Jocko Underground: Should You Improve Your Weakness? Or Capitalize on Your Strengths?

Should You Improve Your Weakness? Or Capitalize on Your Strengths? How to have hard / sensitive conversations with people. How to build relationships with people who are at odds with each other. Risking complacency with diffused / shared accountability. How to raise driven, uncommon, happy, great young men. How to motivate people with no monetary incentive. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is the Jocko Underground Podcast, number 92, sitting here with Echo Charles. Here's a common question for us, and by us, I mean humans. Should I focus on capitalizing on my strengths, or should I focus on improving my weaknesses?

• 0:19Jocko Willink?

  Like I said, common question, actually Echo Charles, you most recently asked me this common question. Sure. My answer is actually yes, that's my answer to both.

• 0:30Jocko Willink?

  But I would say have a bias of focusing time on strength. So if you've got strengths and weaknesses, which you do, you should work on both. You should bias towards working on your strengths in most cases, because, well, for one thing, you have a compounding effect when you're good at something, it allows other opportunities, right? Other things open up, allows you to do more, even that thing that you're good at, you can do it faster because you're good at it, you can do it with more efficiency, and that means you can see other things that are happening. So that's good, and it's usually some kind of an exponential growth when you're doing something that you're good at.

• 1:17Jocko Willink?

  So we want to focus on our strength for sure, but that doesn't mean abandon your weaknesses. You shouldn't give up on them, you should still work on them. But let's say you're great at writing.

• 1:30Jocko Willink?

  No, let's say, let's say you aren't great, let's say you're not good at writing. So I think that's a little more common, someone that's just not really good at writing, don't really like it, but you're really good at math.

• 1:40Jocko Willink?

  That doesn't mean, oh, I should go and try and become a journalist, right? So if you aren't great at writing, don't go to college to become a journalist. That's not a good move.

• 1:52Jocko Willink?

  If you're good at math, not good at writing, go be an engineer, go be a computer scientist. Do do something that is gonna capitalize on what you're good at. But don't just give up on writing. Don't just abandon it. Take some of those classes. Take a creative writing class. Take an English literature class. You know, write in your journal so you can get better at it. Cause it is a skill that you're gonna need, even if you're, even if you're just a in a complete math oriented world, you're still gonna have to write. You're still gonna have to write, even if you're writing, if you're a scientist, you're gonna have to write an application to get a grant or whatever. I'm totally talking about things I don't know about, but I know that those people get grants. You gotta write an application to get a grant.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:36Jocko Willink?

  So therefore you're writing, so you should try and get good at it. Same thing if you're naturally like a lean endurance athlete. If that's what you kinda naturally are, you shouldn't be like, oh, I'm gonna now become a, I'm, my goal is to become a powerlifter.

• 2:55Jocko Willink?

  Because chances are you're gonna top out and you're going against nature. Right? You're naturally lean, naturally have slow twitch fibers. So that doesn't mean, so, so don't go try and become a powerlifter. But that doesn't mean you should never lift, right? You should wanna be strong. Now, listen, if you're a, if you're an Olympic marathon runner, you're probably not gonna be lifting a bunch. At least not upper body, right? I don't think they lift. They don't look like they lift.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  Doesn't seem like.

• 3:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, doesn't seem like they're lifting. But my point is for a normal person, you're, oh, you're naturally a good runner, cool. Definitely keep running, but that doesn't mean abandon lifting, still wanna be stronger, that kinda thing.

• 3:48Jocko Willink?

  And there are also things that if you're not good at them, they're so important that you actually have to do them anyways. So for instance, the jiu jitsu. Sure. Let's say you wrestled. And when you grow up, you're wrestling, so you hate being on the bottom. You don't want to be in your back, so you have no guard.

• 4:13Jocko Willink?

  That's not gonna, there's gonna be, here's the, here's the problem with that. There's someone out there that's a better wrestler than you. Period. End of story. Right? There's someone out there that's gonna put you on your back. And it might be, you know, if you wrestled in college, well, if you wrestled in a junior college, well, then the D1 colleges, they're gonna be all better wrestlers than you, so they're gonna put you on your back. So you gotta just, you know, I had a fighter one time. And I said, hey, you know, let's work your bottom game. He's like, I'm not going to the bottom.

• 4:46Jocko Willink?

  And I said, yeah, but you should still have it. And he didn't, didn't work on it. And he got beat, grounded and pounded for three rounds. Taken down each round. And he was a guy that was really hard to hold down.

