Standard Directive 010: Stop Scrolling

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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Jocko Willink?

  Your phone is so distracting, isn't it?

• 0:06Jocko Willink?

  Your phone distracts you all day long. It's just a huge distraction.

• 0:14Jocko Willink?

  Well, you know what? We don't want to blame your phone. I guess it's the apps in your phone. These apps are so distracting. The games and the news feeds and the social media.

• 0:27Jocko Willink?

  All of them. I know, I know some people that waste hours, hours playing little games on their phone.

• 0:38Jocko Willink?

  Games that are built and designed to release dopamine and keep you playing.

• 0:47Jocko Willink?

  And the games and the engineers, that's their focus.

• 0:54Jocko Willink?

  Same thing with the news feed. Right? What are the news, what are the news feed doing? Constantly updating information on the big story. New big story. That you need to stay up to date on. It's the big thing that's happening. You don't want to miss it.

• 1:12Jocko Willink?

  The news, so distracting.

• 1:17Jocko Willink?

  Doesn't even seem like they should be allowed to run so many stories because it's distracting you. And those game engineers shouldn't be able to design those games because they're distracting you. Maybe they should be illegal.

• 1:31Jocko Willink?

  And of course, there's social media. There's Twitter. There's the Gram. There's the Facebooky and Snapchat and Tik Tok. All 100% designed to lure you in and then keep you trapped in their little algorithm.

• 1:50Jocko Willink?

  So,

• 1:53Jocko Willink?

  those are some forces of distraction that we have to contend with.

• 2:00Jocko Willink?

  Powerful forces, by the way, designed by brilliant people that are making millions, billions of dollars to keep you distracted. That's their sole goal, is keeping you focused on that screen and not on your life. Can you believe that they do that to you? Can you believe it?

• 2:23Jocko Willink?

  Well, guess what?

• 2:26Jocko Willink?

  It's not the fault of the games, or the news,

• 2:31Jocko Willink?

  or the social media platforms and the algorithms.

• 2:36Jocko Willink?

  It's not their fault. There's only one person to blame, and that's you. They cannot make you look at their junk, at their feed, but you do it voluntarily.

• 2:51Jocko Willink?

  You click and scroll and look and get that little dopamine hit that they dole out to you over and over again, and you snort it up like an addict.

• 3:07Jocko Willink?

  And we're trying to blame them. Are they to blame for that? Are they?

• 3:12Jocko Willink?

  Are they to blame for our actions? I actually say, no.

• 3:18Jocko Willink?

  We are to blame. I am to blame. We give them control when we click and scroll. We give up our time and our thoughts and our freedom.

• 3:33Jocko Willink?

  But we don't have to do that. We do not have to accept this. We don't have to bow down to these dopamine dealers, these thought thieves, these mind murderers. We don't have to accept it.

• 3:48Jocko Willink?

  Get control.

• 3:51Jocko Willink?

  Free your mind, stop scrolling, stop clicking, and start living.