421: This Is Why People Don't Achieve What They Set Out To Achieve.

>Join Jocko Underground< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Why people don't reach their goals. Jocko Willink and Echo Charles. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 421 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

• 0:05Echo Charles?

  Good evening.

• 0:06Jocko Willink?

  So here we are. It's January 15th, 2024. We're in the middle of the def reset.

• 0:16Jocko Willink?

  And people have New Year's resolutions that they made. And I heard something the other day that most people, the averages, people make it to January 13th before they quit.

• 0:32Jocko Willink?

  13 days of discipline is the average. After you hype yourself up and get ready is 13 days is the average before you quit, before a normal person quits. So obviously, we're not quitting. We're staying on the path. But this isn't just about, when I started thinking about that, I started thinking about the fact that this is just another goal that people set for themselves, that your New Year's resolution should be, should be wrapped around some kind of goal. It shouldn't just be a thing. It should be a goal. It's got to be a thing that you're going to do in order to achieve a goal. And as I'm thinking about the fact that people don't achieve their goals in life, that's normal. It's very normal for people

• 1:16Jocko Willink?

  to not achieve what they set out to achieve.

• 1:19Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 1:20Jocko Willink?

  Look, we see people that pull it off, right? When we watch sports, we see people that pull it off. When we watch a rock and roll star, they did what they said they were going to do, right? But that's such a small, little, tiny group. And then, of course, there's people that normal that you might not, you might not see them, but you know that they ran a marathon. You know that they, right? So there's, there's people that definitely achieve some of their goals. They're out there. But man. A lot of people don't. A lot of people, and sometimes when they achieve, they run the marathon, but they fell apart somewhere else. So there's, there's a focus that comes in, but they let everything else go, which is a problem.

• 2:05Jocko Willink?

  Just because someone's really good at marathon running, doesn't mean they're good at their finances or their business, just because someone's really good at jujitsu. The classic example is jujitsu. Just because someone's good at jujitsu, doesn't mean that they're good at life. Various aspects of life, whether that's relationships, whether that's business, whether that's waking up on time, whether that's health, right? You would think that someone's into jujitsu, they're gonna wanna be in good shape, right? Physical conditioning. But that's not guaranteed at all. So what happens? What happens?

• 2:43Jocko Willink?

  That we don't achieve our goals? What happens that causes people to not achieve their goals? So the first thing I was thinking about is what I already kinda said, people don't have clear goals in the first place. So they have like some little nascent idea in their head of what they think would be nice.

• 3:01Echo Charles?

  Yeah, or better.

• 3:02Jocko Willink?

  Or better.

• 3:05Jocko Willink?

  But they don't actually say, okay, what is, what, what am I saying? They have a, a positive idea, but it's like a cloud, right? It's like a cloud. It's up there, it kinda looks nice, but, but what is it? They don't know what it is. So I think number one, the number one thing, if you want to achieve your goals, you gotta take that cloud, that idea that you have, and you gotta formulate that thing, you gotta write it down. You gotta write it down.

• 3:36Jocko Willink?

  What are you going to do? What is your goal? What are you trying to achieve? Now, I'll, I'll tell you, for me, the way I am, I, I, if I wanna do something, it's just like, doesn't go out of my brain. When I have something in my mind that I wanna get done, it just is in there. I think about it all the time. But sometimes even me, the smaller steps of the thing that you gotta do, if you don't write them down, they're not gonna happen. Writing things down like that, if you think about human evolution, the ability to write things down has to be one of the main propellants

• 4:19Jocko Willink?

  of our race as humans to create and evolve and get to where we are. If you don't write things down,

• 4:32Jocko Willink?

  they're not happening. I was a crazy checklist person.

• 4:36Jocko Willink?

  I'm less of it now, but boy, I was crazy.

• 4:40Echo Charles?

  How do you, as far as the process goes, because you know how you say, hey, when you get it in your mind, you, your, it's on, like you're gonna do it or whatever, which I've witnessed firsthand, by the way. So the, the, obviously, I'm not gonna refute that, but how do you discern? Because all the things that you've done or set out to do or whatever, that's not all the things that popped in your mind.

• 4:58Jocko Willink?

  So in fact, I can tell you right now, I told Dave Burke this the other day. Good deal, Dave. Yeah, I execute, I execute like 10%. Like, there's a lot of things in there that I wanna do.

• 5:08Echo Charles?

  How do you make the cut? You know, like, how do you know what makes the cut? How do you?

• 5:11Jocko Willink?

  I'll tell you how I make the cut. Is that, all those, looking at all those clouds? I'm like, okay, this cloud, this is the cloud that I'm gonna grab and pull down here and write it down. I'm gonna do this thing.

• 5:20Echo Charles?

  Yeah, so.

• 5:20Jocko Willink?

  You can't, you're right, you can't grab every cloud that floats by. You gotta discern, okay, this one is an executable, pragmatic thing that can be done.

• 5:31Echo Charles?

  So, yeah, so.

• 5:32Jocko Willink?

  And I'm not saying there's not a stretch to it.

• 5:34Echo Charles?

  Yeah, I would think there's a hierarchy and then there's that little baseline of like, or that little, like, what do you call the, the threshold, right? What, so what, can you think of anything off the top of your head over the years that you're like, shit, I almost did that, but like, I didn't, didn't make the cut, but it's still kinda, you know, like.

• 5:49Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I got all kinds of things, but you know what's a good way to talk about is, so, like, writing books?

• 5:54Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 5:55Jocko Willink?

  I have books and, and like Final Spin, right?

• 5:59Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 6:00Jocko Willink?

  Why did I write Final Spin? Because I have a bunch of ideas like that. That was the one that kind of bubbled to the surface and. Solidified the most.

• 6:08Echo Charles?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:10Jocko Willink?

  I have all kinds of little ideas, little nascent ideas that are floating around. And sometimes you see one, you're like, okay, this and it comes back to you the next day and it comes back to the next day and you just need to go. So I think they bubbled to the surface. I don't know how much needing, like, you know what I'm talking about? You need dough. Like, I don't know how much of that, I'm sure I'm doing some of that too, where I'm putting pressure and like squeezing and see what pops up, what bubbles to the surface. Heating them all and see which ones rise.

• 6:38Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 6:39Jocko Willink?

  So you're kind of doing, I think I'm doing that subconsciously, sometimes consciously. Sometimes I'll be like, yeah, this is, sometimes a little idea float by and I see it.

• 6:47Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 6:48Jocko Willink?

  And you're like, oh, that's a good one. Boom, grab it.

• 6:50Echo Charles?

  Yeah, so but have you, and I'm speaking from experience, like, I really want to know this, because. So I'll have ideas that'll hit me super hard and be like, fuck, that freaking idea is good. And then like the next week, I'm like, bro, what was I even thinking? Like, that doesn't even make, it makes way less sense than, you know? But then, but some are like, yeah, it's a pretty solid idea. And then maybe like a few months later, be like, hey, like, this, that idea actually seems like a better idea now. Maybe I learned some, like, where's the, you know, like, where's the, where's the line?

• 7:19Jocko Willink?

  I think they all go into like a 30 day dry age procedure.

• 7:22Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 7:23Jocko Willink?

  Right? Like me.

• 7:24Echo Charles?

  That makes sense, yeah.

• 7:24Jocko Willink?

  So you're just, you got all these ideas. Every once in a while, you take, I'll put that one in the dry age locker and see what happens. Maybe it turns moldy. Maybe you look at it three days later and you're like, that was dumb.

• 7:33Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 7:33Jocko Willink?

  But three days later, you look at it, so it's still clean, looking good. And then a month later, you say to yourself, and by the way, it, it kind of expands. You all of a sudden end up with these other parts of the idea and you're, uh, Mikey and the Dragons is a good one.

• 7:46Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 7:46Jocko Willink?

