345: Life is All Based On The Decisions That YOU Make. So Live a Good One.

Think about the impact that all of your decisions make in your whole life. Have a protocol, and lead a better life. 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 Jocko Podcast number 345 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. So just got back from an event at Echelon Front, that we call the Council. And what is, we have a small group of about 20 leaders. We do it out in a very remote location in northeast Washington State. And it's an opportunity to really get in depth with some leadership tools, with some high level leaders that are running, in most cases, very large organizations. And when I was up there, I just wanted to share some of what I talked about while I was there.

• 0:44Jocko Willink?

  And actually, one specific idea that I first conceptualized at the Council last year, 2021. So in 2021, I went up there and essentially what happened was, it was a pretty interesting dynamic. I get up there and we're sitting down, it's a small group, there was like 15 or 20 people there. And Leif was telling a story about us being overseas or us going through training. And he kind of told a story where I came in at some point and made like a leadership decision. And boom, it helped solve whatever the scenario was. And then Andrew Paul was up there and Andrew Paul told a story that was something was going on. And then I came in and kind of made some decision. And then Leif told another one.

• 1:28Jocko Willink?

  And so for whatever reason, they both told a couple of stories each that were illustrating some leadership point. And in the stories, it made me look like this decisive, good leader, which is cool, great. And you know, but of course, you know, we're all telling stories about each other. But a couple of the leaders that were there, after this one session, they approached me and they said something along the lines of, you know, you just have such great, natural leadership instincts. And of course, my ego is immediately like, oh, hell, yeah, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. And then, you know, so we had a quick conversation and they just said, oh, it's so nice.

• 2:12Jocko Willink?

  It's so cool to hear these stories where you have these leadership instincts. And I said, yeah, you know, it's pretty cool. I'm pretty cool, you know, kind of that ego idiocy.

• 2:22Jocko Willink?

  And then as I thought about it, and I we were on a break, and as I thought about it, there's actually a break at the end of the day. As I thought about it, I thought, well, that's,

• 2:33Jocko Willink?

  that's actually not cool at all, because if my leadership

• 2:38Jocko Willink?

  is just some natural instinct, then that implies that it's something that I can't teach you, right? I can't teach you, I can't, I can't teach you something that is only instinctive. So as I thought about it, I also realized, not only is that bad, but I also realized that there was plenty of times in my life where, especially when I was younger, and I didn't have much experience as a leader, where I didn't make good decisions, or I didn't even realize I needed to make a decision. And so as I'm sitting there thinking about this during this break, I realized that I had learned

• 3:17Jocko Willink?

  to lead, and I had developed knowledge and and developed kind of a process that was so embedded in my brain that it seemed like instinct. And when these guys hear the story, it seems like instinct.

• 3:28Jocko Willink?

  But it's not instinct. It's it's more of a process. And so I sat in my room, and I went through and just sort of wrote down the the process that I use, the things that I think about when I'm making a decision, and I and since then, I've implemented that and teach it at Echelon Front, and I've added a couple of things to it since that timeframe, and basically call it the Extreme Ownership Leadership Loop.

• 3:59Jocko Willink?

  And the reason is because Extreme Ownership, the book that Leif and I wrote, kind of that that term just kind of encompasses the broad principles that we try and operate by.

• 4:11Jocko Willink?

  And there's a reason that I use the term loop. The reason I turn use the term loop is clearly taken from the OODA loop, Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act.

• 4:21Jocko Willink?

  And when you are making a decision, you can utilize that loop. Observe, orient, decide, and act. And what that means is, a real quick brief on that. First of all, you observe, means you look around and see what's happening. Then you orient, you see where you are in that, in what you have observed. Then you decide what you should do, and then you act on it. And once you've acted, you go back to looking around and see how your actions impacted what's happening. And then you orient yourself inside this new picture. And then you decide what you should do now, and then you act again, and you just keep running this loop. And every time you take an action, it's going to change the situation a little bit.

• 5:05Jocko Willink?

  And then you have to observe that feedback, orient yourself with that new feedback. And then you make another decision. And this becomes a little loop that you run over and over again. And it comes from flying jets and in combat and dogfights. And it's a way that you win. And the way that you win is by making this, making decisions and observing and orient yourself, deciding what you're gonna do and acting faster than the other person can do it. And if you can do that, you'll win. And this also applies in jujitsu, obviously. So that's a loop that you need to run when it comes to making decisions.

• 5:43Jocko Willink?

  And this is a similar process to apply in this, in this leadership decision loop that I think through when I'm trying to make a decision. And again, a lot of times, it seems like it's just some instinct. But there's, there's a thought process behind it. And listen, the OODA loop, for the most part, the OODA loop, I view it as more of a tactical decision in a physical realm.

• 6:18Jocko Willink?

  Against an enemy or a competitor. It's it's sort of a an interaction between you and someone else. In a physical and in usually in a physical domain. Whether it's fighter, whether it's tactical maneuver on the battlefield. That's why it's so applicable to combat. Because in combat, you're going against another person. So there's as you as you decide and act. That's going to cause a reaction that you have to then calculate into your new observations, into your new orientation. And so the OODA loop really is about it. It takes place in the physical realm for the most part. This this loop that I'm talking about, this this EO, this extreme ownership leadership

• 7:03Jocko Willink?

  loop, it's usually. I shouldn't say usually not about physical decisions. It's but it's it's equally applicable to conceptual ideas or conceptual plans. Or, and this is important, about human interaction that's not physical. It's it's more the conflict of ideas. So one loop is, in my mind, more of something that takes place in the physical realm. This EO leadership loop takes place more in the conceptual realm. Does that does that make sense?

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, fully, like in a social verbal, all that, you know.

• 7:46Jocko Willink?

  Right. And what this loop does is it provides a checklist or a framework of things to consider while making a decision. And listen, when you first hear this, there's a bunch of them, a bunch of things to think about. And what's weird is I had been doing this for so long that it seemed to other people and really to me as instinct. And it wasn't until I said, wait a second, is this really instinct? Or is this something I learned? Well, I know I used to not have it. Therefore, it can't be instinct. I must have learned it. What exactly am I thinking? What am I considering when I'm out there trying to make a decision in a leadership situation?

• 8:27Jocko Willink?

  So, let's talk through some of these things and there's a whole bunch of dynamics going on here. And I don't want to simplify this to a point where you go, oh, this is just a checklist. Here's the nineteen or fourteen or whatever number of things and you just follow this checklist. Cause each one of these things is a conceptual item. There, there's a big difference between a conceptual idea and a physical thing. Because the physical thing is in this position. It has this mass, it has this weight, it has this, this, uh, takes up this place in the world. An idea, a concept, a plan by its very nature is fluid.

• 9:09Jocko Willink?

  So, all these things, for the most part, are somewhat fluid. Now, there's something about the first thing that I think about when I'm making some kind of a decision. That's actually not fluid at all and that's why it's number one.

• 9:24Jocko Willink?

  And that is time. That's the number one thing I think about. The, the first thing that I consider when I'm making decision is time. Because, and the reason is, because this is the one thing that's not fluid. It, it is what it is. It is what it is and you can't stop it. Can't stop it. You know, I was talking to Kerry Helton. Sure. You know him? K-Dog. K-Dog, that's right. He was talking about Marine Corps Boot Camp and he had a good little, uh, hint for anybody that's going through something tough. And his, the thing that he thought about was, these drill instructors, they, they might be all powerful in Marine Corps Boot Camp. They are all powerful, near godlike figures. But guess what? They can't stop the clock.

• 10:10Jocko Willink?

  And no one can stop the clock. And I, you, us, we, we have no influence over time. We, we do have influence over actions, clearly, but we don't have influence over time. That clock is going to keep going. Look, you can, you can, uh, you can get ahead of it by working hard, by thinking ahead, and that's why it's the first thing that I think about. Once, but, but you can't stop it, no matter what. That's why I can't stand being late. That's why.

• 10:46Jocko Willink?

  When going to the airport, I'm gonna show up early. I look not crazy early, but I'm gonna show up early enough that nothing is going to make me panic. Nothing is gonna make me agitated. The TSA dude's taking his time, cool, I got time. And you ever notice when you're late for something, everything goes against you?

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:06Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 11:06Speaker 01

  It feels like.

• 11:08Jocko Willink?

  If you're, if you're on time, green lights.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:12Jocko Willink?

  If you're late, red lights.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  Red lights all day.

• 11:14Jocko Willink?

  Not only that, but weird red lights.

• 11:17Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 11:17Speaker 01

  Anomalous red.

• 11:19Jocko Willink?

  How long is a red light when you're late? That thing is forever.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's true.

• 11:22Jocko Willink?

  But the weird thing is, it's the same, it's just that you're different.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:26Jocko Willink?

  Your mentality is different.

• 11:30Jocko Willink?

  I tell you that story about the other day, speaking of like mentality, so. Was it REI? You familiar with REI?

• 11:38Speaker 01

  The store?

• 11:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, sports store, it's good.

• 11:40Jocko Willink?

  So I'm in REI, and I got a Sprinter.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 11:45Jocko Willink?

  Vehicle.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  It's a good vehicle for sure.

• 11:46Jocko Willink?

  Four-wheel-drive Sprinter.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  No big deal.

• 11:48Jocko Willink?

  And, and I get it, okay, so, do you know that Sprinters are a thing? Do you know that?

• 11:53Speaker 01

  I know that now, yes.

• 11:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they're a thing.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  My wife told me that, when she saw yours.

• 11:57Jocko Willink?

  Yep, and not only are they a thing, there's a, there's also a big negative, uh, perception of them. Because they're expensive, and people like drive them around, and they, and they're into, people that might have Sprinters might be into sort of outdoors-type sports. And a lot of times, people that are outdoors-type sports are, don't have a ton of money. Right? So, hey, look at rock climbing. Right? Rock climbing, Camp Four, Yosemite, their actual name for themselves is Dirtbags. Hey, we don't have money, we live in a little freaking Toyota Corolla, we sleep in a tent, like, that's what they're doing.

• 12:42Jocko Willink?

  So you get those kind of people, you get surf bums.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 12:45Jocko Willink?

  Right? You and I have talked about the fact that bums

• 12:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:48Jocko Willink?

  is a lifestyle, and there's a bunch of them, surf bums, jujitsu bums, rock climbing bums, ski bums, so there's a bunch of bums, right? Well, all of those lifestyles can also include. People that might drive sprinters.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  The bougie.

• 13:01Jocko Willink?

  The bougie, the bougie people, right? So I'm a bougie person, I guess. Cause I got a sprinter. And guess what? I like to surf. I like to ski. I go to Yosemite, right? So I do those things. So I'm at REI to pick up a bicycle.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 13:19Jocko Willink?

  And as I'm pulling out.

• 13:22Jocko Willink?

  I'm leaving. And by the way, I'm in no rush whatsoever. Time is on my side. I I'm listening to a a an audio book. I'm totally chill. I don't have to be. It was I I think. We weren't recording that day. I had done like a couple of calls in the morning for Echelon Front. I was in no rush, just just kind of enjoying like I was working in the morning and I was it was like a nice little a little mini vacation to be honest. We drive it to REI. You know, go to REI. You get up there, you get to look around, see some cool gear. So I'm I'm that's my mindset. Just cruising. And by the way, it's midday. This isn't a weekend. This is like on a Tuesday or something. There's no, there's no, there's no panic at all. No one's even in there. It's it's like it's after.

• 14:06Jocko Willink?

  I'll tell you how clear this was. It's after like the lunchtime rush on a Tuesday. Complete chill. So as I'm pulling out, and I I won't try and explain the whole thing, but there's like a three-way intersection in the parking lot.

• 14:22Jocko Willink?

  And I'm, so I back out my sprinter. And there's another truck that I'm now head to head with. He wants to go right to get out. I want to go left to get out. And in comes. A little, a little Volkswagen Vannigan. Synchro. So what this is, this is a a four-wheel drive. Volkswagen van. Very rare. Very cool. Like, one of the coolest, it's a very, I won't say it's one of the coolest vehicles in the world, but it's it's definitely in my top. That's a cool vehicle. They're super rare. So Synchro, that's a four-wheel drive. Van.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 15:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I love vans. So which is why I have a sprinter.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 15:08Jocko Willink?

  So I see this van and I'm kind of like, oh dude, that's a sick, you know, four-wheel drive. Synchro van that's super rare. They're they're hard to get. And the the truck wants to go right, he goes right. I'm like, cool, you know, that guy's being cool. He he or I give him like the little hand wave, right? He go, because I'm super chill. By the way, I'm looking at this cool synchro. So I give the guy a hand wave in the truck. I'm like, hey, man, go ahead. So he pulls out. And then I think that the the synchro wants to make a right. So I I look at him, I give him the hand wave, just like, hey, man, come on. And I was, you know, the next hand signal would have been thumbs up.

• 15:48Jocko Willink?

  I might have even, I may have even rolled down the window and said like, sweet ride. That's a sweet ride, man. Respect, props.

• 15:59Jocko Willink?

  I give him the hand signal, like, yeah, go ahead, man. You you can make the right turn and then I'll get out after you. You know, you get head of the line privileges. But you go first. And guess what he does? He starts freaking, you know, of course, behind a Winston, I can't hear what he's saying. Gets starts going crazy on me like, like, like he's yelling. And and what he was basically saying was he wanted me to move because the parking space I had just pulled out of. He had pulled into, and by the way, there was multiple parking spaces. There was no factor. But, man, he was mad. And he was like getting all hostile and like doing this to me. And I was just like, and of course, what I did smiled at him and waved at him anyways. I didn't give him props for a synchro. So if you're listening, nice synchro, bro.

• 16:42Jocko Willink?

