Jocko Podcast 2: Jocko & Echo (“About Face”, Mental Toughness, NewYears Resolutions?)

0:00:00 - 1:01:00 - "About Face" (David Hackworth) Book Analysis and Relevance. 1:01:00 - 2:02:25 - Internet Questions on Mental Toughness, Balance, and New Years Resolutions. 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?

  Welcome. This is Jocko Podcast Number Two with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink.

• 0:13Jocko Willink?

  Good evening, Echo.

• 0:14Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:16Jocko Willink?

  So, people ask me regularly what books I like. In fact, Tim Ferriss asked me, which he asks all of his guests, what books I have given to people, what books I regularly give to people. How do I, what, what books do I gift? Which I actually am not a real big gift giver, for some reason. I don't know why, but I don't really expect gifts from people, and people of the world should not expect gifts from me either.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  Lessons, not gifts.

• 0:53Jocko Willink?

  Yes, yes. So, but there is one book that I have given to a few people in my life, and it is a book that was and still is very influential on me, and especially on my perspective of leadership, and really especially in combat leadership.

• 1:18Jocko Willink?

  And that book is called About Face. Now, here it is right here, About Face. If you can't, if you're listening to audio, it's an 800, over 800-page book. It's written by a guy named Colonel David Hackworth. Hackworth was a kind of a soldier's soldier, and born in 1930, joined the Merchant Marines towards the end of World War II. At the age of 14, had to lie to get into the Merchant Marines, got done with that gig. He joined the Army just after World War II.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  What do you mean, sorry, what do you mean he had to lie to get into?

• 1:53Jocko Willink?

  So he was too young. He was 14 years old. He lied about his age to get in at 14 to the Merchant Marines. When he went a few years later to join the Army, he was still too young and had to lie again to get into the Army. Once he was in the Army, he went over to Europe, and he served directly underneath the war-hardened veterans of World War II, and those are the guys that brought him up in the ranks and taught him.

• 2:22Jocko Willink?

  About hard training and really that's what they taught him and again that's one of those things that I look back on my military career and the Vietnam veterans that were still in the SEAL teams when I just got in the SEAL teams in 1990, 1991, there were still some, some veterans around from Vietnam and those guys, when those guys spoke, you listened because they had some word to put out and I absolutely listened and a lot of those lessons that those guys taught me, those Vietnam veterans taught me, I carried on to them. I mean, I held on to them and took notes and passed them on and a lot of those concepts are the basis of, of what

• 3:02Jocko Willink?

  we wrote about in Extreme Ownership. So, he did that. He ended up getting a fighting career. So Korea was kind of his, where he first saw combat. He ended up getting a battlefield commission and if you don't know what that means, that means you're, you're one of the foot soldiers and all of a sudden they go, "Look, you're a good leader. We're gonna put you in charge." And that's exactly what happened to him. He was wounded four times before the age of 21.

• 3:32Jocko Willink?

  So, the guy was a warrior. I'm gonna read his, uh, read the book dedication here from the beginning of About Face. It says, "Dedication to Steve Przenka, who was one of the World War II combat hardened veterans that taught him how to soldier." So it says, "To Steve Przenka, who showed us how to soldier. To Henry DeBoer, who showed us how to die. To Glover Johns, who showed us how to lead. And to all the doughboys, the ground pounders, the grunts, the American infantrymen, past, present, and especially, future. To them, this book is dedicated."

• 4:22Jocko Willink?

  So he wrote this book, obviously, to pass on the lessons that he learned. And I gotta make a note here and read a little section because he talks about Henry DeBoer, who showed us how to die. So, this took place in the Korean War. And, I'll go right into it. They're in a big firefight, and here's Hackworth. "I saw a soldier prone on the ice. He'd been there a long time. I thought he was dead. But then I saw movement, and I rushed out to get him. My god, I thought. It's DeBoer." Private Henry C. DeBoer had been with George Company since early in the war. He was one of the few survivors from the original 3rd Platoon. Basically, because in those first hard months of combat,

• 5:07Jocko Willink?

  he had not seen even one good firefight. He had an uncanny sixth sense. He could always tell when the platoon was in for a major bloodletting. And invariably, he'd find an excuse to be somewhere else. So here's a guy that Hackworth is saying this guy was avoiding combat.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:27Jocko Willink?

  Finding excuses. Normally, that excuse was going on sick call, which by regulation, he was allowed to do. And you couldn't stop him, even though you knew the only thing that was wrong with him was a chronic case of cowardice. So absolutely, he's being called a coward. DeBoer himself even admitted he was a coward. And we hated him for it. He was an outcast from the platoon. We even had a little song about him, which we'd sing in unison. "Out of the dark, dreary Korean countryside comes the call of the DeBoer board." Sick call, sick call, sick call. He pulled this, he pulled this stunt only yesterday, as we were saddling up for this very operation. He'd sensed the bloodletting all right,

• 6:10Jocko Willink?

  but he hadn't figured that the foggy overcast covering the battlefield would not lift, and the attack would be postponed. He'd returned from the dock last night with a clean bill of health, most surprised to see us. The rest of the platoon took great pleasure in the fact that his malingering little ass would be in the thick of things in the morning. So, he, there was a big operation planned, and he was supposed to go on it. He snuck out, went to sick call, said he's sick. The, the operation got postponed because of weather. He shows back up, and here he is in the scrap.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  Praying that he missed it.

• 6:46Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 6:46Speaker 01

  Did miss it.

• 6:48Jocko Willink?

  Now, back to the book. Now, DeBoer was ashen-faced, hit in the chest or gut. I don't know, there was a lot of blood, and well into shock. I knew he wasn't going to make it. "Come on, DeBoer, you're gonna be fine. You'll be alright," I said, giving him the old pep talk, as I grabbed his jacket collar and started sliding him across the ice. But DeBoer said, "No, Sarge. Just leave me. You're gonna get hit. Just leave me, Sarge." Then suddenly he groaned, "Sarge, I shit my pants." And that was it. He was gone. I left him and ran back.

• 7:30Jocko Willink?

  DeBoer, in death, became one of the greatest heroes of our outfit. It was true, he'd never been anything in his army life but a coward.

• 7:41Jocko Willink?

  But he died right. He died like a man. He didn't say, "Take care of me." He said, "Leave me. Take care of yourself." And when I told the other guys the story, old DeBoer became a legend in the platoon.

• 7:59Jocko Willink?

  So that's the kind of thing that Hackworth saw as a young leader.

• 8:06Jocko Willink?

  From there, you know, when the Korean War ended, he was, again, highly decorated. Korean War ended, did time in a bunch of different units in between the Korean War and the Vietnam War. When the Vietnam War kicked off, he went right into the thick of it again.

• 8:23Jocko Willink?

  Ended up as a battalion commander in Vietnam. And here's his, here's his list of awards. Two distinguished service crosses, ten silver stars, four legions of merit, distinguished flying cross, eight bronze stars, eight purple hearts. So you have a guy here that is, uh,

• 8:45Jocko Willink?

  obviously a highly dedicated soldier. A guy that would do anything for the army and for America.

• 8:59Jocko Willink?

  But, and this is a big but.

• 9:03Jocko Willink?

  This guy was a rebel. He was a true rebel. And he went out and went against his officers. He went against the way the army was running the war in Vietnam. And eventually, he went out in public on national television and spoke out against the Vietnam War and said that we should not fight there anymore. So he went on this TV program. It's called Issues and Answers. It was a big show in the, uh, in the seventies. And he did this interview. And again, you gotta remember, this guy is an active duty,

• 9:45Jocko Willink?

  an active duty, highly decorated senior officer in the army. I mean, this guy is all by all accounts, should be the most dedicated.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:56Jocko Willink?

  And here he is, and this is what he says, you know, this is one of the quotes from this interview. "I think that the top managers of the army, and there's a big difference between a leader, a combat leader and a manager. The top managers were so involved in systems analysis, in the normal bureaucracy of it all, they were, that they were fighting from day to day just to move paper that crossed their desk and they couldn't see the forest for the trees. In February, when we went to Laos, we went into Laos conventionally. The idea was to block the enemy's supply routes. So we dropped in there. We paid a horrible, the Vietnamese paid a horrible price. Tremendous mistakes were made.

• 10:39Jocko Willink?

  Again, conventional thinking." He, he's gonna, he hounds on this a lot, this idea of conventional thinking. And again, you got a guy that's institutionalized. I mean, the guy's been in military service since he was 14 years old. You'd think that they would have him mentally sedated to a point where he would just think what they tell him to think, but he does not. That's the dichotomy of this guy. Again, conventional thinking. Conventional thinking put us in that operation rather than have a light, mobile guerrilla force, but a guerrilla force that belonged to the government of Vietnam. Or an American army operating in there like guerrillas. So he was saying, "The Vietnamese should be doing this.

• 11:23Jocko Willink?

  The, the South Vietnamese army should be doing this. Or if we're gonna do it, we need to operate like guerrillas."

• 11:30Jocko Willink?

  It takes a thief to catch a thief. What we need is a thief. We don't need a conventionally trained FBI agent dashing through the woods with a large force behind him. We need small people, well-trained, highly motivated, and this is what we have not had. Because what we have now, and this is where you say to yourself, wow. Because what we have now among the army is a bunch of shallow dilettantes who run from pillar to post trying to punch their card, serving minimum time at company level because of the exposure. You are very close to the heat of the furnace there, meaning you can get in trouble easily.

• 12:13Jocko Willink?

  So he is on national television, a Colonel in the Army, one of the most highly decorated individuals at the time. And he calls, he says the Army is filled with a bunch of shallow dilettantes who run from pillar to post trying to punch their card. And purposely avoiding combat is what that second piece made.

• 12:34Jocko Willink?

  You don't see this kind of behavior from Army officers very often. I will tell you that.

• 12:42Jocko Willink?

  And here's kind of how he closed it out. She says, the interviewer, sorry, he says, the interviewer says, Colonel, do you think, do you feel it's possible you have become too emotionally involved in Vietnam?

• 12:56Jocko Willink?

  And he says, "I have become emotionally involved in Vietnam. One couldn't have spent the number of years I spent in Vietnam without becoming emotionally involved. One couldn't see the number of young studs die or be terribly wounded without becoming emotionally involved. I just have seen the American nation spend so much of its wonderful, great young men in this country.

• 13:21Jocko Willink?

  I have seen our national wealth being drained away. I see the nation being split apart and almost being split asunder because of this war. And I am wondering to what end it is all going to lead to."

• 13:38Jocko Willink?

  So, that is a devastating statement. And when it came out, they immediately, he put in his resignation papers immediately. And the army started to investigate him immediately and they tried to, they tried to get him in trouble for every little minor infraction that had happened underneath his command at any time, in any situation, they really tried to come after him.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 14:03Jocko Willink?

  And he ended up retiring. And, you know, I think one of the things that he expressed there is a dichotomy that anybody in a combat leadership position will feel. And, and that is, and I don't, in fact, this might be the largest dichotomy of all. And that's a big statement.

• 14:31Jocko Willink?

  And that is, as a combat leader,

• 14:36Jocko Willink?

  you are

• 14:40Jocko Willink?

  told, and beyond being told, you are ingrained, and beyond being ingrained,

• 14:49Jocko Willink?

  you are inherently, inherently caring of your guys.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 14:56Jocko Willink?

  There is no one more important than your guys.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:01Jocko Willink?

  And the dichotomy is, as much as you care about these guys and you love these guys and you do anything for them, but that being said,

• 15:15Jocko Willink?

  it is your job to send these guys on operations that can kill them.

• 15:24Jocko Willink?

  So that is

• 15:27Jocko Willink?

  a huge dichotomy. And I think that's one of the things that Hackworth, when he saw it on a grand scale, because he could deal with it in his own groups, but when he saw it on a grand scale, you know, young men being sent to their death, it's,

• 15:49Jocko Willink?

  it, it, it's, I think, what, what turned him.

• 15:53Jocko Willink?

  Um.

• 15:56Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 15:58Jocko Willink?

  He ended up after this, you know, he kind of continued down that path and he moved out of America. He moved to Australia and he. Ended up.

• 16:10Jocko Willink?

  Kind of playing a big role in the anti. Nuclear weapons movement. And I mean, that's kind of where he went. So. I.

• 16:23Jocko Willink?

  You know, Hack was a complex person. Hackworth, that's kind of his nickname. Everyone calls him Hack. Hack was a complex person. And I don't agree with everything that he says. I don't agree with everything that he does and. Or everything that he did. I don't worship the guy.

• 16:42Jocko Willink?

  And you know, what's interesting about me questioning what his decisions and questioning his leadership is like, that's something I learned from him. Like, don't even. Don't listen to anybody a hundred percent. Don't put, you know, you should always be questioning what people are saying and and making sure and confirming it through other sources and other. Experiences that it's the right thing to do. And that's something that I always try to do with everything. Is is use that attitude. And. So I. I I I don't I don't recall, and I was actually trying to come in here tonight. I was trying to figure out. When I got this book and I actually have no idea. I don't remember it. It like appeared in my life at some point.