  Mikey and the Dragons, but just that hit me. I didn't let that thing dry age at all.

• 7:51Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 7:51Jocko Willink?

  I was like, this is a good idea. I'm doing it right now. Plus, it was also a, an executable idea that I could execute that day. Wrote that thing in a day.

• 8:02Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 8:03Jocko Willink?

  I mean, obviously, it's only, you know, whatever, takes 20 minutes to read, so it probably took me 30 minutes to write.

• 8:08Echo Charles?

  Yeah, but it's rhymes. Like, that's kind of a lot.

• 8:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but rhymes aren't that hard.

• 8:14Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 8:15Jocko Willink?

  Really.

• 8:15Echo Charles?

  An English major.

• 8:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So you have this idea, you can execute it right now. Now, if that idea would have been a big, long novel, probably would have sat in the dry age for a little while because I got, I know it's going to take a lot more to, to execute it. Final spin, take more time to execute on. So. If you don't write these things down now, like I said, for me, I have this idea. It's like, I know I'm doing it. Maybe if I'd never written a book before, I'd say, I better write this down and, and capture this and commit to it.

• 8:46Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 8:47Jocko Willink?

  But since I write books all the time, it's just part of the protocol of life is like, oh yeah, you get an idea, you execute on it.

• 8:53Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 8:54Jocko Willink?

  But, and same thing with like, okay, I need to write a thousand words a day. I know that's how I write a book. A thousand words a day. I know that's how I write a book. If I didn't have that part of the protocol, I'd have to be like, okay, I need to write three chapters today. I need to write whatever. You'd have to write it down. Cause I, I have to write down smaller steps. And when I'm doing a project, dude, I'm, I'm making a list of everything I gotta do and boom, boom, boom, boom. This is what I gotta do to make this happen. It's a, when you write down what you're gonna do, it's a, it's a mission statement.

• 9:27Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 9:28Jocko Willink?

  Right? I don't want to get all crazy because people talk about that. Like what is it? The vision board?

• 9:32Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 9:32Jocko Willink?

  Mission statement and all this stuff. Not, look. If, if it takes you doing that to put something on paper, do it. Do it. Well, what's a mission statement? A mission statement in the military, who, what, when, where, why, and how? And what you have to focus on, this is what you need to do. We'll probably get into this. You need to understand why you're doing what you're doing. What is the long-term benefit of this mission that you have? Why are you doing it? That has to be solid. Because if the reason why isn't strong enough, it's not gonna carry you through the challenges that you are going to face, face in the future. So when you write down

• 10:17Jocko Willink?

  your mission of, of this goal that you have, you have to go through, you know, who, what, when, where, how, and why, and make sure that the why is the strongest thing, because you might have to adapt on how you do something.

• 10:30Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 10:31Jocko Willink?

  Cause you might come into some obstacle that you didn't expect. And it's real easy to say, well, you don't expect this and throw the mission away. Whereas you say, wait a second, why did I do, need to do this? Oh yeah. Because it's gonna improve these various aspects of my life.

• 10:44Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 10:45Jocko Willink?

  When we made that the planet, the planner that we made at Echelon Front, it's execute, execute, execute. That's what it was called now. That's because that's what it says on the cover, right?

• 10:55Jocko Willink?

  One of the unique things about that planner is the way we formatted it, you're looking at your strategic goals every day. So if you have goals, you can't look at your daily plan without remembering, oh yeah, that's right. I'm trying to do this thing. So if you keep your strategic goals front of mind, which you should do. If you were going to take, what is it? If you were going to take, if you're going to meditate, if you're going to take a moment

• 11:25Jocko Willink?

  daily, if you're going to take five minutes, I would say, look, be grateful, pray to your God, do what you gotta do. But if you want to do something in addition to those things like pragmatic, then I would recommend that you think about what your strategic goals are. But what, where are you going? Because that can guide so many decisions that you're making on a daily basis, on a minute by minute basis. If you know where you're supposed to be going.

• 11:52Jocko Willink?

  If you don't, you will kind of wallow around. You don't really know where you're going. If you, I mean, imagine you're going on a hike and you don't know where you're going. How long is your break?

• 12:03Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean? How long is your break? Your break might be 10 minutes, it might be 20 minutes, it might be an hour.

• 12:10Jocko Willink?

  Are you going to push up that hill? Or are you going to take another, if you don't know where you're going, it doesn't really matter. You're going to take the easiest route and that's what happens in our daily lives. We just go, oh, well, you know, I'm not, it's no big deal.

• 12:23Jocko Willink?

  Another point.

• 12:26Jocko Willink?

  You can't, when you're in a leadership position, you can't hold other people accountable. If they don't know what they're being held accountable for, or they don't know what the standards are, or they don't know what the expectations are. Right? Like I can't come in here and say, hey Echo, why is there garbage still in the can? You'd be like, well, what does this have to do with me, right? What, I need to tell you, hey, when we start the podcast, the garbage needs to be empty every single day. And you'd say, oh, okay. I didn't know that was a standard. Cool. I got it. You know what I mean? But if I don't, if I just throwing standards out at you or throwing accusations at you, or trying to hold you accountable for things that you didn't know about, what good is it? It doesn't make any sense whatsoever. But we but we expect that we can hold ourselves accountable and we don't even know

• 13:10Jocko Willink?

  what our own expectations are for ourselves. That doesn't make any sense, does it? Yeah. So you need to write down what the mission is so that you can follow the guidelines and hold yourself accountable to what you're supposed to do.

• 13:27Jocko Willink?

  Make sure that whatever you're trying to do is actually achievable. If you tell me that you want to be in the NBA, that's probably not achievable. But if you say, hey, I want to play basketball five days a week because I enjoy it and it's going to get me in shape.

• 13:45Jocko Willink?

  And I want to say, I want to be on the freaking beer league. And I'm going to play five times a week and I'm going to try and score this many points, right? Like, as a matter of fact, this whole, you know, the whole like smart thing when it comes to goals? There's a, there's an acronym that's very common. People talk about you make your goals smart and it stands for specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bound, meaning you have this much time to get it done. And there's a reason that that acronym exists.

• 14:20Jocko Willink?

  Because it's telling you to write down the goal and doctrinalize it, codify it, quantify it. This is what I'm going to do. This is what I am going to do. That's step number one. That's failure number one. Failure number one is people don't write down exactly what it is they are trying to do. Failure number one. Failure number two

• 14:50Jocko Willink?

  is they don't come up with any kind of plan.

• 14:56Jocko Willink?

  You know what it is you're trying to, you know where it is you're trying to go, but you're not, you don't know how to get there.

• 15:04Jocko Willink?

  What you have to figure out what tactical moves you are going to make in order to reach your achievement, your strategic goal.

• 15:17Jocko Willink?

  And I'm gonna go ahead and say, get out a piece of, get out a piece of paper again and write these things down.

• 15:25Jocko Willink?

  What am I going to do tomorrow, tomorrow specifically, so I can move towards this goal?

• 15:34Jocko Willink?

  Don't try and do everything at once. You need to take smaller steps. You need to move in an incremental way to achieve anything worthwhile.

• 15:49Jocko Willink?

  Whether it's writing a book, whether it's getting better at jujitsu, whether it's getting stronger, whether it's getting better at guitar. The way to do it isn't by cramming for the test. Matter of fact, you can't really cram for a test in a lot of these things. Like you can't, I can't spend a, a week with you and now you're gonna be good to go at jujitsu. Like, no, it doesn't work that way. You, it, can it be good to do a sprint sometimes in a specific skillset? Yep, I've done that before. I love doing that, actually. I'm gonna, oh, I got four days where I don't have to do anything. Cool. I'm gonna train four or five hours a day. You'll feel some improvement for sure. Guitar, same thing. Health and fitness, yeah, it's a little harder.

• 16:32Echo Charles?

  Yeah, it is.

• 16:33Jocko Willink?