  And and I hope your synchro and the fact that you have a cool vehicle like that. I hope that it soothes your soul a little bit because he's an older dude, too. Oh, he was at least my age. He wasn't a spring chicken and there's no reason for him to be stressed out on a Tuesday at at at thirteen hundred or thirteen thirty in the afternoon at REI. No reason, man. No reason. So in his mind, whatever was happening for the time factor was a problem. For me, it was no factor. But you can't get that stuff back. You can't adjust time. So we have to stay ahead of time. So when I'm making a decision, the first thing that I'm going to assess is how much time do I have? Here's another thing. How fast are things changing?

• 17:28Jocko Willink?

  That's a time factor. You have to look at, okay, I see things are changing, but how fast do they change? Cause if they're changing rapidly, I might have to decide quicker. If they're changing slowly, well, maybe I can take a little bit more time. Are there things that I can do to buy myself more time? I know I said we can't control time, but you can do things that can earn you some time back. Maybe there's an iterative step that I can take that will slow things down a little bit on my side. Again, I can't stop the clock, but I can slow them down. So, so that's what I'm going to do. I don't have any control over time and I'm going to think about that. I'm going to consider it. The number one element in my calculus is time.

• 18:13Jocko Willink?

  And here's something else that I, I realize.

• 18:18Jocko Willink?

  Some human beings have a better sense of time than others. This is just a thing. Some human beings are more aware of time than others. There are people that are late habitually, right? Yes. Do we know this? We do know this. Actually, somebody at the council asked me like, hey, how do you do with Echo being late all the time? And I had to give them the information that you're actually not. I think you've only been literally late once or twice for recording the podcast. Yeah. Yeah, it's once or twice. Now, do you cut it down to literally thirty-two seconds? And actually, if we included when you are maybe like forty-five seconds late, we might have to add to that number. But there's no time, there's a very small number of actual violations.

• 19:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I think so. But there's, there are some people that are late all the time. There are people that think that things are going to take five minutes and they take twenty, and that's how they see time. Yeah. And so they're late all the time. So if you're one of those people, and this is going to be a constant theme. If you're one of those people and you know that you don't understand time and you don't pay attention to time, the worst you are with time, if you're a person that's, that's habitually late, you, this should not only be the number one thing in your decision-making, it should be number one, and it should be printed in bold, large font. So that you make sure that you get it. Now, listen, I'm actually good with time.

• 19:47Jocko Willink?

  In fact, sometimes I'm even too good with time and I'll tell you exactly what I mean by that. Sometimes if I think, let's say, uh, let's say we were gonna record the podcast at 10 o'clock. And I was like, okay, in order to record the podcast at 10 o'clock, I gotta leave at 9:30. That gives me a half an hour to get here. It only takes 15 minutes to get here, tops. Unless something wild happens or I hit every single red light or something. So I might be like, oh, I need to take out the garbage right now. But that's gonna take me an extra two minutes and there's a 0.0001% chance

• 20:28Jocko Willink?

  that I hit every red light and now that two minutes that it took me to take out the garbage, now I'm late. So I didn't take out the garbage. So sometimes I have to consciously say, yes, I can fit this in. Yes, I can get that done. And that, that is a good thing to do. But I, I'm almost never late. I would say never, but of course I'm sure there's been some time in the last 50 years where I was late for something. But I'm almost never late. And probably, and what I think is, that's because of this loop that I run in my head. I always think about time first and that. So the reason I'm never late is because I think about this all the time.

• 21:11Jocko Willink?

  So know yourself. And if you're a person that constantly underestimates how much time it'll take to do something, know yourself, understand your own bias. And this is actually one of the things that loop is, understanding your own biases. This is where you gotta run that and make sure that you're gonna have enough time to do something. Chuck?

• 21:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, fully. And regardless of my record of not being late very much, here, I am one of those people. That I underestimate, how did you put it? Underestimate how much time I have or overestimate?

• 21:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Overestimate how much time you have, underestimate how much time something is gonna take.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 21:49Jocko Willink?

  Interestingly. If we were to talk about how often you were late for jujitsu? That's a big number.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:55Jocko Willink?

  That's a big number.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  The majority, yeah.

• 21:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  It was weird. Actually, in the beginning, when I was coming up, I was never late, but and I think you're the one who said this to me kind of bluntly a long time ago where you said something like, oh, it's because you don't think it's important or something like this. But and I realized it's true. Even though most of the time I wouldn't admit that, admit that to the person that I'm late with or whatever, the entity, whatever. When I worked in the nightclub, I was late most of the time. And I'm not saying

• 22:27Speaker 01

  and I'm not saying like, you know, I was supposed to be there at six and I was there at like six thirty. It wasn't that. It was the kind of six oh one, six oh three.

• 22:33Jocko Willink?

  How about six oh eight?

• 22:35Speaker 01

  Six oh eight from time, you know, as you get up past five minutes late, it was less, but, but you, it not being important for like, that was literally the case. And not to say my job wasn't important. I'm not saying that. I'm saying the fact of me being ahead of time or before six o'clock, that wasn't important to me. If I was one, two, three, four, five minutes late, that was fine with me. For this reason, now that I analyze it, because I could be doing more important things than in that five minutes, you know, or in that one minute or in that two minutes. Kind of a thing, kind of a thought I had in my head. And now more, more important things.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  Taking a nap, you know, taking, watching stuff that the way I saw it was, um, and this is me totally analyzing it mentally. It, I didn't, this wasn't in my mind the whole time. Like, oh yeah, this, this TV show is way more important than me. It, it wasn't like that. It was just as it turns out that like, dang, why would I essentially go to where I have to be kind of a thing? When I want to do this and I don't have to be there. I don't have to be there at six fifty nine or five fifty nine.

• 23:48Jocko Willink?

  One of my SEAL buddies, when I was going to college, there was another SEAL that was on going to college as well. And we actually made a deal because in order to, in order to be on time for something, you, because of parking at this particular college. And eventually I figured out that I would just throw my bike, my bike in the back of my van and just whip, you know, whip the bike out and bike to all the class. Park, park way away from campus and just jump on my bike and drive or ride the bike. But when we would be studying together and we'd be like, hey, we'll study at, you know, I'll, I'll meet you at nine o'clock to study. We did this a few times and then eventually, and you know, he was like a guy like me, married with kids. So we didn't wanna, if we didn't have to

• 24:34Jocko Willink?

  be at campus, we didn't want to be there. Not to mention jujitsu, not to mention surfing. So there's a bunch of other things we'd all rather be doing. So we made a deal. I was like, hey, I'll see you around nine. And he was like, yeah, because that way, if you rolled up and you, it took you an extra four minutes to find parking, you weren't like, dude. Because the only way to ensure you weren't going to be four minutes late was to be a half an hour early. You see what I'm saying? The only way to, it costs you 26 minutes of life in order to ensure that you weren't going to be four minutes late. And so we, we were like, hey, listen, around nine. And we actually had the conversation because both of us squared away like, hey, being late is the worst thing in the world.

• 25:18Jocko Willink?

  And we made a agreement, a gentleman's agreement that in this particular scenario, you had

• 25:26Jocko Willink?

  you had slack. Yeah. And when you got there, you got there. It wasn't going to be 20 minutes late, but it was going to be four minutes. It might be six minutes. It might be three minutes. So we had that little gentleman's agreement. So the target is nine. Yep. Target is nine and. I'll be there. And if you're not there, I know a hundred percent why. It's because you weren't gonna leave twenty six minutes earlier to be there on time. Because it didn't make sense, because I'd rather he was with his kids, or he was surfing, or he was doing jujitsu. Actually, I knew he was doing something that was more important than sitting and waiting for me to show up to prove that we could both be on time.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's interesting how you say, or that's an interesting concept, because that's essentially the agreement I made with my work.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  They didn't make that agreement, but I did too, where it's like, hey, I'm not gonna give up. Because it was the same kind of scenario where you have to look for parking. Sure, you could pay for parking, but now what? I gotta pay extra to be at work, kind of a thing? And I'm not saying that's good or bad. I'm not saying that that should be the case, or shouldn't be the case. I'm just saying that's what I thought at the time, so.

• 26:26Jocko Willink?

  That was the agreement in Echo's head.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  Yes, sir, exactly right. So, you know, downtown San Diego, six o'clock PM, especially on those Thursday, Friday, Saturday scenarios. It's like, that's hard to find parking, or it can be, anyway. So, yeah, so I'd be like, okay, I'm gonna go at my opportune time, my best time in my mind. And hey, if it's, if I'm struggling finding parking, I'm struggling finding parking, you know?

• 26:49Jocko Willink?

  That's in your mind, it was no fact.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  The gentleman's agreement.

• 26:52Jocko Willink?

  Because you would have had to leave legitimately, probably a half an hour early to ensure one hundred percent that you were gonna be on time.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, probably a little bit more, exactly right. Like, to ensure, like, the kind, no, you gotta be here before six, or whatever, kind of a thing to ensure. Yeah, it's like half an hour. It's like, bro, it's not even, in my mind, it's not even fair. How about this? How about this? Well, we'll, we'll, we'll decide a reasonable amount of time I have to leave the house. How about that? And if parking is abnormally scarce.

• 27:20Jocko Willink?

  Or traffic.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  That's, we're gonna pay that price together. How about that?

• 27:23Jocko Willink?

  The, the traffic thing is weird too, because that's an excuse that people use, like, oh, yeah, I really hit traffic. And if you live in California, you're like, bro.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're gonna.

• 27:35Jocko Willink?

  You gotta calculate for that. Come on.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yep, I agree.

• 27:39Jocko Willink?

  It's kind of not a valid excuse, unless, let's say you and I work in an office every single day. And we, we make that agreement, like, hey, our goal is nine o'clock, but I understand, I don't want you to leave an hour early to make sure you get here at that time. And I go, hey, man. You leave your house, like you said, you leave your house before this time?

• 28:02Speaker 01

  Reasonable.

• 28:03Jocko Willink?

  I knew that there's gonna be some, there could be some variables.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, and especially if they're like, the variables really vary. Cause like the traffic thing in, I don't know about your roots, you know, in San Diego, whatever. But as far as the routine goes, very least the routine that I have, it's, I know when the traffic is gonna be. You know, it's pretty predictable.

• 28:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  You know, you got your anomalous accident or some hold up on the road every once in a great, great, great while. But, so it is, I, to me, anyway. I think that factoring the traffic is, is a fair thing. Like you gotta, you gotta, if it takes 15 more minutes on this Tuesday after work.

• 28:40Jocko Willink?

  Rush hour.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, versus Sunday morning or whatever, then that's part of the agreement. You gotta, you gotta factor that in, I think. But, Sunday morning, let's say, Sunday morning, every time we're recording and then, or whatever we're doing. And then, no traffic. And then one day, there's like traffic, cause there's some event at the beach or something. I do expect a little bit of, what do you call?

• 29:04Jocko Willink?

  Leeway?

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Leeway.

• 29:05Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  Kind of, I guess.

• 29:08Jocko Willink?

  So that is time. First thing you gotta be thinking about.

• 29:14Jocko Willink?

  Causes stress. Get ahead of it.

• 29:18Jocko Willink?

  The next thing, and this should really come as no surprise, the next things that I think about are the four laws of combat leadership. Cover, move, simple, prioritize, execute, and decentralize command. But I think about them in a very particular way.

• 29:32Jocko Willink?

  So if I'm making a decision, the first thing I'm gonna think about is cover and move. The number one thing is, am I supporting my teammates? Does this help the team? Am I putting my team first? So, so I want you to think about that. The first thing I think about is time, cause I have no control about it. The second thing I do is make sure that I am not putting myself ahead of the team. And I'm not making a decision that's gonna leave anyone else on the team in the lurch, right? And this will immediately.

• 30:05Jocko Willink?

  Vector you in the correct direction. Cause anytime that you as a human are making decision. And it's based on benefiting you, there's a really good chance that that's a bad call. And from a leadership perspective, there's a huge chance. As a matter of fact, I'm gonna go ahead and say that's a bad call.

• 30:26Jocko Willink?

  The, the, the military term is supporting distance. So echo. If I'm working with you, if my fire team or my squad or my platoon is supporting your fire team, your squad, your platoon. I have to stay within a distance where I am able to support you. That means usually my weapons can cover where you may be attacked from. And my communications can speak to you directly. And generally speaking, I, in a, in an infantry scenario, I want to be where I can actually see you.

• 31:05Jocko Willink?

  I can actually, you know, put on my night vision or at least pull out my, you know, pull out my binoculars and see where you are. I got him. I know exactly where he is. The minute that we're out of that supporting distance, there's going to be a problem. So from a, like a tactical perspective, that's a great thing to think about. But from a leadership perspective.

• 31:27Jocko Willink?

  Cover and move is, am I being supportive of the rest of my team? And if you're not. It's going to be a problem. Now, here's a couple of things to watch out for. Some people have a tendency to look out for themselves. And.

• 31:46Jocko Willink?

  Some people. If they have that tendency, one of the worst things about that tendency is that tendency is they don't think anyone else can see it.

• 31:56Jocko Willink?

  And I'm telling you right now, when people are getting screwed, they see it. And in whatever subtle way, whatever, whatever maneuver you're doing that you think no one else can see that you're leaving people. Everyone can see it. They can see it. Thousand percent. They can see what's going on. So if you think you might be a person, and this goes back to what are your own personal balance biases? If you are a person that goes through life that kind of looks out for yourself, this is where you need to index in the right direction appropriately to make up the fact that you're a little bit of a person that takes care of yourself. So just, just watch out for that.

• 32:38Jocko Willink?

  And the way you watch out for that is by when you're making a decision, this is the second thing you ask yourself. Am I making this decision and it's only going to benefit me? And more important, am I supporting my teammates with this decision that I'm going to make? And if you're not, reconsider.

• 32:58Jocko Willink?

  The next one is keeping things simple.

• 33:03Jocko Willink?

