001 Jocko Manual: Switch From Auto To Manual.

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  So we got to podcast 500 and there was a lot of information put out. I think it was over 1,000 hours of, of information being put out. Clearly some of it, um, just historical documentation. I mean, some of the people that we had on that had lived through things that were just part of history. And we got the oral history from them. So that was very cool. Obviously we did the original staple was historical book reviews.

• 0:41Jocko Willink?

  Out of print, military books from back in the day, which was awesome and very enjoyable to do. And then some of them, you know, we're just interviewing people with various experiences. Um, and I, in the beginning, a lot of time I would talk about, you know, looking at human nature. And through the eyes of leadership, through the lens of leadership, through the lens of history. So those, those things are still things that I enjoy doing a lot.

• 1:20Jocko Willink?

  And I think we are still going to release the straight up Jocko podcast number, whatever. I guess the next one will be 501. We'll, we'll do that. Are you still good with doing those? Yeah, thanks. You still press record? Um, but also, you know, it was, there's a lot behind those. You know, there's when it's interesting when people will say, oh, say thanks to your team. We don't really have a team, like you and me are the team. And one of us does the bulk of the work.

• 1:59Jocko Willink?

  So that was the team. The team was just us two. You know, you're doing all the technical side, me doing all the research and all that. So, you know, we're still going to do those podcasts, just not as often. And part of the reason too, is because it's a lot to ask of people to find the lessons and, and calculate and correlate those lessons that are often deeply embedded in stories. And there's lots of context required. And sometimes the lessons are delivered indirectly over the course of time. You know, there was a time where someone could say, you know, I'm having trouble with leadership and, and

• 2:43Jocko Willink?

  someone else could tell them, oh, you should start listening to Jocko Podcast. And they'd listen to it and they'd go, oh, cool. There's 22 episodes. They can listen to them and get started to get a good handle. But then after a while, when there's 500 episodes and a thousand hours, some of that is, it's, it's too hard to gather the information. And plus to parse out like, oh, is this just a history lesson? Cause sometimes people just want a history lesson. They want to talk to, you know, they want to hear from a guy that landed at Tarawa or a guy that was on Iwo Jima or someone that was in Auschwitz or, you know, someone that was in the Korean War. They want to hear from that person. What's their perspective? And sometimes they want to have like, oh, wait, what about just straight

• 3:26Jocko Willink?

  leadership information or, you know, any type of sort of human nature that people want to learn about. And so, I, and, and after, you know, probably after about a hundred episodes, you couldn't just say to someone, hey, just start listening to Jocko Podcast and you're, you're going to learn a lot because there's too much. So I know that people, myself included, want information in a simple, clear, concise manner. They want it directly. Right? I mean, I, that's one of the laws of combat leadership, simple, clear, concise. And From the time aspect and the information aspect, there's nothing simple, clear, concise

• 4:10Jocko Willink?

  about over 1,000 hours of, of stuff being put out there. So I figured what would be good would be to distill some of these lessons down into a more simple format. And I figured since there are very dedicated people that enjoy the original podcast, the Jocko podcast, we probably need to separate them a little bit, you know, so people can say, oh, this is a Jocko podcast and someone that likes to hear an interview or likes to hear a historical book review. They can go, oh, cool. This is what I'm, this is what I'm here for. But then there's also people that are like, oh, you know, I don't have time for a four

• 4:54Jocko Willink?

  hour historical podcast today. I don't have, I don't have the room for that in my day. I still want to learn some lessons. So I was thinking of, you know, okay, well, what do we, we have Jocko podcast, um, maybe something, a new name for, and again, this is all iterative because I gotta breathe a little bit. You know what I mean? You, you might think, oh, you know, hey, we got done with this one. Here's the plan going forward, but actually no, like, okay, let's, it's like in combat when there's something happening, you don't just make a call, you know, you just go, oh, attack or oh, retreat. No, you say, oh, look, we, we, I used to teach this. Sometimes you gotta let it develop a little bit, you know, you gotta see what's, gotta see what's happening.