  Cause how much can you actually work out? Well, you can work out 24 hours a day. Done it.

• 16:38Echo Charles?

  Yeah, but it's, it's, it's less about the workout, more about the recovery from the workout.

• 16:42Jocko Willink?

  Right. Bottom line is, all these things, incremental steps. You, you need to make incremental steps.

• 16:52Jocko Willink?

  So you've come up with your goal and then you need to figure out what it is. What's the plan to get you where you want to go? And then you need to write that plan down, by the way. You need to write down what you're gonna do. Otherwise, it's just a cloud. This is the anti-cloud podcast.

• 17:12Jocko Willink?

  It just saying or thinking I'm, might do this tomorrow is worthless. It's really worthless. Saying I'm gonna do this tomorrow, that's a thing. That's a legit thing. Writing down, I will do this tomorrow, that's where it's at. That's where progress gets made.

• 17:32Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 17:34Jocko Willink?

  Keep that in mind. You wrote down your strategic goal. You're going to review that on a daily basis. You're gonna, actually, when you review that at night, you're gonna say, okay, you know what? Here's what I'm gonna do tomorrow to actually make this happen. So you come up with a plan and then you have to execute the freaking plan. Execute, execute, execute. People don't do what they're supposed to do. And that's the number three reason. They fail to execute. They, and they procrastinate. And, and here's the thing about procrastination, what I realized about, was thinking about procrastination.

• 18:09Jocko Willink?

  If procrastination was truly just like doing it five minutes from now, it wouldn't be that big of a deal, would it? Would it?

• 18:17Echo Charles?

  No.

• 18:17Jocko Willink?

  It wouldn't be a big deal. We wouldn't even talk about procrastination.

• 18:20Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 18:21Jocko Willink?

  We wouldn't even talk about procrastination if it just meant, I'm gonna do it in five minutes. Hey, I need an extra five minutes before I execute on this thing. Here's the thing with procrastination. Procrastination, what procrastination really means is I'm never freaking gonna do it.

• 18:35Jocko Willink?

  That's what it really means. Now, listen, is there some forms of procrastination where you just procrastinate four or five different things at the same time? And you eventually can't do three of them? That's the same thing. You're procrastinating the things that you should be doing for something that you marginally don't mind doing as much. It's ridiculous. You let, you and I have talked about this, letting the window close, the jujitsu window, right? You have the jujitsu window. Hey, everyone's training at 10 o'clock on Saturday. Hey, it's open mat. We're gonna go train at 10 o'clock. But then at eight, you know, you're like, well, I gotta do this little thing and well, now it's 9:40 and I could get ready.

• 19:20Jocko Willink?

  But by the time I get ready and I'm driving down there, it's already gonna be, and you let the window close. Now you're not going.

• 19:27Jocko Willink?

  You let the window close. So what you have to do

• 19:32Jocko Willink?

  is you have to tell yourself, do it now, do it now, do it now, do it now, do it now, do it now. Don't wait, don't hesitate.

• 19:41Jocko Willink?

  Listen to what I'm saying. Do it now. Do it now.

• 19:46Jocko Willink?

  Execute, execute, execute. When you hear the words execute, execute, execute, there's no turning back. You go. That's what you're doing.

• 19:55Jocko Willink?

  That's what you have to do.

• 19:58Jocko Willink?

  If you wait, when you wait,

• 20:02Jocko Willink?

  you negotiate.

• 20:05Jocko Willink?

  When you wait, you negotiate. Now you're in a losing, you're, you're in a losing situation.

• 20:13Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's the, that's why it's number three on this list. Because it causes so much failure. When you wait and you put it off and you let the window close. It's like a, it's like, um, you know, when, when you had that girlfriend? And you like, didn't want to break up with her. You wanted to break up with her, but you didn't want to go through them.

• 20:37Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 20:37Jocko Willink?

  The motion. So what did you do? You like, let it, kind of like, let it just kind of fall, right? You know what I mean?

• 20:45Echo Charles?

  Yeah, like what? Like phase her out kind of a thing?

• 20:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you kind of get, you kind of phased, you know, because you don't want to face, you don't want to do the confrontation thing.

• 20:52Echo Charles?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:52Jocko Willink?

  But you also don't want to like, keep it going. So you just kind of like, let it die.

• 20:58Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 21:00Jocko Willink?

  That's what happens when you hesitate. And that thing that you were gonna do just kind of dies.

• 21:06Echo Charles?

  Oh, rather than-

• 21:07Jocko Willink?

  And it doesn't feel bad.

• 21:08Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 21:09Jocko Willink?

  You don't tell yourself, you know what? I'm too weak to do this today, so I'm not gonna do, you don't do that.

• 21:12Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 21:12Jocko Willink?

  You say, well, I'll do it in five minutes. Well, I'm gonna do it a little, actually, I'm gonna wait, I haven't eaten yet today, so I'm gonna do it after I eat. Oh, I'm kind of full right now, so I can't do it.

• 21:20Echo Charles?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 21:21Jocko Willink?

  You just rack up excuses, ready-made excuses.

• 21:26Jocko Willink?

  You fail to do what you said you would do.

• 21:32Jocko Willink?

  And for that, you get nothing.

• 21:36Jocko Willink?

  You get nothing. Willy Wonka.

• 21:41Jocko Willink?

  You broke the rules. Clear as crystal. You lose, sir. That's what happens when you hesitate.

• 21:51Jocko Willink?

  So, do it now.

• 21:58Jocko Willink?

  That brings us to the number four reason.

• 22:02Jocko Willink?

  This is it.

• 22:05Jocko Willink?

  Lack of motivation. Now, listen, obviously, we don't count on motivation. Motivation is a feeling. We count on discipline.

• 22:15Jocko Willink?

  But I want to talk about the root of the word motivation. Which is motive.

• 22:22Jocko Willink?

  Which is, why are you doing what you're doing? That's why I talked about, when you write down what your goal is, you write down what your mission is, you have to dive into why you're doing this. Because that is what's going to give you the motive. To accomplish the goal. This is what you're gonna have to fall back on. When it's not obvious to your lizard brain. Why you're doing what you're doing. Because your lizard brain's like, I'd rather just sleep more. Your lizard brain says, oh, it's easier just to not do that thing. I'd rather, it's easier to scroll Instagram, so I'll just keep doing that.

• 23:07Jocko Willink?

  Your lizard brain just wants to do the easiest, simplest thing that's most gratifying in the moment. So you have to figure out what your motive is, and you gotta remind your lizard brain and slap it upside the head. And say, the reason why I'm doing this is because one day I'm gonna own my own house.

• 23:25Jocko Willink?

  Or the reason why I'm doing this is because one day I'm gonna get promoted.

• 23:31Jocko Willink?

  Or because I'm gonna be in good shape, or I'm gonna win this jujitsu competition. Or I'm gonna be able to play guitar better, or I'm gonna write a book. All those things, those long-term, your lizard brain doesn't give any shits about that at all. It doesn't, literally doesn't care at all. Your lizard brain is not like, oh, great, I'm gonna win a jujitsu competition in four months. It does not care. Doesn't care at all.

• 23:54Jocko Willink?

  He just wants to scroll, it just wants to scroll Instagram and eat a donut.

• 23:59Jocko Willink?

  So you lose sight of the long term. Look, how long does it take to save up a down payment to buy a house? Five years? Five years. How long does it take to prepare to run a marathon? Six months? How long does it take to get your black belt in jujitsu? Ten years? Something like that? So, so let me ask you this. Does today really matter?

• 24:25Jocko Willink?

  Does today, I mean, does one day really matter? Cause you're literally saying like, you're good. It doesn't really matter, it's so far away.

• 24:36Jocko Willink?

  You know, I, I just missed one day of training. Like, it's no big deal.

• 24:42Jocko Willink?

  I'd rather sleep. And you're gonna rationalize and all that stuff. But you lose track.

