Jocko Underground: It Will Take Longer Than You Think. It's Hofstadter's Law | Comparing Yourself to Her Past Boyfriends | You Lost Your Cool

Hofstadter's Law: It will always take longer than you think. Staying disciplined when you're training for something important. Dating a girl and can't stop comparing yourself to her past dudes. I lost my temper at work. It may be un-fixable. Trying to get other's on my level. Female coworker lashes out a lot, but otherwise a good worker. 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 with Echo Charles, sitting across from me at the table of woe here.

• 0:12Jocko Willink?

  So, little something called Hofstadter's Law, which is a law, it's a theory created by Douglas Hofstadter, who is a Pulitzer Prize, nonfiction winning author. He's a scholar of physics and cognitive science. He made this law, and what I kind of like about this law, it's a little bit of a joke,

• 0:36Jocko Willink?

  in a way. He even named it after himself, which is kind of, kind of funny. It's, if you, if you find something or discover something, other people, you know, designate it, but when you're just like, hey, this is my law.

• 0:53Jocko Willink?

  And basically, the law is that things take a lot longer than you think they're going to. And so, the way he describes it is, it always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law. That's, that's the law itself. So even when you know it's going to take longer, which is Hofstadter's Law, it's still going to take you longer than that. So things are going to take longer than we expect them to take, and we have to plan for that. And he originally, he originally used this, I believe, around explaining why it was taking chess computers so long to beat humans.

• 1:35Jocko Willink?

  They kept saying, oh, humans are going to be beat by the, by computers and chess, you know, in a year. And then it was like, well, not quite a year, five years. It ended up taking, you know, a couple decades before computers could legitimately beat

• 1:51Jocko Willink?

  humans in chess.

• 1:53Jocko Willink?

  So there was some, there was like a little bit of a reference to computer programming, which, which got me into reading about another.

• 2:01Jocko Willink?

  Rule, which is called the 90 90 rule, which comes directly from computer programming. And it says, I think you'll appreciate this one. The first 90% of code accounts for the first 90% of development time. The remaining 10% of code accounts for the other 90% of development time. So 90 plus 90 is 180. So it's going to take you 180% of time to get the thing done. And what's what I found interesting about that is, and I thought that I thought that you would appreciate this as well. This means that big progress is made kind of early. But it takes a lot of effort to continue to improve.

• 2:44Jocko Willink?

  So when we think about lifting, right, you get someone in the lifting, out of the gate, they're making the gains. It's called newbie gains. Right, newbie gains. And but those final touches, I mean, to go from like a bench press of 135 to 250. People can make up that pretty quick, you know, because they just never worked out. Then all of a sudden they get to that. But then when they get to 250, it takes a while to get them to 275. And then they get to 300 and then they get to like 315, three wheels, right? Three wheels all day, yeah. But to go from, for someone that's like, that's a good bench, they go from three wheels to go to like 340.

• 3:29Jocko Willink?

  It might take them six months, maybe even longer. So, so it applies there. You know, it's like, also, you don't, you don't really do any of your own like home building or projects, do you? Yeah, like fixing stuff, but not building, no. Yeah, this is another thing where like when you build your house or you remodel your kitchen or you add a room onto your house, which I've done all these things.

• 4:01Jocko Willink?

  That last like bit of trim and stuff.

• 4:06Jocko Willink?

  They say like the carpenter's house is never complete because he gets once he gets lit moved in it. He's like, I'm not doing that other stuff.

• 4:14Jocko Willink?

  But this is why, you know, I've been talking about lately, that extreme ownership, leadership loop of like what you need to think about when you're making a decision and I put time at the top. And the reason I put time at the top is because it's a one thing we can't really can't manipulate. You can't control it at all. Now, what we can control is what we do. We can control how we can get ahead. We can prepare ourselves and be ready ahead of the power curve.

• 4:41Jocko Willink?

  But

• 4:44Jocko Willink?

  it's you don't have any control over time. So you got to think about it now. This is the other thing. What you and I were just talking about the big moves, right? The big moves come in the beginning. However, that being said, this is Jocko's rule. Just kidding, but another thing to think about is the big moves come, but you actually have to start. And probably the biggest hardest move in any project, in any endeavor is the first step. The first time you go to jujitsu is the hardest time you'll ever go to jujitsu, right? The first time you ever go to jujitsu is probably going to be the hardest time you ever have to go to jujitsu.

