkward spot. Maybe she could self-reflect. See what I'm saying? But if I, if I'm too confrontational, now we just gotta fight. See what I'm saying?

• 1:13:17Jocko Willink?

  And it's weird, I will put, I will be 99% sure that I'm right.

• 1:13:22Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:13:22Jocko Willink?

  And I'll still put a bet on the 1% that you're right.

• 1:13:25Speaker 01

  Hmm. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:25Jocko Willink?

  That's how I roll. That's part of the program.

• 1:13:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:28Jocko Willink?

  99% sure, she's Karen.

• 1:13:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:31Jocko Willink?

  And she just is like trying to cause problems and, and, and be mean.

• 1:13:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:35Jocko Willink?

  To a little kid.

• 1:13:36Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:13:36Jocko Willink?

  That's 99%, but I'm taking the 1% and put my money on that. Hey, you know, what, what are the rules around it? Cause I haven't seen anything.

• 1:13:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:43Jocko Willink?

  Can you tell, can you show me where those are?

• 1:13:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:45Jocko Willink?

  I'm, I'm putting, I'm putting all my money on that.

• 1:13:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's a good move, even from a confrontational standpoint, because, bro, you're gonna freaking look stupid when they're gonna be like, oh, that big sign right there that, for whatever reason, I ignored.

• 1:13:57Jocko Willink?

  Or like, oh, the cops were just here and they arrested two kids.

• 1:14:00Speaker 01

  Exactly right. Then I look extra stupid.

• 1:14:02Jocko Willink?

  Extra stupid.

• 1:14:03Speaker 01

  See what I'm saying? But yeah, yep, I'm with you.

• 1:14:05Jocko Willink?

  And you don't win much.

• 1:14:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:07Jocko Willink?

  If you put your money on the 99% that you're right, you don't win that much more. In fact, you kinda even still kinda lose, cause then you look confrontational, you look like a know-it-all.

• 1:14:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:17Jocko Willink?

  They are, are, even though you're right, they're mad at you for being right. Like, there's all kinds of reasons not to bet on the 99. Take the 1% that you're, you look, in your, in your heart, you know you're right. Fine. Don't put your money there. It makes you look like an idiot. And by the way, it makes you look like an idiot even when you are right. Your ego is just forcing you to do that. But the, the chances, if you are not right and you put that wager down, bro, you look like an idiot. So just don't do it. You don't, you don't win anything. You, there's, there's no win. It's a no-win situation. It's a no-win situation to put money on the 99% chance that you're right. It's only, it's a, it's a guaranteed win if you put money on them. It's a guaranteed win. Why would you gamble any other way?

• 1:15:00Jocko Willink?

  It's a 0% chance of winning or a 100% chance of winning. And yet, most people do the other, do the opposite. Most people bet on their own, their own being right. And they, they, people get, um, resentful of them, they get mad at them, they get confrontational, they argue with them. And occasionally they're also like, oh, here's why I'm right, you're wrong and you're an idiot.

• 1:15:22Jocko Willink?

  Ah, man, alright. Now, being flexible, obviously important, but there are consequences of over flexibility. So far, we have identified the relationship between analytical and recognitional decision-making and how it applies to different phases of an operation. We have further discussed the OODA loop and how it applies to both forms of decision-making. We've explored the relationship between adaptive decision-making, the Boyd cycle, and how it relates to tactical warfighting philosophy. While adaptability is seen as crucial throughout decision-making, the astute leader must guard against being overflexible. And we gotta be balanced, that's why we wrote a book called The Decade of Leadership. We have to be balanced in everything. Overflexibility adds unnecessary risk to your decision-making.

• 1:16:08Jocko Willink?

  Combat leaders use adaptability for increased effectiveness. A focus on flexibility will lead simply to change, not necessarily effective change. And there's people like that. There's people that just want change.

• 1:16:22Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:16:23Jocko Willink?

  They think, maybe it's like they like to prove that they're creative, they like to prove that they've got new ideas and that everything's gotta be a freaking change.

• 1:16:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what it feels like.

• 1:16:30Jocko Willink?