• 24:50Jocko Willink?

  You spend, you know what? Not that bad, I mean, I got, I still gotta save up another 29,000 more dollars for the down payment on the house. This, this nine dollars that I'm gonna buy this cup of coffee for. How much is a cup of coffee? People always talk about it.

• 25:05Echo Charles?

  I don't know, I, I don't know.

• 25:06Jocko Willink?

  I think an expensive one can be $10.

• 25:08Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 25:09Jocko Willink?

  Like, if you go to Starbucks, I think you can get a $10. I don't even know if it's coffee or it's some kind of beverage.

• 25:14Echo Charles?

  Yeah, thing.

• 25:15Jocko Willink?

  And apparently it has

• 25:18Jocko Willink?

  like 100 grams of sugar. It's something crazy.

• 25:20Echo Charles?

  Yeah, I've seen those before, for sure.

• 25:22Jocko Willink?

  They look like a milkshake. Yeah. They might be a milkshake.

• 25:24Echo Charles?

  They're, they're more or less milkshakes.

• 25:26Jocko Willink?

  Milkshakes with caffeine in them. So it's like sugar and caffeine.

• 25:30Jocko Willink?

  Just, might as well be drinking a horrible energy drink.

• 25:33Echo Charles?

  Yep, 20 bucks.

• 25:35Jocko Willink?

  20 bucks? For one of those?

• 25:37Echo Charles?

  Well, that's what I'm assuming. But wait, that's what you said, right?

• 25:39Jocko Willink?

  I thought they were like $10.

• 25:41Echo Charles?

  Yeah, I don't know. It all seems crazy.

• 25:44Jocko Willink?

  But, so you spend that little bit of money. And then you're like, well. And that's the other thing that happens.

• 25:52Jocko Willink?

  Well, well, well, before I say that, it's like, that's why you need to make sure you inculcate your brain with why you're doing what you're doing. You have to really

• 26:05Jocko Willink?

  What's that word? You have to like, what do you do with meat before you cook it?

• 26:09Echo Charles?

  Tenderize it?

• 26:10Jocko Willink?

  No, no. When you leave it in a pot.

• 26:13Echo Charles?

  Marinate?

• 26:13Jocko Willink?

  You need to marinate, you need to marinate your whole brain with why you're doing this thing. This is something that, again, for me, my whole, when I have some idea, my whole brain feels like it's marinated in that idea. Like this whole thing, like this is what I'm doing, this is where I'm going, this is why it's gonna be beneficial, this is who it's gonna be able to help. My whole brain gets marinated in that. So I, when I had come up against a challenge, like that challenge is up against this whole brain that's aligned around why I'm doing this. My whole brain is aligned around that. So you gotta figure out deeply, why are you doing this thing?

• 26:54Jocko Willink?

  So important. What you're doing is important. Why you're doing it, even more important. What did, I think it was Viktor Frankl, if I, if I know why I can bear anyhow, it's something along those lines.

• 27:08Echo Charles?

  Yeah. Yeah, I think Nietzsche said that, by the way. The, um, so you know, every time like you, and you'll talk about this from time to time, where, I mean, regardless of like writing down, I think that's more of like an adult thing and, and way more effective. But I feel like we all know how it feels to, to do this, to set a goal and achieve it, even as little kids. So I remember I had the, I was saving up money for toy, I think it was Optimus Prime. Pretty sure. And it was like freaking thirty dollars or something like that for a little, you know, third grader, fourth grader, whatever.

• 27:43Jocko Willink?

  But bro, those things transformed and everything back in the day?

• 27:46Echo Charles?

  Yeah, the old metal ones. Yeah, yeah.

• 27:47Jocko Willink?

  Those things were squared away.

• 27:48Echo Charles?

  Oh, yeah. So we know how that feels, but just like all the stuff that you're saying, you do that just mentally as a little kid, like you're, like, look, is your why this benevolent thing? No, it's not. It's like, but your why is very clear and it's very powerful. So you're like, oh my gosh, I, you're, you're imagining your life with this new Optimus Prime. You're like imagining where you're gonna play with it, you know, in that puddle at night over here. Like it's, you basically marinate your brain into this whole universe. Verse of you owning this new Optimus Prime and you love it. So it's on your mind every day. So now when you get, you know, you know, you find 50 cents here, you took out the trash, you got another dollar here and all that. You're just like, oh my gosh, it's just reinforces it. I can't wait. It's bringing me closer and closer to that world.

• 28:31Echo Charles?

  Cause your brain is just marinated in that, that whole thing, you know? Rather than if it's like this ambiguous thing, it's like, yeah, you get that dollar. Then next time you go to the store, you're like, wait a second, I can buy like some gum with this dollar. But yeah, cause your brain's not marinated in that Optimus Prime world. You see what I'm saying? But, and so I think we all do that. And most of us have gone through that at some point, saving up your money to get something freaking awesome or whatever. So it's, yeah, it's the same process. And then, yeah, when you get it, you're like, boom, goal achieved. So you get that extra bump too, like accomplishment, you know? It's the same way.

• 29:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's why as you get older, look, when you're, when you're younger, when you're seven years old, Optimus Prime, that's all you need to know. Like that is, it's immediate marination. There's not much competition in your brain, right? You don't have a bunch of other things that are going on. It's just Optimus Prime. And you can see how beneficial it will be in your world. Your world's smaller than, you know, your world's a lot smaller. Your world's like the puddle, the sandbox, right? Optimus Prime kind of just is going to make both those things kind of awesome.

• 29:37Echo Charles?

  Your whole life? Awesome. Yeah.

• 29:38Jocko Willink?

  And so, yeah, the whole world that you live in. So as you get older, you got all these, all these other divisions in your brain, right? And how important could this thing really be? That's why focusing on and writing down, hey, why is this important to me? And by the way, it's a good drill to do too, because you might realize, well, actually, do I really care about that?

• 29:59Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 30:00Jocko Willink?

  Like if you can't find an actual why? Well, then it's, you're not going to be able, you're not going to achieve it unless it's super easy. So yes, I think, I think that marinating your brain and you do that by writing it down and, and figuring out exactly why it is you want to do something is going to be very, very beneficial and understanding what your motive is, is going to drive your discipline. Right. Understanding what your motive is, why you want to do something, the discipline's there. When you look at a, an Olympic athlete that wants to win the gold medal, they are, they are highly motivated.

• 30:43Jocko Willink?

  They know clearly what their motive is, and that translates into just discipline. That's why they're getting up and they're doing their routine or their lifting or whatever they're doing to prepare for that gold medal competition. That's what they're doing.

• 30:58Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 31:02Jocko Willink?

  Make sure you understand why you're doing what you're doing. Make sure you understand the why behind these strategic goals. Now, once you're there,

• 31:11Jocko Willink?

  there's another thing that I think jams people up. Number five on my list. And that is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. What do I mean by that? I missed a day of training. To hell with it.

• 31:26Echo Charles?

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:27Jocko Willink?

  And maybe it's not a day, but maybe it's a week, maybe it's two weeks. Oh, I hurt my ankle and to hell with it. Or I didn't get the bonus I was supposed to get at work, or I didn't get the raise. Now it's going to take so much longer. So to hell with it. I'm never going to be able to buy a house. To hell with it. Or I lost my mind and I ate eight donuts. Echo Charles.

• 31:46Echo Charles?

  It happens.

• 31:47Jocko Willink?

  I ate eight donuts and forget trying to be in shape. I'm just, and maybe that's not that, maybe it's, I, I would think it, I would hope it takes a little bit more to nudge someone where they feel like they just can't get it done. Like maybe you got sick and then while you were home for four days, you just, you know, ordered a bunch of pizza and you were just all ate like crap and you didn't work out. And now you, you know, now you're feeling better, but you're like, to hell with it. My goals are trashed.