• 17:23Jocko Willink?

  And I don't know how and no one never made the recommendation to me. I just somehow ended up with it. And but I got it. I I I got it before. One thing I do know is I got it before September 11th, 2001. When that happened, I had already read it. I had it in my brain. But when I was in Ramadi in 2006. This.

• 17:48Jocko Willink?

  I I I literally read this book every night that I was not out in the field. I read this book every night. And, you know, I just open it up. You could open up anywhere in that in this book and you could find something, some, some piece of information, some similar situation, some lesson learned that you could take from it and it could guide you and and, you know, one of the, like, like, for instance, and it all applied to what I was doing, the situation that I was in. So, for instance, we were in Iraq and we were supposed to be working with Iraqi soldiers who are unmotivated, poorly equipped, poorly trained, uneducated, bad morale, and that's

• 18:33Jocko Willink?

  and corrupt. So they're, the money's all disappearing. It's, it's a horrible situation. And what was Hackworth doing in Vietnam? Well, they were working with the South Vietnamese Army, who was corrupt and unmotivated and poorly trained and all those same things. They were dealing with the same things we were dealing with, and that's one example of many. I took a little break about three months into deployment. I took a little break and I'm not a hundred percent sure why, but I found another book. Somebody had left a book i- in our building. And the book was, speaking of dichotomy, the book was The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe.

• 19:17Jocko Willink?

  And I think at this point, I, you know, three months into deployment, I think I needed some kind of mental escape, you know, at least, you know, I was, I was like dealing with combat all day and then I'd go in my room and read about combat at night and I kind of was like, okay, you need to think about something else for 20 minutes or 10 minutes and just get out of, get, get it out of your head. And I randomly found this book, so I said, oh, and I had read The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe, which was a fantastic book. And so I said, oh, this, I'm sure this will be interesting as well. So as I read this book. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, which is about hippies and drugs and the 60s and that's what it's about. Haight-Ashbury, the whole nine yards.

• 20:01Jocko Willink?

  And there's a quote in the middle that I actually pulled out because I'll never forget this quote and how this quote was so starkly contrasting with About Face. And I'm gonna read this quote and these, and I kind of forget the whole setup to it, but they're at some kind of a concert and there's all this screaming and craziness going on at some rock and roll concert. And, you know, he says, "I couldn't hear what they were screaming either, but you don't have to. They're screaming, 'Me, me, me, me, I'm me.' That's the cry of the ego and that's the cry of this rally, this concert. Me, me, me,

• 20:46Jocko Willink?

  me. And that's why wars get fought. Ego. Because enough people want to scream, 'Pay attention to me.'"

• 20:59Jocko Willink?

  And it was one of those things that I read and it was so starkly different from the situation that I was in where I was with these guys in my own task unit, the SEALs in my task unit, the Marines that were there on the ground with us, the Army soldiers that were down on the ground with us. And these guys were all so selfless. The last thing they cared in the world about was me, me, me, me. And I got done with that book and I went right back to About Face because I, I related to it. I understood and I, I said to myself, "This is true. This is selfless. This is where I'm at right now."

• 21:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:36Jocko Willink?

  So I went back into About Face and I continued and eventually this book is the one book that I've given to a few of the guys that worked closely for me.

• 21:50Jocko Willink?

  Including, including Leif, Leif Babin, who, you know, one of my brothers who wrote Extreme Ownership with me and he's one of the guys that, you know, he's got, he's got his copy and it's all dog-eared and marked up because it's a great book.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:04Jocko Willink?

  So obviously when we, like on Twitter and Facebook and we asked for people to give us questions, a lot of the questions are, a lot of the questions are about...

• 22:17Jocko Willink?

  Leadership. And so I kind of, as I thought about diving in a little bit to

• 22:25Jocko Willink?

  to

• 22:29Jocko Willink?

  this book and, and, and talk about a little bit. And of course, you could spend, you, you know, we could do 50 episodes, 10 hours each on this book. They're so dense and filled with information, not to mention it's 800 pages long.

• 22:43Jocko Willink?

  There's, um, but I wanted to, I wanted to go a little bit deep on this one situation where David Hackworth, Colonel Hackworth, had now gone into Vietnam and there was a battalion of soldiers and they were kind of a disaster. They were kind of the standard of like what, what had happened with some of the, the poor leadership in Vietnam and he took over. And again, just to kind of, to kind of lay out what Hackworth was like, here's a quote that kind of starts off the chapter. Hackworth was essentially a legend. Just before he arrived,

• 23:24Jocko Willink?

  I recall going to the G1 and asking who the new battalion commander was going to be. The deputy G1 said, can't tell you. You know how personnel people are. They like to hit pocket everything. But he's Mr. Infantry. I thought, who the hell is Mr. Infantry? Of course. I'd read about David Hackworth. So his kind of nickname was Mr. Infantry. That was his reputation.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  What does hit pocket mean?

• 23:54Jocko Willink?

  Meaning if, the people that are in charge of personnel and moving people around inside the military, they know, they know little bits of information and instead of giving it to you, they keep it, they keep it close, they keep it in their hip pocket. That's all it means. And then, uh,

• 24:11Jocko Willink?

  To, to kind of explain though, that, you know, there's some people that go, yeah, this guy's a, this guy's a great leader. He's coming in, but to kind of show you what the attitude of the troops is. You gotta remember, this is Vietnam. We got draftees, we got hippies, we got all kinds of anti-American. I mean, it's crazy times. Doc Holly, this is another quote, who's it, from a medic, Charles Windsor. Doc Holly and I were sitting in the aid station, drinking beer and saying, God, this is gonna be hell. We've got some G.I. Joe lifer out here who's going to just ruin us. That was probably the lowest point of morale in the battalion. Not only had we been taking a lot of casualties, but now it looked as if someone was gonna come in and kick ass

• 24:56Jocko Willink?

  and make a, and make career soldiers out of us. And it goes on to go through more quotes where they actually talk about a price on his head. The, the soldiers talked about, hey, we, we need to kill this guy before he gets us killed. Which is just kind of crazy.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's right. You know, you hear about that, you hear about that in Vietnam, this idea of, it's called fragging, there's a name for it. Hey, we're gonna frag our officer, means we're gonna kill our own officer. And it's, uh, something that definitely happened and, and it's a...

• 25:32Jocko Willink?

  This is a perfect case of where people talked about it possibly happening.

• 25:39Jocko Willink?

  So...

• 25:42Jocko Willink?

  To get into this chapter a little bit.

• 25:46Jocko Willink?

  Here's Hackworth, talking about when he took over. "There was no sense in showing this sorry outfit. I was in a state of shock." "It wasn't just the command post group that, it wasn't just that the command post group slept on cots inside tents, that they had folding chairs and stateside footlockers, portable radios, and plastic coolers filled with beer and coke at their firebase out in the field. More than that, it was that they had portable toilets too." So here he is, these guys are supposed to be out in the field. And they have all this luxury. And that's something that we saw in Iraq where

• 26:29Jocko Willink?

  there was certain bases where they had Starbucks and Subway sandwiches and McDonald's literally had those things. And you, the further you go out into the fray, you get guys, I remember visiting some on my first deployment to Iraq, we'd go out to some, there'd be guys, you know, completely in the bush, living like just barely scraping by on one MRE a day.

• 26:55Jocko Willink?

  So now he's talking about the command post and he says that the command post apparently were blissfully unaware that just nearby their troops were crapping on the ground and not even covering it up. So you have complete just disaster situation going on here. And then the the general that's in charge of all these battalions, as he's about to put Hackworth in charge, a guy named General Yule, says, "It's a pussy battalion. And I want tigers, not pussies." But he'd gotten it wrong. With the 4th Battalion, 39th Infantry, that's who he was taking over. It was not a question of feline degree.

• 27:38Jocko Willink?

  As far as I could see, this unit was not even a military organization.

• 27:44Jocko Willink?

  So that's, that's what this guy walked into, Colonel Hackworth. It was total, he goes on to say, "It was total disintegration. Throughout the firebase amid the shit and toilet paper and the machine gun ammo laying in the mud, were troops who wore love beads and peace symbols and looked more like something out of Haight-Ashbury than soldiers in the US Army. All were low on spirit and a few were high, openly on marijuana. There was minimum security. Few men carried or cared for their weapons. Most had let them go red with rust as they strolled around without them. Grenades weren't taped. And when a unit moved out, most of the gunners wore their ammo Pancho Villa style.

• 28:25Jocko Willink?

  The ideal way to guarantee a weapon jam sometime down the track when dirty dented cartridges were inserted into their M60s."

• 28:34Jocko Willink?

  So what we have here is a total lack of discipline.

• 28:39Jocko Willink?

  And another thing that this reminded me of was I was always trying to, when I was in the SEAL Teams, I was trying to pull as much information about war as I could. And one of the recent wars in recent times was when the Russians went into Chechnya the first time and they, they had a really hard time. And I read the after actions reports from the Russian officers that had taken troops there. And one of the ones that I remember, and I've looked for it to try and find it again, I don't know if it's, I don't know, I don't know where it went, but I, I haven't been able to find it. But the guy basically says, "It all started when the guys stopped shaving."

• 29:21Jocko Willink?

  And when they stopped shaving, then they, then the next thing you knew, they weren't cleaning their guns. Then the next thing you knew, they weren't staying aware while they were on watch. And the next thing you know, they were getting overrun and killed. So those little things, those little things that you do right all the time are important. And that's the same thing with you and with me and with our lives. It's those little things, those little disciplines, those little daily disciplines.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  Little cycle, like you waking up at 4:30 in the morning.

• 29:58Jocko Willink?

  Like me waking up.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  Like it's a ritual, you know?

• 30:00Jocko Willink?

  That's one of them. You know, I try and do something physically active every day. That's another thing. When you lose that discipline, what goes next?

• 30:07Speaker 01

  The next thing on the list, really, yeah.

• 30:09Jocko Willink?

  And then, and then the next thing you know, you're sleeping in until nine, you're knocking your work done and things are going horribly backwards. But it's those little disciplines.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:18Jocko Willink?

  And, and whenever I feel myself start to slip, I always think of this. I always think of the fact that there's these little disciplines that mean so much.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:27Jocko Willink?

  And they build on each other.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  The, and it's interesting is I didn't, I didn't really look at it that way ever. And that makes complete sense where, yeah, you let the little things slide and slowly by slowly, those things that you let slide start getting bigger and bigger. I always thought of it where I remember.

• 30:45Speaker 01

  Hearing somebody say, if you can't make your bed right,

• 30:50Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  Then how do you expect to run a company, I think it was? How do you expect to be the boss of a company?

• 30:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  And I remember thinking, well, unless your company is a bed making company, that has nothing to do with it. And

• 31:03Jocko Willink?

  This is also a little bit counter to something I've heard recently when they talk about, have you heard this decision fatigue? Have you heard that?

• 31:09Speaker 01

  Not that expression, no.

• 31:10Jocko Willink?

  So it's basically this theory where every decision you make takes some sort of toll on you mentally.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 31:16Jocko Willink?

  And so you should, you should not fatigue your, your decisions. You should only, you should save your decisions for important things. So for instance,

• 31:26Speaker 01

  Is that kind of like if you're with a group of people and one, one guy says, hey, where do you guys want to eat? And everyone says, oh, I don't care. Where do you want to eat?

• 31:35Jocko Willink?

  It's different.

• 31:35Speaker 01

  No, it's the same thing.

• 31:36Jocko Willink?

  It will.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  It's the same thing, but on a way lower level.

• 31:39Jocko Willink?

  But, but the level of this, when I heard about this decision fatigue, the level that I heard this on was, uh, like,

• 31:45Jocko Willink?

  you, you, every day, you don't, you shouldn't think about what you're going to wear that day. You should have your clothes ready because if you wake up, you have to think, oh, do I wear the blue shirt or the white shirt? And, and then it becomes decision. And then you decide, oh, what am I going to have for breakfast? Am I have this or may have that? And each one of these decisions chip away. Now, now that's fine. I, I don't really, I don't know if I believe that a hundred percent. But one thing I do think is the opposite is I think that the smaller disciplines instill and create stronger disciplines. So the waking up early, the making of the bed, the, the checking off your list, that all those little things that you do, I think increase discipline. I know what you, when I fall off the discipline wagon, for whatever reason, it's like a, it's like a train wreck, you know?

• 32:31Jocko Willink?

  I'm like, oh, God, what just happened? I'm all of a sudden, my room is a mess and my, it, it just goes downhill in three days and two days. And I go, oh my God, get back in the game. So, and then as soon as I get back in the game and I implement those smaller disciplines, boom, we're back in the game and, and the, and the bigger disciplines fall into place.