  How complicated is this decision? Or how much complexity will this decision add to our situation? What, and that's really a great way to think about it. Will this decision take our current situation and simplify it? If it's going to do that, that's very, very helpful. If this decision is going to make things more complex, this is usually not a good decision. So the minute you say, oh, we just need to get some more people down here into the mix. And all of a sudden you think to yourself, wait a second, that's actually going to make things more complicated. Reconsider. Again, you can still, you can, hey, any one of these things that I'm saying right now,

• 33:48Jocko Willink?

  there are situations where you, you have to still push through it. It's when you're not thinking about it. It's not, when you're not being intentional about your decision, that's when you're going to have a problem. Most important, when you don't even recognize, a lot of times people are making things more complex. They don't even know it. Cause they're not considering the things that I'm talking about. Sometimes they're screwing people over. They're not even thinking about it. That's, look, there's sometimes where I'm screwing over Echo with my decision. But I don't, you know, and I just don't, don't think he's going to notice or I don't care. Sometimes I'm doing it and I just, I, I, I don't even recognize the fact that, oh, I didn't realize Echo was going to get left out in the cold one time.

• 34:23Jocko Willink?

  Leif Babbitt, we were staying in a hotel at the muster and we had like, uh, I had a room, he had a room and they were ju- they were joined by, um, like a, a unit room or whatever, like a, like a, what's that word? A common area. Yeah, a common area, but actually my, the, the entrance to my room was through the common area and then so to get into my room, you'd go through the common area and then I'd go into my room. Leif had, he could go into the common area and into his room, or he could go through the hallway. So we went to PT and, and I forget how it happened, but he locked the common area door.

• 35:05Jocko Willink?

  So, and then we got split up when I came back, I didn't have the key to his room. You know that little, you know, like the key, the mechanical lock on a door? Old school. He had swung that thing shut, so I could, so we were laughing. He was actually trying to help me out, but he locked me out of my room. Which was awesome. Sure. He didn't know, he didn't know that, he didn't know that we were all both gonna leave through his room. So anyways, my point is sometimes you're doing things and you don't understand the secondary effects. So that's one of the, that's one of the benefits of having a checklist. Because the minute you say, oh, wait a second, Jocko might actually have to come back in and I won't be with him, so therefore I should open the door from the inside. Cool, got it, done.

• 35:52Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes I say, oh, I want to do this thing. Oh, but am I really covering for Echo? No, I'm not. I gotta help him out. Okay. So this, the, one of the uses of running this loop and going through this checklist is you make sure you're not doing something that doesn't make sense, that you didn't, that you weren't aware of.

• 36:11Jocko Willink?

  So make sure that you are covering for the rest of your team. Make sure you are putting the team first when you make a decision.

• 36:18Jocko Willink?

  Next one's simple. Well, I already covered simple. Making sure things are complicated. The next one is prioritize and execute. Does this decision that I'm about to make? Match the priorities that we should be focused on?

• 36:33Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's, that's step number one. Hey, wait a second. I'm about to go in this direction. Does that even help us getting where we want to go? Then you kind of have to dig a little bit deeper. Are the priorities that I'm focused on right now, are they even correct? Cause sometimes what you're focused on right now changes and you have to adapt. If you and I are rolling and I'm trying to defend an arm lock, you're trying to arm lock me and all of a sudden you get my neck. Guess what the priority is? Priorities my neck. Protect your neck, right? So priorities are going to change. And so you have to make sure when you make a decision that you're supporting the right priority or you're supporting the priority that you have designated and you also have to double check that the priority that you're focused on is the right one.

• 37:19Jocko Willink?

  Or the priorities plural that you're focused on are the right ones plural. And then, once again, you gotta check your own tendencies because some people have a tendency to get distracted.

• 37:34Jocko Willink?

  And if you're a person that has tendency to get distracted, then you need to double down on making sure you focus on the right priorities. Some people have a tendency to try and accomplish too much. They have the tendency to be like, those people might usually have a also a bad relationship with time where they think they can do more than they have time for. And then they also say, I can do that. I can do that. I can do that. Even though I have a good relationship with time, sometimes I do try and bite off more than I can chew. But not very often, most of the time I don't do that. Most of the time I could actually take the garbage out before I go to jujitsu. But I don't want to be two minutes late. So therefore I'm going to take the garbage out later. I should have taken it out. I should have rolled the dice.

• 38:18Jocko Willink?

  That there's a point 001% that I'm a minute and 28 seconds late.

• 38:26Jocko Willink?

  So know what your tendencies, there's people that have a tendency to shift priorities too often. Similar to being distracted, right? But they're like, no, we need to focus on this. And then three days later, no, we need to focus on this. And then three days later, no, we need to focus on this. That actually happens.

• 38:41Jocko Willink?

  Uh, and of course, there's some people that get fixated on a priority. That may or may not matter. As time goes on. So that can happen as well. So when you are making a decision, check your priority list.

• 39:00Jocko Willink?

  And make sure that your decision supports the priority and then also double check that the priority you're focused on or priorities that you are focused on are the right ones. Pretty straightforward. Uh, decentralized command.

• 39:13Jocko Willink?

  Here's a really good rule of thumb if you're in a leadership position. The decision that I'm about to make. Can I decentralize and delegate the action?

• 39:28Jocko Willink?

  So as soon as I'm thinking of doing something, I think to myself, oh, can I? Turn this over to someone else. So, hey, we gotta get that building cleared? Yes, we're gonna clear that building. Hey, Leif. Grab your squad, grab your platoon, grab your team, go get that building clear. Can I turn it over to someone else? Hey, Echo, we need to, uh, come up with some cool graphics for this event that we're gonna do. Can I turn that over to you? I wanna know if I can. Because my goal is to not be focused on doing things myself, because the minute that I'm doing something myself, I can't look up and I can't look out. Which is going to impair my ability to lead.

• 40:14Jocko Willink?

  This also allows me to be aware, and again, so much of this is awareness. It allows me to be aware that sometimes there's something that I, I do have to do. And I've gotta say, hey, Echo, I've gotta go do this thing, cover me. Or hey, Echo, I'm gonna be going and executing on this thing, watch my back. Or look up and out while I'm doing this. So these are all things that, again, it's okay to make those decisions as long as you're aware of it. But the minute I go, hey, I'm gonna go execute this thing. And I don't tell you to look out, now, now we get flanked.

• 40:48Jocko Willink?

  We're looking, hopefully with decentralized command, we're hoping and the goal is that we are only doing things that only we can do. I only want to do things that only I can do. Everything else, I want to, I want to have someone else on the team do it. That's the goal. And by the way, the things that I only I can do, I eventually want to train someone else to be able to do those things.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  How do you balance the, um, okay, remember you know, the, your, your, uh, it was your story, but, um, somebody came to you was like, you know, I need this advice, whatever. And you said, put them in charge of something they put, and then that person put them in charge of something that was really undesirable, like cleaning.

• 41:30Jocko Willink?

  Cleaning toilets at SEAL Team Two on the second deck. Yeah. That was the mission someone was tasked with in order to give them more responsibility.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:38Jocko Willink?

  And it didn't help the situation. It made them more mad.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  So, so how do you find the balance? Because kind of in a way that kind of, in a manner of speaking, translates over to what you're talking about now where it's like, hey, can I delegate this? Can I delegate this? Which a lot, a lot of times, depending on the project of delegation, it can empower someone, it can help the whole group because they can do this while you're doing quote unquote, more important things or whatever. How do you balance like what you delegate them to do with something important or whatever versus something that, because you know, some things need to be done, but no one really wants to do it, kind of a thing.

• 42:11Jocko Willink?

  Hey, if something sucks, I'm, I'm going to get in there and do it somewhere. This is the picking up brass story, right? Because picking up brass, it's real easy to say, uh, you know what, guys, I gotta go back to, uh, meet with the commanding officer. I gotta go back and prep a brief. So I'll be back in the air conditioned office, back in San Diego, while you guys are out here in 120 degree heat, heat, picking up brass. Real easy to say that. So decisions like that, I'm going to be very cautious and I'm going to weigh my leadership capital, which we'll get to, because if, look, does this mean if the commanding officer is like, hey, I need a brief tomorrow. I'm like, sorry, sir, I'm picking up brass. No. It doesn't mean that, but I better prioritize.

• 42:52Jocko Willink?

  Building a relationship with the troops, making sure they understand that I don't mind getting my hands dirty. Don't mind getting my knees freaking cut up. Don't mind having blisters on my hands from picking up hot brass out in the desert. That's what I'm gonna do. So, there's some, there's some variables that we have to weigh into. And that's also why, good deals, give them away. You know, hey, someone's gotta go ashore early and, and spend an extra four days in wherever this nice vacation area of Thailand. It's like, oh, I'm, no, I'm gonna go on the Advan. And it's like, no, no, hey, Echo, you got it. Take these guys, make sure we have, you know, the stuff that we need for the training in Thailand. And you're like, awesome, right?

• 43:38Jocko Willink?

  So, that's how I weigh it out. Just, just, I have to, I have to, I have to assess the suck meter. And if you're a person that always sees the suck meter high and runs the other way, everybody knows it. So, don't do it.

• 43:53Speaker 01

  So it's kind of a little balancing act game within the game, kind of a thing.

• 43:56Jocko Willink?

  Hundred percent.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz if you just be rigid, or this is what it seems like anyway. If you just be rigid to the, hey, I'm always gonna delegate, and then it's when it comes to, you know, I'm gonna, who, trash needs to be taken out? I got, I got an extra three minutes or whatever now, but no, no, no, I'm sticking to the rule. Delegate, delegate, delegate, you know, kind of a thing.

• 44:14Jocko Willink?

  No, things that suck, try not to delegate. And, and look, that could also mean if you're the platoon commander, guess what you're doing all day? Cleaning the toilets, picking up brass, like you could be, you could assign yourself every task that kinda sucks. And we don't wanna do that. So we have to put that into the calculus. We don't just delegate things that suck. In fact, you know, Leif tells a story, we were going through the, our dive portion of training. And diving kinda sucks, you know, it's cold, wet, miserable, long, boring. And some people think, and so a lot of guys, given the opportunity, they have meetings to attend during dive. They have, uh, whatever, reports to write.

• 45:00Jocko Willink?

  And Leif and Seth, you know, they were kinda like surprised. Here I am, got my wet suit on, got my fins out, we're ready to go dive. Ready to go spend four hours turtle backing around San Diego Bay and freaking three hours on bag on, in the darkness, you know, bored out of your mind. But that's what you do. So.

• 45:21Jocko Willink?

  That's one of those things where if it sucks, use caution while delegating. Make sense?

• 45:28Speaker 01

  Fully, yeah, fully. It's a, yeah, it's the kind of more of the approach to it, right? Where it's like, you gotta understand the overall picture of what you, what are you doing here? You know, and why are you doing it? Kind of a thing. So if you, if you have more important things to do, you delegate these things. They're all important because they're all pieces of the puzzle.

• 45:45Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  But, um, yeah, you, there's another, like I said, game kind of going on where

• 45:52Speaker 01

  you want to be looking out for everyone in that little additional way, you know? And you're gonna sacrifice little parts of kind of yourself.

• 46:00Jocko Willink?

  Yep, yep.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  To kind of do it.

• 46:05Jocko Willink?

  So, we kind of got the four laws of combat covered. The next thing I'm gonna think about, and this is a big one, is making sure that our ego is not driving this decision, which you would be shocked and dismayed at the number of decisions that are driven by ego. Driven by ego. They're, they're almost 100% in some cases driven by ego.

• 46:32Jocko Willink?

  Am I making this decision based on my ego? Am I imposing it as punishment? Subconscious punishment on someone who questioned me?

• 46:45Jocko Willink?

  Am I forcing this to prove, to echo that my plan was the better plan? So, you have to be extremely cautious of that. And, and the thing that we have to be careful of is that our, our ego can absolutely, or not even. Your ego is going to lie to you. That's what our ego does. Our ego is going to lie to us. And so my, and, and if, it's tricky too. Your ego's smart. Your ego's, it's like the devil. You ever seen the movie The Exorcist?

• 47:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 47:19Jocko Willink?

  So in the movie The Exorcist, the devil knows the things to say to the priest that's gonna like get him. And your ego is equally smart as the devil. And it knows, you, you, my ego's like, hey, hey, Jaco. This, hey, I know I get extreme ownership. I, you, you, hey, I buy into extreme ownership 100%. But this time, this, this actually really is Echo's fault. Echo's plan's really not as good as yours. I get it. I know you want to be humble. But hey, if you're humble now, it's actually going to cost you in the long. That's the way your ego talks to you. It's like a little savage in there. Just manipulating.

• 48:04Jocko Willink?

  So you gotta be very careful of that. The other thing that happens is if your ego's running the decision, have you listened to anybody else? Have you listened to other people with an open mind? Do you have an open mind? So be careful of that. Cause sometimes we're listening but we're not hearing.

• 48:24Jocko Willink?

  And then a good little sanity check. Am I doing this? Am I using this decision? Am I driving this decision with my rank? With my position?

• 48:37Jocko Willink?

  Even with my experience? And let me explain what that sounds like. The idea of driving, it sounds good, right? It sounds good for me to say, hey, I'm more experienced. That's why I'm making this decision. But that's the equivalent as, dude, I've been doing this for 20 years. You need to shut up and listen to me.

• 48:56Jocko Willink?

  Any of those things. If the main driver of your decision and the way you're convincing people is through experience or through rank or through position or authority, you already lost. You already, I'm going to say you lost. But you need to reconsider what's happening. Because if I can't articulate to you, Echo Charles, why I made this decision without saying, because I outrank you or because I'm in charge of this or because I have, because I've done this type of thing 20 times. If I have to go there, that means I'm not really, I can't articulate why we're going with my plan. And that's a problem. And the problem most likely is my ego. So use caution on that.

• 49:36Jocko Willink?

