Jocko Underground: Being Supportive At Home.

How to get your team on board with training and not slack off. When to quit. When to pivot. Does every transgression deserve punishment / disciplinary action? No time for an effective workout routine. How to best be supportive at home. 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 the Jocko Underground Podcast, number 133, sitting here with Echo Charles.

• 0:05Jocko Willink?

  He just went on a very long, long story.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 0:09Jocko Willink?

  That was approximately 24 minutes in length. And it was about how someone else told a story that no one was interested in.

• 0:19Jocko Willink?

  And I was not interested in his story at all. And yet I sat there. So, you know, that's what we're doing. That's how we're kicking things off.

• 0:28Speaker 01

  I appreciate your patience, for sure.

• 0:30Jocko Willink?

  Did you really not realize until you were done?

• 0:35Jocko Willink?

  How ironic that story was?

• 0:37Speaker 01

  It was ironic, but I feel like it was kind of now that I'm thinking about it, I feel like it was like a message, you know? Like from the universe. It's like you gotta learn your own lesson. You know, it's like that kind of scenario. So.

• 0:48Jocko Willink?

  Good.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  Thanks for your involvement, man, for sure.

• 0:51Jocko Willink?

  Appreciate it. All right. Well, let's get to some Q and A.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 0:54Jocko Willink?

  What do we got?

• 0:55Speaker 01

  Jocko, my wife and I have four young kids and my wife feels that she's being called to stay home with them. She's leaving a great paying job that she likes, but the call to be home with the kids before they grow up is greater. I'm 100% support. Uh, her decision. I have coined an acronym, C H L, which is Chief Home Officer. As she will be running the house and raising our kids, my wife would admit I'm more orderly and willing to help. Um, I like things in their place and a clean house. I often joke that I'm going to come home to a mess and she will be eating bonbons while the kids run wild. The order of the house is sometimes a point of contention.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  My wife grew up in a lot of clutter in her, in her family, but she is much more conscientious about this than she was. I truly believe she will create structure and be a rock star, C H L. She starts staying home with it in the coming weeks. What steps can I take to change my perspective and take more ownership of myself when it comes to expectations? I know I need to be willing to help and that things aren't always going to be perfect. I also know it's important to show gratitude for what she does. Bottom line is, I want to be a better father and husband without being bothered by the little things. Thanks for getting me on the path.

• 2:12Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah. You luckily have a pretty good perspective here and you realize that you kind of need to get over it, get over some stuff. Because with four kids, trying to keep things perfectly ordered is a waste of time and energy and it's not gonna help your kids or your wife or your relationship.

• 2:36Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna have, wait, letting the kids run wild? I hope your kids are running wild, but that's what you want. You want your kids running wild.

• 2:44Jocko Willink?

  That's what you want. You don't want them totally out of control. You want to put some parameters, but you want them to be like, that's what, that's what having kids. That's how they grow up. That's how they become interactive with other human beings. That's how they test their limitations. That's how they learn. What are you gonna put them in boot camp? No. Have them run a while. So it's awesome. So we don't want to waste a bunch of time and effort and frustration because the towels aren't aligned, right?

• 3:16Jocko Willink?

  That being said, look, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, a level of cleanliness, functionally clean.

• 3:27Jocko Willink?

  You want to functionally clean, you want to set a functionally clean standard that we're gonna hold as a family, by the way.

• 3:37Jocko Willink?

  Look, when things aren't functionally clean, you can't find things, you trip over things, things get broken, things get lost, things are disordered, right? That's a problem.

• 3:50Jocko Willink?

  But there's also, you know, anally retentive OCD paranoia about the towels being aligned, which is bad. So what are the standards we're talking about? I'm talking about standards like, look, the kitchen, when we get done cooking at night, before we go to bed, we clean the kitchen. The food's cleaned up. We don't want ants or other freaking bugs in our house. When we're not, when we're done playing with the toys, we put them away.

• 4:17Jocko Willink?

  Do they have to be aligned in the toy box? Nope, they just gotta be out of, they should be off the floor.

• 4:23Jocko Willink?

  The bed's gotta be assembled and notice I said the bed's gotta be assembled. It doesn't need to be made.

• 4:31Jocko Willink?

  It just means the covers have to be on it. The pillows have to be at the top. The covers are not on the floor. They're not in a ball. They're on it. It takes. It probably takes four minutes to make a bed or six minutes to make a bed. It takes thirty seconds to assemble a bed, right? Put the comforter back on. It was all boom, boom, boom. Pills at the top. You're good.

• 4:58Jocko Willink?

  The garbage, when it gets full, we empty it. We're not cramming it. There's not stuff falling out. Dirty clothes going in the hamper.

• 5:07Jocko Willink?

  That's it. No big deal. Dirty clothes are going in the hamper. We're not leaving them strewn on the floor.

• 5:15Jocko Willink?

  So those are kind of these functional standards that I'm talking about.

• 5:20Jocko Willink?

  Is there gonna be dust on things? Yep.

• 5:23Jocko Willink?

  Is the floor not gonna be swept? Yep. Are the kids' clothes getting ironed? No, they are not.

• 5:33Jocko Willink?

  Is the Tupperware drawer perfectly ordered? Nope, it's not. Uh, is the microwave clean? Cause you know, you put spaghetti in the microwave and it explodes and there's like little things in there, right? Is that an inspectable daily item? No, it's not. Doesn't really matter.

• 5:53Jocko Willink?

  Is the fridge? A little bit sketchy.