• 32:51Jocko Willink?

  So, continue. Now, there was a general that had swung through Vietnam. General James Woolno.

• 33:08Jocko Willink?

  And he observed, and this is going to the book. General James Woolno observed and wrote to the Chief of Staff Wes Morland, we all know who that is, less than a month before, so before this, he had showed up, before Hackworth had showed up. This guy, General James Woolno, had observed and wrote to Chief of Staff Wes Morland, less than a month before, during his whirlwind nine-day trip to the war zone.

• 33:36Jocko Willink?

  Woolno told the chief that the most, that the almost universal opinion among those he'd spoken with was that the young officers and enlisted men being sent to Vietnam were indeed properly trained, prepared for combat, both by training and mental conditioning. So, this guy wrote this flowery report after he goes to Vietnam for nine days. And you can imagine, somebody like Hackworth that spent five years in Vietnam, somebody shows up, spends nine days there, he's looking at this guy like he's an idiot.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:08Jocko Willink?

  And this is a classic, um, statement about leadership. He said, this is Hackworth, going directly to the book again. "What a mistake it was to listen to the generals of corporate HQ, who were briefed only in zero defect terms, and so far from the cutting edge, expected nothing less. It was among the biggest mistakes of the war. The politicians only listened to these generals, and these generals to themselves."

• 34:43Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's crazy. And this is again, when I was talking about questioning earlier and like I questioned Hackworth and I questioned everybody and everything, I'm constantly asking those questions because you don't know. You don't know if you're just listening to the generals that are only listening to themselves. Back to the book, few people asked the frontline soldiers, the only ones who really knew. So you gotta talk to your frontline troops. That's just a mandatory piece of leadership. I liked, I had a great word on this, it's called incestual knowledge, right? When the, when this little group just talks among themselves and they believe everything

• 35:27Jocko Willink?

  that they hear and they, and they agree with everything they hear. And you know where we see this? We see this and we saw it with mixed martial arts. Because you saw guys that got so into their own little thing with no outside influence that when they all believed their own crap.

• 35:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, so jiu-jitsu can be too fully.

• 35:47Jocko Willink?

  It, it can be that way. And you gotta have an open mind with everything, you know? And definitely jiu-jitsu is one of the things you gotta have an open mind with and see what other people are doing and how are they doing it? And that's, that's the miracle these days is you can be seeing, getting all this influence from the internet. There's all of these different people out there and showing how they're doing it and it's, it's a whole new world. But you gotta have an open mind. If you have no, don't have an open mind and all you do is incestuously converse with other people that believe the same thing as you, you're wrong. And this is crazy.

• 36:27Jocko Willink?

  This is, this is again, this is what Woolnoe says, what is left, and he's talking about the, this Vietnam, what is left appears to be a mopping up operation. I do not believe that in the current situation, the enemy has the capability to more than harass us. I did not find a division commander who disagreed with this conclusion with respect to his own tactical area of operation. This is 1968. And this general's coming back saying, hey, the enemy can't do anything but harass us. And that's, this, this guy was the ranking guy going in back and reporting to Wes Moreland. He didn't charge the whole army. Crazy, crazy that this could be taking place.

• 37:13Jocko Willink?

  As we go a little bit deeper into this, they had a board that explained, it was like a scoreboard for how many VC, Vietcong, how many of them had been killed or wounded? And how many Americans had been killed or wounded? And when he took over, when, when Hackworth took over, the enemy had zero KIA. So there'd been zero enemy killed, zero enemy wounded, and zero enemy captured. Meanwhile, the Americans had had 24 killed and 485 wounded.

• 37:50Jocko Willink?

  So, so did you hear what I just said?

• 37:52Speaker 01

  I did.

• 37:53Jocko Willink?

  So, the enemy had zero killed, zero wounded, zero captured. And yet, we had lost 24 Americans killed and 485 wounded. This goes back to what I was talking about, where I would see these similarities in Iraq to Vietnam, because these wounded came from rockets, mortars, booby traps, friendly fire.

• 38:18Jocko Willink?

  Rockets, mortars, booby traps, and friendly fires. I think 70% of the casualties in Iraq were from IEDs. Which an IED is an improvised explosive device, that's a booby trap. You know, the other big percentage was from getting mortared. You know, where you're sitting inside your firebase and all of a sudden bombs start raining down from the sky.

• 38:39Jocko Willink?

  And it's weird too, like, this is something that we talk about often, it's something that, that Hackworth talked about as well. Is, if you ever heard someone say, "In Vietnam, we won every major battle, but we just lost the war." Have you ever heard that?

• 38:52Speaker 01

  No.

• 38:54Jocko Willink?

  It's a, it's a statement that some people make. And as I started to analyze that, because when I was younger, I was like, "Yeah, that's right." Because we're the best military in the world, we would never lose to these guys, we're awesome. And, and we are awesome, and we are the best military in the world. But if I have a platoon of, you know, 40 guys in the army, and we lose a guy to a booby trap, and we lose a guy to a mortar, and we, and we never confront the enemy, who's gonna win the war? It's not us. So that was a very, uh...

• 39:34Jocko Willink?

  Very disturbing. And we did see some of this. We did see some of this in Iraq where things would get sugarcoated. And that's one thing I'd go back to the book and I'd say, why are they sugarcoating this? What's going on? Somebody needs to speak the truth. You know, we need to tell them what's really going on here. Hey, I raise my hand and say, no, boss, it's not like that. We, we need this. We need, this is where we're going to lose. This is what's going wrong. And luckily, we had some very strong, you know, military leaders that did that, you know, Petraeus, for sure, who kind of implemented the surge. We had McMaster, who I talk about a lot, H R McMaster, up in, up in northern Iraq,

• 40:16Jocko Willink?

  and, you know, the guy that I work directly for, Colonel Ashan McFarlane, who's now a general. Those guys were guys that spoke the truth. And I would hear, I heard McFarlane do that. I would hear that guy say, no, actually, we can't do that. No, that's actually the wrong idea. No, we actually need to engage with these tribal leaders, even though they were criminals six months ago. No, this is what we need to do. So I got to see some of that leadership step up, which was, which was awesome.

• 40:46Jocko Willink?

  He goes on to talk about how, I gotta read this. So he goes, what's called a change of command, which is when, you know, I'm in charge, but I'm going to give you the battalion. So, "The following day, I took over the battalion from Lieutenant Colonel Franklin A. Hart in a parade field, change of command in the middle of the Mekong Delta. What kind of war have I gotten myself into, I wondered? A perfectly starched General Yule was there, having flown in for the occasion in his polished choppers. There were, there were other brass too, and photographers, the American flag, but the battalion colors, which were ceremoniously passed on to me. And all this before the scroungiest, most spiritless assembly of

• 41:29Jocko Willink?

  soldiers I'd ever seen. Incredibly, none of the generals or colonels seemed to notice the slack condition of my new charges or their positions."

• 41:41Jocko Willink?

  Lieutenant Colonel Frank Hart would still receive a legion of merit for his job well done with the battalion. So picture that in your mind, you're taking over this battalion, these guys are just complete disaster. The generals show up in their polished helicopters, wearing starched uniforms. And they don't even, they just ignore, it's like they're like got blinders on, they're just ignoring the fact that these guys are just a total disaster.

• 42:08Jocko Willink?

  Crazy thoughts, crazy thoughts. So, um.

• 42:16Jocko Willink?

  Then we get into the point. Where, and this is where, when we, when we get these questions on Twitter about leadership. And this is sort of what drew, drew me back to thinking about, talking about this book. Was because as we get these questions, you end up with a, with a, just really great examples. And, and a lot of the questions that we get are.

• 42:43Jocko Willink?

  Um, you know, what do you do with people that are unmotivated, what do you do when, you know, and, and everyone has that question of what do you do when people are unmotivated? And I, I'll tell you, can you imagine if there's anyone less motivated than a. You know, a conscript, a draftee from Vietnam, from the Vietnam War, it's, it's. It's kind of crazy.

• 43:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no problem.

• 43:16Jocko Willink?

  Uh, one of the things that Hack says is little could I have guessed that whipping it into shape, meaning the battalion would require every little bit, bit of knowledge I'd gained in, in the interim. So his whole career, he realizes his whole career, he's gonna have to take every trick that he'd learned to get these guys into shape. Now, what's interesting about this is, he says whipping these guys into shape. And this is something I've had.

• 43:40Jocko Willink?

  I've had executives, when I get on with the CEO and he'll say, I need you to come in here and whip my guys into shape. And it's always, it's one of those quotes that I have to push back on. Because they think I'm gonna come in there like a drill instructor and bark orders and people are gonna, and it just doesn't work that way. Yeah. And, you know, you have to do, you have to do more than that. So, when, one of the initial things that he did

• 44:11Jocko Willink?

  was institute discipline. And as you know, discipline is one of my favorite words.

• 44:21Jocko Willink?

  Going back to the book here, from the outset, I realized that to make this unit an effective military force, I'd have to implement about a thousand changes. So I'd figured we'd start with five a day, little things, basic things, like wear your steel pot helmet. And clean and carry your rifle at all times, and ammunition will not be worn Pancho Villa style. My first order was that come darkness, the fire support base perimeter would pull back 300 meters. The troops instantly began to grumble at this, but at the next order, but it was the next order that really began the mutinous feeling within my hard luck outfit.

• 45:05Jocko Willink?

  Anything you can't carry 24 hours a day is gone on the next chopper. So here are these guys that were living in tents, that had toilets out there, radios and all this stuff. And he said, anything you can't carry with you is going, is out of here. That's hardcore discipline. And

• 45:26Jocko Willink?

  they piled it all up in the middle of the, uh, the middle of the base and had a big helicopter come in and take it out. Now, one thing he says here is he says, I wasn't there to have them like me. And this is one of those dichotomies where, and I'm sure everybody at one point or another, who has worked for someone that

• 45:52Jocko Willink?

  is very abrasive and thinks they can just throw orders around and and and no one likes working for that guy. It's it's awful.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:01Jocko Willink?

  And so there's a fine line between, listen, I'm not here to make friends. And, oh, I'm just gonna be totally abrasive and treat everyone like crap because you're not gonna get people to follow you with that attitude. So he obviously was very good at walking that fine line between pushing hard enough where he's like, hey, I'm not here to make friends, but at the same time, not pushing him so hard that he's getting shot or there's a complete mutiny against him.

• 46:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, you'd think that someone who who

• 46:31Speaker 01

  in my experience, when people say that, I'm not here to make friends, you know, I'm here to whatever. It's usually kind of like an excuse because they piss somebody off.

• 46:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 46:42Speaker 01

  So I think that to really use that in a in a in a in an accurate way, or in a in a conducive way, I'm not here to make friends, is if you can show them results, and at the same time, not necessarily, you know, be the nicest of guys, then I think that's when you start to walk that fine line.

• 47:00Jocko Willink?

  So so it's beautiful that you said that. So this this goes right into the fact that

• 47:08Jocko Willink?

  a short time later, so after they pulled back this perimeter, so every night, instead of staying where they were, just all relaxed, they packed up, they pulled back, they dug in. A short time later, we were hit with a barrage of rocket and recoilless rifle fire, but most of it fell on the old positions. When I got on the horn and called for artillery, I was surprised I was very nervous. Command is not like hopping back onto a bicycle. And after two and a half years away from it, I was rusty and actually scared I'd screw up. But then I heard a guy, later do I be identified as Lieutenant Larry Toller, who worked in the S3 section, running behind me to his defensive position. And here's the quote from this guy, "He's a mean son of a bitch, but he knows what he's doing." So that's exactly what you just said.

• 47:55Jocko Willink?

  And that's exactly what effect it had.

• 48:02Jocko Willink?

  Now, moving through this.

• 48:07Jocko Willink?

  The men, and now he's talking about this unit, the 439, the men of the 439 had no unit identity and no pride in themselves. So for all those people that are out there that have sent me Twitter questions saying, hey, how do I deal with people that are unmotivated? How do I, you know, how do I change? There's another one. How does culture change?

• 48:27Jocko Willink?

  He's gonna go into that. As a first step toward rectifying this, I decided to call my Hard Luck Battalion, the Hardcore, and the troops, Ricondos. So, he's renaming them. He's renaming, renaming the battalion. And I actually did this very thing when I was a task unit commander, when I took over a task unit. So, task units in a SEAL team, they have a phonetic letter for their name. So there's Task Unit Alpha, Task Unit Bravo, Task Unit Charlie, and then you've got the platoons underneath them. So, what I did with ours is, basically as soon as I took it over, I said, hey, we were Task Unit Bravo B. And I said, guys, we're not Task Unit Bravo, we're Task Unit Bruiser. And that

• 49:11Jocko Willink?

  was one of those things where, even though at first people were kinda, you know, what's this all about? But then, but then after a little while, they're like, oh, no, no, no, cuz you're in a task unit, I'm in Task Unit Bruiser. And it, and it really does have a, a legit effect.