  And right tied up next to that is emotion. Am I making an emotional decision? I mean, what a smart little thing to check on. And if you check on it, you're going to realize that it's a bad, that it's a bad move. People make this emotional decisions all the time. And by the way, they almost never turn out good. Am I mad? Am I frustrated? Am I vengeful? Am I fearful? Am I guilty? Guilt is an emotion. That'll make you do something that you know you shouldn't do. Fear is an emotion that'll make you do something that you shouldn't do.

• 50:22Jocko Willink?

  Frustration. I'm getting frustrated, you know what, just go ahead and do it, right? These are horrible things. So, check with yourself and make sure that your emotions are not driving the decision. Now, listen, here's the other thing, here's the dichotomy, is your emotions do still have to be part of the calculus. They gotta be part of the calculus. You gotta calculate your own emotions to get the answer. You gotta calculate the emotions of the team to get the answer. Cause if the team is all mad about doing this thing. And I say, you know what, though, logically, we should do it. All right, guys, this is the logical answer, go do it. And all it does is make everyone madder. First of all, are you going to execute well? Are you going to do a good job? Are you trustworthy while you're out there and you're mad? What did you do to my leadership capital?

• 51:07Jocko Willink?

  All these problems it's going to cause. All these problems it's going to cause. So I have to put emotions into the calculus.

• 51:17Jocko Willink?

  But it can't be the overwhelming driver of my decision making. It has to be a component. But it should be a small component in most cases. Meaning, if I know that making some decision is going to make the entire team totally irate, I need to weigh it a little bit more because the emotion is stronger.

• 51:38Jocko Willink?

  But, you have to calculate it. And if you're not aware of it, if you're not paying attention to it, then it's not gonna, it's not gonna work out the way you want it to. It's going to actually cause bad decisions.

• 51:53Jocko Willink?

  Next one, perspective. Perspective.

• 51:57Jocko Willink?

  People throw this around. People throw this around. What makes you know what other people's perspectives is. But they only throw it around when they think about it. But a lot of times, we get locked into our perspective. And that's bad. I want to see as many different perspectives on a subject, on a topic, on an idea that I can. I want to know my peers' perspectives. I want to know my subordinates' perspectives. I want to know my superiors' perspectives. I want to know my competitors' or my enemies' perspective. What are they actually seeing right now? The more angles I see of a target or of a problem,

• 52:36Jocko Willink?

  the more, the better I can understand it.

• 52:40Jocko Willink?

  And the better I can understand it, the better off I'm going to be. We have this thing when you do a reconnaissance of a target, a building or a compound. When you, when you do it, what you try and do is you try and move around the entire perimeter over a period of time. You try and see it from every different possible angle. If you don't see something from every possible angle, there's something that you're missing. And that thing that you're missing could be a critical component of the target or of the problem. So by asking your subordinates, hey, what does this look like to you? By asking your peers, like, hey, what do you see here? By asking your boss, hey, what does it look like from your perspective? By doing that, it's going to give you a better understanding

• 53:24Jocko Willink?

  of the target, of the problem, of the issue. And then you can better formulate a plan. And by the way, my default mode is to take, when someone else says, hey, Jocko, I see a solution. My default mode is to try and utilize their solution, try and utilize their plan, try and utilize their idea. That's my default mode.

• 53:48Jocko Willink?

  Now, if there's a leadership vacuum, and I wrote about this in Leadership Strategy Tactics, Field Manual, if there's a vacuum, no one's making a decision, sure, I'm gonna step in. I'm gonna give you some little hints here. When there's a leadership vacuum, I'm gonna let that leadership vacuum develop it a little bit extra, just a little bit extra. I'm gonna let that void, let the presence of that silence, of that non-direction, of that lack of leadership, I'm gonna let it sit there for an extra second, two seconds. Why am I doing that? Because I want everyone to know that there's a leadership void. And it doesn't take long. It takes a second, takes two seconds, three seconds. And all of a sudden, everyone goes, "Oh." And when everyone knows there's a leadership void, everyone is primed to execute.

• 54:32Jocko Willink?

  Everyone is ready to receive orders.

• 54:37Jocko Willink?

  So, if there's a leadership void, I'm gonna make sure everyone can feel it. By the way, those extra two, three seconds, I'm actually confirming the plan in my head that I've formulated. So now my plan is gonna be two or three seconds further developed and better. And then I make the call. And yes, I'm gonna make a small call, iterative decision. And if someone else happens to make a call at the same time, guess what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna support their call. Because that's my default mode.

• 55:06Jocko Willink?

  My default mode is to support someone else's call.

• 55:11Jocko Willink?

  Because that is the easiest way to move forward with a plan. The easiest way to move forward with a plan isn't with Echo has a plan and I have a plan to try and convince Echo that my plan is better. The easiest way, the quickest way to move is to say, "Echo, sounds good. I'm on board. What do you want me to do? How can I support?" Unless Echo's plan is freaking, you know, horrible. Actually, let me rephrase that in a more distinct way. Unless Echo's plan is un-viable, it's an un-viable plan that will not work. If it's a minimally viable plan, if it's, you know, if it'll get the job done, you have a minimally viable plan and I have a viable plan, so that means mine might be a little bit better. But now I have to convince you of that. I have to explain why.

• 55:55Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, when I say I'm gonna support your plan, I can probably bring some additional viability to your plan that can make your plan better than mine was in the first place. So that's what I'm gonna do.

• 56:05Jocko Willink?

  That's the easiest way to do it. Now, what do we need to think about here is we need to think about the fact that we almost all, here's a bias. That almost all of us have the same bias, which is my idea is the best idea. That's, that's, that's our general consideration as humans that my idea is the best idea. So know that you have that bias. I actually go hard against that bias. And quite frankly, sometimes I go too hard against that bias. Sometimes someone's got a plan. I'm like, eh, and it might not, it might be minimally, really minimally viable. And I'll be like, you know what? We'll go with it. Sometimes I do that a little bit too much. So I know that. Why do you think you do that?

• 56:50Jocko Willink?

  Just wanna be supportive, don't wanna be a imposing tyrant on the team. And someone, and generally I'm like, thinking to myself, well, you know, my plan's good, but you know, we can probably make Eggles' plan worth. I would rather do it. Why? I'll tell you why. I literally believe what I'm saying right now. It's usually easier for me just to support your plan than it is for me to convince you of this other plan and explain it to you. I can uptake your plan pretty quick. I get it. Cool. Let's go execute that thing. I'm supporting you. Let's run with it. And then I'm detached from your plan. So I can see a little bit more when it's my plan. All of a sudden I gotta, I gotta manage that whole thing and I'm staring right into it. And I don't know how good you are at being detached and, and trying to adjust things. You might not be as good as me. So you know what?

• 57:30Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna let you, detachment is a harder skill than, than the planning and execution. Or it's a rarer skill. If I tell you to go and execute something, there's a good chance you'll be able to do it. If I tell you, hey, I'm gonna go execute, you detach and sit on the outside and try and give me some broad guidance about how I can do better. That's a harder job because most people, most of the time you'll be like, I'm starting to execute my plan. You're gonna jump in there with me. You're gonna start doing it too. So that's why I sort of over index on allowing, on, on providing support or allowing people to do things that maybe I don't a hundred percent agree with, right?

• 58:13Jocko Willink?

  I mean, you've done some stuff where I've been like, huh?

• 58:18Jocko Willink?

  That didn't seem to be the best idea, was it? And we can look back postmortem.

• 58:24Speaker 01

  Is this a Christmas music thing?

• 58:25Jocko Willink?

  Christmas music, that's a good one, right? You know?

• 58:29Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 58:29Jocko Willink?

  Some things happen, you're like, well, that's not good. That's not what we were looking for at all. Didn't you say you didn't even know that was a Christmas song?

• 58:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's correct.

• 58:37Jocko Willink?

  Bruh.

• 58:38Speaker 01

  I know, I don't know, sorry. I do now, though, so, you know?

• 58:41Jocko Willink?

  You gotta watch out for that one. So, that's the deal. It's perspective. You have to actually pull yourself back and try and see other people's perspectives. And the best way to do that is by talking to them, asking them good questions about what they see. You're not gonna be a freaking, uh, uh, uh, what's the word? A psychic that I can see what Echo sees. I don't go into a meditative state and get, and go into your brain. No, I go, hey, Echo, what does that look like to you? This is not, this isn't freaking, this isn't freaking, uh,

• 59:15Jocko Willink?

  this isn't remote viewing. This isn't remote viewing. What's the deal with remote viewing? You think it's true?

• 59:20Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 59:20Jocko Willink?

  They had big programs with it in the military. There's a movie about it.

• 59:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, I mean, I don't, if it is true, I don't know how it works at all. It doesn't seem.

• 59:30Jocko Willink?

  Could be the guys are really good at guessing.

• 59:32Speaker 01

  Maybe, you know? Well, a lot of the, what do you call, like, the psychic, you know, mediums and mind readers and stuff? That's as it turns out, from what I understand, what it is. It's like, it's not guessing, but it's like guessing about like, they, they react to cues with you, like how you respond. So it's like, I'm seeing red, and then if they do something, they're like, okay, red is something, you know? Do you know a person's name? And they go real basic names first. And so, cause I'm feeling a John or a Jim.

• 59:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  You know, like that.

• 59:59Jocko Willink?

  What would be even broader is like, do you know anyone that's, do you know one that's experienced trouble in their life right now? And if I see you like, huh, then I'm like, eh, wait.

• 1:00:09Speaker 01

  Are they sick?

• 1:00:10Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean?

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  And at the same time, my mind is like, do I? Then I search for everyone in my whole. It's like whether it's significant or not, you kind of make it significant. So it's like a dance going on.

• 1:00:19Jocko Willink?

  Maybe we'll have a remote viewer on the program. For, because the military had like a remote viewer group. People that, that's what they did. Sit in a room and go into a meditative state and look for, you know, missile launch pads. Stuff like this.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  I guess the argument for and against it, in a matter of speaking, is kind of the same thing where it's like your brain is so complex. And we, you know, there's a lot of stuff about your brain and all this stuff that we don't know. So it's possible, but at the same time, it's kind of like, all right, well, I don't see how your eyes can like see something that they don't see. And it's your brain, you know, like it doesn't make sense. Given what we do know, it doesn't make sense.

• 1:01:01Jocko Willink?

  Eddie Bravo has a podcast now and it's called Look Into It. I think it's called Look Into It, which is a freaking great name. And this makes me think, you know, maybe we need to get Eddie Bravo to look into it. And see what's up, see what's up with remote viewing. He, because he's looking into a bunch of stuff.

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. You know why it's called Look Into It?

• 1:01:20Jocko Willink?

  I think it's because of what I just said. Is there another reason?

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that's the thing that there was a, um.

• 1:01:24Jocko Willink?

  Oh, is it a meme?

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  Kind of that he, they, he was on a podcast, I forget which one it was, but it was one, you know, one of Joe Rogan's podcasts, he was on there. And then they got into this heated like argument about, you know, one of the things that Eddie Bravo really kind of proportions, maybe wasn't UFOs. What was it? I don't know. 9/11, maybe? I don't know. So I forget what it was, but he kept saying, you just haven't looked into it. You just haven't looked into it. Kind of, you know, I mean, that was kind of his defense to a lot of things. But he said it so many times that like it became a thing.

• 1:01:55Jocko Willink?

  Well, it's a great name for his podcast because that's what he's doing is out there looking into it. The weird thing about looking into things these days is you can kind of find what you want to find.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  Whatever you want. Yeah, that's true.

• 1:02:06Jocko Willink?

  There's, there's all kinds of things to find what you want.

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:10Jocko Willink?

  To find.

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  We have this trampoline.

• 1:02:14Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. And then, okay, so we have this trampoline. It's re, it's called a rebounder. It's like essentially like a regular little trampoline, but it's like. I don't know, more robust. I don't know, whatever.

• 1:02:25Jocko Willink?

  How big is it?

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  Like the regular sized ones, like this table, maybe a little bigger.

• 1:02:29Jocko Willink?

  That's not a regular size. So when I think trampoline, I think of something that you, that is like fifteen feet across.

• 1:02:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:35Jocko Willink?

  Like a leg breaker.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:37Jocko Willink?

  But this thing is, this is like one of those fitness trampolines where you jump on it.

• 1:02:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. But it's the one where it's like, there's no noise. It's called a rebounder, if I'm not mistaken. So anyway, one of the claims is that, oh yeah, it does something to your lymph system.

• 1:02:52Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:02:52Speaker 01

  Like it like does something to it.

• 1:02:55Jocko Willink?

  Elevates it somehow.

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, the pressure and here's the thing, that could be hundred percent true. It could be.

• 1:03:02Jocko Willink?

  Look into it.

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, you look into it. So I go and look in and you know, my wife, she's like saying, yeah, my dad told me and this and he has one. And let's face it, the kids jump on it. It's fun. That's my main kind of catalyst or whatever.

• 1:03:14Jocko Willink?

  Didn't even have to look into that.

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  Yep. Lymph or no lymph systems, it's fun. The kids freaking love it and whatever. It's good for your legs too, obviously. Uh, but I'm like, if I'm gonna talk trash, which I do just jokingly, cause I don't, I don't know if it helps your lymph system or not. If I'm gonna talk trash, I should at least look into it. So I looked into it and sure enough. It says, yeah, it does this to your lymph system, but then, but then just like what you're alluding to where you kind of gotta consider the source, you know? And then, oh, what, what if I spend my day looking into this five websites that said this? Now I gotta determine the credibility. So it's like hard, you know?

• 1:03:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's all kinds of cra- cause you can make a website that has, oh, click here for the supporting documentation, but you also wrote the supporting documentation, right? So even when you're looking into it, you're not looking in the right place.

• 1:04:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's true, man.

• 1:04:07Jocko Willink?

  What, what, what a platform is Eddie Bravo's? Do you know what? It's on a platform. I don't know if it's on a open platform.

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't know.

• 1:04:17Jocko Willink?

  I'll have to look into it.