• 5:36Jocko Willink?

  So I think we gotta do a little bit of that, breathe a little bit, um, and listen, you know, cause people are gonna give us feedback, which is cool. But as I think about, like, one of the, one of the things that popped in my name, popped into my head for a name was the manual podcast. And what I liked about it is cause there's layers, for one thing, there's layers. The layers being, you know, I've, we've reviewed a lot of manuals on this podcast. I've myself have written what I called field manuals, the discipline of freedom field manual, leadership strategies and tactics field manual.

• 6:17Jocko Willink?

  So I've written some manuals, but in that same vein, same word, different meaning. Lately I've been talking a lot about, about having to switch into manual mode.

• 6:31Jocko Willink?

  Which means we're not just going through the motions on something, but we are going to be in direct control of our thoughts and our actions.

• 6:42Jocko Willink?

  And this is something that I've thought about for a long time. You get into, you know, you and I have talked about cruise control. Right. Being in cruise control. Being in cruise control sounds cool. And especially if you have a modern vehicle with adaptive cruise control and lane keeping assist. Sure. You're kind of not driving, you know, your Cadillac does that, doesn't it? I, you know, it does a lot of things. Yeah, sure. Do you have to put your hands on the wheel? No, I don't, but you know, I understand what you mean. I got a Ford. It's got something called Blue Cruise. Yeah. And you don't have to have your hands on the wheel sometimes. Yeah, yeah. It's cool for driving, right? But let's face it. You're, things can go wrong. Yeah, fully.

• 7:26Jocko Willink?

  When you're in this Blue Cruise, what's the Cadillac thing called? Super Cruise. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's cool when you're driving, but it's not the best way to operate in life. One of the things, one of the earliest places that I experienced this was in the SEAL Teams, as a new guy, your new guy in the SEAL Teams. And when you're going through close quarters combat training, CQC, it used to be called CQB, Close Quarters Battle. And then they changed it. No mean creature is very important. They changed it to Close Quarters Combat CQC. Sure. Well, when you're, when you're a new guy, the, the manipulation of the safety on your weapon is very important.

• 8:10Jocko Willink?

  So you have to put your weapon on safe at the right time, take your weapon off safe, put it back on safe, and there's people watching you. And in the beginning, you're very conscious of it. You're like thinking about it, but.

• 8:26Jocko Willink?

  Pretty quickly, your brain is taking over. And what's weird about being a new guy is you're not used to being in that auto automaton mode where you don't have to think about it, it just happens. So as a new guy, you like go into a room, you shoot a couple of targets, you take your weapon off safe, you shoot a couple of targets, you get done, you you start moving to the next room and as you're moving, you're like, oh, wait a second. Is my weapon unsafe? Because you don't remember doing it. And luckily you did. And but it takes a little time to get used to, but that's how quickly even something as important, like you can get fired from the SEAL teams, they can, they can kick you out of the SEAL teams if you're not safe, you get safety violations.

• 9:09Jocko Willink?

  So even something that is important is as important as safing your weapon. As a new guy, the most important thing in the world. And you're like, wait a second, did I do it or not? Because you went into this automatic, you went into this cruise control mode. So. And then eventually you get to a point where you just know you saved your weapon, it's just part of your, it's just part of your system. Um. Eventually, you have to learn what you need to think about and what things can be kind of automatic. And this ties into a word that I have, I don't know if I've officially adopted the word yet.

• 9:54Jocko Willink?

  I may or may not have adopted the word. Uh, the word intentionality. Even you're getting nervous when I say it, right? Because it's, it's like a hippie new age thing, right? Yeah, yeah. You know, be intentional, right? Even you have to, you have to kind of whisper it when you say it, you know, so you can give the right mana, you know what I mean? Sure. Be like, I like to live intentionally, right? So, so that kind of scares me, that kind of stuff makes me nervous. But I, I was talking about it, I was talking, I was talking to a group of people and I, I trapped myself where the only word I could use was intentional. I like trapped myself. And what I said was, you know, whatever, I said, hey, when you're doing this, in this situation, you've got to be.

