Jocko Underground: There Are No Solutions, Only Trade-Offs.

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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?

  This is the Jocko Underground Podcast. It's number 46. Echo Charles is here with me. I got something for you to kick this off today. I want to talk to you about something. A little quote. The quote is, "There are no solutions, only trade offs." You try to get the best trade off you can get, that's all you can hope for. That is a quote from Thomas Sowell, famous economist. He's written, he's written like 89 bucks or something. I'm actually just ordering them all. Cause that, that guy, the points he makes are phenomenal. The first, the, the book that I kind of, is one of my favorite books. It's called Basic Economics. We, I've raised it at certain points on the podcast. Haven't ever covered the thing in full, but anyways,

• 0:45Jocko Willink?

  Thomas Sowell, if you don't know who he is, go look him up. He's freaking awesome. But there's no solutions, only trade offs. And, and this is certainly a good, it's a good way of thinking that a lot of people don't really,

• 1:00Jocko Willink?

  a lot of people don't really understand it, right? You've got to recognize that you're not always going to get what you want. You're only going to get some of what you want. And even to get some of what you want, you're going to have to give up something else. That's the way it works and people don't want to admit that.

• 1:20Jocko Willink?

  And when I heard this from Thomas Sowell, the first time I heard it, I didn't hear it from Thomas Sowell at all. I was, I was trying to buy my first house. And I was looking at various properties, you know, I had the real estate agent, you know, giving me the looks, showing me, and I was being kind of finicky. You know, like, well, I don't know about that. And finally, my real estate agent who got frustrated with me because probably, probably because I shut down a couple of deals where I was like, eh, eh, not really. Finally, my real estate agent says, um, Every house is gonna have advantages and disadvantages. Every house. Every single house that you want. It's gonna have a big yard, but it's gonna be a small house. Or it's gonna be a small house, but it's gonna have a big yard. Or it's gonna have a low price, but it needs work.

• 2:05Jocko Willink?

  Or it's gonna be in good shape, but it's gonna have a high price. Or it's gonna have a bad layout. That's flexible. Or it's gonna have a good layout, but there's not much flexibility to it. Or it's gonna have. Hey, a bunch of privacy. But it's hard to get to. Or it's gonna be easy to get to, but you don't have a lot of privacy. So the list goes on and on and. And a lot of times it's just the price versus whatever. You know, oh, you can live in this neighborhood, but it costs more. Or you can have a bigger house, but it costs more. Sometimes that's the, that's the. That's the variable.

• 2:37Jocko Willink?

  But here's why I wanted to bring this up. It's real obvious, but sometimes. We fail to recognize. What the trade offs are. And that we can actually parse them out and figure out. What part of the deal you want to keep? What, what is? Actually important to you? So that you can keep the things that you care about and you can let go of the things. That you don't really care about. So when you're putting a deal together, you gotta think about this.

• 3:13Jocko Willink?

  But here's the thing.

• 3:16Jocko Willink?

  This is the important part. This is your life too.

• 3:21Jocko Willink?

  Right? This is actually your life too. You don't get to do everything you want to do. You don't, nobody does. You don't get to. Spend time with your family and focus on work and focus on training and focus on learning and focus on relaxing and learning a new skill. You don't get to focus on everything.

• 3:40Jocko Willink?

  It doesn't work that way. We have to pay attention to it though.

• 3:47Jocko Willink?

  And fundamentally, what it boils down to is you need to prioritize and execute, but.

• 3:53Jocko Willink?

  With the time that you have in your life that you want to focus, you got to weigh out and parse out what's actually really important to you. So you can get the best, let's say the best deal out of life. You have to, you have to understand what's on the table. You got to understand what's on the table. And I think that's where the mistake, people, people don't even know what's on the table. They don't, they don't pay attention to what's on the table. Like they don't pay attention to what the trade offs are. They don't pay attention to what they care about or what they don't care about. And sometimes they care about something that somebody else cares about and they're thinking that now that's important.

• 4:33Jocko Willink?

  Or they just see what's real obvious and they just grab whatever they can without thinking about what they're going to leave on the table. You know, you're going to, you can only fit so much in your hands and some of it's going to left, get left behind. So you got to think about that. You got to pay attention to that. Cause if you're not paying attention to it, you're going to leave some things on the table. And you're going to look up and you won't be able to hold anything else. So pay attention. Probably a good situation to detach, take a step back. How do you do that? Write down what's on the table. Actually write it down. That's how you detach from it. You write it down. You make a list of what's on the table. You make a list of what's at stake. You make a list of what the trade offs are.