• 49:26Speaker 01

  It's like a little psychological sense of pride, like we're this, this unique kinda almost elite group, just in that small, little psychological way. And, yeah, I think branding, a lot of, that has a lot to do with branding where, where you get, like a company, for example. You do just little things different and include everyone, whether it be the name, whether it be little, I mean, sometimes they do it with, um, like team building exercises, which I've seen a lot of ones that, that, that don't really, they're not very effective. But there's certain things that if, if those activities can kinda invoke a sense of pride, and you guys are doing it together. That's one, that's one that can work. And the name thing, it's crazy how that's such a big thing.

• 50:10Speaker 01

  When you're a little bit, when you have a cool name, we're like, it's almost like a gang mentality.

• 50:14Jocko Willink?

  It is. And I mean, he literally says here, they had no unit identity. So guess what? He's going to pick that identity, call him the hardcore, call him the Ricondo. He's going to give them that identity and give them something to latch on to. And he goes even further. So he talks about how in the past, when he was in, with another unit, they had this greeting between officers and enlisted guys. And the officer would say airborne and the enlisted guy would say all the way. So airborne, all the way. And so now these guys are in Vietnam and it's a little bit different. It's a little bit harder. So now, and this is going back to the book, when a soldier saluted an officer, he said hardcore Ricondo, sir.

• 50:57Jocko Willink?

  And when the officer responded, it was with a heartfelt, no fucking slack.

• 51:04Jocko Willink?

  And I mean, it, it doesn't get any better than that. And as a matter of fact, when, this is, this is one of the most fired up things. When I, when I retired from SEAL Teams, the guys that ran the land warfare training, so like the most miserable hard training out in the Imperial Valley of California, where it's 120 degrees and you're humping through the desert and it's just completely hardcore. And we would, I mean, the training was miserable and tough and realistic and badass. And when I left, those guys from the land warfare group gave me a shotgun. And on the shotgun was engraved, no fucking slack.

• 51:45Jocko Willink?

  So, so you picture these guys walking around. It's like you just said, you're talking about unit identity and they give them this name, but now they're walking around and every time they see each other, they're saying hardcore Ricondo, no fucking slack. And I don't care. That's a mantra, you know, that becomes a mantra, that becomes what you say. And that doesn't take much for what you say to start to become what you believe.

• 52:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:08Jocko Willink?

  And so I love that. I love, and when we work with companies, we, you know, depending on how long we're working with them for, we'll sit down and we'll have them come up with a mission statement. Yeah. And then we'll come up with some kind of a mantra and I'll tell them this story about no fucking slack. And you know, like what is going to make you, what is going to make you think that way? Cause that's what I used to say at land warfare, you know, when I was running land warfare training. You know, hey, should we give these guys a little extra time? Should we give them that? Should we move the target a little bit closer to the insert point? Are these? Can we make this a little bit easier for them? And I'd say, no fucking slack. And the reason was, I wanted these guys to be ready. I wanted every one of those SEALs that was going to Iraq and Afghanistan to be ready for anything to be ready.

• 52:51Jocko Willink?

  I wanted the training to be harder than real combat. That was the goal.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  And then these, these little mantras and, and all these things, that kind of gives everyone a sense of pride in going through that hard training.

• 53:02Jocko Willink?

  Oh, for sure.

• 53:03Speaker 01

  To ultimately result in being ready.

• 53:06Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  So for them to, to take pride and enjoyment in that hard training because of these little tiny things, that makes it just that much more effective. You know, the whole, the whole situation.

• 53:16Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's completely true. There's another piece here. Simultaneously, going back to the book, simultaneously, I started establishing standard operating procedures that would not only keep the troops alive, but also give them for the first time, the feeling they were in charge of the situation, not at mercy of the VC or insidious booby traps. So, think about that. You know, this, this idea that you're on the defense all the time and you're constantly like waiting to get blown up or waiting to get mordred or waiting to get, take a sniper round. That's a horrible, horrible feeling. Being on the receiving end of that stuff is horrible because you don't have control

• 54:01Jocko Willink?

  over it. So then they started slowly putting things together to, to go on the offensive. And so standard operating procedures included such things as every officer having to read Mao's Little Red Book. So this was kind of the communist way. And he wanted all the officers to know and understand that. Because how can you beat an enemy if you don't know what they're thinking? That was another just classic move. You gotta think like the enemy. I got a couple more things to pull out here.

• 54:42Jocko Willink?

  People talking about, um, you know, caring for your guys. And here's another good, you know, I, this is going back to the book. I wasn't going to lose any legs for a couple VC. I was into fighting hard, but not at the expense of bleeding troops. The fact that I had, that I walked with the platoons, put me in the good graces of a lot of men. But my stock rose even faster when they got word, when word got around that I wasn't a butcher. So even though he was hardcore and he was saying no fucking slack. What he, what he talked about earlier in that paragraph is if he found one of the young officers was doing something that was careless, that could put guys at risk of running into booby traps or that what, that didn't have a good return.

• 55:25Jocko Willink?

  He'd fire that guy. He would literally just fire the guy. And that, and so the guys realized, okay, this guy is hardcore, but guess what? He cares about us and that, that, that is huge. And, and another piece, and this is kind of going back to what we just said. All the 439 really needed, had need, had really needed was a good kick in the ass, which included creating or bringing in leaders who cared for their men and giving the men some sense of real purpose. Wow. Wow. You know, and what we call that, and what Leif and I talk about in the book, it's the why. Why are we here? And you would be surprised.

• 56:11Jocko Willink?

  It happens with companies. It happens with families. It happens in the military. It happens with teams. They don't understand why they're doing what they're doing. They're just doing it as a task, as a robot. And you can't treat people like robot. People have to have some kind of long-term goal. They have to have an understanding of why they're doing what they're doing. So when, that's, that's like 99% of my answers. When somebody says, hey, I've got this problem where these people don't want to follow this rule. They don't want to do this safety, uh, task or safety procedure. They, you know, I can't get my guys to do the safety procedure. And I'm like, well, do they understand why they're doing it? Well, what do you mean? Do they understand why they are doing it?

• 56:53Jocko Willink?

  Do they understand why they are supposed to clip in at the top of the tower that they're climbing? Do they understand why? Do they understand the implications if they fall? Do they understand the implications, not just to them, but to their family? Are they thinking about the implications to their job? Are they thinking about the implications to the company? And then other people's jobs? You put all those why? Here's why you're clipping into that tower. Cause if you fall, you can't pay your mortgage. Your kids, you know, can't eat. Then on top of that, we have to shut down the tower for a week. We're going to lose money. We're going to lose jobs. And, and when you think about why, then all of a sudden the guy goes, okay, I guess I'll clip in. It's one of those things. So that idea of understanding why is just extremely important.

• 57:35Jocko Willink?

  And, uh, to close out this, this section on, you know, about face, which again, depending on, I don't know, this may be, maybe this was just a, um, an exercise in my own, in my own, uh, what is it? What is that word selfishness to be able to talk about this with people and have them here? And, and for me to go through this book again, again, I learn every time I read it, but to kind of wrap it up. So he goes on and they go on. This is a long chapter and they go on to talk about all these different things that they did, and they did turn the fight and they did start to kill the enemy and they did start to spare their own guys. And they, they started fighting the gorillas like they were gorillas.

• 58:20Jocko Willink?

  So he really implemented all those things that they had talked about. So now he's getting ready to leave and he says, uh, "The hardcore battalion proved to me everything I'd ruminated on throughout the two years that went before." All those ideas and theories on how to fight the G and the G is gorillas. "If there was satisfaction in that, there was much less in the fact that my success didn't make a dent in the way the war was prosecuted." So even though he did a great job and it really changed their battlefield for him, other people didn't say, oh, I see what they're doing. I'm going to do that too. Ironically, what did was the debacle of hamburger here, hill,

• 59:03Jocko Willink?

  where Screaming Eagle General Melvin Zace ordered 11 assaults up an extremely well fortified, totally use, totally useless piece of real estate as if he thought.

• 59:17Jocko Willink?

  As if he thought he was in Korea or storming kraut positions at Normandy. Almost 400 American men dead or wounded later. The 101 unit was king of the mountain. But within a week, the objective was abandoned. So I don't know if you've ever heard of this, but Hamburger Hill is a huge deal. Lost 400 guys wounded or dead. Held it for a week and then left. The ensuing horrified uproar among American people and in Washington made sure Hamburger Hill was the last huge and costly battle fought by an American troops in Vietnam. So I guess if no one learned how to fight the war from me and the men of the hardcore. At least from General Zace, they finally learned how not to.

• 1:00:00Jocko Willink?

  But we were already four years into the war and there were almost four more to go.

• 1:00:10Jocko Willink?

  Tough.

• 1:00:13Jocko Willink?

  So that's about face for you. That is a, that is a heavy book. Figuratively and literally. And, you know, again, depending on what people thought of that, maybe we'll come back to it. And talk about it again in the future.

• 1:00:31Jocko Willink?

  That book and those experiences are kind of where this comes from. This mindset. And the attitude that I have. How much of it do you think? I don't, I couldn't sit here and put a percentage on it. From a leadership, from a combat leadership perspective, it is a, it is a pretty significant amount. You know, it's probably in the, in the 20 or 30% of

• 1:00:59Jocko Willink?

  confirming things that I believed. Learning new things, seeing things and reading about them and then watching them happen and, and understanding them. So that it definitely is a, is a significant portion of some kind. Yeah.

• 1:01:19Jocko Willink?

  Meanwhile.

• 1:01:20Speaker 01

  Meanwhile, on the internet.

• 1:01:22Jocko Willink?

  On the interwebs. We got a bunch of, uh, great questions. A bunch, I mean, we got hundreds of, hundreds of great questions. And obviously, we can't answer them all. So, some of them, we kinda compiled together. Some of them, we pulled out. And you know what I did not do, is I did not put the names of the people that submitted them. So, next time, I will do that. I think we got one person that, that recommended that. So, I apologize for everyone out there on Twitter and Facebook that submitted questions. And we used them. Next time, I'll, I'll try and get your name in there. So, you'll know that I am talking to you.

• 1:02:06Jocko Willink?

  But, uh, but we got some great feedback and comments and all that. So, let's, uh, let's dive into some of these.

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  Okay, so, mental toughness, we're going back to this. I think this is important, mental toughness. Cause I think this is one of those things that's a constant endeavor for I would, I would argue for everybody.

• 1:02:26Jocko Willink?

  I would agree.

• 1:02:27Speaker 01

  In one way or another.

• 1:02:28Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely.

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  And that, and this question's really appropriate. Mental toughness is not just one thing. Some people are tough in the gym, or in fights, but weak when their wife leaves them, for example. Do you agree with that?

• 1:02:40Jocko Willink?

  And, and this guy, and again, I wish I had, whoever you are, I apologize, because he actually makes a statement. This is a statement.

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:47Jocko Willink?

  Mental toughness is not one thing.

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:50Jocko Willink?

  And then he quantifies that statement by saying, "Some people are tough in the gym, or in fights, but weak when their live, when their wives leaves them."

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:59Jocko Willink?

  He says, "Do you agree?" Well, I agree a hundred percent. And this opens up

• 1:03:06Jocko Willink?

  a whole spectrum of reality. And that is, that these, that, that, what is it?

• 1:03:18Jocko Willink?

  That crushes a person. Because it's different for everybody. Everybody has this thing, this weakness that maybe it never gets uncovered. Maybe it does. And the fact that he's talking about, you know, fighters. And saying that people are tough in, in the gym, they're tough in fights, but they have some weakness that can crush them. I think we've seen that plenty. I mean, just famous people. Famous fighters that this has happened to. John Bones Jones. I mean, obviously the guy's an animal in fights. He's an animal training in the gym. But he has some mental weaknesses. That he needs to overcome.

• 1:04:01Jocko Willink?

  And that hopefully he will be able to so he can reach his full potential. And I, I. I hope he does. But, you know, he's lucky. He's got a good. Support base around him. And he's got money to, to. Try and solve these problems. Because there's a lot of people that. End up with those weaknesses or have those weaknesses and ends up crushing them. And that's scary. And I'll tell you what the scariest thing is. And I think this is a great lesson. And it's something that I learned over and over again. And I don't know when it exactly solidified in my brain. But it's so disturbing and bizarre. When you see somebody.

• 1:04:47Jocko Willink?

  That you care about.

• 1:04:50Jocko Willink?

  And you watch them go down this spiral. And it's so obvious. What they have to do to stop it, to stop the downward spiral. It's like, oh, uh, get rid of that girl or get, stop using that drug or stop drinking or do whatever the case may be, whatever that thing that's got them. And you're clearly telling them to stop it. And they don't.