• 10:42Jocko Willink?

  Intentional about what you're doing, right? And then I thought about what we do in the military. Because if you think about what you do in the military,

• 10:52Jocko Willink?

  being intentional is absolutely required. And there's actually, there's actually a protocol for being intentional. And it's real obvious. Plan, execute, debrief. That, that's how, that's how you're intentional. So,

• 11:08Jocko Willink?

  we come up with a plan, right? We assess the situation. We, we come up with various courses of actions. We grade those courses of actions and figure out which one is going to work best. And then, once we've, once we've

• 11:23Jocko Willink?

  decided which course of action we're going to use, then we come up with a plan. So that's part one. That is being intentional, right? I am going to come up with a plan. Then you go and execute the plan. We go and do the thing that we, we said we're going to execute. And obviously this is going to be challenging. This is sometimes the hardest thing about doing something is actually doing the thing.

• 11:44Jocko Willink?

  And then what we do is we debrief, which is what we do with, we debrief to the point that it's almost a little bit ridiculous sometimes in the SEAL teams. We debrief everything. So, but then we figure out what we did right, what we did wrong, and what we can do better. So you combine those three things and now we're being intentional. We're being intentional.

• 12:12Jocko Willink?

  We plan, we execute, and we debrief. Now,

• 12:19Jocko Willink?

  where can you do this? This is the same as not being on cruise control, right? Because if you're on cruise control, you're just going through the motions of whatever your habits are. So you don't,

• 12:30Jocko Willink?

  you don't want to live like that, right? So, so where can you do this? Where can you take yourself out of cruise control? And where can you

• 12:39Jocko Willink?

  become, when can you shift into manual mode?

• 12:45Jocko Willink?

  Before you go to bed at night, write down what you're supposed to do tomorrow.

• 12:50Jocko Willink?

  Think about the advantage that that gives you when you wake up and you don't have to figure out what it is you're supposed to do today. Cause when you wake up, you're you got brain fog, it's confusion, you were dreaming about random freaking pickles. And like, you know, who knows what you're dreaming about. Sure. Just chaos. And well, but when you actually write down what you're supposed to do, and I do believe this, when you write down what you're supposed to do, first of all, it allows you to sleep because you're kind of like, okay, cool. I know what I'm gonna be doing tomorrow. And I think there's some kind of brain activity that starts solving and and calculating those things while you're sleeping.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, there's the

• 13:33Jocko Willink?

  Concur?

• 13:33Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah. There's a priming effect hundred percent. It's kind of like, I mean, I don't know if I'm if everyone's like this or not, but you ever been like focusing or working on something and then someone in just out of the blue comes in with some other stuff? And you're like, bro, like, I dig it, but right now is not the time I'm doing this. It's like a feeling, you know? So because you're not primed for this thing, you're primed for the thing in front of you or the thing that you're about to do, whatever, whatever your schedule is, whatever. But um, yeah, if you're already kind of like maybe like on a weird subconscious level or on a certain level of, you know, certain mental level, you're primed already.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  Or you begin the priming process. And it's not like super active. It's not taking that much energy, you know? So you kind of, it's kind of like if if someone said, hey, you have a, you have a jujitsu match right now. And you're like, oh, well, what's your right now? Really? Like, you kind of scramble mentally a little bit. As opposed to or when compared to, hey, you got a jujitsu match in four weeks. You know, then you then you can begin the priming process. You see what I'm saying?

• 14:41Jocko Willink?

  That really, that jams up people when they're competing.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:44Jocko Willink?

  And Yeah, and you know, we think we have an hour and all of a sudden it's time to go now.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:51Jocko Willink?

  That jams people up.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  Makes sense.

• 14:52Jocko Willink?