• 1:04:20Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. Uh, perspective. You gotta look into some other people's perspectives. And, and figure out what the whole target, what the whole problem looks like. So there you go. Perspective. Spend some time, put that on your checklist. The perspective you have, by the way, is not the whole thing. And there's a good chance that your perspective is actually wrong, right? Hey, I don't see any enemy on this target. All you need to do is go ninety degrees in the other direction. You could see a bunch of enemies sitting behind a building.

• 1:04:52Jocko Willink?

  Hey, make your bias that your perspective is probably a little bit off. Maybe even make your bias that you're, that you're wrong. That what you see is not the whole picture. That what you see is actually a bad picture. That's what I think of my perspective. I think, ah, you know what? This is what I see and I know my, my gut instinct is like, I know I, I don't not seen everything. And there's more to the picture and I need to figure out what that is. Make that part of your checklist.

• 1:05:23Jocko Willink?

  Next thing is mission. So, so is the decision that you're about to make, does it support the mission that you're actually trying to execute on? And not actually more important than that, does it support your overall strategic mission? And this is, this causes all kinds of, there's a, there's a term out there. Have you heard the term mission creep?

• 1:05:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's a pretty common term now. This is because people don't run this leadership loop in their brain and they don't ask themselves, hold on a second. What's our mission? What's our overall mission? And is this in support of it? If I make this decision, it's going to help us repeat, uh, reach our strategic goals. All kinds of people make that mistake.

• 1:06:05Jocko Willink?

  And we can't allow for that. So what you do is you just run a quick check and say, hold on. Does this support the tactical mission that we're trying to execute? Does this support the strategic mission that we're trying to achieve? And if it doesn't, you know, it's a bad decision.

• 1:06:22Jocko Willink?

  Next one, leadership capital.

• 1:06:27Jocko Willink?

  And this is one that I recently added to this list. And, and, and the reason that I added to the list is because at some point I was having a discussion with somebody. And I realized, actually, let me rephrase this. I was making a decision and I realized that the main thing that I was calculating was how much this is going to cost me from a leadership capital perspective.

• 1:06:50Jocko Willink?

  And so, so first of all, what is leadership capital? Leadership capital is the fact that you can only get people to do so much.

• 1:07:01Jocko Willink?

  As a leader, you can only get people to do so much. There's a, there's a, there's a, when you ask somebody to do something, it costs. It costs you leadership capital. And if they don't want to do it, it costs more.

• 1:07:17Jocko Willink?

  And if they want to do it, then it costs less. And if they do it on their own accord, then it's very cheap, maybe even free. And if you let them do what they want, you're kind of collecting some leadership capital. So just the very, any interaction that I have with Echo Charles, if I say, hey, get this done. Hey, hey, do this. Hey, make a video about this. That cost me leadership capital. Cost me leadership capital.

• 1:07:48Jocko Willink?

  Especially if you don't want to do it. It has cost me even more. Now, look, I might have some leadership capital with you and you're like, all right, fine. I'll do it. If you want to do it. If I'm like, hey, make a video with robots exploding. You're like, oh, hell, yeah, right? It didn't cost me very much. Now, if I say to you, man, I wish we had more videos with robots exploding. You were like, dude, I'm going to make a sick one.

• 1:08:13Jocko Willink?

  That's very cheap. You're still working, so maybe it costs me a little something. But if I say, hey, man, I have no idea what to do. What do you think we should do? And you're like, we need to make a video with robots exploding. I go, that's awesome. I actually gained some leadership capital. So everything, when you're, when you're, when people are interacting with each other, there's going to be leadership capital spent.

• 1:08:38Jocko Willink?

  We, and by the way, every interaction that I have with you, not, never mind just a tasking, but when we interact with each other, there's leadership capital being exchanged. And we as people always think we have more leadership capital than we do. Here's a couple of things that will throw you for a loop. You think rank gives you a bunch of leadership capital? It doesn't.

• 1:09:04Jocko Willink?

  It doesn't. Rank, it gives you a little tiny bit. Cause hey, man, you know, obviously I'm in this position and you, you haven't been here as long as me and I've done this stuff before. So there's an element of leadership capital that comes with rank.

• 1:09:19Jocko Willink?

  But it's not as much as we think. Actually, when I give ownership to someone, when I say, hey, I go, you go ahead and run this project the way you want. You seem to have a good grasp on it. That actually earns me leadership capital. So giving ownership earns leadership capital. Listening to someone, as simple as that might sound, gives me leadership capital. When you come to me and say, I want to talk to you about something, I go, oh, I get out my notebook and I say, hey, tell me what you got. You're like, I have this idea of doing this and I'm writing it down. That gives me leadership capital.

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  You could do like a little, whether it be fresh on front or whatever, you could do like a fun little quiz. Right? And it's like leadership capital quiz. Like, is this spending it or earning it, right? And you could do little thing. You could probably go pretty deep with that.

• 1:10:03Jocko Willink?

  You can go real deep. I've done, I've covered that in the academy. How to earn leadership capital.

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:08Jocko Willink?

  And what costs leadership capital. So you definitely, that's, that's good. We could, we could do it on here at some point as well.

• 1:10:18Jocko Willink?

  It's surprising how much listening to people gives you leadership capital. And usually when I talk about the, the opposite of that, is when people go, oh yeah, he's right. Cause listen, if you start telling me something, I cut you off. Right? You, you might not realize the weight of when you're telling me something and I listen to you. You might not, it's like a subconscious, you'd be subconsciously giving me leadership capital. Oh yeah, hell yeah. But when I cut you off and you're trying to express something to me and I just cut you off and I'm like, yeah, hey, look, let's get to the topic of the day.

• 1:10:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:51Jocko Willink?

  You're just, that, that cost me a lot of leadership capital. Just like any, and that's just do with respect.

• 1:11:00Jocko Willink?

  You know what you were talking about earlier? A crappy job? If we got something, if we gotta go pick up brass and I'm out there doing it with you, leadership capital goes up. If I'm in the air conditioning place, leadership capital goes down. So there's all these things that are going on.

• 1:11:19Speaker 01

  Bro, it gets kinda tricky too, though. Then maybe it's my little pea brain mind going too deep into it. Maybe it's not, but like, let's say you, okay, you know your story, right? The patches, right? So you let, we'll say, you let something slide, right?

• 1:11:35Speaker 01

  You let something slide, sometimes that can, under certain circumstances, that can gain you, may have you gain leadership capital, but under other circumstances, you can lose it. It's the same action. You let something slide, but it's like, oh, you gotta understand.

• 1:11:49Jocko Willink?

  That's why we wrote the dichotomy of leadership.

• 1:11:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's why a quiz would be.

• 1:11:52Jocko Willink?

  And that's why leadership is tricky. It's tricky because you, you gotta, you gotta assess that. And that's why I'm talking about this, this leadership loop. Because so often, people aren't actually just checking themselves like, wait a second, I wonder how bad Echo actually wants to do this? I wonder what this is costing me?

• 1:12:11Jocko Willink?

  The reason that it weighs so heavily for me, first of all, it's because leadership capital is the currency of winning. If you want to win, you gotta have a bunch of leadership capital built up.

• 1:12:23Jocko Willink?

  And I put so much weight on leadership capital. Because this is interesting thing to think about. Most of the time, a one idea, it's only a little bit better than some other idea. Right? Very rarely are you and I working at a company or in a military unit or part of a team, and your idea is so radically different from mine, that I'm willing to, that I even need to think about, hey, is that a good decision or not? Usually, your idea is pretty good.

• 1:13:04Jocko Willink?

  You're like, in your mind, you're like, hey, I want to explode, uh, Star Wars robots, and I think you should explode.

• 1:13:12Speaker 01

  Terminator.

• 1:13:12Jocko Willink?

  Terminator robots, right? Are those two things worth arguing about?

• 1:13:18Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 1:13:19Jocko Willink?

  Are they worth it? They're not. I think one thing, you think another thing, but the things that we're thinking are very closely related. So therefore, what trumps the idea, because the ideas are so close.

• 1:13:33Jocko Willink?

  What trumps the idea is leadership capital. We have a common goal. We have a common capability. We have common experiences and we're going to come up with pretty similar plans because we're both coming from the same place. Therefore, your plan is probably going to be viable. And because your plan is viable, because what did I say? You want Star Wars? Terminator. Okay, because you want Terminator robots and I want Star Wars robots. They're both viable, but because they're both viable, I make the expenditure of leadership capital a very heavy weighted element of my decision.

• 1:14:09Jocko Willink?

  Because the decision between Star Wars robots or Terminator robot isn't going to make that much of a difference. Now, are there people that freaking dig in about what robot needs to die? Hell yeah, there are and they're idiots for doing it. I don't care.

• 1:14:25Jocko Willink?

  I don't care. And the reason I don't care is because building leadership capital is the strategic move. It's a strategic move because if we're spending leadership capital all the time, we won't have any left. Or even worse, we'll end up in debt and that's not going to end well. Because by the way, when I don't have any leadership capital with you and I ask you to do something, you're not going to do it. If I have a ton of leadership capital and I need you to do something and there's no time to talk about it and you don't believe in it, but I need to get it done. I can actually spend some of that leadership capital. We can move forward.

• 1:15:00Jocko Willink?

  So

• 1:15:02Jocko Willink?

  that's what I'm going to do. When I'm making a decision as to whether or not to go left or right or use Terminator robots or Star Wars robots. I'm going to put a huge amount of weight on how much leadership capital this is going to cost me. And see and weigh whether this is.

• 1:15:25Jocko Willink?

  Whether this is the right move or not, most of the time it's not. Most of the time it's not. Leadership capital is more valuable than any other elements in the world. Leadership capital, it's everything that's wrapped up in leadership capital. Trust, integrity, vision, unity, there's all these things that are wrapped up in it. That's what makes it so valuable. It's like this, this thing that has so much power. And yet people will throw it away. People don't even realize how valuable it is. They'll just throw it away on this, that, or the other thing. Like, hey, you just need to get this done. Boom, I just, I just spent freaking however many units worth of leadership capital.

• 1:16:10Jocko Willink?

  Dude, you just need to be quiet and get this done. Boom, I was just throwing money away. Hey, hey, Jaco, I gotta go to, hey, look, I don't need to hear your ideas right now. We need to move forward. Okay, cool. That just cost me. It's like everything we do, people just throw it away like it's nothing. They break, they break out the freaking, they go into debt, they go, then they end up bankrupt.

• 1:16:28Speaker 01

  Leadership.

• 1:16:28Jocko Willink?

  You ever met someone that has no leadership capital left?

• 1:16:31Speaker 01

  Yes, I have.

• 1:16:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, like you work for someone that's an asshole. You work for someone that doesn't listen to anybody else. They have no leadership capital.

• 1:16:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:36Jocko Willink?

  And, and, and maybe they can make some things happen early on because they have the authority or they have the experience or they have the position. That, that, and that they can actually make a little bit of progress and then the leadership capital is gone and everything just falls apart.

• 1:16:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's like a, a back, and I've said this before, so I don't need to go too deep into it, but the, you know how like you have an old boss that you used to work for? And he was just a dick or whatever and he don't work there anymore. You work at a better job now, you know? And then maybe you see that old boss somewhere, the way you feel about him. You can see his leadership capital is at zero at that point.

• 1:17:09Jocko Willink?

  At zero.

• 1:17:11Jocko Willink?

  So that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna consider a leadership capital and it's gonna weigh very heavily. And, and by the way, the reason I didn't put this on the list originally because it was so. It was so integral to the way I think I didn't even see it there.

• 1:17:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:23Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean? It was just one of those things. It was almost like if you, if I was to put down, what do you need every day? I go, you'd be like, hey, I need a good workout. I need to get a good steak. I want to roll jujitsu. And I go, what about oxygen? What about air? You're like, well, yeah, obviously that's leadership capital for me was like breathing air. It was that integral to my day. I didn't even see it was there.

• 1:17:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:44Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 1:17:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. Now that you bring it up though, it's like, it's not like air, right? Cause it's so like, people don't.

• 1:17:50Jocko Willink?

  Oh, no, actually wrong. It is like air.

• 1:17:53Speaker 01

  It is, but they're ignoring it. So it's like.

• 1:17:55Jocko Willink?

  Well, it is, but people don't realize how valuable it is. They can't breathe. So they don't even realize it's there and they're there like just wasting it and it doesn't matter. It'll always be there. No, it's not. You get choked out. That's what happens. Tell me you're not concerned about air when you're getting that guillotine choke sunk on you.

• 1:18:12Speaker 01

  I am concerned about air.

• 1:18:13Jocko Willink?

  Real concern.

• 1:18:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:18:15Jocko Willink?

  So be careful.

• 1:18:16Speaker 01

  Tell me if you think this is an example of being in touch with leadership capital.

• 1:18:23Speaker 01

  So you know, as you know, we have this dog now, small dog. Never wanted a dog. I didn't want a dog.

• 1:18:28Jocko Willink?

  What's your dog's name?

• 1:18:29Speaker 01

  Maya. It's a small little, what do you call it? Yorkie?

• 1:18:33Jocko Willink?

  I don't know what you call it. Cause I don't have the.

• 1:18:34Speaker 01

  Come on, bro. You know what it's called. Anyway, one of these little small dogs, whatever, whatever. It's cute, whatever. I never wanted the dog though. But why are you gonna, we're gonna add another thing to the like simple life. All the kids want dogs. My wife, maybe, maybe she wanted the dog, maybe not, but she hears it from the kids every day. Oh my gosh. Every time the kids see a dog. And there's people in our neighborhood, neighborhood with cool little dogs and stuff and they're nice dogs. And so they're great examples of dogs all around. Constantly being reminded how they don't have a dog, right? So finally I'm like, hey, all right. I kind of went through this loop a little bit in a small way where I'm like, hey.

• 1:19:09Jocko Willink?

  You weighed leadership capital at some point in there.

• 1:19:11Speaker 01

  Exactly right. So I'm like, all right.

• 1:19:13Jocko Willink?