• 5:17Jocko Willink?

  And then you prioritize that list to make sure that the trade offs. Cause there's no solution. There's no perfect solution. You're only going to get trade offs. So pay attention so that you're trading off the right things. So you can keep as much of what you want as you can. And you can let go of the things that you don't care about. Little life advice from Thomas Sowell.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Woody, I remember a long time ago, I did this interview with this, um, it was like a magazine.

• 5:49Jocko Willink?

  What, you got interviewed?

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  And they're talking about work, work balance or work life.

• 5:56Jocko Willink?

  Life work balance.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, how do you do? And maybe the guy thought I was more busy than I really was, but.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  But I do, I, but that did make me think though. It made me think like, wait a second. Yeah. Like I do kinda. Like I don't stress like, oh, I'm not paying enough attention to this or that. But then so, and my answer ended up being. I only care like about four things, really. Like I don't care about like my fashion or you know how like some people you can see they care about. And I'm not knocking fashion.

• 6:28Jocko Willink?

  Some people don't care about it, myself included.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  Care, yeah, exactly right. And I wouldn't even say I don't care about it. I'm saying I, I care very little about it. I'm not over here like. Staying up at night stressing about, I need to spend more time on my fashion. But, um, but there's like four things I cared about. And it was like, you know, my family, my work, like, like health and fitness and then like jujitsu or something. That's kinda it really, you know?

• 6:51Jocko Willink?

  It's a good list right there.

• 6:52Speaker 01

  Right? I mean, what else is there really? I mean, so anyway, my question is like, do you, like, what do you care about? You think like, what's your?

• 6:58Jocko Willink?

  I mean, it's the same stuff, but here's the thing. You, you, you're not gonna get, you can't get, you can't give a hundred percent to your family. Can't. And you can't give a hundred percent to your work. You can't. And you can't give a hundred percent to your health and fitness. You can't. And you can't give a hundred percent to jujitsu. You can only give, you only have a hundred percent. So you gotta be careful. And, and pay attention to what you're gonna leave on the table. That's what you gotta do. It's the way it is. You're only gonna get trade offs, not a solution. Doesn't exist.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. So really by its own nature, you, you essentially, if, if you can cut that down. The more you cut that down, the better off you're gonna be.

• 7:37Jocko Willink?

  The less things you, you need.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, you know, less, less moving parts or whatever, less parts taking, you know, taken away from the other. But when you think about, and especially if you take this, this element, this element of life seriously.

• 7:51Jocko Willink?

  Which element?

• 7:52Speaker 01

  This like.

• 7:53Jocko Willink?

  The trade offs.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  Always a trade off.

• 7:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, got it.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Man, you could. You could trim away a lot of BS in your life.

• 7:58Jocko Willink?

  Definitely do that. Cause you're probably spending time doing stuff that literally you actually not only is it stuff that you don't really care about, there's stuff that you actually know is bad. Right?

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:11Jocko Willink?

  I mean, stuff that you legitimately know is not beneficial to you, is not helping your family. It's not helping your work. It's not helping your jujitsu. It's not helping your health and fitness. There you are doing it. You're trading it off. It's, it's, it's a bad move. So that's another good point. You gotta pay attention, not to just the things you want, but what are you investing in that you don't even want at all? And you're investing into it. That's sad.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's a big price too, right? Cause you know, the whole thing, I mean, this is kind of a, it's not a cliche. Cause it's so, so, so true where you, you probably spend some money on the, on the BS stuff.

• 8:48Jocko Willink?

  For sure you do.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  But you spend time on it. Like, you know, the kind where you're.

• 8:52Jocko Willink?

  Well, here's the thing though. What is money?

• 8:58Jocko Willink?

  It is time.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:00Jocko Willink?

  You've traded your time for some money at some point. Now you're just using that money to spend somewhere else.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:06Jocko Willink?

  Time is the ultimate thing, right?

• 9:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:08Jocko Willink?

  That every month, all the money that you have, you, you had to invest time into.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  That's weird.

• 9:16Jocko Willink?

  I mean, which is another good reason why you want to set your life up so that you, so that you're. 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 jacoundground.com and subscribe and we're doing this, 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, 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.

• 10:02Jocko Willink?

  More control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us. 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.