  So, yes, writing down, giving yourself a little time to process. That is an, that is an area where you can manually take control of your life. Same thing with like with working out, right? What are you gonna do tomorrow in your workout? What's the plan? What are the goals? What are the numbers you want to hit? Right? What are the, what are the sets and reps? What, what time are you gonna make? What's the mandate? What's the minimum mandatory that's happening?

• 15:18Jocko Willink?

  Uh, you know, you can do it for fuel, right? You can say, okay, what am I gonna eat tomorrow? Because, because leaving these things to chance? That's Cheetos. You know what I'm saying?

• 15:29Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, the, you, um, my wife will be like, hey, what do you want for dinner? Right?

• 15:37Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  But I don't know. Freaking I'm doing this other thing, you know? But if we, but if she or we, whatever, I'm just, just in principle, obviously it's not a huge deal. But in principle, if we had that written down the day before or two days before, you see what I'm saying? If, if these things were written down, you don't have to think about that kind of stuff. You already know. You just refer to your notes. See what I'm saying?

• 15:58Jocko Willink?

  And you can, like, the, the detached assessment of what you should eat tomorrow? Is way better than the, I'm hungry. I'm gonna open the fridge and see what's happening.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  Yep, the auto mode.

• 16:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, just the cruise control modes, pulling out the crap. So, that's an area where if you take control and you go into manual mode, you're gonna do a better thing. You, you can do it for conversations that you're gonna have, right? You're gonna, uh, you know, meet, have a business meeting with a, with a partner or potential partner. Why not take five minutes to come up with a damn plan before you roll in there? Maybe it's, you have to meet with one of your employees.

• 16:40Jocko Willink?

  Why not come up with a plan? Three minutes of what you're gonna talk about? How you're gonna say it to them? What contingencies do you need to have?

• 16:52Jocko Willink?

  Maybe you can do this protocol for your Saturday. You know what I'm saying? Instead of just letting Saturday happen to you, what time are you gonna wake up? What are you gonna do for workout? What's the workout gonna be? When are you gonna spend time with your kids? When are you gonna spend time with your spouse? When are you gonna get the stupid chores done around the house that you gotta get done? And if you actually plan what that Saturday is gonna look like, I guarantee it's going better. Guaranteed to go better. If you let cruise control run your Saturday, Saturday disappears.

• 17:28Jocko Willink?

  So, this is, all these are examples of switching to manual. Manual mode. Getting control. Just don't let your Saturdays happen to you. Take control of your Saturdays, take control of your Sundays, your Mondays, your Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, you see what I'm saying? Go, don't, don't go into cruise control, go into manual mode.

• 17:51Jocko Willink?

  What's, what's, what's natural? Is cruise control. Cause look, as cavemen, we're not even supposed to survive like, you know, till tomorrow. We're just thinking about, we're just thinking about right now. Right. So it's, and those animalistic instincts that you have, they're gonna keep you alive for right now. Right? For right now, they're gonna keep you alive because you're gonna eat something because it's in front of you, you're gonna eat it. Or if you get a chance to rest, you're gonna rest, you're not gonna expend any extra energy, right? So, the, the

• 18:24Jocko Willink?

  natural mode is cruise control. Taking the easiest route, using the least amount of energy. Getting through whatever situation you're in with minimal friction.

• 18:36Jocko Willink?

  And unfortunately, in modern life, that, that just leads to disaster. So, this is, we wanna get in that situation where we can switch to manual mode, but it's not easy.

• 18:51Jocko Willink?

  It's not easy.

• 18:54Jocko Willink?

  One thing that's, that makes it not easy is it happens without recognition, right? Like when you're driving and all of a sudden 15 minutes went by and you don't remember it. But you didn't, you didn't, you didn't switch into cruise control, it switched on you.

• 19:10Jocko Willink?

  Or, did I turn off the toaster oven?

• 19:15Jocko Willink?

  Did I lock the door or not?

• 19:18Jocko Willink?

  Right? Where did you park the car? Right? You go to the, the, the mall?

• 19:26Jocko Willink?