• 5:01Jocko Willink?

  I would have a hard time holding him down. You know, he had a good, you get fit, feet on the hips and getting back to his feet and it was hard to take down too. But got taken down three rounds.

• 5:13Jocko Willink?

  And didn't have his timing, didn't have his, you know, you can learn some tricks down there of how you're gonna get back up. So there are critical things. That's why I should, I used writing as an example. Writing is actually kind of a really important skill to have in general in life. If you can't write well, you can't even really put together a good application to apply for a job, never mind a grant. You can't explain things correctly. In the, in the military, you're not good at writing evaluations. You're not good at writing awards. Like, there's all kinds of problems. So writing is not a great example because writing actually is something that you should get good at.

• 5:55Jocko Willink?

  I had a

• 5:58Jocko Willink?

  I didn't really like being on the bottom very much in jujitsu when I started.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:04Jocko Willink?

  Probably because I was like bigger and stronger. So when I was on top, I could like use my weight and strength to control people. And so what I did, I realized I didn't like it. And so I just ended up starting on the bottom for like a year straight.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:18Jocko Willink?

  And I got so confident on the bottom that I brought my game back up to speed. So that's a positive thing because if you're not good on the bottom, what happens when you get put on the bottom? You're gonna get smashed. So you have to do that. Now, what's interesting about this is you know, you think about what your weaknesses are. I think a lot of times you mistake your weaknesses for something that you lack the natural ability to do. When the reality is you just haven't really worked on it.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:54Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm saying?

• 6:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:55Jocko Willink?

  Like you, you, oh, you're, this guy's not a good striker. In, in fighting. Well, how much does he train striking? Of course, he's a black belt in jujitsu and he trains seven days a week on the mats, but he doesn't real. So he's not a good striker. He hasn't trained every single day for 10 years in striking.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:14Jocko Willink?

  Cause he doesn't really like it that much.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:16Jocko Willink?

  And why doesn't he like it that much? Cause he doesn't do it very much. So when he does go spar, he kind of gets his ass kicked and so if there's something that you're not good at, chances are it's not that you don't have the natural abilities, it's that you haven't worked on it. And that's a problem. So sometimes people think, I don't want to do that. They hide from it. And that's a bad thing to do, especially from a leadership perspective.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:40Jocko Willink?

  You know, if I come down and I see the troops are doing something, it's something I don't feel really comfortable with. So I just kind of like hide from it. Not a good move. Instead be like, hey, can you guys walk me through this? Cause I don't really know how to do it.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:52Jocko Willink?

  And then you realize, oh, it's just, oh, it's just that I don't know how to do it yet. Once they teach you, oh, you're gonna have to practice it a little bit, then you'll be better at it. Okay, cool. But taking that step to go and get into something is important.

• 8:07Jocko Willink?

  This is a Mikey and the Dragon scenarios, by the way, right? Like, when you're looking at, you know, when I say, hey, Echo, I want you to brief the sales team today. And you're like, I don't, I don't, I'm not good at public speaking. And I go, well, how much have you practiced? And you're like, well, I've never practiced. Well, then you're not going to be good at it. So I think a lot of times we see our weaknesses as something we naturally aren't good at. But in reality, we don't see that we haven't worked at it and that other people have worked at it. You know, oh, how that person, oh, I'm not good at squats. Well, how much are you squatting? You know, oh, I don't have a good, you know, I don't have a good bench. How much bench press are you doing?

• 8:52Jocko Willink?

  So that's the reality is I'm not a good runner. How much are you running? What are you doing? Now, listen, there's people that you're not going to be a, an exceptional runner. You're not going to have an exceptionally strong bench. You're not going to have an exceptionally strong squat. But just about everybody can be pretty good. You know what I'm saying? How, I shouldn't say just about anybody, with the right amount of work. You know what's interesting? I'm not good at anything.

• 9:24Jocko Willink?

  I'm not good at anything. But I do, an interesting thing that I do have is I have like good

• 9:31Jocko Willink?

  mobility in my squat position. Like, there's a lot of people that can't go to ass to grass squat. You know, just, I'm talking like no weight. I'm just talking sitting here, oh, just squat down all the way comfortably and, and be able to sit there like that.

• 9:47Jocko Willink?

  I have, I know people that are more flexible, kind of universally than I am. But they can't do that. Why? Because they don't ever get in that position. So if you get in that position and you sit there, you'll open up your hips, you'll improve your flexibility in your ankles, blah, blah, blah.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:07Jocko Willink?

