Jocko Underground: Character Development | Parkinson's Law: Work Expands to Fill The Time Needed To Finish | Dealing w/ a Jealous Ex | Home Schooling

Parkinson's Law: Work Expands to fill the time available for completion. Taking over a leadership role to fix a failing team. Tips to prioritize and execute. Tips for Character Development. Your circle of friends. Mistakes with bringing a "military mind set" to civilian teams. Dealing with a jealous ex. Home Schooling. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Underground Podcast number 58, sitting here with Echo Charles. Echo Charles, how long does it take to plan a SEAL mission?

• 0:11Speaker 01

  30 minutes, more, less?

• 0:14Jocko Willink?

  More.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  More, right? More than you have.

• 0:17Jocko Willink?

  So this is a common question that I used to ask the SEALs. It'd be like, how, how long will it take you to plan this mission? And guys, guys say, well, you know, four hours, or six hours, or eight hours, or one hour. And the answer actually is, this is actually what the answer is, it's a half an hour longer than the amount of time that you had to plan the mission. Cause that's what it takes to get everything aligned. You're almost there, then you gotta freaking make some last minute adjustments. Now, I recently discovered there's a, a theory, a law around this, and it's actually called Parkinson's Law. And Parkinson's Law, what

• 0:53Jocko Willink?

  it states is that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Now, in, in a planning for like a SEAL mission, there's always a little bit extra to do. That's why it expands beyond it by about a half an hour. You give somebody 20 minutes to plan, it's gonna take them 50. You give them an hour, it's gonna take an hour 30. So, this guy, his name was Cyril "North Coat" Parkinson. He was alive, born in 1909, lived to 1993. He was a naval historian. He was an author. And he served in the Territorial Armor Army, which is like the reserves over in England. And he actually ended up teaching quite a

• 1:36Jocko Willink?

  bit at school, at military schools. But he made up this law, and the law was kind of, and I read through it, it's, it's a spoof. He's kind of making fun of, he's making fun of it, right? It's sort of like my statement of like, it takes a half an hour. Like, the theory is that it takes one half hour longer than, he, that's what he, that's what he's doing too. And he put a bunch of formulations around it. And, and he made other ones, but you know, the, uh, the number of new employees hired annually over the number of employees who want to be promoted by hiring new employees. He goes through all these formulations. They're funny. And that was for one of his other laws. But he just talks about how bureaucracies form,

• 2:16Jocko Willink?

  and how, how they grow, and what their effectiveness and efficiency is. But this particular law is interesting.

• 2:25Jocko Willink?

  And it's interesting to pay attention to because it allows you to take some control over time, right? And knowing that if you can compress time, you can get more done. Do you like, let's say I have a call with an East Coast client that's at seven o'clock in the morning. Takes me half an hour, you know, to get done, get showered. My workout, I'm going to be super efficient and it's going to be a good freaking workout.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:54Jocko Willink?

  And I'm going to get, I'm not going to waste any time. I'm, I'm in there. I'm getting it. If I have, my first call's at nine, bro, my workout's going to take longer and it's not going to be necessarily, look, sometimes it's nice. You go in there, you get a little bit of a better workout because you have more time. But when you're on a timeline, you get more efficient. This also applies to if you, if you're going on a hike or you're going on a mission and you have whatever size rucksack you have, it's going to get filled up. So the bigger rucksack you have, the more crap you're going to bring. The more, here's another one, your house. The bigger your house is, remember when you had an apartment?

• 3:36Speaker 01

  Yep, I do.

• 3:37Jocko Willink?

  Back in the day?

• 3:38Speaker 01

  Back in the day, yeah.

• 3:39Jocko Willink?

  And you didn't have a bunch of stuff?

• 3:41Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 3:41Jocko Willink?

  You had like very limited stuff.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 3:43Jocko Willink?

  Now you got a big house and you got a lot of stuff.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  With a garage too.

• 3:48Jocko Willink?

  With the garages I've been in, which is kind of filled up with stuff as well. Do your cars fit in your garage anymore?

• 3:53Speaker 01

  They do now. We, uh, we recently, very recently just made the decision to go hard and clear it out. Yeah.

• 4:02Jocko Willink?

  So these, if you put limitations on yourself, it can actually increase your efficiency. If you set yourself up with a types, tight schedule, it can drive your tempo. It can drive your pace. If you give yourself unlimited time, if you give yourself unlimited resources, you're going to use all those resources. You're going to use all that time. Constraints that you put on yourself are very effective. Uh, you know, I, we're, we're, uh, Nick La, Nick Lavery, who's a special forces guy. He's on the podcast. He lost his leg in Afghanistan and he's got one of his legs, a prosthetic leg. But one of the things he talks about is that.