• 32:13Echo Charles?

  Yeah, I'll tell you when it happens is when other important things kind of emerge. And then you're like, you know what? Forget my whole goal because I, I want to focus on this other stuff. So, and it doesn't have to be important stuff either. So you know how like, um, let's say, okay, I want to get in shape. I want to lose 15 pounds and I have this like certain lifting goal, whatever. And then maybe you got a business trip, maybe you got a, you know, short vacation, you know, maybe, um, you know, maybe your kids get sick or something like this. And you could find the time to do all this stuff and still achieve your goal. You totally could, but it becomes more comfortable and convenient to just really immerse yourself in the vacation.

• 32:55Echo Charles?

  Or really focus on, you know, bringing the kids and then really unwinding when you get home. You know, kind of a thing because of the stress or whatever, you know? So it basically, your, your attention and your commitment gets essentially divided. And now sort of other things compete for it, for that focus, for that attention.

• 33:16Jocko Willink?

  We're gonna get to distractions, which is what you're talking about.

• 33:19Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 33:19Jocko Willink?

  For sure. Which is, which is some of the things that can lead to throwing out the baby with the bathwater, right?

• 33:25Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 33:27Jocko Willink?

  My point in this is if you fall off the path, get back on it.

• 33:32Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 33:32Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's like such a simple concept.

• 33:36Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 33:37Jocko Willink?

  Like, hey, I was gone for a couple of weeks, no jujitsu for a couple of weeks, right? It's real easy because now it's Saturday, Saturday morning. I haven't trained in whatever it was, nine days or something. It's real easy to be like, well, you know, one more day and I should really like get, you know, I should give my body a minute to, you know, whatever you're saying.

• 33:58Echo Charles?

  Oh, yeah.

• 33:59Jocko Willink?

  It's just lies.

• 34:00Echo Charles?

  Well, yeah, the, the reason I said what I said is because I literally did that before. Where I'd be like, okay, I wanna like, when I go home to Hawaii, where I'll be like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make this commitment to like, not slack off. Like, I'm gonna make it to the gym every day. I'm gonna, you know, do all this stuff and it gets hard, certain days it gets hard, but all it takes is like an extra 10 minutes of planning or a little, you know, adjustment or whatever, but it's yet another mental like effort you have to do in a time.

• 34:28Jocko Willink?

  You let the window close, yeah.

• 34:29Echo Charles?

  Yeah, you know, so, so it's like, yeah, and meanwhile, the whole family's there. So it's like, all right, let me just let go this whole idea of staying in shape. Rather than, okay, hey, look, maybe today was hard, we didn't make it to the gym today. You know, we'll be like, okay, let's, let's do like a makeup workout at night or something like that. You don't need the gym, let's do a makeup workout, like try to do what you can kind of a thing. But I throw the baby out with the bathwater being like, eh, it's not, it's way less realistic, you know? And you throw the whole campaign out the window. Now I don't even think about going to the gym anymore. I just focus on going to the beach.

• 35:01Jocko Willink?

  There's, there's another thing that can jam you up here, which is.

• 35:08Jocko Willink?

  When if you say, well, you know, I can just, I'll get back on the path tomorrow. And that becomes the, you know, that becomes four tomorrows, five tomorrow, seven tomorrow. I was talking to Joe Moss. Yeah, oh yeah. He goes to confession once a week. And you would, maybe in your mind, you're like, well, you just do whatever you want, then just go to confession and be like, well, you know, I did this wrong, this wrong, this wrong, this wrong. Okay. Well. You know, Jesus saves and you're good. Yeah. You know, Jesus forgives, you're good. That could be your attitude.

• 35:44Jocko Willink?

  But what he says is like, that's not the attitude. The attitude is actually, it keeps him in line because he knows he's got to go face to face with a priest once a week and tell him all of his transgressions that he committed. Yeah. And so he doesn't want to do that. So you, as a person, you have to do confession with yourself, right? You have to admit that you sin. You have to admit that you fell. You have to own your own transgressions and connect them to how they negatively impacted your strategic goals. Once again, we're going back to our strategic goals.

• 36:25Jocko Willink?

  Because if all we do, if we're able to just say, well, you know, I fell off the path yesterday, I might, you know what? I'm not going to get back on it tomorrow, maybe the day after that. And you just start adding these things up and you don't ever put yourself in check. You don't ever come face to face and look in the mirror and admit your transgressions and say, no, I'm really screwing this up right now.

• 36:47Jocko Willink?

  If you don't do that, you're throwing, you'll, you'll end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater, which is, which is a major problem.

• 36:56Jocko Willink?

  Which leads to what you're talking about, which is, I think then, what I put as the number six reason for failure is just distractions. And by the way, in my opinion, many of the distractions that make people fail are self-made.

• 37:14Jocko Willink?

  It's our, it's our wandering eye that's looking for distractions. And the phone is the best example of that.

• 37:22Jocko Willink?

  Cause I'm just gonna check it real quick. I'm just gonna check it real quick. You're fighting against technology that brilliant psychologists and computer programmers and just data analytics. That's the main thing. Data analytics. They have data analytics to try and just get you to look at that thing more. Which is crazy to think about. Your mind is lizard, right? You have a lizard brain, so it's figuring out how to feed the lizard. And the lizard wants to eat. And so you're just in there. It's terrible. And that's one example. There's all kinds of examples like that. You, you have to get focused on what you're supposed to do.

• 38:07Jocko Willink?

  You have to be able to concentrate on that. You have to do the thing. You have to do the thing. Uh, setting a time, a specific time to make things happen is outstanding.

• 38:25Jocko Willink?

  It's outstanding. If you don't have, if you have an open-ended time. We were just talking about this, like I was supposed to have a call today. And I was working out and I got the word at 5:30 in the morning that the call got canceled. My workout took a lot longer. And it was great. I enjoyed the workout because I got to like add some additional exercises and go a little bit more and blah, blah. But the workout 100% took a longer amount of time than it would have because I had more time to fill. There was no, there was no timer on me.

• 39:01Jocko Willink?

  So when you can set your day up where.

• 39:07Jocko Willink?

  You have to get things done in a certain amount of time. It's going to prevent you from falling victim to distractions.

• 39:17Jocko Willink?

  And you know, what kind of distractions? Look, you have distractions from work. You have distractions from your family. Wait a second, I just say your family's a distraction? Did I say that? Look, can your family requirements be counter to what your goal is? Hundred percent.

• 39:37Jocko Willink?

  That's why we get up early. That's why we get up before our kids.

• 39:42Jocko Willink?

  That's why we get up before our spouse. So that we can get stuff done. We can achieve and check off our list. Before we're robbing our family of time. That's so crystal clear.

• 39:59Jocko Willink?

  These little distractions. Here's another thing. You have to PID your enemy. Positively identify.

• 40:07Jocko Willink?

  If you start paying attention to what distractions are, you know, it's funny. I was, I was like putting together notes for this podcast. And I like went to check my phone.

• 40:16Echo Charles?

  Yep.

• 40:17Jocko Willink?

  You have to identify that those things, they're not. They're not benevolent things. They're, they're evil things. They're stealing your time from you. If you just kind of look at them as neutral. They can get in no problem. If you know what they are, if you identify, if you positively identify them as a evil force. That's trying to steal from you, you'll start to put those things down.

• 40:49Jocko Willink?

  So be careful of distractions. You have to be careful of distractions. You have to label them. You have to positively identify them. You have to call them for what they are. Cause your lizard brain just thinks it tastes good. Just thinks that dopamine hit feels good. So it's in there. That lizard brain is so easy to fool. Things an idiot. And yet it's running roughshod all over your own brain.

• 41:19Jocko Willink?

  For terrible.

• 41:22Jocko Willink?