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, because, I mean, and I think I, I think I know what your point is gonna be here, but when you say it's clearly obvious. It's clearly obvious, kind of, a way to put it is it's clearly obvious on paper. Where you could point it out and that person, the person you care about, he's you, whatever. They'd probably agree with you. And you say, oh, is this holding you back, you think, or is this jamming you up? And they'd probably say, yeah, but to be like, oh, just simply let it go. Let's say it was a girl. Let's say, I don't know, a good girlfriend, like that.

• 1:05:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  Um, and you're like, yeah, the girl's jamming me up.

• 1:05:51Jocko Willink?

  Or a guy, let's be fair, or.

• 1:05:53Speaker 01

  Or a guy, whatever. Um, and, you know, it's as simple as that, get rid of the girl. But I think, and everybody's different, there's a certain need that someone has, an inherent need.

• 1:06:05Jocko Willink?

  That, that's.

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

  That that girl is fulfilling. And that need is big, no matter how deep down it is, it's a big need, obviously. That they're letting that need get fulfilled in, in, at the expense of their goals, their training, or whatever. So it's not that easy. It's obvious, sure, but it's just not that easy to be like, oh, let's just get rid of the girl.

• 1:06:25Jocko Willink?

  I didn't say it was easy.

• 1:06:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:06:27Jocko Willink?

  But I know you've seen this, I think we've all seen this, where you're looking at a situation with someone that you truly care about. And you want to help them, and you could write down in two sentences, what they have to do to completely resurrect and change their life. And it's, and it is as easy as getting rid of a girl or a guy that's in their life that's a disaster. Or it's as easy as stopping the use of drugs and alcohol. Or it's as easy as cutting sugar out of your diet because you're sick from it. Or it's as easy as working out a certain methodology to get you through this situation. So it's, it's, it's horrible.

• 1:07:08Jocko Willink?

  And it's one of those things that's, for me, it's taught me to, again, I talk about detachment a lot. Detach from myself to make sure I'm not that guy that doesn't have some issue that's holding me back. And like, I could be doing better if I would get, if I would take that input from other people. Or even better off if I could detach and see that input myself and self-correct.

• 1:07:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and you, when you can see it in someone else, that's really what you, what the dynamics of that relationship is, meaning. Let's say, you know, your friend has something, a girl, for example, holding him back. It's easy for you to say, oh, just do this. Here's the two sentences. This is all you gotta do. Get rid of the girl. Be happy. That's it. It's easy because you are detached.

• 1:07:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:07:53Speaker 01

  So the hard part is for him to actually detach. But if he can detach, look in, he'd be essentially in the same position as you and probably be able to at least be on his way to do it.

• 1:08:02Jocko Willink?

  Exactly. It's weird, though. And that's why I say people are crazy. Like, we do crazy things. We make big mistakes. We get emotional. We do things that are crazy. Human beings do it. And that's very, very difficult to deal with. And it's really, uh, it can be very sad to see. You know, I've seen people with great unbelievable potential that have, for all practical purposes, cast it away for some ridiculous reason that, again, if they would have followed two bullet points on a piece of paper that said, get rid of this girl and stop using this drug, their life would be different. And you just, you can't help them.

• 1:08:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. And obviously, you know, getting rid of a girl, um, that's clearly just an example. It's not, we're not saying girls are any sort of a problem.

• 1:08:52Jocko Willink?

  And we've seen the same thing with girls and guys. You know, girls that date this guy, that's a disaster, that drags them down, whatever.

• 1:08:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:00Jocko Willink?

  And it could be either one. It's, we should just say a relationship so that it would be unfair.

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. Toxic relationship.

• 1:09:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, toxic relationship.

• 1:09:08Speaker 01

  I didn't, I mean, you use the word ridiculous, which, you know, cool, but I don't think it is really ridiculous. Because if you kind of, if you break it down, I think, like I said,

• 1:09:19Speaker 01

  they have a certain need that isn't obvious to everyone, you know, everyone aside. Even to them, it might not be obvious, but they have a need in there that this toxic relationship is fulfilling. It's jamming up a bunch of other things in their life or their goals, but it is fulfilling this little thing that they need.

• 1:09:38Jocko Willink?

  Well, okay, you can say that.

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  That's, that's, but that makes sense, though.

• 1:09:43Jocko Willink?

  I'm not gonna argue with you. That's the, that's the root of the problem, though.

• 1:09:47Speaker 01

  Right, but if, if that need is, if basically the, the, the sum of that need or the, the...

• 1:09:55Speaker 01

  The size of that need is bigger than the need of them achieving those goals, which may seem weird because it's like, oh, that teeny tiny need to be loved or accepted is bigger than being a champion of the world or being, it seems weird, but from an individual standpoint on the in, how they feel on the inside, that need in a lot of times is bigger.

• 1:10:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and that's what's crazy, which is why I said people are crazy. Because they make that determination.

• 1:10:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:24Jocko Willink?

  And you can't help them. That's the piece. You cannot help them.

• 1:10:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:28Jocko Willink?

  You can try. You can paint it out for them. You can tell them a thousand times, a thousand different ways.

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you, yeah, I think there are ways to help. Obviously, I think it's like through like a therapy type of situation, not necessarily like a professional therapy, maybe, but not necessarily, or something really impactful.

• 1:10:46Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, I always hear, you know, you always hear it's gotta be the rock bottom. The person's gotta hit rock bottom somehow. And then they realize, oh, okay, I've destroyed my life. Now I'll start moving again. And you just wish you could help them before they hit rock bottom.

• 1:11:00Speaker 01

  I was talking about this today with, with Greg, hitting rock bottom. And the reason that it's typical, and I don't want, I'll just use the word easier. It's easier to move forward when you hit rock bottom is because you're not, you can't go any further, deeper, but what that, I mean, that sounds obvious, but what that means is

• 1:11:20Speaker 01

  you're here, right at the bottom. If below here is unacceptable, it's death or it's, you know, jail, I don't know, whatever, whatever your rock bottom is. So you can never justify, oh, I've been doing it this way and I'm still here. You can never make that justification at rock bottom because I've been doing it this way and I'm here. That's unacceptable. You're a rock bottom. But let's say you're not at rock bottom, but you're pretty junk. You're not doing good, but you're making it. You're handling it. Sure, your job sucks, but I'm still here. You know, I still got my car.

• 1:11:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So they're able to justify.

• 1:11:55Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah. One day, okay, I need to make an improvement. I'm gonna start, I'm gonna start on Monday. I'm gonna, I'm gonna make an improvement. So they start on Monday. Okay, it goes good. Tuesday, it goes good. Wednesday, some temptation comes and whatever, the drugs or drinking, whatever.

• 1:12:10Speaker 01

  When they're kind of exhausted from putting in that effort to change. And it's like, okay, I'll just have one beer. Okay, I'll just, okay, I'll just start drinking again because hey, really, I'm, I'm cool with it. You know, I, I, I made it. It's not all that bad.

• 1:12:23Jocko Willink?

  They've accepted their station in life.

• 1:12:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:12:26Jocko Willink?

  And when somebody accepts their station in life, then I guess they're not going to be motivated to do anything.

• 1:12:31Speaker 01

  Right. So, and that accepting their station is essentially their justification for relapsing. But when you're at rock bottom, you can't do that. So, I mean, obviously people's rock bottom are different, like I said, but that's the reason that it's, that it's easier. I know it sounds crazy, but it's easier to move forward when you're at rock bottom.

• 1:12:49Jocko Willink?

  It's tough stuff.

• 1:12:50Speaker 01

  So, uh, yeah, mental toughness, yeah, like how you said, it is, um, it's different for everyone and you can be meant, it's not an across the board thing. You're just mentally tough.

• 1:12:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And but to tie this back into mental toughness is, again, going back to detachment. You know, I'm, I'm glad where most of the people listening to this aren't dealing with a situation where they've got some grievous scenario going on and their life is on a downward spiral. Hopefully, your downward spiral is that you slept in until 5:30. You know, that's, that's the type of thing where you want to catch yourself. And like we talked about earlier, you want to get those little disciplines in place and, and build upon those and become better.

• 1:13:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:30Jocko Willink?

  Stay out of them. Never mind the rock bottom. Let's get to the top of this bad boy. That's what I'm talking about.

• 1:13:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it, and with that, I think this might be kind of obvious, but it's important to recognize what elements or what aspects of your life that you are not quite as tough mentally at. You know, like if, if, you know, if you have a weakness for beer and alcohol, then recognize that. Or I have a weakness for giving up when I start to get tired in training or something like that. Um, you know, recognize that.

• 1:14:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:00Speaker 01

  And, uh, here's a quick story for you. It's an important story.

• 1:14:03Jocko Willink?

  Echo Charles with a story.

• 1:14:05Speaker 01

  Christmas Eve, um, I went to the store just real quick and it was real crowded, the supermarket, right? So I go and I get two 12 packs of beer and.

• 1:14:22Speaker 01

  Some tomatoes. And I have a cart, not, or I have a basket, not a cart, so I'm carrying it. So, all the lines are long, so I'm, so I'm standing in one of the lines and, um, and I'm holding the basket with a twelve pack of beer in one hand with the tomatoes and the other twelve pack of beer in the other hand. So it's, that's, you know, it's not like terribly heavy, but it can get heavy after a little while. So, the line's real long, so I'm gonna be in that line for a while. So after a while, you know, your shoulders start getting tired. And, right then, I recognize, okay, this can be a small exercise in mental toughness, just a small one. Not a, you know, not a marathon or nothing like that, but you know what I'm gonna do? I'm just gonna hold these until, until I put them on the thing.

• 1:15:06Speaker 01

  I'm not gonna put them down, cuz right now, I kinda wanna put them down.

• 1:15:11Speaker 01

  So, what I did is I made it, consciously made it an exercise. So I held them and every little thing that would happen, this guy's not taking, um, or this guy's not being as quick as he should be, boom, that, that's another element added to the mental toughness exercise.

• 1:15:27Jocko Willink?

  Somebody's gonna write a check.

• 1:15:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, I did it. I totally did it. It took maybe, I would say, ten minutes, a good ten minutes of just holding it, you know? Um, so I put my, my, uh, my stuff on the, on the little carousel or whatever to get it checked out. And I remember thinking, okay, that's one little exercise in mental toughness, a little workout, mental toughness done. Now, I realize as a demonstration of mental toughness, that's quite lame.

• 1:16:01Speaker 01

  But, as far as recognizing

• 1:16:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:03Speaker 01

  a potential situation where you could be mentally weak, using it as an exercise to be, to help with mental toughness as a concept, that's an important element.

• 1:16:13Jocko Willink?

  And you know what I liked the best about that whole story? Was the fact that you had to mentally detach yourself and recognize, because that's the true exercise in my mind, is having the ability to be outside yourself and look at yourself and say, "You're being weak right now, or here's an opportunity." That's real triumph

• 1:16:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:34Jocko Willink?

  on a small scale.

• 1:16:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:35Jocko Willink?

  With beer.

• 1:16:37Speaker 01

  It, it

• 1:16:37Jocko Willink?

  At the supermarket.

• 1:16:38Speaker 01

  And tomatoes, yeah. But... If you can just start thinking to yourself that way, that small little exercise can turn into a little bit bigger exercise. And next thing you know, you're in a detrimental situation, recognizing, hey, if I can practice some toughness right now, where, you know, a month ago, two months ago, I would have straight up gave up. But let me use this as yet another exercise. And it's a big detrimental situation, look at you mentally tough.

• 1:17:07Jocko Willink?

  I like it.

• 1:17:07Speaker 01

  At least on your way, yeah.

• 1:17:08Jocko Willink?

  Approved.

• 1:17:09Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:17:10Jocko Willink?

  Barely approved, but approved nonetheless.

• 1:17:19Jocko Willink?

  Next question.

• 1:17:22Speaker 01

  Okay. Okay, next question is my son, who's seven, seven years old, and I want to get into jujitsu. What lessons has it taught you in life?

• 1:17:38Jocko Willink?

  Well, you know, I talk about jujitsu all the time because I do think it's a great metaphor for life. Some of the things that it teaches you without a doubt is it teaches you humility. Because it's not going to teach you humility by telling you, hey, be humble, be humble. It's going to teach you humility because you are going to get submitted and be forced to surrender to people that are smaller than you, that are weaker than you, that aren't as good athletes as you. And that's going to happen on almost a daily basis.

• 1:18:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:08Jocko Willink?

  When you first start out. So there's no doubt about that. It's going to teach you about respect. And I had a, I had a buddy in the Marine Corps, a great dude, Big H. I know you're out there somewhere. And he was, he was a badass. I mean, he looked like a superhero, super strong, just, and he, and he grew up in, I think he grew up in Texas. He was some kind of a gang member in Texas, had a rough childhood. And he was, he was a badass, scary dude, super nice, but, but, but definitely could bring it. And when he started training. After like a month, you know, I said, so you know, what do you, what do you think of jujitsu?