  Now, this would be actually be an interesting thing for us to do is go through your decision to get a dog and, and, and, and assess your leadership loop on this thing, right? I mean, you know, time, well, you do have plenty of time to make the decision. So you didn't like rush one weekend and be like, okay, we need to get a dog now. No, you took time to consider it.

• 1:19:31Speaker 01

  Two years, by the way.

• 1:19:32Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. Cover, move. You were like, hey. If we don't get a dog, is that putting me first? Yes, it is. And so you kind of made that decision like, okay, gotta put the team first. Simple. This is one, one of those things where like, well, this is going to actually make things more complex. So you had to put that into the calculus, right? Prioritize and execute. Well, is it one of our priorities? Well, we saw some family unity being, being created. And so that was a positive thing. So the priority kind of stepped up a little bit. Cause we want the family to be tight.

• 1:20:04Speaker 01

  And yeah, and there's other, other elements in that too, because you know, like, okay, so my daughter's nine. So getting a small dog too, this is like a small, it's not like some big Great Dane where it's like a little more responsibility or whatever. It's a small little dog, minimal arguably responsibility comparatively speaking. And you have a pet that it actually is responsibility for the kid, obviously being supported by us, of course, you know? But she gets to learn a little bit of that responsibility, sacrifice, you know, and stuff like that. So it was a net pot, as far as priorities go and the developmental elements of a kid. And let's face it, like, is it unreasonable for a kid to have a childhood pet? Is that unreasonable?

• 1:20:43Jocko Willink?

  It's good. And as you just mentioned, there's lessons to be learned, which goes into decentralized command. You know that, is this something you can decentralize? So what did you go, oh, we're gonna get this dog and then I'm gonna have to walk it. I'm gonna have to feed it up. No, you were probably like, hey, I'm not cleaning up dog shit, right? I'm not gonna be the one that feeds it every, so you knew you could decentralize some of this stuff. So that is additionally positive here. Was it your ego that was getting in the way a little bit? Cause hey, check it out. Let's face it, the dog is gonna take a little attention away from Echo Charles, just a little bit, right? And plus you might've been like, hey, this is my house, right? You could get into that mode.

• 1:21:22Speaker 01

  And that, that is, um.

• 1:21:24Jocko Willink?

  I'm not saying you did, but it could be a factor.

• 1:21:26Speaker 01

  A little bit, maybe not necessarily in that particular way, like this is my house and I make, it wasn't that. It was more about like, oh yeah, everyone wants this dog, but what about what I want? It was like that. And I was like, bro, that's kind of whack, you know, when I realized that.

• 1:21:39Jocko Willink?

  Good. Okay. Um, emotion?

• 1:21:43Jocko Willink?

  You had to at least check the emotion that you were having and that everyone else was having. Cause if you don't, you you weighed in how happy everyone was gonna be. And that countered how like somewhat frustrated you were gonna be. You actually went through this and thought to yourself, you know what? Them being super happy outweighs me being a little bit aggravated. So you put, you did the calculus of the emotion, made the right call. Mission, does this help our mission as a family? Again, helps bring the family together. There's lessons to be learned. We have something to talk about. We have a, a, what's that? A common affection towards this thing.

• 1:22:23Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:22:23Jocko Willink?

  Even though this thing is small and weak and doesn't really protect us from anything, which is okay.

• 1:22:27Speaker 01

  But it gets, it gets the kids outside even more, you know, all this stuff.

• 1:22:31Jocko Willink?

  Leadership cap, so this is where we get to. So now you got to a point where it's leadership capital. You were, and how did you calculate that on the dog purchase?

• 1:22:38Speaker 01

  Which it in a small way went back to measuring the emotions and comparing them. But it was essentially that, like people, everyone knew that I didn't want a dog. In fact, they've been knowing it for two years. I'm not the kind of person, whatever that that's like, no. You know, like I don't complain about that kind of stuff, but they, everyone knew that I was not really into it at all. Um, when we got it, I didn't be like, yeah, I wasn't into it, but I did it anyway for you guys. None of that kind of stuff. I was just kind of like, I was like, hey, if that's what we're doing, let's do it. And I'm so, actually I will clean up after it. Not as a priority, but I'm down for the support 100%. So, uh, when, uh, when it was time to, to get the dog or whatever, I was like, I basically got on board.

• 1:23:21Speaker 01

  And I figured, and I guess in terms of leadership cap, I wasn't thinking of it in terms of leadership capital, but I wasn't thinking of it in terms of like, hey, what would like, what's the right thing to do here? And something that would, if I get on board in a positive way, in a conducive way, that's gonna be better off for everybody. So that's just what I did, but kinda maybe, how should I say inadvertently or whatever? Just not thinking, thinking of it. I'm sure that did because people know that I didn't want the dog, but meanwhile I have a good attitude about it. I'm still cleaning up and let's face it, this is the classic tale, right? Where the dad doesn't want the dog, then the dad ends up being the best friend of the dog, kind of a thing, you know? We're not quite there yet, but I have embraced the dog on a personal level.

• 1:24:06Speaker 01

  Teeny tiny dog.

• 1:24:07Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 1:24:08Speaker 01

  So I feel like if they even notice, who knows? They've been, they're little kids.

• 1:24:13Jocko Willink?

  I guarantee you got some leadership capital out of this guaranteed. And that's good. That's good because over time also you, you gotta think how much am I spending leadership capital when this is the one thing they want and I'm not getting it for them? That's, that could be a problem. And as I shouldn't even say, like, it probably wouldn't actually be that big of a problem. And the reason it's not that big of a problem because it's a huge ask, right? It's a huge ask. A dog is a big deal, man. You can't just be getting a dog on a whim. You need, you should go through this checklist before you go and invest in a dog or pick up a dog from the dog pound or whatever you're gonna do.

• 1:24:51Speaker 01

  Here's what I do have in mind consciously in regards to leadership capital. If I complain about that dog or about having the dog, not even necessarily about the dog, because you can complain about like, frick, the dog's barking, you know, whatever. But if I complain about having the dog, that is like, to me, it feels like I'm like spending so much of that leadership capital because it's like, I never wanted that dog, you know, making everyone feel guilty or something like this. Never. It's, it's against the straight up morals.

• 1:25:20Jocko Willink?

  That would be.

• 1:25:20Speaker 01

  That's so strict. I think that.

• 1:25:21Jocko Willink?

  That would be bad. So leadership capital, put that in the calculus. It's more valuable than the air that you breathe from a leadership perspective. Now, the next thing is as, and I've, I've mentioned this a bunch already, but as I'm judging or assessing all these aspects of a decision, I am going to the whole time pay attention to my own bias.

• 1:25:46Jocko Willink?

  You know, do I tend to think that I have too much leadership capital? Because there's people that are like that. They think, oh, hey, man, don't worry. I'm Jocko, man. People just go, no. Do I underestimate the amount of leadership capital that I have? First of all, that's rare and it's usually not true. But those are things that I am going to do. I am going to constantly be assessing my own bias. So you might want to throw onto your leadership loop, bias assessment.

• 1:26:15Jocko Willink?

  To make sure that you're not making a mistake because of the biases that you have. And or you can put, or you can put that into each one of these topics. Ego, emotion, mission, leadership capital. You can put bias into each one of those subcategories to say, you know what? I know I'm always get let my ego get in the way. Or, or maybe you're saying the other opposite side, you know, I'm never confident enough with my decisions.

• 1:26:39Jocko Willink?

  On time, right? What's your bias? Do you think everything takes five minutes when it really takes a half an hour? Calculate that bias.

• 1:26:49Jocko Willink?

  And then the last thing I'm going to say here is something that I like to think about.

• 1:26:55Jocko Willink?

  Am I looking at the symptoms? Or am I looking at the root cause?

• 1:27:02Jocko Willink?

  Because

• 1:27:06Jocko Willink?

  a lot of times this solution that's right in front of your face is actually a solution to a symptom. And we see this like 2D solution that's right in front of us and it's usually obvious. And here's what's tricky. It's usually right.

• 1:27:21Jocko Willink?

  Usually the first, you know, if Echo is doing something or if we, if we got to come up with a plan and I come up with a quick plan to solve a problem, usually that first plan that we both see is a solution and it will work. But there's a, a, a good chance that we're both reacting to a symptom and not to the disease. So I like to just check myself and say, is what I'm looking at the symptom? Or is it, or is it the actual root cause of the problem? And is the solution that's being proposed or the plan I'm coming up with? Is it a 2D solution for something that's right in front of me? Or is it a 3D that will actually get us a long-term solution?

• 1:28:03Jocko Willink?

  So that's what I'm gonna look at. Now, here's what messes us up in this loop and it's pretty similar to what can mess you up in the Oodle loop. Number one is you can get stuck in any one of these areas. Just like you get stuck in the Oodle loop, in the Oodle loop, you can get stuck observing. You're just looking around, looking around, trying to, trying to see what you see. You're trying to get every angle and you get stuck there. You get stuck looking around and you get shot down. Maybe you get stuck orienting yourself. You're like, wait, hold on, where are they? Where am I? Hold on, let me see exactly where I'm in. You get shot down. Maybe you get stuck in the decision mode. Wait, should I go left? Should I go right? Should I left, go right? I don't know, there's advantages going left, there's advantages going right. You get shot down. Or act. You just, you, you won't take action. You don't do the action, you get shot down.

• 1:28:47Jocko Willink?

  So if you get stuck in any of these as well, same thing. If you get stuck thinking about any of these things and you let it become the focus. I want to make sure my ego is not a problem. So, and that's what you focus on. You don't consider time. You don't consider emotion. You don't consider the mission. So you can't get stuck on any of these things. You can't get stuck. You have to let the, the loop continue to flow. And you know what? You're gonna figure out, you're gonna figure out that there's some things that you're good at in this loop and there's some things that you're bad at in this loop. Maybe your ego is not a problem, but you have a problem with time.

• 1:29:26Jocko Willink?

  Maybe your emotion isn't a problem, but you always get distracted by different missions. Maybe you cover and move really well, but you don't realize that you expend leadership capital on stuff that doesn't matter. So you want to continually observe these things and you want to over index on the things that you know you, you are weak at. So that's the number one way that we get messed up when we're making decisions. The number two things we don't, we ignore the feedback that we're getting, which is such a disaster. It's such a disaster to ignore the feedback that we're getting. And you know, the, the point I made earlier about Echo Charles and how my ego is gonna lie to me.

• 1:30:13Jocko Willink?

  Your ego is lying 100% of the time. Let's, let me just say that. My ego is, is saying, you know, actually, in this case, Jaco, look, I know I get it, but this echo really is the problem. He really is the problem. That, and when I ignore that, the fact that, I, I, I'm sorry, not that I ignore, but I let my ego convince me that, you know what, this time, just this one time, my ego is right. It's not. Or just this one time, hey, this is an emotional decision. It's the right thing to do. You know, Jaco said, you need to put emotions into calculus and I'm pissed, so we're gonna do it. No.

• 1:30:48Jocko Willink?

  We ignore feedback. And of course, this comes from a, a lack of humility. You, when, when you're being told something, even in your own head, but you ignore it. Like, you know, I know Echo might kind of get screwed by this decision, but you know, he's not gonna notice, boom. You're just lying to yourself. You're ignoring the feedback and that's gonna cost you. And so in order to do that, this comes back to a fundamental, a fundamental skill of leadership that I wrote about in Leadership Strategy and Tactics, and that is the ability to take a step back and detach. That's the only way you're gonna see this stuff. You can't, detachment is a superpower and the reason that detachment is a superpower is because the solution to the problem is not in the problem.

• 1:31:33Jocko Willink?

  The solution to the problem will not be found inside the problem. You gotta step outside the problem in order to see the solution. Don't get wrapped up in the problem itself.

• 1:31:45Jocko Willink?

  Instead, take a step back, run through this loop so you can make better decisions. And what is an important thing to recognize?

• 1:31:57Jocko Willink?

  You might be thinking like, oh, well, I'm not, you know, the CEO of some big company and I don't even need to make a bunch of decisions. Guess what? Life is a series of decisions all day, every day. That's what life is. Everything that you do is a decision. It's, it's almost like the, the binary decision, which I wrote about in Discipline equals Freedom's Manual. Everything that you do is a decision. They're not always necessarily binary, but when, when you live life, you're making decisions. Everything you do is a decision.

• 1:32:29Jocko Willink?

  So because everything you do is a decision, once you realize that you should detach and you should have a protocol for making decisions because then your decisions will be better.

• 1:32:40Jocko Willink?

  And you should have the humility to realize when you aren't making good decisions and when you get that feedback and realize, oh, I gotta make some different decisions now.

• 1:32:49Jocko Willink?

  And then you make adjustments and you make better decisions and you move on.

• 1:32:54Jocko Willink?

  But and what's beautiful about this is it means that if everything in your life is based on the decisions you're making, guess what? You have a lot of control over your life.

• 1:33:10Jocko Willink?

  Based on the decisions that you make.

• 1:33:14Jocko Willink?

  So make good decisions. It's gonna make you a better person. It's gonna make you a better leader. It's gonna give you a better life.

• 1:33:23Jocko Willink?

  Alright, there you go. Echo Charles.

• 1:33:27Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of good decisions, I know there's some ways that people could decide to support themselves a little bit better.

• 1:33:32Speaker 01

  Yep, it's true.

• 1:33:33Jocko Willink?

  And they could support this podcast while they're doing it.

• 1:33:35Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 1:33:36Jocko Willink?

  They could support America while they're doing it.

• 1:33:38Speaker 01

  Very true, yeah.

• 1:33:39Jocko Willink?

  Which is kind of a big deal.

• 1:33:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:41Jocko Willink?

  Especially considering how tenuous the world is right now. World's a tenuous place.

• 1:33:44Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:33:45Jocko Willink?

  There's other elements out there making a move.

• 1:33:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:48Jocko Willink?