  And you don't remember where you parked the car because you were in full cruise control? Did, this, this is one that happens to me. Did I pack that thing that I need for the trip? You know, I don't even remember, I always have it. But I'll be going to the airport like, whoa, wait a second. Did I bring? Time war? Yeah. You know what I mean? Like it's, it's. And it's there, but I did it in full cruise control. So going into cruise control happens. Without us consciously deciding to go into that mode. And there's actually different like psychological. Names for this. Automatic processing procedural memory.

• 20:06Jocko Willink?

  Just procedural memory. You're just doing, doing the thing. Here's a good, a good name, good term. Cognitive offload. Cognitive offload. Well, this is when you just let your surroundings or your routine or your. You know, devices. Carry part of your mental load. Now, we can use this to our advantage, right? That let, making, making notes about what you have to do tomorrow? That's cognitive offload. You don't have to think about it anymore. You already have it. Right. The to do list. That to do list is cognitive offload. That's a good thing, but when you let your phone be the cognitive offload. When you let, let Netflix be the cognitive offload.

• 20:49Jocko Willink?

  When you let the, you just go with the flow.

• 20:53Jocko Willink?

  I was just driving and there was a detour. And the, there was a car in front of me. And then there was a vehicle that was clearly like part of the whole construction process. In front of that car. And. That. Construction vehicle is delivering some material to like the construction that was happening on the road. And.

• 21:17Jocko Willink?

  The that kind of like in this detour that vehicle pulled off to like start offloading and the car in front of me was just so in cognitive offload it just followed the car it followed this truck into the construction site and there's a dude like waving his hands you know guy with a slow sign he's waving his hands at the car and he's looking at me and and we like locked eyes and he kind of gave me like the look of like dude I'm glad you're freaking have a brain yeah but the person in front of me total cognitive offload procedural memory just follow the car in front of you and we're gonna be good

• 21:48Speaker 01

  brother that's um that's real

• 21:50Jocko Willink?

  Oh I just literally saw it 15 minutes ago

• 21:53Speaker 01

  in fact there and I told you the story before where

• 21:57Speaker 01

  cuz like

• 22:01Speaker 01

  when I got my bouncer you gotta get certified to be a security

• 22:04Jocko Willink?

  I didn't know you were a certified bouncer

• 22:07Speaker 01

  and they teach you this with in in in the um in the event of a fire two things that they say you gotta keep in mind you need to be like a leader scenario right because there's two things that phenomenon that will that'll happen and it's that it's like people just automatically follow crowds and then the other one was people will automatically go out the way they came in so basically it's like hey you gotta be follow the crowd thing is like hey you gotta be calm because if some one person panics and the next person panics and everyone panics because their brain just automatically goes into well there's a panic situation and then the other one was yeah they automatically go where they came in

• 22:45Jocko Willink?

  yeah

• 22:46Speaker 01

  the exit is right here big red exit or whatever and they still do that so yeah that's real that's really in so many situations

• 22:53Jocko Willink?

  and this is what I'm saying this problem that we all have is very common here's another word I would say it's an adjacent term inattentional blindness failing to see things that are happening because you're focused elsewhere

• 23:07Jocko Willink?

  Um, yeah.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  You ever heard the, the idea of we only use 10% of our brain?

• 23:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  Right? They say, I mean, and I don't know where we came down on that and if that's true or not true, whatever. But I think it's like 10% of your attention. And I wouldn't be surprised if it's even less, but because maybe for you, for me.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  But you, okay. So I was changing a battery in a smoke detector yesterday.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  And so in this particular room, the ceiling was really high. So I had to get a ladder. So you know, it's how you get a freaking one of these huge ladders. So I went up and I was barefoot on the ladder. And I was changing and the, the battery in there was like taped in there. So I don't know if you remember what a smoke detector battery, you gotta undo it. And the wires are still connected. So my hands are up above, right? So I'm got it, bro. I gotta focus because the tick, the, the time is ticking because my shoulders get tired. You know, all this stuff.

• 24:02Jocko Willink?