  All right. This ties into what I put down for number seven, which is a lack of time management. Yes, you waste time. You, you need to make a schedule. And you need to stick to your schedule. You need to

• 41:39Jocko Willink?

  you need to get up a little earlier.

• 41:42Jocko Willink?

  You need to not waste time on things that don't move you toward your goal. Imagine if you went through and looked at your time, if you did a time audit. I've done that with a lot of people. People are like, well, I don't have time. Let's do a time audit. Let's see where your time's going.

• 41:55Jocko Willink?

  Oh, guess what?

• 41:57Jocko Willink?

  Hour and a half Netflix. Hour and a half. Do you know what you can do with an hour and a half in your life?

• 42:05Jocko Willink?

  Forty nine minutes. Social media. What can you do with forty nine minutes?

• 42:13Jocko Willink?

  What can you do with forty nine minutes? You can do all kinds of things with forty. By the way, you can write a thousand words to a book in forty nine minutes.

• 42:20Jocko Willink?

  So positively identify

• 42:25Jocko Willink?

  your enemy.

• 42:27Jocko Willink?

  And when you're wasting time, you should be, you should know and understand it. What you gotta watch out for is like, what is it? The devil will make you, the, the, the best trick that the devil plays is making you think that he doesn't exist. So it's not like when you open up Instagram, it goes, warning, I'm about to waste your time. Doesn't do that. It doesn't say, hey, you are now stepping into my algorithm and I own you. Doesn't say that. It should say that. But you know what you need to do is you need to tell yourself that.

• 42:59Jocko Willink?

  When you start doing things that aren't productive, you need to positively identify them as the enemy and treat them accordingly. Do not let them invade your brain. And they're over there giving your freaking lizard brain a massage.

• 43:15Jocko Willink?

  They're over there feeding it donuts and it's freaking stoked. Can you picture your lizard brain just like getting a massage and just getting fed donuts? It's all nice and warm and feels really good. And it's just, it's just a waste. Just a waste. So, time management, disciplined time management. Yeah, like I said, set a timer. Here's another thing. Two components. Do the hard things first, and also, do the strategic things first. This is why we work out early in the morning. It's why we try and work out first thing. It's a strategic thing. It's a strategic thing. And

• 43:57Jocko Willink?

  strategic things, because they're long-term, they're much, much, much easier to let slide.

• 44:07Jocko Willink?

  Only do the tactical things when the strategic things are done. And look, we don't always have this luxury, but as much as you can possibly set your life up like this, it's gonna make it easier. So, like for me, here's an example for me. I'm writing a book which is due in nine months, and I'm prepping for a podcast which I have to have ready by tomorrow. Which one should I do first?

• 44:26Echo Charles?

  Nine months.

• 44:27Jocko Willink?

  A hundred percent. Even though your intuitive answer be like, well, one's due tomorrow, so do that one. That's the wrong answer. First, you spend your hour writing the book, get your thousand words done. When you're done with that, then you can prep the podcast. Same thing with health. That's why we prioritize the strategic necessity of working out and exercising. You have to do that first, because it's real easy by the end of the day, where it's like, well, you know, now your wife is looking at you because you didn't work out in the morning and blah, blah, blah. Now it's seven o'clock at night, and your wife's like, well, we have the family dinner right now. Do you, you're not gonna eat family dinner with us?

• 45:13Jocko Willink?

  That's real, by the way. It's totally real. And now your answer is, well, yes, I care more about working out, which is what she's gonna hear. Right. Then I do about you and my, you and our children. Yeah. The reality is strategically, you want to stay in shape for your wife and kids and you want to be healthy. So that's why working out is a priority. Don't put the, don't put those things head to head. Yeah. Do the strategic things first. Here's another thing, plan for some contingencies. Don't, don't schedule every minute of the day. Don't say, oh, you know, four thirty to five, I'm getting ready to work out, five to six forty-five, I'm working out.

• 45:56Jocko Willink?

  For six forty-five to seven, I'm showering. Don't do that.

• 46:02Jocko Willink?

  Figure out some continued, look, you can do that in the morning, but then you better have, you know, nine thirty to ten

• 46:10Jocko Willink?

  contingency time. Look, and I got some things that I'm gonna fill that with, but I'm also ready to handle a call from school or whatever's going down, an email that I didn't expect. Don't try and plan every minute of the day, leave some room in there.

• 46:25Jocko Willink?

  Cause other things come out. Other things happen. And this leads me to number eight. The external factors of the world.

• 46:36Jocko Willink?

  That prevent us from achieving our goals. Things happen. Things happen we don't expect.

• 46:43Jocko Willink?

  Car broke down, flat tire, water heater broke. Those are like minor things, right? But there's bigger life things that can happen. Car accident. Injured kid, sick kid. We have to be able to adjust, we have to be able to adapt.

• 47:01Jocko Willink?

  And what that means is we have to be able to adapt

• 47:06Jocko Willink?

  how we are going to achieve our goal. And when our plan is no longer functional, we don't abandon our strategic goal.

• 47:20Jocko Willink?

  We make adjustments.

• 47:23Jocko Willink?

  We make adjustments when external factors come into play, things we didn't expect. The weather's bad. So we couldn't go for a run, or whatever the case may be.

• 47:37Jocko Willink?

  The client that we expected didn't come through.

• 47:43Jocko Willink?

  We had a manufacturing defect and now we don't have the money that way. Like, there's all kinds of things that are gonna happen in life.

• 47:49Jocko Willink?

  And that's why you have to be able to adapt.

• 47:54Jocko Willink?

  And those are external things, those are inanimate things, but then you get number nine. Reason why we fail, which is other people.

• 48:05Jocko Willink?

  Other people do things that disrupt you and your goals.

• 48:10Jocko Willink?

  It's their fault.

• 48:13Jocko Willink?

  And you can probably see right where I'm going with this. We cannot control other people. Can't control other people.

• 48:22Jocko Willink?

  The only person you can control is yourself.

• 48:25Jocko Willink?

  So, don't. Don't. Make your plan reliant on other people. And if you do, then make sure that you have contingencies in case things don't go the way that you expected them to go. Or people don't do what you expected them to do. Because chances are they're not, they're human beings. Human beings aren't perfect, they're not machines, they're gonna do things. And so you can have a plan, you can put them in the plan, but you better have some contingencies.

• 48:57Jocko Willink?

  And your plan must be about you and what you are going to do and what you can control.

• 49:07Jocko Willink?

  Blaming other people and other things.

• 49:12Jocko Willink?

  This comes to the number 10 reason why we fail.

• 49:18Jocko Willink?

  To execute on our goals. And I guess this is probably pretty obvious right now, but it's a lack of ownership.

• 49:26Jocko Willink?

  It's a lack of ownership. It's a lack of ownership of your mission. It's a lack of ownership of the execution. It's a lack of ownership of when you fall off the path. It's a lack of ownership of when things don't go your way.

• 49:40Jocko Willink?

  You have to own the mission, you have to own the execution, you have to own the outcome. And here's the thing, when you take ownership, you're in control. And when you don't take ownership, it's, it's left to chance.

• 49:56Jocko Willink?

  And that leads to failure. So if you want to do something, you have to own it. If you have a goal that you want to achieve, you have to own that goal.

• 50:08Jocko Willink?

  You have to own the mission, you have to own the execution, you have to own the outcome.

• 50:13Jocko Willink?

  That's what you have to do.

• 50:18Jocko Willink?

  You have to take complete ownership of your mission and of your life. That is the way. That is how you achieve your goals.

• 50:30Jocko Willink?

  And that is the path to get there.

• 50:35Jocko Willink?

  So. That's where we're at, man.

• 50:38Echo Charles?

  Yep. The marinating your mind thing, I very much like that one. And I like even that expression, marinate your mind, because that's kind of, you know, the few times that I have achieved that, that's what it felt like.

• 50:52Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 50:52Echo Charles?