  You know, got China making a move. They're out there making a move. They're trying to take, Russia's out there, they're making a move.

• 1:33:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:54Jocko Willink?

  People are stepping up.

• 1:33:56Speaker 01

  Moves are being made.

• 1:33:57Jocko Willink?

  Moves are being made. And are we gonna sit back? Now, does this mean you need to pick up a rifle and go to war? No, but I'll tell you what you can do. You can support America.

• 1:34:08Jocko Willink?

  I know a good way to do that.

• 1:34:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, me too. Well, it starts with ourselves, right? I think a lot of the time where you're talking about good decisions where, look, other people not making decisions for you unless you're letting them. But you wanna make good decisions for yourself, right? I would imagine, so it starts with yourself. We're, uh, take caring, taking care of ourself physically, mentally.

• 1:34:33Speaker 01

  Deciding to.

• 1:34:34Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're doing.

• 1:34:35Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 1:34:35Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:34:36Speaker 01

  Yep, so we're working out, of course.

• 1:34:38Jocko Willink?

  A hundred percent.

• 1:34:39Speaker 01

  We're reading. I know that.

• 1:34:40Jocko Willink?

  Yes, we are.

• 1:34:41Speaker 01

  We should be. At the very least, listening.

• 1:34:43Jocko Willink?

  Wait, are you reading?

• 1:34:44Speaker 01

  I'm reading here and there.

• 1:34:45Jocko Willink?

  Bro, I don't know about this. Wait a second here. What are you reading?

• 1:34:49Speaker 01

  Um, well, there was, okay, so there's a book.

• 1:34:52Jocko Willink?

  Cause you can't reference Mind Games, which you read nine years ago.

• 1:34:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:56Jocko Willink?

  And that's, I think that may be the only book you've ever referenced since I've known you.

• 1:35:01Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't know. I've read plenty of books.

• 1:35:02Jocko Willink?

  Okay, what do you got? What's on the, what's on the docket? Echo Charles.

• 1:35:04Speaker 01

  All right, more so than I'm gonna tell you what's currently on the docket, cause I'd have to, you know, but.

• 1:35:09Jocko Willink?

  Wait a second, bro. You can be honest. We're telling each other the truth. This is like leadership, uh, you know, uh, uh, capital we're trying to build. If you're not gonna tell me like, oh, no, no, right now I'm not reading anything, Jock, cause you know, it's summertime and I was in Hawaii. And so we're not reading anything, unless you are.

• 1:35:24Speaker 01

  Yes, so.

• 1:35:25Jocko Willink?

  So what are we reading right now? Nothing or this book?

• 1:35:28Speaker 01

  So it depends, cause that's a spectrum.

• 1:35:33Jocko Willink?

  You should own this a hundred percent right now, otherwise it's not gonna look good.

• 1:35:37Speaker 01

  Here's a hundred percent, uh, uh, truth on the matter. So I have Kindle books and audiobooks, like, you know, some are halfway done, some are all done, some are whatever. So when, how much time has to be elapsed? Between the last time I was into one of these books, actually like reading it or listening to it to now? How much time has to pass before I'm technically not reading?

• 1:36:01Jocko Willink?

  Let's just say a week.

• 1:36:03Speaker 01

  Okay. We might not be reading.

• 1:36:08Speaker 01

  But, that being said.

• 1:36:10Jocko Willink?

  That's kind of a bummer. That means that the books that you're reading or even listening to must not be that captivating.

• 1:36:16Speaker 01

  Uh, or, well, yeah, I mean, I guess in a manner of speaking technically, yeah, but that doesn't mean that they're not captivating. That might mean that other things that I'm doing.

• 1:36:25Jocko Willink?

  They're competing with life and life is, life is captivating, which is a good thing.

• 1:36:30Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 1:36:30Jocko Willink?

  Right? I never thought of that comeback. You know, some people are like, I'm reading three books a week. Be like, oh, that's cool. I'm actually living.

• 1:36:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:39Jocko Willink?

  Right? That could be a little bit of a dichotomy.

• 1:36:41Speaker 01

  Could be, yes. And obviously that's gonna depend, cause reading three books a week, one, we don't know how fast they read or listen or whatever, or what they're doing, you know? What if they're going on miles, runs, redoing the same thing, you know, it's kind of a, you know, so it can be awesome. It can be kind of what you're alluding to where it's like.

• 1:36:55Jocko Willink?

  What if I'm flexing though?

• 1:36:58Jocko Willink?

  That's fine.

• 1:36:59Speaker 01

  Oh wait, flexing with the, I'm reading, that's just a flex?

• 1:37:02Jocko Willink?

  Like, like, uh, the fourth book I've read this month.

• 1:37:07Speaker 01

  Right, right, just to sort of brag and make like, yeah, well, you know, there are many variations of flexing.

• 1:37:14Jocko Willink?

  Cause it'd be an interesting reflex, would be like, I don't have time to read books.

• 1:37:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, or that could be an excuse.

• 1:37:21Jocko Willink?

  It could be an excuse?

• 1:37:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it just depends. It's a dichotomy.

• 1:37:24Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so where, where's Echo Charles at in this spectrum that we were considering?

• 1:37:28Speaker 01

  The last book that I finished, which was recently, uh, I don't know, whatever, a few months, actually I read it twice. So, uh, was the four agreements, recommended by Jason Gardner. Yeah, that's a good one.

• 1:37:39Jocko Willink?

  And you guys, I heard you guys talking about it and you seemed, uh, both, you know, you were both concurred that it was good.

• 1:37:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, and a lot of times that, that type of book, and I mean this type, that type of book in this particular, particular way is, it's real like, um, like it has a lot of spiritual like terms, you know, but, and you know, usually spiritual terms are real like, they land on different people in different ways.

• 1:38:03Jocko Willink?

  I'm not tracking spiritual term, i.e. what, what's a spiritual term?

• 1:38:06Speaker 01

  Like, um, you know, calling things black magic, or, cause he'll use that term a lot.

• 1:38:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but he's using, he's using those terms, cause I, I heard you guys talking about it and I think I might've even been talking to you a little bit about it, or Jason. Those are just like an analogy, like this type of attitude is black magic that's negative.

• 1:38:24Speaker 01

  Yes, so I took it in that way.

• 1:38:26Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:38:26Speaker 01

  Like, this is an analogy.

• 1:38:28Jocko Willink?

  Literal black man, magic.

• 1:38:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, and every once in a while, it kind of felt like that, but either way, I, I never took it as that. Like, to me, that's not the useful part of it. Um, the useful part is many other things, but anytime they say something like black magic, I know what he's saying. I know what you mean. I think I do anyway. I believe I do. So, I, I just, I, I put it that, I took it in that way. But yeah, so that being said, the spiritual parts, even with those spiritual parts or whatever, like what he was saying with all the four agreements is like very, it was, it's a good one. It's a good one, and a lot of it might not come as like a surprise, like, oh man, I totally didn't know that, but just like a lot of books about like ways to think and regard yourself and the world and stuff, it's like, oh, okay, that, that makes sense. Or that's a good reminder, you know?

• 1:39:14Jocko Willink?

  It's kind of like what we just covered. There's a lot of people that are like, of, of course you should consider if you're screwing over your, your buddy. Yep, and it seems obvious, but.

• 1:39:24Jocko Willink?

  There's times that people do this aware unaware and I think the big warning there is like you think no one notices everybody else so yeah some things can be they actually I think when something seems obvious usually it's affirming to like this is this has got to be this is pretty true because I know I felt this way and now I'm seeing this guy felt this way and now I you know so it becomes like a thing

• 1:39:46Speaker 01

  Yeah and sometimes it just puts certain things certain elements into perspective that you might not have realized how important they are or how prevalent they are in day to day you know stuff

• 1:39:56Jocko Willink?

  Awareness when you're aware of things you become just awareness is a is a huge step up in understanding and reacting properly and interacting properly with the world

• 1:40:10Speaker 01

  Like the idea that you actually brought up a few times today the idea that like people notice like what like what I see what you're doing or I see whether it be your intention or when they're getting screwed over whatever like the the idea that people can see what's going on that I think that's one of the many things that's like it helps to understand how big of a thing that is like you know how it's like yeah sometimes they'll notice sometimes they won't it kind of feels like that sometimes

• 1:40:35Jocko Willink?

  They notice

• 1:40:36Speaker 01

  Oh yeah people know like you know and I've said this before I got it from Sam Harris where it's like when you name drop someone it's like everyone sees you name dropping and it's not even like a noble thing

• 1:40:46Jocko Willink?

  You mean when you talk about I got this from Sam Harris

• 1:40:49Speaker 01

  After we hung out this one day you know it was awesome but but that's like you know one of the many examples of sure maybe somebody caught it but you know I'm sure it was effective when I did but everyone noticed the same way you'll notice when someone else does it you know it's kind of one of those things but um and there's a lot of things like that you know so yeah that I think that book overall was a lot of that but some stuff was like oh that is a good way to look at things you know

• 1:41:18Jocko Willink?

  And and sometimes when somebody's written something out and they've explained it it clarifies it for you it increases your understanding and the better understanding you have then the more You can interact with that properly. You can utilize that as a tool.

• 1:41:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:32Jocko Willink?

  That's good stuff. So, uh, yeah.

• 1:41:35Speaker 01

  We want to read. Very on varying levels.

• 1:41:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:39Jocko Willink?

  Because I'm reading one book a week over here, Flex.

• 1:41:42Speaker 01

  That's good. If you're reading one book a week, that's good, man.

• 1:41:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:46Speaker 01

  It's hard to say that that's bad.

• 1:41:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Uh, uh, I don't actually know if I've, there was a while where I was reading one book every week when we were doing the podcast and it was like almost all books.

• 1:41:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:57Jocko Willink?

  And then it seemed like we went a little, a bunch of people were coming on for interviews.

• 1:42:01Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:42:02Jocko Willink?

  Um, so that was a little bit more interview centric. So, but I, this I can say, there's no period of time of more than two days where I haven't read something.

• 1:42:13Speaker 01

  Oh damn.

• 1:42:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So that's kind of where I'm at, but that's not a flex, bro. Cause guess what? Maybe I should be, uh, you know, surfing or getting in fights at, uh, REI.

• 1:42:24Speaker 01

  Sure. Hell yeah.

• 1:42:25Jocko Willink?

  Parking lot.

• 1:42:25Speaker 01

  Situations.

• 1:42:28Speaker 01

  But we are working out every day.

• 1:42:29Jocko Willink?

  You know, Joel Tudor. Yeah.

• 1:42:30Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:42:31Jocko Willink?

  Joel Tudor, he, if you don't know, he's a surfer and a jujitsu guy and an awesome guy, but, uh, he like posted something, something about like basically kook surfers, like, you know, surfer starter kit, Malibu surfer starter kit. And one of the pictures was like a sprinter. I responded on this post. I was like, hey, bro, I got a sprinter.

• 1:42:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So, sorry, Joel. Sorry, Joel. I got a sprinter there, people.

• 1:42:57Speaker 01

  Well, so it's kind of a confirmation, really, in a small way.

• 1:43:01Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 1:43:01Speaker 01

  You just called me a kook, huh? That's messed up.

• 1:43:05Jocko Willink?

  I was up on the horses and I asked the guys, the cow, the actual cowboys. I said, I said, hey, in surfing, if you're a, if you don't know how to surf, but you have a surfboard and you're paddling out, but you have no idea what you're doing, then you're a kook.

• 1:43:18Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:43:19Jocko Willink?

  I said, what's that called on horseback riding? And, cause that's me, cause I don't know how to ride a horse.

• 1:43:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:25Jocko Willink?

  And they said, uh, it's a dude.

• 1:43:27Speaker 01

  Huh.

• 1:43:29Jocko Willink?

  So there's a thing called a dude ranch.

• 1:43:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:31Jocko Willink?

  Which is basically for city slickers to go out and like be a cowboy for a little while.

• 1:43:37Speaker 01

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 1:43:37Jocko Willink?

  And so if you're one of those people, then you are a dude.

• 1:43:42Speaker 01

  That's weird. I've heard of dude ranch.

• 1:43:43Jocko Willink?

  There was another word that they told me as well, but I can't remember it. Yeah. But I was one of those. I am one of those on a horse.

• 1:43:51Speaker 01

  You're a dude?

• 1:43:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:53Speaker 01

  That's funny. There was a show called Hey Dude and it was about a dude ranch and it was on like Nickelodeon too or something.

• 1:44:00Jocko Willink?

  Back in the day.

• 1:44:00Speaker 01

  Back in the day. Well, hey man, learn something new every day. See, sometimes you don't even have to read. You just come, listen to Jocko being a dude and cook or whatever you're being over there. Uh, but we are working out every day.

• 1:44:11Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:44:12Speaker 01

  Yes. Like currently working out. Like.

• 1:44:16Jocko Willink?

  You can make that claim. You don't have to, you don't have to sort of put, put explanations around that claim. Bro, your face was so guilty when you said you read. I was like, dude, please don't lie in front of everybody.

• 1:44:29Speaker 01

  I was trying, I was trying to do the calculus because that's a legitimate question. Cause like if you say, oh, I'm working out, right? But you haven't worked out in two weeks. You're like, bro, you're not working out.

• 1:44:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:37Speaker 01

  You're currently not working out actually. But if it's been like two days, that's like, okay, you could have just been coming off a rest weekend or something like this and you're still on the program. See what I'm saying? Or working out. So with reading, how is that? I never thought about it. So look, if I read last night before I went to bed or something, easy, right? I know the answer. Oh, I'm reading this last night. I was reading this, but let's face it.

• 1:44:57Jocko Willink?

  It's been three weeks.

• 1:45:00Speaker 01

  So that was the guiltiness.

• 1:45:02Jocko Willink?

  Kind of a gift, isn't it?

• 1:45:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:05Jocko Willink?

  Uh?

• 1:45:06Speaker 01

  It, it, yeah, yeah. I'm gonna agree with you.