  Like, no. If it's work, if it's, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, fool. The effective adaptive leader strikes a balance between reacting in response to the environment and proactively shaping the environment. Overflexibility can also lead to inconsistent leadership. Constant changes of positions and decisions can lead to a loss of confidence from subordinates, which is also detrimental to an operation. Finally, an overflexible leader often seeks to change that which already works, which I just said. In this case, unnecessary change could have negative impacts on not only the action outcome, but also the subordinate effort.

• 1:17:12Jocko Willink?

  So, yes, we want to be adaptive. Yes, we want to have an open mind. Yes, we want to make small decisions, but we don't want to go overboard because then that creep problems as well. One more idea to cover here, and this is decision-making concept, war gaming, returning to the concept of analytical decision-making. When time is available, we often utilize a concept of war gaming. And I'll tell you what, I, I run little war games in my head, like when I'm thinking about something like there's a war game just happened. You know what I mean? That's, oh, I can, that's what's happening. They talking about it in the, when there's time available and it's, and no, like, I'm looking at something like, okay, here's possible outcomes. I'm kind of seeing them all at once, like boom, they're there.

• 1:17:55Jocko Willink?

  War game is a technique in which we analyze a plan that we have developed and identify possible friction points that may cause the plan to fail. In other words, we assess what could go wrong with our plan. These reasons could be based on enemy activity, friendly activity, or the effects of terrain and weather. Through war gaming, we can identify shortfalls in our plan and select the most likely friction points. We can either change our plan to mitigate those friction points, or we can build secondary plans allowing us to be more adaptable on the battlefield. One must be careful, however, not to war game to death and identify only the most likely friction points.

• 1:18:36Jocko Willink?

  Failure to war game is usually the result of a commander falling in love with their plan. A concept counterintuitive to the adaptive leader. So you should be like, my, my plan actually means nothing to me. If you come up with something better, we're going with that. And being able to just think through what is going to happen, just take 20 seconds to be like, and I, I think what I, what I generally do is like, what, what's probably going to happen? What's probably going to happen? Like, what are the chances of that? And what's, what, what's the worst thing that can happen? Maybe I, I don't, I don't want to say go like full worst case scenario. I probably do like, it's more like, um, it's like an assessment of if this goes sideways, where am I going to be?

• 1:19:19Jocko Willink?

  You know, because it's too hard to say, well, worst case scenario, because usually the worst case scenarios are somewhat unlikely. But I'll kind of calculate like, okay, is, well, worst case scenario, but what are the chances of that?

• 1:19:33Jocko Willink?

  You know, like if we go out for dinner tonight, we could get in a car crash and everyone dies. What are the chances of that? Not high. How do we make it? Seat belts, it's like, it's, it's, we don't need to go that deep. But like, hey, if we go here, if we leave right now, can we make it? Yep, cool. Let's go. And then the last thing we'll cover from this document is the value of war gaming is significant, provided it focuses on the most likely scenarios. When done properly, it adds depth and adaptability to our plans and increases our tempo and execution. So, that's what we're doing. We're doing, we're doing role plays, right? We are practicing and we're thinking through things before they actually happen.

• 1:20:15Jocko Willink?

  The, the anecdote that I always use, that if you came to my house and I, and I said, hey, you know, come in the back door and just, you know, go, go into my kitchen. And I was hiding there and I jumped out and scared you, you'd be scared. But if I told you, hey, come to my house, come in the back door and go to the kitchen, I'm going to scare you, you would not be scared. Because you're prepared for it. So preparation goes so far in this decision-making process. Now, look, in Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual, I wrote about another decision-making process. I call it the extreme ownership leadership loop. And it's just like, what do I think about when I'm making a decision? And it's very simple and straightforward. Time, how much time do I have to make this decision? And then it's like four laws of combat, cover, move, simple, prime, test, execute, decentralized command.

• 1:21:01Jocko Willink?

  Is this decision violating any of those rules? And by the way, you can violate one of those rules and still say yes, but you have to put that in the calculus. And if all of a sudden you're violating two of those rules, well, hold on a second, three of those rules, we might have a problem. Four, we're probably not doing it.

• 1:21:16Jocko Willink?