  It was like you're, and I'm not saying it's consuming you every day and all day and nothing like that, but it is always kind of on your-

• 50:58Jocko Willink?

  I kind of am saying that.

• 50:59Echo Charles?

  Yeah, in a way, it is that, like you're, it's on your mind all day. And, and also it kind of, um, it's, I mean, it is one way of putting it. It's a, it kind of shifts your identity into like the person who is that new like goal or whatever.

• 51:16Jocko Willink?

  Here's the thing too, every thought that you now have and every action that you take now has to run through the marinate.

• 51:21Echo Charles?

  Exactly right. It includes that. Exactly right, man. Yeah, it's, and so, and it works for kind of everything. So the, the few times where working out or whatever, I had, I had a goal. It's either to make weight, um, to get a certain time on a conditioning thing to be like, okay, I know I'm here, you know, kind of a thing. So I'll just work and work. So everything, yeah, everything that I did kind of had something to do with that at least a little bit. Especially when it was time to work out, it was always on my mind. So it was like a new thing. So I would always project like in the future as being that thing.

• 51:54Jocko Willink?

  Yep. The more marinated your mind is.

• 51:59Jocko Willink?

  On that thing, the better you're gonna be.

• 52:02Echo Charles?

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:03Jocko Willink?

  When you, when you meet someone that's obsessed, right? Their mind is just fully engrossed in whatever that goal is. You, you meet like a wrestler that's trying to make state. That's all they're doing.

• 52:16Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 52:17Jocko Willink?

  What are they doing? They're watching video. They're watching more video, they're training, they're conditioning, they're cutting weight, they're watching their diet. Everything that goes in their mouth goes through the filter.

• 52:25Echo Charles?

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:25Jocko Willink?

  Every thought that they have goes through the filter. Every action they take goes through the filters. It's gonna help me or it's gonna hurt me?

• 52:30Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 52:30Jocko Willink?

  Everything that I'm doing is moving me towards making it to state.

• 52:33Echo Charles?

  Yep. Even like, let's say you're saving up for a house or something, right? You and your family saving up for a house. Even the stuff that you do in your like apartment, you're still thinking like, oh, you're cooking, right? Let's say, uh, or let's say it's sunny outside and you wanna go swim in the pool. So you go to the, what, the community pool? Let's say your new house, you know, you plan to have a pool. You go to the community pool, it's on your mind like, oh, I can't wait. So I can't wait to be in my own pool. It's always on your mind. So it shapes like your behavior, it helps shape like all your behavior. And then you're always thinking about the world that you're in your new house. You know, you're always thinking about that.

• 53:09Jocko Willink?

  And that's why it's really important to write down these strategic goals and review them. You can, you can get to a point where you're adding marinade into the package every day. If you don't, it's not gonna be there. And now you're doing things that don't support the long-term goal. So, so you, that's why that review of your strategic goals on a daily basis. Look, and if you're the type of person that just, like, I'll be honest, I'm like this. When I wanna do something, that's all I'm thinking about and I'm gonna do it. If there's something where I'm not sure, I need to write it down and I need to review that. And say, here's what I'm trying to do, here's where I'm trying to be.

• 53:52Jocko Willink?

  If I don't do that, it ain't gonna happen. Unless it's just some intrinsic goal that I have that's just part of me.

• 54:01Jocko Willink?

  If I don't have, if it doesn't feel that strong, then I need to write it down and I need to review it to make sure I'm staying on the path. It's like the culture inside of an organization, right? If you have a good culture inside of an organization, everyone in the organization can make decisions based on the culture. If you truly have a strong motive and a strong why behind your strategic goals, those are gonna, they're gonna filter through every single action that you take. You know, it's funny is, I don't know if you picked up on this, but when Alex Honnold was on the podcast, he said he hadn't had a dessert in like six months, getting ready to climb El Cap. Why? His whole brain is like, this is what I'm going to do.

• 54:45Jocko Willink?

  I can't have a freaking Oreo because that doesn't help me achieve this goal. Can't do it.

• 54:52Jocko Willink?

  Every single thought in his brain was one goal. Now, look, it's harder to do that when you're a normal person. I mean, he was living in a van. He's a climber. That's what he's a professional climber. When you're a normal person and you have a job and you've got kids and you've got a payment, you've got to go to the PTA thing and you've got to, like, there's a bunch of things going on.

• 55:11Jocko Willink?

  So if you don't take the time to write down what it is you want to do and why you want to do it and how it's going to benefit and how it's going to help you in the puddle and the sandbox playing with Optimus Prime, if you don't write those things down, it's gonna get other things in there that aren't going to lead you to where you want to be.

• 55:32Jocko Willink?

  So you gotta, you gotta take a legitimate, you know, this is one of the things about Def Reset where in the past I'd be like, well, why would you start on New Year's? Why don't we just start now? Like if you have a New Year's resolution, just start today. It's December 9th or it's October 4th or whatever. Don't wait till New Year's. Do it now. Where I, where I kind of changed my perspective on that was, you're not going to go on a mission. In the SEAL teams without coming up with a plan. So when you come up with a mission that you want to achieve in 2024. To think, oh, I'll just start right now. No, no, no. You actually need to come up with what your plan is. And why you have that plan and what are the benefits going to be and where and how are you going to get it done on a tactical level?

• 56:15Jocko Willink?

  The mission mindset about what you're trying to do is very, very powerful. And yet someone thinks, oh, they have a cloudy idea up there in the sky and I'm going to get there. You're not going to get there. You need to grab that cloud. You need to compress it into water and then squeeze it onto the paper.

• 56:32Echo Charles?

  Yeah, especially when it's challenging, right? Where you can't just be like. And I always like thought that I was like kind of weak in that way where you know, people will be like, oh yeah, let's just, let's just get a workout in real quick. And I'm thinking, frick, why do I have to prepare mentally for like working out like it's this big thing or whatever? And the fact is I don't, but when I do, the workout goes way better and get a better workout overall. Now workouts in the spectrum, I understand that, you know, even a light workout is better than no workout. I understand, but the, the, the concept's still right there where if it's like, yeah, hey, if I'm about to embark on this thing that's going to be challenging. Even like daily, it's going to be challenging. To just pick up and start doing it.

• 57:14Echo Charles?

  Might be less beneficial than putting in legitimate prep work.

• 57:18Jocko Willink?

  Yes, put in the prep work. Come on. By the way, this doesn't mean wait nine days. Means right now. Come up with a plan, figure out where does you want to go. Hey, if you're, if you're lost right now. Okay, write down tomorrow. First I'm going to do is I'm going to figure out some strategic goals that I need to make for myself.

• 57:35Echo Charles?

  Yeah, preparation is way different than procrastination for sure.

• 57:38Jocko Willink?

  Yes, yes. Good distinction. Preparation is not the same thing as procrastination. Hey, preparation can turn into procrastination and procrastination means you get nothing. You lose. Because procrast, like I said, procrastination isn't five minutes. Procrastination is it's not happening.

• 57:59Jocko Willink?

  So you've got to figure out what your priorities are and you've got to execute on those priorities. It's another part, that's part of the death reset. It's prioritize and execute. Why would that be? Why is that part of the death reset? Oh, it's because people fail to do it. Why is that one of the laws of combat leadership? It's because people fail to do it. All the laws of combat leadership, cover, move, simple, prioritize, execute, decentralized command. They're all counterintuitive. They're all what people tend not to do. People tend not to look out for their buddy, cover and move. They tend to look out for themselves. That's why it's the number one law of combat leadership. Simple. People tend to make things more complicated than they are.

• 58:41Jocko Willink?

  So that's why we have to tell them, keep it simple. Prioritize and execute. Why is that? Because people tend not to do what they're supposed to do. They try and do too many things at once. They get distracted.

• 58:52Jocko Willink?