• 5:27Jocko Willink?

  The first time you go to the gym is probably going to be the hardest time you'll ever have to go to the gym. And maybe, maybe it's like, oh, the first two weeks, right? The all those two weeks, it's like you're getting in the habit. First time you go in the cold tub.

• 5:42Jocko Willink?

  It gets easier. Cold tub gets easier. I'm cold right now. I went, I got out of the cold tub a couple of hours ago and I'm still cold right now. Yeah, that's real. I turned off, I, I, I turned off the AC in our space here because I'm freezing. I understand. It is cold in here. Yeah, it is cold in here and I was in a cold tub and brought my core temperature down to whatever.

• 6:09Jocko Willink?

  So these are good things to think about. See, this is what's I use this example, like if you go into my house and I tell you I'm gonna scare you, I'm not gonna be able to scare you. Awareness. Yeah. Just awareness is makes you so much more prepared. And makes you be able to contend with things so much better. So by being aware of the fact that number one, the first step is the hardest step. You should be aware of that. And if you know that you're like, all right, I'm gonna have to like go harder right now. I have to put more effort because I need to go to the gym. I haven't worked out before. Or my first day of fasting, it's gonna be so hard. You gotta know that it's gonna be hard. And if you're mentally prepared for that, it's gonna be better for you.

• 6:53Jocko Willink?

  Uh, I had a really good conversation.

• 6:58Jocko Willink?

  I think it was also at camp.

• 7:01Jocko Willink?

  I was talking to Jonathan and Anne. They have a first in nutrition. Montgomery? Yeah, yeah. The Montgomery team. And they were talking, so they they help people with nutrition, right? And yeah, first in nutrition. And as we were talking, you know, they they what they tell people, one of their taglines is you can eat anything, but you can't eat everything.

• 7:34Jocko Willink?

  Which is, which makes sense, right? So if you really love pizza, okay, we can put it on your schedule or your plan. But you know, here's what you're gonna have to sacrifice. Here's what you can't, if you're gonna have pizza, you can't have, and you, and by the way, having pizza doesn't mean having three quarters of a freaking pie, right? Having pizza, you can have it, but you're gonna have a slice and you're only gonna have it on Wednesdays or whatever. So you can have anything, but you can't have everything. Okay, cool. So that was the first part, but then they what what I related to. Was, you know, they were like, you know, talking about how much you can eat of something.

• 8:17Jocko Willink?

  And I started recognizing that the expectations that you have play a huge part. And here's how I know this for a fact. What's your favorite dessert to eat? Me? Yeah. Uh, either uh, homemade chocolate chip cookies or chocolate cake. Okay, let's go with chocolate chip cookies. And let's say you're eating, no, no, we'll go with cake. So you're eating your cake. And I roll in. You've got a big, a slice of cake, right? And I go, bro, that looks really good. Can I have a bite?

• 8:52Jocko Willink?

  Will you give me a bite? I would give you a bite, yes. Okay, so, and how would you feel about it? You have the, you've taken two bites of your cake. I roll in, I go, can I have a bite? You say yes. How do you feel about that? Fine. Fine, okay, now check this out. You're down to your last, there's one more bite. I roll in. And I say, oh, can I have that bite? You may still give it to me, but how do you feel about it? You don't feel good. This has happened to me 10,000 times in my life, right? 10,000 times where people, you know, you get to your last piece of steak, or you get to your last piece of dessert. Or you got one more like freaking cookie left in the bag of those like little cookies that are bite sized.

• 9:38Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm saying? So you, what happens is, what I realized, that feeling comes from the expectation. Because when there's one bite left, you're excited about having the last bite. You already ate the whole freaking piece of cake. But it's in your head that you got one more bite.

• 9:56Jocko Willink?

  And so when I set that expectation on you, you, you got issues, dude. Like, I'm like, hey dude, give me the, I, oh, sorry, when I take that expectation from you, it's gonna hurt you. And it pisses you off. So, my point in saying this is, from like an eating perspective, if you go, oh, I'm only gonna have one slice of pizza. That's all I get. And you set that expectation. So, that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground Podcast. So if you want to continue to listen.

• 10:33Jocko Willink?

  Go to JacoUnderground.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 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

• 11:18Jocko Willink?

  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.