  Is this decision based on my ego? Is this decision baked on my emotions, based on my emotions? Do I have good enough of perspective of all the other angles and other people's viewpoints and other people's opinions? I got to understand their perspectives. What are the frontline troops think? What does my boss think?

• 1:21:35Jocko Willink?

  And then I got to figure out, is this decision that I'm going to make right now, is this, is this my mission?

• 1:21:41Jocko Willink?

  Is this going to help me reach our strategic goal? Because it's not going to move me towards my strategic goal. Why am I doing it or not?

• 1:21:50Jocko Willink?

  And then finally, relationships. Is this going to

• 1:21:54Jocko Willink?

  make my relationships stronger with the people on my team? And I'm going to put all these answers into my calculus to figure out if I'm going to say yes or not. And I'm going to go through those over and over again. And I think that what the, what that little decision loop that I just went through, what I think that helps with is it helps you, it helps you sift out, like, is this emotion? Is this ego? Do I have the right perspectives? It helps you, it helps you take all this junk that's in your head and kind of correlate it into something that's a little bit easier to understand, which is very, very helpful when you have a complex decision to make.

• 1:22:34Jocko Willink?

  So, give that thing a try as well. It's from Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual. And that's what we're doing, you know? We're, we're making decisions. We're trying to make things happen. Don't get stuck. You know, it's a big piece of the Oodle Loop. People get stuck in the Oodle Loop. It sounds like you were saying earlier, you get stuck in sort of the analyze, right? You get, you get stuck in the orient, you're looking around, you're trying to get more information, you're trying to, trying to correlate it and figure out the best way and all this stuff. That's just observe orient, observe orient, observe orient. And I'm over here just act, act, act. And again, look, I'm not saying you need to be hyperactive, right?

• 1:23:17Jocko Willink?

  You don't want to do things without thinking about them, but don't get stuck. And by the way, you can get stuck in action too. Where you're just like doing a thing and do banging your head on the wall, banging your head on the wall, banging your head on the wall, banging your head on the wall. And you're not going, hold on a second. This is not working. We need to do something else. So you can get stuck in any one of the elements of the Oodle Loop. You can just get stuck there, looking around, trying to figure out where you are, trying to figure out what decision to make. Should we go left? Should we go right? Should we go left? Should we go right? Should we go straight? Should we go left? You're stuck there. So don't get stuck in any of them. Use them, make them.

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  It's actually a good point that I guess doesn't really get talked about as much is getting stuck in the action part of it. Because you always hear about procrastination and you know, procrastination is going to kill your dreams, like all this stuff, I understand. But yeah, getting stuck in the action, which is actually, and tell me if I'm wrong here, the, the word you use, uh, when you're like task saturated. Yeah, like, so you've been going and going and going and going and you haven't took in any time to look and be like, bro, where am I at? You know, like you've been going down this road for a long time because you thought that was the road. And then, yeah, you look up and you're like, bro, I've been, I've been playing the wrong game. Remember that one? You've been playing the wrong game.

• 1:24:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that, that, that one hurts, you know, that one hurts. You're playing the wrong game. You know, we, we'd have guys that would, we'd put a barricaded shooter in the hallway and they would keep shooting. I wrote about that in Leadership Strategy and Tactics. You could put a barricaded shooter in the hallway in training situations and, and some, you know, young platoon commander would send two guys, they'd die. Two more guys, they die. Two more guys, they die. Two more, bro, just walk outside going through the window. What are you doing? Your action, action, action, action, action, action. No observe, no orient. No change in decision, just action, action, action. So you got to be careful of that. Usually it's not, that's not the problem. But it, but it can be. Any one of these, if you get stuck in them, that's going to be a problem.

• 1:25:05Jocko Willink?

  Usually people get stuck in the, in the observe, looking around, they're trying to orient and they can't decide what to do. They decide they can't make a decision. That's normal. Those, those first three are the normal ones. Action is the one, occasionally people get stuck, but usually they don't take action and they're just treading water. The decision part is what we talked about today. Trying to make a decision so that you can then act. And that's what we're doing. If we do that, we'll lead ourselves and lead others better. And speaking of leading ourselves, by the way, we should start every day by leading ourselves through some get some.