• 5:57Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean? A little bit. It's a little bit sketchy. Like it, we're not, we're not gonna put it in a, what's, we're not putting any commercial for fridges. No, cause it's a little bit sketchy. There's like some stuff over there. It's like, you know, it's a little bit sketchy. The windows? How often are we cleaning windows?

• 6:20Jocko Willink?

  Not super often. Like, oh, the kids' face prints and fingerprints on it. Who cares? I don't care. I actually enjoy it. I enjoy when my kid, my microwave's a little bit jacked up. I enjoy when the freaking, there's fingerprints on the counter. You know what I mean? You got the stainless steel fridge. There's kids' fingerprints on it? Good. Good. And by the way, if this bothers you, probably your ego bothering you.

• 6:45Jocko Willink?

  Either that it's some weirdness bothering you. Cause it shouldn't bother you. Rug vacuumed? Eh.

• 6:53Jocko Willink?

  Occasionally. But I'm not freaking out because there's some lint out there. You know, a long, a long time ago, someone, I had a picture of my gym floor. Aftermath picture of the gym floor.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  Hell, yeah.

• 7:06Jocko Willink?

  And someone chimed in, you know, would you get some discipline and, you know, clean your floor?

• 7:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:13Jocko Willink?

  Don't care. Functional space. Oh, there's chalk on my gym floor. Gee, I use it.

• 7:21Jocko Willink?

  You know, what's the point in making my bed? I gotta get in there again and tonight. You know what I'm saying?

• 7:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:26Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna push the freaking covers underneath the thing. Like the sides.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Hospital corners.

• 7:34Jocko Willink?

  Hospital corners, am I doing that? No, I'm not doing that. I don't even, when I get into bed, I, if I go to a hotel. And I get in the bed, I pull the freaking, uh, covers out from being tucked in. Cause it's too tight.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  Too tight.

• 7:49Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 7:52Jocko Willink?

  We're doing functional cleanliness because we live in a functional space.

• 7:58Jocko Willink?

  It's not a museum in, in, when I went to OCS, Officer Candidate School.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 8:02Jocko Willink?

  They had this term museum, I think it was museum piece. So guys would have like a fake T-shirt. It wasn't fake, it was a real T-shirt, but it had been folded to the perfect standards and they never wore it.

• 8:16Jocko Willink?

  Uh, they had. Museum piece boots. That were highly polished, but they never actually wore them. They had museum piece belt buckles. Cause if you got a scratch in your belt buckle, you're getting in trouble. So I'm not going to put that one in my inspection locker, gonna have a museum piece in there. You ever been to those houses? You ever been to someone's house where you can tell like, it seems like no one lives there?

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, Scotty Lewis. So, you know, Scotty, Squatty Lewis, yeah, all day. And I have more autism, but he's a cleanly guy. And that's the first thing I thought of, by the way, when you're like freaking hospital corner, like all this stuff, bro. We went to his house, Big Island, by the way. And yeah, I remember thinking, wow, this is like a museum cleanliness scenario. And it kind of told part of the story. So long, a long way of me saying, yeah, I do.

• 9:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Did, do you, when's the last time you talked to Squatty?

• 9:04Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't know, the other day.

• 9:06Jocko Willink?

  Have you been to his house now?

• 9:07Speaker 01

  No.

• 9:08Jocko Willink?

  Did he get married?

• 9:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. He's married, kids, the whole deal.

• 9:11Jocko Willink?

  Do you think that the house is that clean?

• 9:16Speaker 01

  It's not as clean. I would imagine that it's not as clean as the house that I saw. But you know, if I know Squatty Lewis, which I do, I'm sure there is some Squatty Lewis influence. Cracking up in there. Yeah, for sure.

• 9:30Jocko Willink?

  Functionally clean is what we're looking for. Functionally clean is what we're looking for. You know, it's another thing like weapons, like you can clean your gun to a point where you're cleaning the bluing off the gun, right? It's it's you and you're spending so much time. You should have shot more.

• 9:50Jocko Willink?

  Like if you went and shot for an hour and then you cleaned your weapon for two hours,

• 9:57Jocko Willink?

  what would have been better? You shot for two hours and cleaned it for an hour. It wasn't quite as clean, but it's functionally clean. It's literally no negative impact. In fact, it's kind of positive.

• 10:09Jocko Willink?

  Functionally clean is what we're looking for. Just like, well, that's what we want with our weapons. That's what we want with our house. And by the way, kids can do a lot.

• 10:19Jocko Willink?

  Kids can do a lot. Get them after cleaning. Hey, just like everything else, don't make it, don't make them hate cleaning because they'll turn into slobs. You ever seen the kid that goes away for the first time out of their house and everything's a disaster? Everything's a slob?

• 10:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:32Jocko Willink?

  That's they probably had Squatty Lewis for a dad.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Relief.

• 10:37Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm saying? I'm never freaking cleaning again. It's like, no, that's not, we, we want to make it fun. We want to let them understand the why. We want to make it rewarding.

• 10:49Jocko Willink?

  Let your wife, the chief home officer, let her freaking run the show. Let her set the standards, dude. Everything that you say to her that criticizes the way she's doing her job, I don't care how well intentioned you are, there's zero possibility that it lands in a positive way.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  I think you're right about that.

• 11:10Jocko Willink?

  Okay, maybe it's a 1% possibility, but I shouldn't even say that. I think it's zero.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 11:14Jocko Willink?

  When you say, hey, you know, the dishes should be shut up.

• 11:20Jocko Willink?

  Don't say it.

• 11:22Jocko Willink?

  When you say, you know, I noticed that this area of the floor is be quiet. So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground Podcast. So if you want to continue to listen,

• 11:36Jocko 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

• 12:19Jocko Willink?

  to strengthen 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.