• 1:45:08Jocko Willink?

  Kind of a gift.

• 1:45:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:10Jocko Willink?

  I'm giving you the opportunity to tell the truth.

• 1:45:12Speaker 01

  Wait, wait. What do you mean three weeks is a gift?

• 1:45:13Jocko Willink?

  I'm saying, me saying, oh, you, you were reading three weeks ago, you were reading.

• 1:45:16Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, me, yeah.

• 1:45:18Jocko Willink?

  Kind of me being not generous.

• 1:45:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, technically, I don't know. I've never done the, the math and the technical, you know, evaluation, but if you compare it to working out.

• 1:45:25Jocko Willink?

  You're getting interrogated.

• 1:45:26Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:45:27Jocko Willink?

  You're not good.

• 1:45:28Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 1:45:30Speaker 01

  If you compare it to working out, then no, I'm not reading. Currently not reading. But here's the thing too, though.

• 1:45:35Jocko Willink?

  Did you already lift today?

• 1:45:36Speaker 01

  No, not yet.

• 1:45:37Jocko Willink?

  This afternoon?

• 1:45:38Speaker 01

  Squats today, by the way.

• 1:45:39Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:45:40Speaker 01

  Uh, either.

• 1:45:41Jocko Willink?

  Get that mental prep going.

• 1:45:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little bit. Um, but here's the thing about reading versus working out. You can pick up a book for like 10 minutes. You can read three pages. Working out, if I go do one, two sets of curls, is that a workout? I know it's BTN. I know, I know. BTN is better than nothing.

• 1:45:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:59Speaker 01

  Which is a non-philosophy in my opinion, but that's just my opinion. How about this? We'll use that philosophy very sparingly. How about that?

• 1:46:07Jocko Willink?

  All right.

• 1:46:08Speaker 01

  But you see what I'm saying though?

• 1:46:10Jocko Willink?

  Yes, you can read a short amount and it still is providing legitimate benefits and progress.

• 1:46:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:17Jocko Willink?

  Whereas two sets of curls, while it is BTN, if you believe in that philosophy, which Echo doesn't, I would say it truly is BTN. It is better than nothing.

• 1:46:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, but if I go two sets of curls and then now I say, hmm, you know what? That's gonna be my workout routine. Bruh, after about two months, it's kinda like an N. Nothing.

• 1:46:39Speaker 01

  I'm not speaking, so, okay, look, we got to the bottom of it. Thank you, Jaco, for your input. We're hopefully reading, we're hopefully working out, we're hopefully improving ourselves so we can deal with the world in a better way to make better decisions.

• 1:46:52Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:46:52Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:46:53Jocko Willink?

  So get some Jaco Fuel, jacofuel.com, get yourself some more, get yourself some, hey, this is, this is, of all the things we're gonna say about Jaco Fuel, the flavors of the Discipline Go Drinks have been radically upgraded. They were based on my taste buds before. My taste buds are not normal. My taste buds weren't appropriate to judge the taste of a drink for the world. I had to run that through the leadership decision loop and say, wait, my perspective on this is not correct.

• 1:47:30Jocko Willink?

  Other people have a more, a better palate for the job and we also want something that's more universally loved. So we redid all the flavors. All the flavors are now awesome. You may have had one flavor that you really liked before and you might have had two that you just like, these are gross. Now you will at least like all the flavors and there will be three and maybe five of them that you love.

• 1:47:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say that's probably true.

• 1:48:00Jocko Willink?

  Totally redid them all. They taste delicious. If you tried them when they were based on my palate, I apologize.

• 1:48:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:08Jocko Willink?

  Um, I'm taking ownership of the fact that I had a very sensitive palate to sweetness and a little bit of sweetness tasted like sugarcane in my mouth and that wasn't the truth.

• 1:48:20Speaker 01

  Besides this, you just drink water though.

• 1:48:23Jocko Willink?

  That's what I'm saying. That's why my palate was so jacked.

• 1:48:26Speaker 01

  And now, and recently I got on the water train. So the only thing that I drink is water. Every once in a while, I'll have like a milk shake. Actually I have that more, but even now. Everything is way sweeter. Everything. If you just drink water. Before I'd have an occasional Gatorade here, maybe some, you know, the kids got some orange juice.

• 1:48:47Jocko Willink?

  Good example too. Mango, I didn't like your mango flavor. Of Discipline Go. Mango Mayhem. And now it tastes really good. It's still not my favorite of the group. But I will definitely enjoy drinking it. So we're good.

• 1:49:06Speaker 01

  Yep. I feel like we're good too.

• 1:49:07Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. Get out here and get you some of that. Um, also we got the Hunt gear coming. OriginUSA.com. Get yourself some American made Hunt gear and listen. That's just, that's just what we have to do in the world right now. There's, like I said, there's people that are stepping up, people that are not good. And they're stepping up and they're trying to take over. And you don't need to necessarily pick up a rifle to go to war. But right now it's an economic war. And if you pick up some Origin USA gear. It's going to help us win the war. So we don't have to fight a war. That's the goal. Let's be economically strong. So go to OriginUSA.com, get a gi, because you should be training just in case, just in case the war does come. Get some Hunt gear.

• 1:49:53Jocko Willink?

  Just in case the war does come, you can hunt the enemy. But in the meantime, you can hunt deer, elk, whatever else it is you want to hunt. Get yourself some of that. Um, also we have a store. Do we have a store?

• 1:50:06Speaker 01

  We do.

• 1:50:06Jocko Willink?

  Okay. What's that all about?

• 1:50:08Speaker 01

  It's called Jaco's Store. You want to represent like we're, uh, you know, improving ourselves, making good decisions. You want to represent? Discipline equals freedom. Which is kind of the overarching kind of thing for this whole thing. The more disciplined you are, the more freedom you are. Anyway, you want to represent, we've got some cool shirts and hats and hoodies and whatnot, some merch. But it's better than just merch though, by the way. A lot of thought and effort and careful meticulous consideration has been put into all of these elements.

• 1:50:37Jocko Willink?

  You should put that into every package that you send out.

• 1:50:41Speaker 01

  I'm good.

• 1:50:41Jocko Willink?

  Just let everybody know that careful time consideration has been put into this.

• 1:50:46Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. But and it's true. There are many people, and when I say many, I mean for countless people that have said these like this called the shirts and stuff like it's my my favorite shirt.

• 1:50:57Jocko Willink?

  The new shirt that you have on right now. This is this is called the standard issue, right?

• 1:51:01Speaker 01

  This one equals freedom standard issue. So it's a new one.

• 1:51:05Jocko Willink?

  And there's a there's multiple color ways.

• 1:51:08Speaker 01

  Colorways, yeah, you might you might recognize the, you know, the colors and what they represent.

• 1:51:13Jocko Willink?

  But if you don't, that's fine. Kind of layer there.

• 1:51:15Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 1:51:15Jocko Willink?

  People need to figure out what the layers mean.

• 1:51:17Speaker 01

  Yep, simple, but maybe not easy kind of a thing.

• 1:51:20Jocko Willink?

  I actually didn't figure out. You guys told me I may have figured out if I would have maybe seen them all at the same time and done a consideration. I might have figured it out, but I didn't. I didn't figure out, but also I looked at him for like three seconds. I was like, all right, do tell me.

• 1:51:31Speaker 01

  Well, when you looked at the one, you were like, that's what that is. And then all all you had to do is apply that same thinking to all of them. You get like, I see what's going on here. But, yeah, but either way, layers there for sure. But if you don't, if you don't know layers, doesn't even doesn't even matter. You just choose the color that you like or the colors.

• 1:51:45Jocko Willink?

  And then if you do understand the layers, then it kind of matters, too.

• 1:51:48Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 1:51:49Jocko Willink?

  Doesn't matter if you don't get them, but if you get them, it kind of does matter.

• 1:51:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:52Jocko Willink?

  Let's face it, because if you listen, you know.

• 1:51:56Speaker 01

  This is the way I see it. This one is kind of like the why we call it standard issue. It's kind of like the main one. We're positioning as kind of the main discipline equals freedom, the standard. If you have this one, you're you're that's the standard.

• 1:52:09Jocko Willink?

  You have the standard issue.

• 1:52:10Speaker 01

  Yep. Like if you don't have it, like, are you even in the game or what? I'm not saying you're not. But you see what I'm saying?

• 1:52:17Jocko Willink?

  There's a question.

• 1:52:18Speaker 01

  You don't have the standard issue is what I'm saying.

• 1:52:20Jocko Willink?

  All right, there you go.

• 1:52:22Speaker 01

  So yeah, jocko store.com. We also have the shirt locker. Don't forget about that subscription. One shirt, a new shirt. One month, there. New, different designs, little bit more creative, I would say. Um, those are pretty, the good ones coming out.

• 1:52:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you gave me a brief on the one that's coming out.

• 1:52:38Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:52:38Jocko Willink?

  I'll say, uh, it's, it's affirmative.

• 1:52:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's good.

• 1:52:42Jocko Willink?

  Is that next? When's that? How far out is that?

• 1:52:43Speaker 01

  Um, so August, September, September.

• 1:52:47Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's a good one for September. All right. Awesome. Uh, subscribe to the podcast. You know that. Uh, jockounderground.com. We've been putting some out there. If you want to get some questions to us, we'll respond to those directly. And it's also given us the ability to have our own platform to make sure that whenever we get banned from this one, which could happen at any time, or they might just say, hey, from now on, when you listen to this podcast, we're going to insert our own advertisements in here. So we don't like that. That's where we made jockounderground.com. So if you want to go there, subscribe to that. Uh, YouTube channel. If you want to see awesome assistant directing from me, you can check out that and I'll get you covered down.

• 1:53:28Jocko Willink?

  Psychological Warfare on MP3, flipsidecanvas.com, Dakota Meyer. I've written a bunch of books about leadership. Check them out. Only Cry For The Living by Holly, Holly McKay. That's, uh, Jocko Publishing. She wrote that book. She risked her life to go write that book. So she's been on the podcast. The book is, is insane to read and will teach you about the world and about evil in the world. So check that out. We also have Echelon Front Leadership Consultancy, echelonfront.com. If you want me to come and talk to your company, let us know. Echelonfront.com. If you need help, we can help you. If you want to go to any of the events that I've been talking about,

• 1:54:10Jocko Willink?

  things like the muster, things like the council, things like EF Battlefield. Just, just come and check those. The next EF Battlefield is sold out, but it's at Little Big Horn. Looking to that, looking forward to that. I think the next muster is in Atlanta, Hotlanta, October 12th to 14th.

• 1:54:29Jocko Willink?

  We sell out everything. So if you want to come, get there quick. And also we have the online training academy. I mentioned that a couple of times today.

• 1:54:37Jocko Willink?

  Teaching people how to lead in their life. And a lot of times people think, oh, I don't need to learn how to lead. I'm only in charge of three people. Or I don't even know how to lead because I'm not even in charge of anyone. Guess what? You are in charge of someone. You, you're making decisions all the time. You have a family. You have peers that you need to lead. You have to lead your boss. I know that seems crazy.

• 1:55:01Jocko Willink?

  So go to extremeownership.com. If you want to get in on that online training. Part of the reason we built that is to make it more accessible to more people. That's the mission of Echelon Front, to pass on the leadership lessons we learned. And the Echelon Front team can't get to everybody. But now we can. Extremeownership.com. Go and check it out. And if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families. You want to help Gold Star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom. Mama Lee, she's got an incredible charity organization where she provides most of what she does. She does a bunch of things. I would say that the best thing that she does, well, I won't say the best thing. Uh, how can I say this?

• 1:55:45Jocko Willink?

  One of the most impactful things that she does, and she does a lot of impactful things. She provides medical help for veterans that is not provided for by the Veterans Administration. So hyperbaric chamber is one of the primary things she does to take someone that's having issues and pay for them to go to a location where they have a hyperbaric chamber. Put them on the right nutrition. Give them the right vitamins. Get their, get their health squared away for 30 days. Everything's paid for. 30 days of recovery from the impact of combat and trauma. That's one of the things that she does.

• 1:56:28Jocko Willink?

  So that's at AmericasMightyWarriors.org. So check that one out. And then of course, I was talking about being on a horse today and I'm a dude. Sure. Meaning I'm not skilled. But you can, when you're out there in the wilderness and you're interacting with an animal.

• 1:56:48Jocko Willink?

  And you're in the open air. It's, it's a very positive thing for your mental and physical health. So Mike Afink, he has this thing called Heroes and Horses at heroesandhorses.org. He takes veterans into the wilderness for 41 days. And it's horseback, it's camping, it's staying out on the trail. And guys are coming back renewed and reanimated for life. So check out heroesandhorses.org. He's been on the podcast. I'm sure we'll get him back on here again at some point, but he's got a great charity, as does Mama Lee. So check those things out if you want to support.

• 1:57:30Jocko Willink?

  And if you want to check in with us, we're on social media, on Twitter, on the Gram, on Facebook. Echo's at Echo Charles. I'm at Jocko Willink. Listen, and if you're gonna go on there, all I'm saying is be careful. Cause there's an algorithm that's looking to grab you by the throat. Don't let it. Be ready for it. Don't let it run your life. Get off your phone. And of course, to all those military folks out there in the world that are making decisions every day, that provide us freedom and security. Thank you for what you do. And also thanks to police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and Border Patrol and Secret Service and all the first responders.

• 1:58:13Jocko Willink?

  Thank you for protecting our freedom and security here at home. And everyone else out there, life is all decisions. And everything you do is based on decisions that you make. So think about the process and, and think about the amount of control that these decisions give you over your own life. And think about the impact that these decisions have in your life. So don't just let them happen. Make them happen. Make them happen by being aware of your decisions and make them happen by having a protocol.

• 1:58:58Jocko Willink?

  So you make the right decisions to do the right things. So you can be a better leader, a better person, and lead a better life. And until next time, this is Echo and Jaco. Out.