• 1:18:50Jocko Willink?

  And he said, uh, you know, I used to think I was badass and now I don't want to mess with anybody because I don't know if they've been training for three months and if they have been, I'm in trouble. So you definitely will learn respect from jujitsu.

• 1:19:07Jocko Willink?

  Discipline, you know, we, we were just kinda talking earlier and I was talking about training today and how I just did not feel like training today. I was all beat up, I was tired, I'm sore and there's only one thing that got me on the mat. And that's just having the discipline to get on there and know that I needed to train. So there's nobody, I don't care who you are, that feels like training every single day, seven days a week. But if you want to get better and you want to reach the goal, then you have to do it. And so it teaches you about discipline and, and I would say from a mental perspective, one of the coolest things that jujitsu teaches you is it teaches you that maneuver and that tactics and that brains.

• 1:19:52Jocko Willink?

  That those things trump strength and trump meeting force on force. And I talk about this all the time in psychological situations and it's too bad. I wish everybody in the world trained jujitsu because you have all these metaphors that you could tell them. So it's great when I have a client that actually trains jujitsu because then I can or understands MMA or watches martial arts or watches UFC because then you can use these examples. But you know, the classic case i- in the mental confrontation is people have a tendency to want to go, you know, fist on fist. And if you say one thing, if you say method A, I say method B,

• 1:20:34Jocko Willink?

  and we're just gonna bang those two methods together and see who, you know, a lot of times it's see who has more rank. And you know what, you know what Echo, I'm in charge, so we're going with method B. Well, now you're gonna do what I say, but you're not gonna do it willingly. You're gonna sabotage it, whatever the case may be. That's not jujitsu. Jujitsu is. Is using maneuver and setting people up and and being more crafty. That's what jujitsu is and that's how you win and that's how you win, not just on the mat, not just, but in life as well. And it's the same thing on the battlefield, you know, we we have a little saying in the in combat. He who flanks first wins, meaning the person that gets around to the side and attacks from an unexpected

• 1:21:17Jocko Willink?

  direction is going to win. And it's the same thing in mentally in jujitsu and it's the same thing in in, you know, mental confrontations with people. It's it's who is going to maneuver. And it's always this indirect approach. That's the key phrase that I use when I'm dealing with someone that's not a jujitsu person. And I'm talking about how do they deal with their boss that does this or their subordinate that has a big head or whatever. I tell them, listen, you need to use an indirect approach because the direct approach is not gonna get through to this person. I was I was doing some executive coaching the other day and had this guy. He explained the personality of this guy that worked for him.

• 1:22:01Jocko Willink?

  And the guy that had worked for him had been moved underneath him in a in a reorganization and it was one of those guys. He's a senior guy who he should have been a peer, but now all of a sudden he's reporting to him and he's been in the business for thirty two years. And he knows stuff better than I do. And the guy says to me, so I've brought the guy in and I've told him I'm going to coach him and this is what I'm going to help him with. And I said, okay. You you are no way is this guy going to accept that, that you're going to coach him. It's it's not in his personality. You can't go, whereas this guy that I was talking to, call him Mike, I said, Mike, you want to be coached, you want to be helped, you have an open mind. If I came to you and said, hey, I want to coach you, you'd be like, that's great.

• 1:22:42Jocko Willink?

  This guy is the complete opposite. If I go to him and say, hey, I'm going to coach you, he's going to say, I don't need coaching.

• 1:22:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:22:49Jocko Willink?

  And even if I outrank him and I say, no, I'm going to coach you, he's going to do it reluctantly and he's going to sabotage it. And he's never going to put any effort into it. And he's going to actually do the opposite to prove you wrong.

• 1:22:57Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah.

• 1:22:58Jocko Willink?

  So that's the direct approach. Jujitsu is the indirect approach. So what you do with this guy when you're going to coach him is you say, listen, you know what I need is you're so much more experienced in this. I need some help running the organization. Can you come and help me get things in order and give me a hand, straightening things out? And also, can you fill me in on what we can improve inside of our department? And when you do that, now all of a sudden, he's starting to tell me what all the problems are. And now I can discreetly and indirectly coach him on how we're gonna fix those problems.

• 1:23:38Jocko Willink?

  That's jujitsu. And that's one of the lessons you learn from it.

• 1:23:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, and not to mention the sort of more obvious things where, you know, it's a great workout. You get, you know, kind of this.

• 1:23:54Speaker 01

  You know, men, actually just all people, they have a sort of aggression kind of built into them. And it's a spectrum, some people more than others. You can engage.

• 1:24:06Jocko Willink?

  I understand what you're trying to tell me.

• 1:24:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:11Speaker 01

  You can engage in jujitsu and be a pretty accurate simulation of whether it be a fight or any kind of aggressive combat situation. And it's still be safe and doable where you can do it again and again. You can go, you know, the next day. It's, if you go spar, boxing, you can't really do it every day. And you can't go all out. If you go all out and do it every day, you're gonna get messed up.

• 1:24:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:36Speaker 01

  In jujitsu, you can do that. And so you get that satisfaction when you leave. And it's kind of strange because when you get the satisfaction from that, you kind of want to do it some more. You know, so most people, when you talk to people who have been doing it for over a year, talk to anyone you know that has been doing it more than one year. I would say, my argument would be 85% or more will tell you that at some point, they were addicted to it. That they would go to sleep at night and they'd be thinking about a move or something like that.

• 1:25:06Jocko Willink?

  And to go along with the things that you just, the obvious things, because you're right, there's some obvious things. The workout, it's a great workout. You get more in tune with your own body. You learn how to handle yourself in a real fight. And it does give you, absolutely gives you confidence. And confidence that you can handle a situation, confidence that, that's coupled with the respect that you look at everyone and say, hey, you know what? This guy might be able to, this guy might know more than I do, so I'm gonna respect him. But at the same time, you know that, hey, I'm gonna be able to at least know what I'm doing very confidently. So it helps out across the board and it's definitely a great sport.

• 1:25:45Speaker 01

  So with the new year approaching, what have you changed your mind about? Is in as far as two fifty?

• 1:25:54Jocko Willink?

  In two thousand fifteen, yeah. Well, the biggest thing that's been a radical change, because I'm a I always talk about how I have this big, open mind and all that. But the fact of the matter is, I I'm very set in my ways and I kind of follow patterns and I I believe things and and my beliefs are open for for changing, but a lot of times they just don't get changed. Okay, so one thing that's been radically different about me in two thousand fifteen, and it's been kind of a bizarre ride, is the fact that I am now out there in the world. And, you know, people, obviously, when I made the decision with Leif that we were going to write this book, we knew that

• 1:26:40Jocko Willink?

  we were going to be out there and and people were going to know us. Now, the book has been more successful than, you know, it's kind of been the max level of success that I thought it could achieve. You know, I thought there was a spectrum and we definitely achieved a great success and we're super happy about that. But that means we're even more out there than we thought we're going to be. Then on top of that, there's been this whole internet phenomenon.

• 1:27:05Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:27:06Jocko Willink?

  Of going on the Tim Ferriss Show with Tim and going on the Joe Rogan Show with Joe and then doing this podcast and being on Twitter and all these things, being on Facebook. I mean, I didn't literally did not have a Facebook account, literally did not have a Twitter account, never been on it before. And then now I have, you know, I'm on it and in it and communicating with people. And I think that's, you know, people would tell me like, hey, social media is cool. You can link up with other people. And I was definitely.

• 1:27:39Jocko Willink?

  I didn't want to link up with other people. I didn't want to have my friends and I didn't really want to meet meet other people.

• 1:27:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:46Jocko Willink?

  But now that I'm there, it's awesome, honestly. It's awesome to have people all over the world. I have people all over the world, especially because, you know, I do the thing in the morning with my watch and at four, four thirty in the morning, I take a picture of my watch and I post it on Twitter. And I, I get those because other people do it. And, and now my Twitter is filled with people from every time zone throughout the day that wake up at four thirty in the morning and they get their workout on. And that's, that's cool, man. That's very cool to see that there's other people in the world that have the same kind of mentality that want to be better, that want to improve, that want to do their best. And I think that's, uh, I think that's been pretty cool to see. And it's also been,

• 1:28:32Jocko Willink?

  it's, it's been, honestly, it almost makes me feel

• 1:28:40Jocko Willink?

  like I'm in a leadership position in a way again. Because I've got like people that are saying, hey, thanks for putting this out there and thanks. And it, it makes you feel just like, just like being in a leader, combat leadership position, where you feel humbled by these guys that are doing so well. Well, I feel the same way with these people. I'm humbled by the fact that these people are out there and they're communicating with me and talking to me and, and saying I inspire them. And I always write back, man, you inspire me. You know, that inspires me that you're out, you know, kicking ass. And, and there's these, you know, I always talk about like the single moms or the single dads that are out there. They're getting up earlier than me and they're going to work.

• 1:29:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:20Jocko Willink?

  You know, and that's job number one and they're getting home late. So that's, that's inspiring to me and I'm, I'm, I think it's been a pretty cool ride so far. Any other weird thing is I have no idea where the ride is going. I do, I do not know. You know, I'm all about plans and I'm a little bit of a control freak. But just to be out there and on this roller coaster, you have no idea where it's going. So that's, that's pretty entertaining too.

• 1:29:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, to, to connect with, um, with people who have the same interests in you and not all interests, obviously, but just some of the same interests as you. It is kind of refreshing because if you go just through your day to day life, right? And someone as extreme as you are, it's going to be hard to find someone to relate to.

• 1:30:04Speaker 01

  In specific ways, or even in a general way, it's gonna be harder for someone like you.

• 1:30:08Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:30:08Speaker 01

  So, when you get these little tidbits of people doing the same thing as you, and it's like, dang, I'm relating to these people, just in that small little way, every day, or however often you check your Twitter, you know? And it's kind of refreshing, and it reminds you that there are people like that out there, you know, who want to wake up early and be disciplined, and work hard, and then face the day, and get stuff done, or whatever. And you might not see that in your day-to-day life outside of the internet, like in your real life. You might not see that. So you might have this feeling of, man, am I the only one who's trying to get this stuff done? You know, almost like that kind of thought.

• 1:30:43Jocko Willink?

  You're right. And I'm definitely not.

• 1:30:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:45Jocko Willink?

  And you're right, it is reassuring.

• 1:30:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:49Jocko Willink?

  And it's cool to communicate with these people. They're fired up. Got a bunch of firemen and police officers that are on there, that are fired up every day, a bunch of, obviously, a bunch of former military people. But then, you know, because I have kind of a weird background, I get these crazy old hardcore punk rock kids, and, you know, they're communicating with me, and it's just, it's very interesting.

• 1:31:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:10Jocko Willink?

  Very interesting. And it's been an interesting ride, and like, I'm curious to see where it all ends up.

• 1:31:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I do think that the more experience you have with people, the more good stuff you can learn that people have in them, regardless of stuff you might not agree with them.

• 1:31:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:25Speaker 01

  But if you can find, have more experiences with more people, in whatever way, you'll be more informed about how people are.

• 1:31:31Jocko Willink?

  And this, this really, the fear, or the rejection I had of social media, was based on what I talked about earlier with that Tom Wolfe book, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Me, me, me, me. And I always felt that social media was me, me, here's a picture of me, here's me doing this, here's my food, and this is my car, and this is me, me, me. And it just felt so disturbing. And... But now, I, like you're saying, I realize that this, this social media, at least the way that I'm involved in it right now, it's not about me, it's about we.

• 1:32:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:32:16Jocko Willink?

  And there's a group of people that have the similar mindset. And some of them are more into it, some of them aren't, but they're there. And they communicate with me and it's not me, it's we. And I think that's, that's, that's pretty cool.

• 1:32:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. Well, it is everything. It's a spectrum, but I think, I think we all feel that, even if we're people who are really into the internet, really into Facebook, really into Twitter, um, and Instagram, if people overdo it, me, me, here's a selfie of me i- in front of the mirror. If you see ten pictures of, of them taking a picture of themselves in front of the mirror, that's a me, me, me situation for sure. But they're just on that side of the spectrum, that's all. There's, there's all kinds of different people. And I think the majority people are in that we, we category.

• 1:33:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:07Speaker 01

  Sure, it's something about me, but there is, there is no we without me too, you know?

• 1:33:11Jocko Willink?

  No, it's cool. Uh, I don't like people that send me stuff on Twitter, that I get pictures every day of people's watches. I get pictures of their jump rope or their kettlebell, like no one's, I don't know what any of these people look like, which I guess is kind of bizarre. And, but that's, you're right, they're not about me, me, me, they're about we and like having a little, uh, little group, little gang to get after it.

• 1:33:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I sent you one picture of me and it wasn't four thirty, it was more like noon.

