Standard Directive 019: Don't Get Behind The Power Curve

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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?

  Don't get behind the power curve. This is something that I heard first in the SEAL teams and I heard it a lot when I was in the SEAL teams. And I didn't know where it came from in the beginning, but it's a term that pilots use.

• 0:17Jocko Willink?

  Pilots flying airplanes, if you get into a situation where you don't have enough power to give the aircraft the speed that it needs to stay in the air, then you're going down. You're gonna go down. And if you have enough altitude, if you're high enough above the ground to point your nose down and gain enough speed using gravity and give you lift, then you can recover.

• 0:44Jocko Willink?

  But if you don't have enough altitude, you are going to crash and burn.

• 0:50Jocko Willink?

  Now, in SEAL teams, when we talked about being behind the power curve, we didn't mean it in this technical aircraft kind of way, but it had a similar meaning. You see, you have all kinds of things to do when you're preparing for a mission. You have to prepare all kinds of gear. Weapons and radios and boats and motors and parachutes, all kinds of stuff. And then you also have to plan for the mission. That means you have to figure out the navigation routes and the communication plans and the actions at the objective itself and contingency plans and escape and evasion plans. And then on top of that, you have to present the concept of the operation up the chain of command and get approvals.

• 1:36Jocko Willink?

  And then you have to rehearse the mission, do talk-throughs and walkthroughs. And you have to do so many other things when you are preparing for a mission. Gear inspections and radio checks and weapons test fires. There's so much to do and on top of that, you have a timeline.

• 1:55Jocko Willink?

  You have a timeline because the target has to be hit at a certain time.

• 2:02Jocko Willink?

  It has to be hit at a certain time because of coordination with other units or intelligence that you've gathered or the calculus of how many hours of darkness there are and how much time you actually have to get to the target and back away from the target in the dark. So you have a timeline that you have to make.

• 2:26Jocko Willink?

  And if you don't pay attention,

• 2:29Jocko Willink?

  you get behind the power curve. You get to a point where you have too much to do and not enough time to do it in.

• 2:39Jocko Willink?

  And when that happens,

• 2:42Jocko Willink?

  you're gonna crash and burn. So stay ahead of the power curve. You should feel that power curve on your back. Don't slack off, don't procrastinate. Don't, don't debate things that don't matter. Don't let perfectionism eat up all of your time. Don't sit around, don't pontificate. Get things done. Get things done on time and on target and stay ahead of the power curve.