Standard Directive 008: The Good Things Add Up.

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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?

  Listen, when you make mistakes, they add up. They add up. One mistake compounds and leads to another, which leads to another, and they can lead you to a downward spiral of destruction.

• 0:17Jocko Willink?

  Here's the thing, you know what else adds up? The positive things. The good moves, the small sacrifices that you make to do things right.

• 0:30Jocko Willink?

  The adjustments needed to correct problems, the daily discipline required to get you where you want to get to. Those little positive things add up too.

• 0:46Jocko Willink?

  And it's obvious and we know it, but here's the question, why don't we do them? Why don't we do them?

• 0:52Jocko Willink?

  Well, it's because, in most cases, it's because they add up slowly. They add up so slowly that you don't really notice the results. Right? One day in the gym,

• 1:09Jocko Willink?

  one day in the gym is basically imperceivable.

• 1:14Jocko Willink?

  Two days in the gym, you don't recognize any change whatsoever. A hundred days in the gym,

• 1:22Jocko Willink?

  and you're almost a new person.

• 1:25Jocko Willink?

  Right? You've seen those before and after pictures? One day of playing guitar,

• 1:31Jocko Willink?

  one day of playing guitar, you can barely play one chord.

• 1:37Jocko Willink?

  A hundred days of practicing guitar, and you can play literally almost any song.

• 1:46Jocko Willink?

  An hour of writing, an hour of writing and you've got a short, kind of junky, thousand-word essay.

• 1:57Jocko Willink?

  A hundred hours of writing? And you got yourself a whole book.

• 2:04Jocko Willink?

  So we let these things slip. Because it takes so long to see the progress, we let them slip. And when we don't do them,

• 2:15Jocko Willink?

  it becomes zero times 100, or zero times 1,000. And that nets out to a zero.

• 2:25Jocko Willink?

  When you do anything, it adds up. When you do nothing, it amounts to zero.

• 2:32Jocko Willink?

  So take the small steps every day. Do what you're supposed to do. And don't expect some incredible results in one day, or two days, or 10 days. Worthwhile things take 100 days. They take 500 days. Maybe they take 5,000 days. They take time.

• 2:57Jocko Willink?

  But it's little steps that add up.

• 3:01Jocko Willink?

  So put in the daily effort. Let that be your reward. Reward yourself. Feel gratification from knowing that you moved the needle even just a little bit.

• 3:14Jocko Willink?

  Rome wasn't built in a day.

• 3:18Jocko Willink?

  The Grand Canyon took millions of years to form.

• 3:25Jocko Willink?

  And whatever it is you want to do, isn't going to happen in one day. You have work to do.

• 3:33Jocko Willink?

  And I know it's just a little bit. I know it's just a little tiny movement forward. But that work is what it takes.

• 3:44Jocko Willink?

  So go do it.