• 1:25:45Jocko Willink?

  Jiu-jitsu, wrestling, running, boxing, Muay Thai, sprinting, lifting, surfing, swimming. What else? What are we doing?

• 1:25:54Speaker 01

  You said lifting, so.

• 1:25:59Jocko Willink?

  Hey, when we're doing those things, we need fuel. And that's why we have Jocko Fuel for you. We have protein, ready to drink protein, powdered protein, pumpkin spice protein. It's freaking good, isn't it?

• 1:26:12Jocko Willink?

  Surprisingly good. To me it was, because you know, I never really had a pumpkin spice.

• 1:26:18Speaker 01

  Doesn't seem like your vibe in, in general, as a flavor in general, but hey, man, it is what it is.

• 1:26:24Jocko Willink?

  And what it is, is, is tasty. So check that. We got hydration, we got joint warfare, we got that super krill, we got time war. I mean, look, if I was a drug dealer, I would have problems because I'm all up in my own product.

• 1:26:38Speaker 01

  Getting high on your own supply.

• 1:26:39Jocko Willink?

  I'm getting high on my own supply with across the board. I'm in, I'm in the game. We got everything that you need. We're working out, we're getting after it. So get the fuel that you need. You can get it at jacofuel.com. And also you can get it at pretty much every retailer that you go to. And if you go to a store,

• 1:26:58Jocko Willink?

  And they don't have Jocko Fuel, just go up and ask them and say, hey, we want to have Jocko Fuel here. And tell them to reach out and we'll take care of them. We'll get you the Jocko Fuel that you need. Until then, check out JacoFuel.com. Also, Origin USA, we make 100% American-made products from 100% American materials. The cotton, the zippers, the buttons, the thread, American-made, American-made, and American-made. Communist-free, no communism, no communism at all. There's not too many people that can give you 100% guaranteed no communism. I think that should be on our labels, actually.

• 1:27:34Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:27:35Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna talk to Pete, I'm gonna talk to Pete, we might go 100% communist-free. 100% slave-free.

• 1:27:42Speaker 01

  I'm on board.

• 1:27:43Jocko Willink?

  100% eco-terror-free. Cause that's terror, dude. What they do to the, what they do to the environment over in other countries? Where they have no EPA, they have no rules and regulations, they're just, they're just short-term gratification. They, they don't give a shit, bro. You ever seen, you ever been to the beach in a foreign country? How about a third-world country?

• 1:28:08Speaker 01

  I've been to, no, I mean, I've been to beach in Cancun.

• 1:28:13Jocko Willink?

  Is it clean?

• 1:28:14Speaker 01

  Wait, wait, not Cancun, it was, uh, Cabo, yeah. Oh, yeah, it was. No one was there, it was good.

• 1:28:19Jocko Willink?

  I've been to some beaches in the world, and by the way, I've been to some remote beaches. And it's just covered with junk, covered, I'm talking in the middle of nowhere, covered in junk. I mean, I, I'll show you some pictures sometimes in some third-world beaches, just, just, you, you been to a garbage dump before?

• 1:28:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:28:37Jocko Willink?

  No, literally looks like a garbage dump. That's what it looks like.

• 1:28:40Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 1:28:41Jocko Willink?

  It looks like a garbage dump. You, if you want to go swimming, you're, you're swimming at the garbage dump.

• 1:28:44Speaker 01

  Straight up in the trash.

• 1:28:45Jocko Willink?

  There's no rules and they don't care. And so now you take that and you go to a factory and they dye the denim.

• 1:28:54Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, crowns.

• 1:28:55Jocko Willink?

  And well, guess what? They don't, they, they have chemicals that are left over. And so what do they do with the chemicals? Do you think they process? No, they just freaking dump them right in the river, right into the ocean.

• 1:29:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:05Jocko Willink?

  So that's what you do when you buy this crap. And some of these companies will be like, oh, you know, we give, you know, we, we support the, you know, the environment. And you go, oh, really? Cause you, you're buying this, you, you, you got factories polluting the earth. And you don't seem to care because you want to make an extra $3 on a pair of shorts. You dirtbags. So we don't do that at Origin USA.