• 1:33:39Jocko Willink?

  It's four thirty in the afternoon.

• 1:33:41Speaker 01

  Actually, it was like two P M.

• 1:33:46Speaker 01

  So your sleep, next question, your sleep routine, you get less than eight hours sleep.

• 1:33:52Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:33:52Speaker 01

  From what I know, okay? So your sleep routine, how many hours of sleep do you get? And what are the techniques you used to get to sleep if you're not tired? You know, do you take naps? Does that, does that work?

• 1:34:04Jocko Willink?

  Uh, okay, so I generally sleep, I try and sleep at least five, five and a half or six hours a night. It generally ends up being somewhere between five and five and a half, generally. I-

• 1:34:20Jocko Willink?

  Feel not good if I sleep for, you know, seven hours. I don't feel good. I feel groggy. Uh, I don't know why that is. Uh, that's the way it is though. I feel good and I, sometimes I feel better when I slept 4.5 hours. Otherwise known as four and a half hours.

• 1:34:44Jocko Willink?

  So, so there's no doubt that I don't need a ton of sleep. Um, that being said, sometimes I do feel tired. And sometimes, you know, come the afternoon, uh, especially if I have to do something boring or tedious. And that's when I'll feel really legitimately tired. If I'm up and moving, I don't need to sleep. I actually don't need to sleep. Like I can go long periods of times without sleeping. If there's something actively engaging my mind.

• 1:35:14Jocko Willink?

  Especially something, it's gotta be partially physical, you know, cause you sitting down, reading a book when you're tired is, is tough. So,

• 1:35:22Jocko Willink?

  I do, and, and power naps are great. And this is something that I learned, part of it in high school and part of it in basic SEAL training. When I was in high school, my anatomy and physiology teacher, I used to go in, walk by his room at lunchtime and he'd be in there with his feet up on the desk. In like his chair all low. And he'd just be in there sitting, you know, doing a little bit of work. And one day I said, hey, you know, you look kind of relaxed in there. And he said, hey, this is a technique. And I said, what do you mean? He said, put your, when you, when you rest, elevate your feet above your heart. Because your, your veins are stressed out, you know, the one-way valves in your veins, you've got blood pooled up in areas in your feet. You want to get that stuff out of there.

• 1:36:05Jocko Willink?

  So elevate your feet above your heart. And I was like, hmm, that makes sense. Then in SEAL training, you'd come back from, let's say breakfast in the morning or lunch. And you get back to the barracks and you have to grab gear to get ready for whatever the next evolution was going to be. Well, they'd give you time to grab the gear, but they'd also give you time to, you know, use the bathroom or, or whatever. And it would literally be, they'd say, all right, we gotta be back out here in eight minutes. Well, it'd take you one minute to get your gear done. So if I didn't have to go to the bathroom, I would go in my room, I would lay down on the floor, I'd put my feet up on the bed and I would set my alarm clock for six minutes. And I would get a power nap and you'd fall asleep almost immediately because you're so tired. So you just fall asleep, six minutes later, boom,

• 1:36:50Jocko Willink?

  you wake up and you feel refreshed and you feel recharged. If you sleep for longer than that, sometimes you start to feel groggy again. So you gotta be careful that you don't sleep for too long, but yeah, try the elevated feet above the heart, eight-minute power nap when you're feeling tired and it'll make you feel better. You gotta set your alarm clock so you don't, so that eight minutes doesn't turn into two hours. And, and that's it, you know, I, look, I know and probably, uh, I know I should probably sleep more and I would like to do that. I'll, I try and do that sometimes. Um, but also my mind,

• 1:37:33Jocko Willink?

  it's, it's not like a big choice that I'm making. You know, when, when I'm thinking about something, it cannot be stopped. It, it cannot be stopped. When I'm thinking about something, it just goes and I, in my mind, it feels like I'm going down, um, various tunnels of thought. That's literally what it feels like. I'm going down these various tunnels of thought and one leads to another. I'm taking a left turn, right turn. I'm getting all these ideas and I can't sleep.

• 1:38:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:02Jocko Willink?

  So,

• 1:38:05Jocko Willink?

  you know.

• 1:38:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I would imagine that a lot of people are like that where if they have a lot going on in their life, you know, where they can't get these certain thoughts out of their head, good or bad. You know, sometimes you're just excited about something and you can't stop thinking about it and you know, whatever.

• 1:38:21Speaker 01

  But. If that's a problem, if he gets in the way of your sleep and it's jamming you up the next day, then I'm sure you can, you know, I'm sure meditation can kind of help is from what I hear about meditation.

• 1:38:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, maybe. I don't know. But I will say this, if you, if you want to go to bed earlier, you have to get up earlier. Like it doesn't work in reverse. You can't just force yourself to go to sleep at night. You have to just wake up earlier and be more tired at the end of the day.

• 1:38:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:45Jocko Willink?

  And I love the feeling of when I'm so tired that my, my head hits the pillow and I fall asleep immediately. I love that feeling of just exhaustion. That's what I'm going for every day is see if I can just burn it, burn it out and just be so tired at the end of the day.

• 1:39:02Jocko Willink?

  So that's my sleep routine. Probably made all kinds of doctors and stuff angry at me. Sorry. Sorry, Doc Parsley. I know.

• 1:39:10Speaker 01

  Like, I think they say that the, the, the ideal amount of sleep is seven and a half hours or something like that. But I would imagine it'd be different from person. Like if you're used to getting six hours sleep, doesn't your body conform? Like, you know, your sleep cycles, I think they conform to that six hours that they have.

• 1:39:26Jocko Willink?

  Doctor, Doctor Echo has spoken.

• 1:39:28Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:39:29Jocko Willink?

  Your sleep schedule will conform.

• 1:39:31Speaker 01

  I learned that on the internet.

• 1:39:35Speaker 01

  So in regards to, you know, achieving goals and just your pursuits in life, how do you deal with loved ones who seem to determine or who seem determined to hold you back from your goals? Um, and that's, I guess that's kind of assuming that you have loved ones that are determined to hold you back from your goals.

• 1:39:53Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 1:39:55Speaker 01

  Well, that, you know, an issue?

• 1:39:57Jocko Willink?

  This is one of those questions that came in and I think you voted positive on this question was let's answer this question. And why did you, why were you so, why did you want to answer this question?

• 1:40:06Speaker 01

  Because not that I've had this experience.

• 1:40:09Jocko Willink?

  Whoever you were that answered this question or that asked this question, I put a line through it. Echo brought it back from the dead. So, okay, here you go.

• 1:40:16Speaker 01

  Well, cause I think people deal with this. I, I don't, I haven't experienced this personally, but I've seen it happen. I've seen it in other people where, and I think.

• 1:40:29Speaker 01

  Part of this is just my philosophy, but I think a big part of this, I believe a big part of this is you can apply it to every situation where it's a supposed loved one, whether it be your family, spouse, whatever, where they will hold you back sometimes. And sometimes it can be because they're jealous of you or something. So, and not necessarily jealous, so they're gonna say, you know, they're gonna lie to you and say, hey, that's a bad idea, when it's really a good one or nothing like that. They'll just be focusing on the bad part of it. So, let's say, let's say you were unemployed for a little bit,

• 1:41:12Speaker 01

  you've been working hard to get this job, and you finally get a job. And then you're, I don't know, a parent or whatever says, well, it's about time, you know? So, instead of dang, you know, you got this job, congratulations, they focus on the negative. And that can be discouraging on a personal level. Like, there was no happiness, there was no encouragement, there was no one saying that, no one making me feel like they were on my team, making me feel like I'm alone in doing this. People do that. And then they do a bunch of other stuff as well, telling you, the other part that I said, they will tell you it's a bad idea to start this new company. You know, because they may be afraid, subconsciously or whatever, that you might outshine them, or you might do something good when they haven't done anything good.

• 1:41:57Speaker 01

  So, yes. So, how do you deal with that? And of course, a bunch of other ways that they can kind of get in the way. This probably isn't gonna be anything new, but you know how you surround yourself with like-minded people? Or you surround yourself by certain types of people, and you're gonna start to become like that. So, I'm not saying disown any family members or loved ones, I'm not saying that, but you have to create boundaries, specific boundaries to these people. And I know a lot of people say, well, that's my family, and I can't change that, or that's my family, so, you know, and they feel like they're under this obligation to...

• 1:42:38Speaker 01

  Essentially give away part of their life, but I think it should be the opposite. I think that that's your family, so they should understand that you're on a path to success, or you want to be on a path to success. And if they're in the way, then they're in the way and those boundaries have to be created. If they can't handle that, then they're someone who is against you in your path. And if you're on a successful path and someone is against you, just the eventuality is that they're gonna be cut out of your life. And if they can respect the boundaries, then boom, you can keep them in your life and they can be them and you can, I love them for them, no matter how negative they're, and you can have all that. But if you don't, they're either gonna bring you down, or you gotta cut them out of your

• 1:43:23Speaker 01

  life, family or not. I think family should be held in a higher standard than your friend or your whatever, because they're your family. They're the one who should be treating you good. So you're saying your loved ones are treating you bad, they're the ones that should, they're the last people that should be treating you bad. They're your loved ones. So if they're not treating you good, then, like I said, they're the one in violation. Not you for pursuing your path and, you know, and not giving them the attention, or not going to their house every other Saturday or whatever, like you're supposed to, whatever. It's their fault, or not their fault, but it's their responsibility to support you. And if they're not, then like anyone else who's not supporting you, they should either

• 1:44:06Speaker 01

  have a boundary between you and them, or be cut out of your life.

• 1:44:11Jocko Willink?

  I think that's fairly sound advice. I'll tell you that, a couple things from my perspective. First of all, I think that many people are negative in the world. And to coin a term that is used very often these days, a lot of people are haters. And they don't want you to succeed. And we would see that, we'd even see that in SEAL Teams, because SEAL Teams is a bunch of really super competitive guys, and everybody is competitive with each other. And when someone starts doing something well, other people can get jealous of them pretty quickly. And so that, like I had one friend of mine, who...

• 1:44:55Jocko Willink?

  He decided that, hey, he was gonna try and take like a year off or get, get orders to go to an Ivy League school while he was in the SEAL teams. And he had applied and actually got into one, you know, one of the best colleges in the world to go there for a year and get a degree. And, you know, that's awesome. And he came to me and, and he said, hey, you know, I've got some guys that are telling me I shouldn't do this. It's gonna be bad for my career and this, that and the other thing. And I said, bro,

• 1:45:29Jocko Willink?

  I hate to tell you this, these guys are just, they're haters. They're just jealous. The fact that you thought of this, the fact that you went on a limb, the fact that you made this happen, the fact that you put in application, the fact that you took the, the test to get into the school and now you're gonna go there, you're gonna have that on your resume, which is awesome. You know what? Don't worry about anybody else. They're, they're just, you know, I hate to use the word jealous, but they're jealous. The fact that you're gonna go out and make this happen, which I thought was, uh, I thought that was awesome. The other kinda contrary advice to what you just said is

• 1:46:05Jocko Willink?

  when people aren't approving what you're doing and they're saying negative things to you and they're not giving you the praise that you want for your, what you're doing,

• 1:46:15Jocko Willink?

  that's your fault. You're the one that's wanting praise. You're the one that's looking for approval. You're the one that wants all the support. Like, no, I don't expect anything from anybody, cause people are crazy, as I briefed earlier. And they're not gonna give you support. If they're one of these people that are, that are negative, they're gonna be negative no matter what you do. So you can't be, be hung up on getting their approval and getting their support. You go forth and conquer regardless of what people are trying to do to hold you back. No one's gonna hold you back. Who's gonna hold you back? How's that gonna happen? You don't let them hold you back.

• 1:46:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and I agree with that last part. You don't let them hold you, but, hold you back. But here, here, here's an example. Let's say.

• 1:46:55Speaker 01

  Let's say you're pursuing this, I don't know, business degree or something. Or you want to start a t-shirt company. And it's gonna, it takes all this time. You gotta really get your knowledge down and you really do all your research and stuff. And it takes a lot of time. Let's say it takes fifteen hours a day, every single day, while you're getting this thing up and running. But you visit your mom on the weekends typically. And you go down there, you help her with her yard work just because she wants company.

• 1:47:24Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:47:25Speaker 01

  You know, you do all this stuff. If you don't, she makes you feel guilty, you know, if you can't make it or, or, I don't know, you're sick or something. She makes you feel guilty. So you're under this, and when you grow up, it kind of gets ingrained in, into you. You know, like these relationships with your loved ones. And not to mention, they're your loved ones. They're supposed to love you, you know, and you're supposed to love them.

• 1:47:47Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:47:48Speaker 01

  So I think you do care about the support. I think that's a natural part of it. If that's your loved ones, I'm, I'm not saying like your friend or your neighbor is not recognizing my, my success or whatever. That's your loved ones typically. That's, if anyone's gonna praise you, you're gonna hope that they're the first ones.