  So I'm like, folks. People that are here for the combat stories will be freaking fired up to hear this one. You gotta have a battery in your hand and your shoulders. We're getting tired.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  I'm telling, okay. So this, this is an attention story, like how, how you literally won't pay attention to like what's going on. Even if it's a loud signal, we'll say in principle. So I'm, I'm changing this battery, right? So I gotta undo the tape and then I have to make sure like the battery fits in perfect. And then, and it's upside, you know, you're upside down, right? So the battery can fall out because you gotta take off the tape. So anyway, I'm trying to focus on this like freaking full on bomb diffusal freaking mental scenario. Fine, I'm getting it in.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  So I get it in. Finally, I switch the other battery. Boom. I put it in, right? I put it in, boom, boom, done. And you know where, you know, when you get a little task done, it's like a little mental, like gratification. And you can almost, almost like you can exhale, right? So boom, I exhale and then all of a sudden I realized my feet hurt real bad, just right then and there. And I'm like, frick, cause that ladder had this weird, rough like surface to it, you know? And I was barefoot and my feet were kind of sensitive. And Brian, it started hurting just all of a sudden, right? When the battery went in, I clicked it on my feet, started hurting bad. I'm like, bro, I had my feet. And I'm like, oh, this thing is gonna climb down or whatever. But I was like, wait a second. I didn't even feel that while I was putting the battery in, because I was so attentive, you know? My attention was so attentive to that freaking task. See what I'm saying?

• 25:27Speaker 01

  Bro, I'm telling you, that's how life is. Like you, you have any idea how much stuff you're missing in life? Because we're focused on this or that or whatever. See what I'm saying?

• 25:36Jocko Willink?

  Yep, another good story of raw survival for

• 25:43Jocko Willink?

  Jack. Uh, here's another good one. Preconscious processing, mental operations and information handling that occur just outside of immediate conscious awareness. But the readily accessible, they're ready readily accessible and be brought to consciousness with little effort or the right trigger. Right? So things can be happening. And you, they're right just outside of like the conscious, they're just kind of happening. And all it takes is wait, wait a second, what's that? Well, I need to get focused on this thing, which again, to me, this is important because you, if you're not paying attention to it, you won't see what's happening. If you're not paying attention to it, you won't see what's happening.

• 26:25Jocko Willink?

  You'll just be following that car in front of you and you'll be sitting inside of a construction site. But I think, I think my favorite of these different terms.

• 26:35Jocko Willink?

  Is one behavioral inertia, behavioral inertia. Inertia is just that, you know, uh, inertia does not cause anything to happen. It's just sort of like, it's just the steady state of what's happening. You know, the, uh, a body at rest tends, tends to stay at rest, the body emotion tends to stay motion. That's inertia. That's inertia and inertia is a passive thing. It's just, it's just happening. It's not making the thing go, but it's going and it's going to keep going or it's not, it's not going to make the thing stop, but it's stopped and it's going to be hard to move. Cause that's inertia. So the idea that you have behavioral inertia, just the tendency, just to keep kind of doing what you're doing is

• 27:22Jocko Willink?

  is scary. It turns you into an NPC. Which I know you're familiar with this term. It turns you into a non-player character because non-player characters can only like go through the motions that the, the whatever seven, you know, things that they can do with their hands. You ever seen those videos of people being NPCs like real life people being NPCs? Have you ever seen those?

• 27:46Speaker 01

  The, where they're like physically acting like that.

• 27:49Jocko Willink?

  And they'll like say the same thing again, like they're like they're an NPC, but they're in real life. I always think those are pretty funny. But.

• 27:58Jocko Willink?

  It's strange that there's that we do that. We just get into the mode of we're just habitual behavioral inertia. We're just gonna keep doing the same thing. Well, just do it, just do the thing. Now, can some of those things be good? Yeah, and you were talking before hit record today. You you you have some behavioral inertia. That's good. Like when you wake up in the morning, you're gonna you're gonna lift. At least you're in that mode right now. Recently. Yeah.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, well.