• 4:47Jocko Willink?

  When he puts his leg, when he says, look, when you have a prosthetic leg, when you put that leg on, the timer starts. Because there's sweat gonna build up, the skin's starting to get worn, the, you're, you're, basically, your body changes a little bit over time, you know, you, you, you gotta tighten that thing up, you either get swelling, or you get reduction. And so all these things are going on. So when you put, when he puts his leg on, he has X, you know, it, well, depending on the weather, depending on the temperature, depending on the activity, he knows when he puts that leg on, he has got to take advantage of that mobility. And that is something, all, all these things that I'm talking about, the reason I'm talking about them is because they can really help us, if we understand

• 5:32Jocko Willink?

  Parkinson's law, and we understand the hazards of Parkinson's law, then we can put things into effect that will help us avoid falling into that trap.

• 5:44Speaker 01

  Makes sense. Yeah, the, one of the, um, the things, right, is like,

• 5:53Jocko Willink?

  That's pretty specific.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Is like, um, I don't know, maybe, okay, you ever did this, or maybe your wife didn't did this, or maybe you know someone who did this where, that you live with, where it's like, okay, let's say your house is kinda messy, let's say it's normal messy, but someone's coming over. And they're like, oh shit, I'm gonna be there in fifteen minutes, and you start, oh, I don't want them to see my mess, right, and you start cleaning up, bro, that's like a solid, quick, clean job, you know, it's kind of the same thing.

• 6:20Jocko Willink?

  It'd be not bad.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, it'll, yeah, it'll probably be, I mean, in my experience, it's usually pretty solid, you know, cause you gotta, but it's, yeah, it's the kind of the same thing, it's like, oh, the clock is running, you're not, you're not dilly-dallying, you're not like going through drawers and be like, oh, I remember this thing, do I need it, do I not, you're just making decisions.

• 6:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, one of the little quotes I saw around this thing is, if you wait till the last minute, it only takes a minute.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 6:45Jocko Willink?

  No, I don't appreciate that. Now, one thing that I mess up, I, where I have a problem is, I think I don't want to be late for anything and therefore, let's say I'm coming to record the podcast and I'm like, okay, I'm meeting Echo at four thirty at night. Okay, four thirty. And I get done with a call at four and I'm like, you know what? I need gas. And I can get, I technically, I can get, I can drive here, stop, or drive to the gas station, stop, get gas and then continue here and then be here before thirty. But there's like a one percent chance that I'm here at four thirty-three and so I don't do it. So I could have, I, it

• 7:25Jocko Willink?

  cost me three minutes of being late, but it, but now when I drive home, I waste twelve minutes, go into the gas station, get in the gas filled and all that stuff. So I tend on the, I need to do a better job of just fitting stuff in there. Just get it done. Just, hey, look, I'll be a little bit late, but no factor. Deal with it. Like you were late today for this. I could have gassed. I could have gone to the grocery store or whatever. You know what I'm saying?

• 7:51Speaker 01

  You could have.

• 7:52Jocko Willink?

  You're on Hawaiian time for us.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, well, yeah. But that's, okay. And then there's this factor too, where it's kind of along those lines as well, where, okay, you, I'm assuming you never did this because of your college experience that I know about. You weren't like this, but I was like this, where, let's say they're like, okay, we've got this paper due. And it's going to, in two weeks, you know, this paper is due and it's about this. And, bro, to me, two weeks, I don't even have to start till next week. You know, like, bruh, I could do it in one week. And then one week turns into like four days now you have left, you know, to, to turn in four days and three days, and then I have one day to do it. And I didn't even start. Like, I think that's a common thing for a lot of us college students.

• 8:34Jocko Willink?

  It's definitely a common thing. And it is almost embarrassing for me. I would, I would literally be like done with stuff a week in advance. Like, it was so stupid.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that makes sense. And there's a whole nother thing, but.

• 8:49Jocko Willink?

  By the way, I'm not trying to like humble brag. I was a twenty-eight-year-old man at this point. This was my job. This wasn't, I wasn't going to a party. I wasn't meeting a girl after class or before class. I wasn't. So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground Podcast. So if you want to continue to listen.

• 9:13Jocko Willink?

  Go to JacoUnderground.com and subscribe and we're doing this, we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their control and we are doing this so that we can support the Jocko Podcast, which will remain as is free for all, as long as we can keep it that way. But we, but we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors. And we're doing it so we can give you more control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us. And to do that, we are, we're building a website right now where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen

• 9:58Jocko Willink?

  this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So thank you. It's JacoUnderground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you. Just email [email protected] and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.