  So I say, yes, work on both.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Both.

• 10:12Jocko Willink?

  That's my answer.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's two.

• 10:13Jocko Willink?

  To your question.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  So the, the, this kind of, you, you're helping me make sense of it all because I kind of see it as, so certain things that you're naturally good at, there's kind of two little categories in a way, where it's like, one, that you're kind of just natural, like, let's say you're fast, twitch muscles, you're going to be better at certain physical activities than others, right? That's like, you're naturally good at it. Then there's another kind of natural ability that seems natural, and technically it is, but it's because you've been put in certain environments that sort of give you this proxy training for this certain thing. So like, you know, let's say you're a farmer, or someone who bales hay, or lifts up, does a lot of physical stuff just through work, and then you go do something else that's physical in a different way, but similar, you know, some, some overlap there or whatever, and you're going to be ahead of like the normal person.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  So it's like, oh, this came natural to him, as well, because he spent freaking 15 years doing this other thing that's similar, you know?

• 11:05Jocko Willink?

  The really good, obvious example of that is water.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  Water, yeah.

• 11:12Jocko Willink?

  Being comfortable in the water. So anyone that grew up in the water, whether they were, lived by a lake, lived by the ocean, they surfed, they were on the swim team, they played water polo, those people are comfortable in the water. Anybody that grew up where there's no water, they didn't swim, they're, they're a disaster in the water, and it takes a lot of work for them to overcome that. And you see this all the time in, in basic SEAL training. People that grew up in the water, they don't have any problem with the water evolutions, like, like literally no problem.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:41Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's a rest for them.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:43Jocko Willink?

  There's some people that are panicking on every single time they go do a pool evolution. And the pool evolutions are challenging, it's, it's underwater knot tying, it's life-saving, it's 50-meter underwater swim, and anyone that grew up in the water, they, they, they consider those things to be a rest. They consider those things to be a rest.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Easy round.

• 12:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and just like any, just about anyone that ran cross-country in high school, or certainly in college, they don't worry about those runs at all. They're like, oh, oh, we got a four-mile timed run today. They run a four-mile timed run in 26 minutes, 25 minutes. The passing time is 32 minutes. There's a bunch of people that fail those things.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:26Jocko Willink?

  Why? Because they're used to that environment.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:29Jocko Willink?

  So, yes, you're right. It it may seem like, oh, this guy's naturally comfortable in the water. Yeah, the dude played freaking water polo. You know?

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:38Jocko Willink?

  Of course, he's gonna seem natural in the water.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:40Jocko Willink?

  And there's other dudes from Iowa, grew up on a farm.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:44Jocko Willink?

  Had never ever his face in the water.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, where you get like people who grow up in a big family, you know, and then for some reason they're real like, um, you know, they have certain personality traits that are that are conducive to other environments. So like, you know, you hear about people, for example, they're in a big family and they gotta kind of fight for to be heard.

• 13:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  So they're real tenacious in that way. And that sort of sets them up for certain other situations, you know?

• 13:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  So in a way, they got training.

• 13:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  But it's just by their natural life, you know, kind of a thing. So there's that going on. And then there's the stuff that kind of like how you said, where you don't have any training, you actually, you don't have experience doing it. That's really what it is. You don't have any experience doing it, whether it be training or just in everyday life. And then those wind up usually, or a lot of times being quote unquote weaknesses.

• 13:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  And then, okay, so then moving forward, again, this is just me trying to make sense of the whole thing where these are gonna be kind of more techn- technical expressions. So there's training and then there's performance. So you know, training is like, hey, you can practice your weaknesses, you can practice your strength, you practice everything. But if you can identify your weaknesses, that's the time where you can really focus on them. And it's like, cool, I can improve them slowly by slowly. But come performance time, unless they're at a certain level, bro, you want to avoid that stuff. You want to play to your strengths. Now, hopefully you brought your weaknesses up a little bit so you can at least live or survive or, you know, whatever the case may be. But performance is not the time to start working on your weaknesses.

• 14:13Jocko Willink?

  You're right.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  In training. So hopefully you can kind of differentiate. What are you doing right now? Are you training or are you performing? You know, kind of a thing?

• 14:21Jocko Willink?

  Hundred percent.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  You can kind of make sense of it.

• 14:22Jocko Willink?

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

• 15:07Jocko Willink?

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