• 28:26Jocko Willink?

  I'm in fully in that mode. Like when I wake up, there's just behavioral inertia. I'm gonna get up, get out of bed, gonna go work out.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:32Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes a little bit too much. I needed some pre-workout the other day. I didn't take it. I wished I would have afterwards. Cause I was like, I kind of, I was very tired. I was very sore. I kind of wanted to chill and I should have just gone full pre-workout. You know, five o'clock in the morning, pre-workout, let's go. But I didn't. But sometimes you sometimes you need that hitter.

• 28:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, fully. Yeah, fully. And I think that in assuming like, you know, I'm not an expert on behavioral inertia. I just learned that today. You know that about me. But the the the principle still remains regardless of when it happens or what you need. It was still part of your day because it's just been part of your day. There's no like, hey, I need to pattern, pattern, interrupt my whole thing and start working out now. You know, working out is just normal. That's normal. Regardless of when it is like, yeah, I'll wake like me, I'll wake up. Yes, I'll work out, but it'll be like the run or walk or whatever. And then, you know, it's like a routine. But if there's no workout, that's the weird stopping of the inertia. You see what I'm saying?

• 29:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so exactly. We look down on NPCs. That's like a, that's like an insult on on Twitter X, right? It's an insult in the world to call someone like, oh, that's just an NPC, just a non-player character. They've just been programmed, right?

• 29:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like they're they don't mean nothing. They're meaningless, insignificant, irrelevant.

• 29:51Jocko Willink?

  If we're not careful, we become them. We have to engage our brains. And I think when I was thinking about this podcast, you know, I think sometimes I need that. I need to break my own behavioral inertia. I need to make sure I'm not being an NPC.

• 30:14Jocko Willink?

  And I think other people are the same way. And I think that, you know, doing something where we can help people switch into manual mode, right? Doing something where we can help people snap out of their behavioral inertia. Make me think, make you think.

• 30:37Jocko Willink?

  Because here's the deal. If we allow behavioral inertia to be in control, many of the things that we do will be wrong.

• 30:50Jocko Willink?

  Because we have bad habits, we have bad behaviors. And like I said earlier, we're programmed as humans to take the path of least resistance. That's what our genetic programming is to save energy, to follow familiar patterns. We're from a physiological perspective. We're programmed to overeat. We're programmed to to have a bias towards physical inactivity. Like we're programmed for that.

• 31:20Jocko Willink?

  That includes avoiding physical activity if we can. It includes over indexing on rest. It includes avoidance of discomfort. Right? We don't want to be too tired. We don't want to be too hot. We don't want to be too cold. We don't want to be too uncomfortable. That's all that's all something that is programmed into us.

• 31:42Jocko Willink?

  You know, and and then from a from a psychological perspective, we're programmed with impatience. We're programmed with selfishness. We're programmed with jealousy. We're programmed to have a closed mind. Like you are programmed psychologically. You don't hear anybody else's ideas.

• 32:03Jocko Willink?

  We're programmed to avoid responsibility. Clearly, we oppose taking ownership.

• 32:11Jocko Willink?

  We're programmed for a lack of concentration because in the caveman days, if you got too focused, you know, on that one thing, you, you would get attacked by a saber tooth tiger. So you, so you're just constantly kind of looking around, going from this, going to that.

• 32:27Jocko Willink?

  Here's another thing, we're programmed to think negatively. Right, we're, we're drawn towards negative information. Why? Because positive information doesn't kill the caveman. Negative information kills the caveman. I want to know what happened. I walk up on a scene and there's bad stuff and good stuff. I want to know about the bad stuff. Cause the good stuff isn't going to kill me. The bad stuff is going to kill me.

• 32:51Jocko Willink?

  We're programmed to avoid change. We're programmed to conform to social pressure. We're programmed. We're programmed to procrastinate things that are going to be good in the long term. Cause we're programmed for immediate gratification. That's what we're programmed for. But that's, we want to get food right now.