• 1:48:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but you can't be hung up on it, especially if they're crazy.

• 1:48:09Speaker 01

  Right, and that's, that's my point.

• 1:48:11Jocko Willink?

  That was your point.

• 1:48:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, so.

• 1:48:12Jocko Willink?

  Accepted.

• 1:48:13Speaker 01

  So you say, you, you, that's how they can hold you back. If it's ingrained in you that you have to be there for your mom. If she's trained you from a little kid to be, to say, you owe me, I gave you life.

• 1:48:25Jocko Willink?

  Then, then again, that's your fault. If you're letting them hold you back, then that's your fault.

• 1:48:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:48:29Jocko Willink?

  You need to take ownership of it and move on.

• 1:48:30Speaker 01

  Yes, so yeah, exactly right. And that's what I mean by you create those barriers. You, you have to suck it up or, or cut them out of your life. And how, how you would say about, about other people or other situations when you're in a job or, or a leadership situation where you can make them understand. If you can make them understand what you're doing.

• 1:48:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:49Speaker 01

  That's ideal, where you can maintain the integrity of the relationship.

• 1:48:52Jocko Willink?

  You are correct. Now you just hit a home run. Because you're going back to the basic principles. You have to let people understand why. And you have to make them understand why it's gonna be beneficial for them in the long run. You know, I used to dealing with guys when we were working hard.

• 1:49:07Jocko Willink?

  You know, training guys for combat, or we were training for combat. And you think, oh, well, you know, you gotta let these guys get home to their families. You know, they gotta get home tonight. Let's let them out early. And I'd say, look, the best thing we can do for these guys to help them and their families is to train them as hard as possible. So in the long run, they come home from combat. That's what we're here to do.

• 1:49:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:25Jocko Willink?

  And everybody understands that message. So it's the same thing. You're right. When you explain to your family members, this is why I'm doing what I'm doing. This is how it's going to benefit me, which will thereby benefit you, which will thereby benefit our whole family. Yes, that is correct.

• 1:49:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:39Jocko Willink?

  Explain the why.

• 1:49:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:45Jocko Willink?

  Next question.

• 1:49:49Speaker 01

  What is the, what are the bullet points and keys to success for motivating and engaging your team of leaders?

• 1:49:58Jocko Willink?

  Well, first of all, we just kind of covered that when we talked with About About Face for a solid hour, which is, which is one of the questions here. I actually answered this question last time. So this is a question that you hear all the time. Is, you know, what can I do to motivate these guys? How can we get them engaged? And first of all, I want to say that leadership, although there are basic principles, fundamental principles that can be used, it is not something that can be bulletized. It is, it is like trying to bulletize how you play guitar, or trying to bulletize how you play the violin. It is a, it is an art. It is a practice. And there are many, many different ways to, to manipulate that instrument

• 1:50:43Jocko Willink?

  to make it make the noise that you want it to make. And that's what leadership is. Leadership is not follow these four steps and you will become a good leader. It doesn't work that way. It is an art. Now, again, just like there's principles behind music. There's principles behind leadership and that fundamental principles stay the same. But how you engage with those and the nuances involved in executing those those principles is what makes leadership so challenging. Which again, is why we have a book, which is why we have a business, which is why there's leadership schools around the world, because it is a very challenging thing to do. So, you know, the bullets are, I almost, after saying that, you know, what are the bullets?

• 1:51:26Jocko Willink?

  Well, you gotta build relationships, you gotta listen to people, you gotta give respect, you gotta, the main thing we talked about tonight with about face, you gotta answer that why. People gotta understand why you're doing what you're doing and understand what their perspective is. So you gotta communicate with them. It's all those things. But I think it's important to realize that leadership is a learning, a constant learning process. It's a nuanced tool. There aren't any bulletized lists that are gonna make you into a great leader tomorrow. What there are are principles that you can learn and understand and interpret and apply in different ways, with different amplitudes, at different times, with different personalities. It's mayhem. It's mayhem. That's what makes it so challenging and so fun.

• 1:52:11Jocko Willink?

  And I, that's what makes me love to talk about leadership because there's, it's an infinitely complex thing on, in so many different ways. But all that being said, it is something that does follow core principles. And so, learn those core principles, know those core principles, and that's what will make you a good leader. But don't look for a quick solution. Look for a comprehensive, a comprehensive mass of knowledge and technique and understanding that will make you a better leader.

• 1:52:54Speaker 01

  In your opinion, what are the best tactics in order to remain focused?

• 1:53:00Jocko Willink?

  Okay, th- this is individual for me because I know different people have different techniques. If you're, if you're using whatever techniques you have and they're not working well, then they're not working. So try mine.

• 1:53:14Jocko Willink?

  So mine are when I have to do something focused, no music, no video, no TV playing in the background, none of that. No phone, turn that off and, and get focused on the task at hand. So what are you going to do to focus on the task at hand? You have to predetermine. There's a, there's a thing we used to use in the SEAL team, SEAL teams. It's called task condition standard. Here's the task, here's the conditions that are involved in the task. And here's the standards that you have to complete the task to. So I like to think of when I have to focus on something, I set up my own task conditions and standards for it. And, and a good example for me was writing our book.

• 1:53:57Jocko Willink?

  When we were writing Extreme Ownership, Leif wrote about half of it. I wrote about half of it. We actually wrote a little bit more of half each because we, we both wrote chapters that aren't in there and, but it was a lot of writing to do. And how do you do that? How did I do it? I'll tell you. I set the task conditions and standards for what I needed to do. For me, it was, what did I have to do? The task was to write. The condition was I, I was trying to write the draft. So I knew it didn't have to be perfect and I got perfect out of my head because perfect can be bad. And the standard was I said, I'm every day I'm going to write a thousand words regardless. I'm going to write a thousand words and I tried to do it in an hour or less. So that's what I did.

• 1:54:40Jocko Willink?

  I made, you know, no music, no phone, no videos playing in the background. I have an hour, I'm going to sit down, I'm going to get this done. So to me, that's a form of motivation. When you say, okay, this is what I'm going to do. This is how I'm going to do it. This is how long it's going to take me. I'm going to get it done. I'm probably going to try and get it done faster than an hour. And I used to time myself and be like, hey, that only took me, you know, 49 minutes. That's pretty good.

• 1:55:00Speaker 01

  Kind of like a CrossFit exercise.

• 1:55:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, like you're going into it with a, with a, with a challenge. And then you go about it in a, in a disciplined way. And that's.

• 1:55:12Jocko Willink?

  Going to be the core of a lot of answers I give.

• 1:55:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I'm gonna disagree on a personal level. From a personal standpoint, I mean, with the no music thing. I think the music in my case helps. I think for a lot of people, music helps.

• 1:55:29Jocko Willink?

  It might. When I talk specifically about writing, then music does not help me.

• 1:55:34Speaker 01

  Especially music with like words, like if there's lyrics, you know, but if it's like, like some piano or something like that.

• 1:55:43Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:55:44Speaker 01

  That can help.

• 1:55:45Jocko Willink?

  Echo, you are clear to listen to piano as you create.

• 1:55:51Speaker 01

  Some violin, some orchestra. I think that would work too for us.

• 1:55:54Jocko Willink?

  Cello.

• 1:55:59Speaker 01

  Um, any, was there more to that one?

• 1:56:01Jocko Willink?

  No, I'm good.

• 1:56:03Speaker 01

  Any advice on balancing the thousands of things you have to do every day?

• 1:56:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:10Jocko Willink?

  Again, chapter in the book, it's called prioritize and execute. Prioritize and execute. That is the name of the chapter. That is a, one of the basic principles, one of the laws of combat that we use. And that is that you're going to have all these problems happening on the battlefield. They're all going to happen at the same time because Murphy's law. And when they do, if you try and handle them all at once, and you try and do them all at once, you will fail. So what you have to do is you have to prioritize them and execute. So in business, that looks the same way. You know, you got all these problems, all these, you know, initiatives that you're trying to start, these things you've got to handle. And that's, that's good. And that looks very similar on the battlefield. On a personal level, it's the same principle.

• 1:56:54Jocko Willink?

  But I'll tell you what I consider to be,

• 1:56:59Jocko Willink?

  for lack of a better word, um, I will, I will use this word. I will tell you the hack. A hack. The hack for this, uh, and this is no genius thing here. If you really want to get things done, make a list of what you need to do the next day, make it into priority.

• 1:57:22Jocko Willink?

  What you actually need to do is schedule the time that you're going to execute those tasks. This is a piece that a lot of people miss. So I guess it is a little bit bigger of a hack than.

• 1:57:34Jocko Willink?

  Then I gave it credit for. You have to say, okay, I've got to do these six things tomorrow. You've got to put on your schedule when you are going to do those things. And that really drives execution because it puts a time limit on it. And it makes you get on there and get it started and get it done. So you can move on to the next task. So task lists and calendars should actually be connected. You know intimately. And then, once you have that in place, you get up and you go and you get it done. Wake up early and make it happen.

• 1:58:10Speaker 01

  Prioritize and execute.

• 1:58:12Jocko Willink?

  That's what we do.

• 1:58:18Speaker 01

  New Year's resolutions.

• 1:58:22Speaker 01

  2016 is coming up in a few days. So.

• 1:58:28Speaker 01

  What's your one thing for 2016? That you need to do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier and or unnecessary.

• 1:58:37Jocko Willink?

  And that's, that's one of the New Year's resolution questions that we pulled out because I got a bunch of them. Because everyone's thinking, you know, what, what is, what are we all going to do for the big New Year's resolution? And. I mean, you seem pretty fired up by the New Year's resolution. So, so what are your thoughts here?

• 1:58:58Speaker 01

  My, uh, what like my personal New Year's resolution?

• 1:59:01Jocko Willink?

  And or thoughts therein.

• 1:59:05Speaker 01

  Uh, I, you know, I'm be honest, I haven't come up with any specific ones right now. Maybe I will, maybe I won't. Um, but I think, yeah, I think I'll evaluate. Where I want to be where I am and see if I can connect those dots. Whatever that looks like, hey, you know, I don't know yet, but we'll see.

• 1:59:30Jocko Willink?

  Well, that sounds real organized. Anyone that just heard that in the world, um, please ignore and delete from your mind.

• 1:59:42Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Well, actually, here's the funny thing is I think that resolutions are for the most part, little feel-good statements that people use to justify

• 1:59:56Jocko Willink?

  a delay in execution. That's what I think. So I say, don't make a new year's resolution for tomorrow. Don't execute then, execute now. Execute now. And when I say execute now, I mean now.

• 2:00:12Jocko Willink?

  And now, and now, and now, and continually execute what it is you're trying to do. And the other thing about a new year's resolution is it's a year. That's a big, long chunk of time. And that type of goal to anybody, I don't care who you are, a year is too long. It's too big of a chunk. So saying that you're gonna make that type of a long-term strategic goal, it's like shooting. When you shoot, if you've ever shot weapons before,

• 2:00:43Jocko Willink?

  if you look at the target, the long target that's 400 meters away, if you, if you look at a target as you look at it, your vision can't hold that focus and it becomes blurry. So you have to shift back to the front side of your weapon, which is only two and a half feet away. And then that becomes very clear and the, and the long distance target in the background fades a little bit, but that's okay because you can see that thing right in front of you and that's what you want to make happen. So what you want to do is you want to set those short-term

• 2:01:12Jocko Willink?

  goals that are closer than a year away. That's going to be blurry and it's going to lose its impact and you're going to not see it anymore. So make up that long-term strategic goal. That's fine, but make sure you make some short-term tactical goals that are closer. Now, now that being said.

• 2:01:32Jocko Willink?

  To close this out, this is the last question tonight. I would say,

• 2:01:37Jocko Willink?

  don't make a New Year's resolution to be a better person in 2016. I would say make a resolution to be a better person now.

• 2:01:50Jocko Willink?

  Make it a resolution of discipline to get better, smarter, faster, stronger, healthier, more productive, less agitated, to eat cleaner, live more, to go and do.

• 2:02:08Jocko Willink?

  Do all those things. But don't do them on New Year's Eve, don't do them on New Year's Day, do them now.

• 2:02:16Jocko Willink?

  That,

• 2:02:19Jocko Willink?

  that resolution of discipline, to work and follow through and maintain your will, that'll result in the freedom

• 2:02:33Jocko Willink?

  that you're looking for. And yes, you heard it once again. Discipline equals freedom.

• 2:02:40Speaker 01

  Discipline equals freedom.

• 2:02:42Jocko Willink?

  And with that,

• 2:02:45Jocko Willink?

  that's all I got. Thank you, Mr. Echo.

• 2:02:49Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:02:50Jocko Willink?

  Everyone that's out there listening, we appreciate it. We will see you next time.

• 2:02:57Jocko Willink?

  Keep getting better.