• 1:29:32Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:29:33Jocko Willink?

  Communist-free, real deal. When we make everything that you need. You can, you literally don't need anything else. Maybe if you have to wear a business suit, you might have to give a business suit from somewhere else.

• 1:29:43Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, that's true.

• 1:29:45Jocko Willink?

  But if you need jeans, if you need pants, if you need shirts, if you need t-shirts, have you tried on the, the new, um, Nano Rip shirts?

• 1:29:52Speaker 01

  Nano Rip shirt? I don't think so.

• 1:29:54Jocko Willink?

  They're freaking clutch, dude.

• 1:29:56Speaker 01

  Wait, what kind of shirt? Like t-shirt? Is it a t-shirt?

• 1:29:58Jocko Willink?

  They're like a button-down.

• 1:30:00Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, no, no, no, I have not tried it, but I saw, uh, Belittle had one on and I was like, okay.

• 1:30:05Jocko Willink?

  When I spoke in DC at the Washington Monument, I wore one.

• 1:30:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:09Jocko Willink?

  Matter of fact, when I spoke, I was a 250th year, uh, anniversary of America.

• 1:30:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:16Jocko Willink?

  I, when I spoke, I was wearing head to toe.

• 1:30:19Speaker 01

  Full Origin drip.

• 1:30:20Jocko Willink?

  Origin drip.

• 1:30:21Speaker 01

  Eh, okay.

• 1:30:23Jocko Willink?

  Full Origin, full American-made. I was as American as I could possibly be. That's what we're doing. So if you're an American, you want to help America, you want to help the communities, you want to help the economy, you want to help people send their kids to college, you want to help our, our, our people grow, want to help our farmers and our manufacturers, you want to help everybody. You want to help our Defense Department, War Department now, you want to help that? You want to help America? Let me tell you what, go to Origin USA and get yourself some. That's what we're doing.

• 1:31:00Speaker 01

  That's true. Also, don't, don't forget about Jocko Store, where you can get your Discipline Equals Freedom merch, apparel, stuff. Also, good, it seems to be a hot one as of right now, good. It's true, bro. Cause it applies to everybody, like, kinda, under all, um, uh, we'll say many circumstances. High-level problems, low-level problems, everyday problems.

• 1:31:23Jocko Willink?

  Have you made a low-level problem good t-shirt yet?

• 1:31:25Speaker 01

  Hmm, no.

• 1:31:27Jocko Willink?

  What would be the?

• 1:31:28Speaker 01

  I don't know, the vibe, I would have to analyze that one.

• 1:31:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:31Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, good, but yeah, good, uh, good, good idea, for sure. And then there's also the-

• 1:31:37Jocko Willink?

  So a high level, just so everybody knows, a high-level problem is like when the, when the, when the air conditioning on your Cadillac Escalade is running a little cool.

• 1:31:49Speaker 01

  Or what happens?

• 1:31:50Jocko Willink?

  You're like, you're like, good. I get to test out my Origin hoodie.

• 1:31:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Yes, something-

• 1:31:56Jocko Willink?

  It's a high-level problem.

• 1:31:57Speaker 01

  Something that might be in the same category as first-world problems, you know, high-level problems, um, you know, you're, uh, I think the OG one was the Cable Guy, back in the day when cable was a thing, more so than not, when the Cable Guy is a little bit late. That's a, that's a high-level problem, you see? It's still a problem, but it's not one of these, you know, these things, you see? But no, no, hey, they're everyday problems, high-level problems, low-level problems.

• 1:32:21Jocko Willink?

  My chauffeur is sick, I don't have to drive myself.

• 1:32:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, brutal. See what I'm saying? Exactly, right. Shaq. But yes, but yes, you can, you know, we got shirts on there, it's pretty cool, uh, we have different versions of it. Anyway, it's all on JacoStore.com. Check it all out there. If you like something, get something. Also, Shirt Locker. Subscription, new design every month, uh, people seem to like that one now, and you can check out, click on the Shirt Locker button on the top, right? Boom, you can see what it's all about. Pretty cool. If you like that, boom, subscribe, man, get your new design every month. You can cancel anytime. You know, it's not one of these deals where you get locked into anything, so, bro, up to you, see what I'm saying? All on JacoStore.com.