• 33:10Jocko Willink?

  We want to feel good right now. We want to get warm right now. Where's what we're programmed for. That's how we stayed alive. Before we had freaking Instacart and Uber Eats and controlled temperature in our house. Before all these things, you had to just, oh, look, if I can get warmer right now, I'm going to get warm right now. If I can get food right now, I'm going to eat it all, all of it. That's the way we're programmed. So if you don't engage your brain,

• 33:39Jocko Willink?

  you will follow your human programming. I will follow my human programming.

• 33:46Jocko Willink?

  And in order to resist that, we have to shift into manual mode.

• 33:54Jocko Willink?

  We have to take control of our minds, mind control.

• 33:58Jocko Willink?

  And that's what I'm thinking about doing here.

• 34:01Jocko Willink?

  Helping each other get our minds right.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  So all these, a lot of this overlaps with the cognitive biases, right? The, you know, we're programmed to, to do these things or whatever. And you're right, they're for, they're kind of, they're basically a defense or protection like mechanism.

• 34:20Speaker 01

  But so this comprehensively, this is auto, right? Auto mode or, or automatic mode, right? So at any given moment, switching to manual, you'd be surprised how much that helps you. Actually, you said this a long time ago and it applied to something a little bit different. But the, to me, the principle like literally is this, when you said, I made a shirt about it. Said, uh, what are you doing right now? You know that? Like I, I know it was slightly different because you applied it to like your guys, right? When you're training guys and it's like, hey, you gotta be consciously looking for something like to do or whatever. Like, what are you doing right now? But when you said that, it stuck with me. And every once in a while, like, you know, you can kind of feel it.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  You can kind of feel yourself in that auto inertia mode, especially when it builds up a little bit, you know? And then, bro, I use that, well, I'd be like, hey, like, what are you doing right now? Like literally, what are you doing? Like, it's almost like, and then you kind of have this weird mental detachment from like your whole life. Everything you did today, yesterday, last week, anything that you, you know, like, do you, are you planning on anything? Like, do you have a goal right now? Like, what are you doing right now? It's like the whole thing, bro, it helps. And then you can be like, oh yeah, look, I've been doing this automatically. I'm gonna stop that. Let me do this other thing instead, you know? You can start making these conscious decisions.

• 35:36Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Yeah, that came from being out in the field, training guys. And you'd see some young SEAL or old SEAL. And there's chaos, there's confusion going on. And just walk them and say to like, what are you doing right now? And they would not know. They would not know what they were doing. And so if you're, if you don't know what you're doing, they're just going with the flow. Well, there's problems out there. And then I used to say the same thing to my kids. It used to really piss them off.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:04Jocko Willink?

  You know, I'd say, what are you, what are you doing? What are you doing right now? They took great offense. Why did they take offense to it?

• 36:09Speaker 01

  Well, because.

• 36:10Jocko Willink?

  Because they knew they were cruising.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  They knew, well, look, out of this, I don't want to get into a whole thing. But you have a certain, there's an element to your presence that.

• 36:21Speaker 01

  Kind of magnifies certain thing. You're right. At the end of the day, you're right. But I think a more accurate way of putting it is, it's not because they knew they were doing the wrong thing, or they knew they were not doing the right thing. It was that they know that you think they're doing the wrong thing, or not doing the right thing. And they have a lot of value in your, you know, opinion and your dad, and you're the authority, and you're you, and all this other stuff. So it amplifies. You're right, though. You're correct. Like, what you're saying is correct. But that's why, yeah.

• 36:49Jocko Willink?

  And that's why it's important to ask yourself that over and over again. What are you doing right now? And that will help you shift into manual mode. And if you shift into manual mode and you take control of what's happening, things are going to get better. And that's what we're doing here. This is the Manual Podcast, Episode One. If you want to support, go to jockofuel.com, check out originusa.com, jocko store.com, and echelonfront.com. Thanks for listening. Until next time, this is Echo and Jocko, out.