• 1:32:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and by the way, we also have WarriorKid.com. So we got the Warrior Kid movie coming out. It comes out November 25th, global release on Apple TV. It's a beautiful movie, it's a beautiful story, it's gonna get kids freaking doing jiu-jitsu, doing pull-ups, eating right, getting after it. It's what America needs right now, in my humble opinion. And so that movie's coming out, you got the, we, we, I mean, I've written the books, you can get the books, WarriorKid.com, and you can get them t-shirts. You can also get them t-shirts that say good.

• 1:33:29Speaker 01

  Yep, that's true.

• 1:33:31Jocko Willink?

  Those, are those on the Warrior Kid website? Are they on, they're on the Jocko Store website?

• 1:33:35Speaker 01

  Well, uh, in the, in the spirit of, uh, accuracy, you know, that's not a Warrior, Warrior Kid, uh, themed shirt, no. But it is for the kids, though, which is, they're all on JacoStore.com, so.

• 1:33:48Jocko Willink?

  Even the Warrior Kid themed shirts?

• 1:33:50Speaker 01

  Warrior Kids shirts are on JacoStore.com, yes.

• 1:33:53Jocko Willink?

  Or you can go to WarriorKid.com.

• 1:33:54Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:33:55Jocko Willink?

  So we got two options for you there. Get your kid a Warrior Kid t-shirt, get him fired up. They're going back to school, they might never be back in school, but like, what a subtle flex. You know, I can read and I can fight, I'm a Warrior Kid.

• 1:34:07Speaker 01

  Easy money.

• 1:34:08Jocko Willink?

  But don't think it's a big deal, but kinda is.

• 1:34:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, hell yeah.

• 1:34:12Jocko Willink?

  So check that out. Also, you know, speaking of books, I've written some other books besides kids' books, and you can check those out, plus check out Put Your Legs On by Rob Jones. Need to Lead by Dave Burke. Echelon Front, we have a leadership consultancy where we help companies around the world

• 1:34:29Jocko Willink?

  organize themselves and solve problems through leadership. So if you want to come to one of our events or you want to have us embedded inside your company, go to EchelonFront.com. If you want to learn the skills of leadership in an online manner at your own pace, you can go to ExtremeOwnership.com, where we teach these principles online. And then if you want to help families, service member families, active families, retired families, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's Mom, Mama Lee, she's got an amazing charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. Also, check out HeroesAndHorses.org, Micah Fink, giving people back their soul up in the mountains of Montana, Jimmy May's Organization Beyond the Brotherhood.org,

• 1:35:14Jocko Willink?

  and then WarriorsInNeed.org as well. Check all those out. If you want to connect with us, you go to Jaco.com. And then if you have a timer on your phone, you can set it to three minutes, countdown timer, and you can go on to social media for no more than three minutes. And you can find me at Jocko Willink, you can find Echo at Echo Charles. Just be careful, because if you go over three minutes, you're now creating chaos in your brain. Dopamine hits, destruction of your soul. So watch out and don't let it get you. Thanks to all of our military personnel out there right now, standing watch. Thank you for your service. And all the veterans who have served, thank you for holding the line for freedom.

• 1:35:56Jocko Willink?

  Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, as well as EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, and all of our other first responders, thank you for holding the line here at home. And everyone else out there, listen, you've got decisions to make.

• 1:36:14Jocko Willink?

  You've got decisions to make, and every decision has an impact. And while some of those impacts are small, some decisions will impact every aspect of your life. And by the way, some of the small decisions that you make, if you make them over and over again, they'll impact every aspect of your life. And they compound, and they might put you, if you make the right small decisions all the time, that puts you in an amazing place. And if you make bad decisions continually, guess what? They put you in a bad place. So these decisions that you're making are important, and you gotta know how you're making these decisions. What, what factors and influences are driving your decisions? Do you have control over those? Or are you being controlled?

• 1:36:58Jocko Willink?

  You gotta remember that it is you that have to make the decisions, you have to make them.

• 1:37:04Jocko Willink?

  So make good ones. And that's all we've got for tonight. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko, out.