  And last one is decentralized command. What do we try and do? Our instinct is try and control everything ourselves. What do you need to do to win? Decentralized command. Let subordinate leaders lead. So these things are all counterintuitive.

• 59:05Jocko Willink?

  That's why we have to focus to make things happen. It's counterintuitive to actually say, alright, I'm going to make this specific goal and I'm going to make a plan to get there. The intuitive thing is like, well, I'm doing pretty good. It feels good right now. My lizard brain likes this doughnut. Just think your intuition is based on a lizard brain. That's what your intuition is. Your intuitive thought is based on a lizard and you have to overcome that. You have to take your human, your logical mind and overcome that freaking lizard. So you can do what you're supposed to do. What's another thing, interesting thing that Alex Honnold said? He said something like, well, you know, I feel like if I can do something,

• 59:50Jocko Willink?

  then I'm kind of obliged to do it. Meaning he has this skill and he can make this climb, then he needs to do it. Well, that applies to everybody. What can you do in your world? What can you bring to the world that no one else can bring? And if you don't bring it. That's on you.

• 1:00:12Jocko Willink?

  And dang, what about that freaking deathbed? When you're on your deathbed and you knew you had this potential and you had this goal? And you didn't do anything about it? Hey, are you gonna achieve everything you want, ever wanted to achieve? Probably not. I don't think too many people get that lucky. I don't think too many people have the planets align in a way that that's perfect.

• 1:00:36Jocko Willink?

  But to not even take a crack at it? Or to just knock out the things that kind of fell on your plate? Not, not a good answer.

• 1:00:46Jocko Willink?

  So let's not do that.

• 1:00:50Jocko Willink?

  Let's make things happen.

• 1:00:53Jocko Willink?

  Alright, with that.

• 1:00:56Jocko Willink?

  Might need some fuel along the way.

• 1:00:57Echo Charles?

  It's true.

• 1:00:57Jocko Willink?

  I recommend you try Jocko Fuel.

• 1:00:59Echo Charles?

  Yes.

• 1:01:01Echo Charles?

  Yep, we already participating in that part of it for sure. Creatine.

• 1:01:08Echo Charles?

  Hydrate daily.

• 1:01:09Jocko Willink?

  I'm going creatine. Greens, that's my morning mixture. But then after jiu jitsu? Or run when I'm like I've sweated, then it's hydrate time.

• 1:01:20Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:22Jocko Willink?

  I think either one of those is a good option, though.

• 1:01:23Echo Charles?

  Yeah, yeah, fully in the milk. New milk out, milk out, by the way.

• 1:01:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this is kind of a big deal, actually, now that you bring it up. It's coffee milk, it has 95 milligrams, grams of caffeine in it. It tastes delicious, 95 milligrams is like a strong cup of coffee. And it has 30 grams of protein. Hey, this is your new go to like thing in the morning. What are we talking about Starbucks? So you can go to Starbucks and pay whatever, $10 for a bunch of sugar. No protein, by the way. Just sugar, just useless lizard brain satisfaction lies.

• 1:02:01Echo Charles?

  What's funny about that star, I mean, I'm assuming it's Starbucks, I don't know, but it was, uh, so we have a friend of the family.

• 1:02:07Jocko Willink?

  Hey, when I'm talking about Starbucks, I'm talking about all these freaking.

• 1:02:09Echo Charles?

  Exactly, right, yeah. Starbucks is kinda like, you know, like, it's like a Xerox scenario, you need to say it. But, um, we have a friend of the family was like, hey, these, you know, she stopped going to Starbucks to save money, right? Cause it was like expensive and when you add it all up, like, cause she went every day during the week. So it's like five days a week or whatever. You add that up, you add up how much you spend, even if, I think it was like six or seven bucks, something like that. And it was like, dang, look how much I saved. So they just stopped, um, this girl stopped going. And she incidentally lost a bunch of weight. Cause it's like, bro, you know, when you get like the caramel mocha thing and like all this other stuff, you don't realize, you think it's just a coffee. But if you don't look into those macros, bruh, you're gonna be freaking.

• 1:02:51Jocko Willink?

  And there's nothing good in there.

• 1:02:52Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:53Jocko Willink?

  It's not like you're getting protein.

• 1:02:55Echo Charles?

  No.

• 1:02:55Jocko Willink?

  You're getting nothing but junk. And they, by the way, they charge you $12 for it.

• 1:02:59Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:00Jocko Willink?

  What a scam. Anyways, we're hooking you up. We got that mulk, got that coffee mulk. It's sweet cream coffee. It tastes good. It tastes like, tastes like tiramisu.

• 1:03:10Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:10Jocko Willink?

  Cause tiramisu has some kinda.

• 1:03:12Echo Charles?

  Coffee.

• 1:03:13Jocko Willink?

  Coffee thing in it. There's something, and I don't like coffee, but this tastes good.

• 1:03:17Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:18Jocko Willink?

  So, and, and the coffee people in my world, Leif, Leif's just down.

• 1:03:25Echo Charles?

  I'm down for coffee.

• 1:03:26Jocko Willink?

  Leif's down. Well, he's down for coffee, but he's also down for this new mulk.

• 1:03:28Echo Charles?

  Yeah, of course. Yes. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, for the coffee lovers.

• 1:03:32Jocko Willink?

  He's been begging for that for a while, now that, now that I mentioned it. He's been like, hey, bro.

• 1:03:38Jocko Willink?

  Cause he likes to get in that coffee. Dude, he's like, cause he was in the fleet navy.

• 1:03:41Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:41Jocko Willink?

  Where if you're in the fleet navy, bro, that, the fleet navy runs off of coffee.

• 1:03:45Echo Charles?

  Oh, for.

• 1:03:45Jocko Willink?

  Like, it's just, it's a, it's a thing. It's a big thing. And so he was in the fleet for a couple of years out there just getting his surface warfare on just sucking down, sucking down black coffee.

• 1:03:57Echo Charles?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:03:57Jocko Willink?

  Cause you got watch and you don't get to sleep. And then you're standing watch and then you're sleeping in a room that's freaking loud with the aircraft taking off overhead.

• 1:04:06Echo Charles?

  Yeah. Well, yeah. And, but coffee, the flavor is like a thing. Like, there's coffee ice cream. In fact, my daughter likes coffee. And she was actually drinking the mulk. She was like, yeah, coffee mulk, hell yeah. I was like, bro, that has caffeine in there. And she was like, oh, she's 10. But, so, but yeah, but at the same time, that does kinda prove for the taste, you know, if little kids are just, oh, shit, score, you know, kind of a thing.

• 1:04:30Jocko Willink?

  So yeah, yeah, man. Good. Get the milk, get the, get the joint warfare. So it's like our biggest, uh, most repeated subscription because when you go on it, you don't want to go off it. Anyways, there you go. Jocko Fuel dot com. You guys all know the gig. Come and get it. Also, it's at Wawa. By the way, we got the, the milk is going into Wawa. So we, you, you know, might've heard it's like hard. It's a battle there at Wawa, but we're, we're back in there. We're back in there with milk. We got some of the energy drinks. Also Vitamin Shoppe, GNC, Military Commissaries, Afe's, Hanford, Dash Stores in Maryland, Wake Fern, Shop Right, HEB and Meyer.

• 1:05:10Jocko Willink?

  HEB down in Tejas area. They got big pallets down there. They got, and you know what an end cap is? Yeah, end cap on the aisle. Yeah, they got Jocko Fuel end caps down there. So thanks, everybody down in Texas. Meyer, same thing. Big pallets on the floor. Wegmans, actually going into Wegmans. You've probably never been to a Wegmans. Wegmans is like this super dialed in grocery store out on the east coast. And we're going in there and they, they just ordered a bunch of pallets to put right on the floor. So you can get some go, some milk, just. They, they just want people to be healthy. Good on them. Uh, Harris Teeter, Lifetime Fitness, Shields, small gyms everywhere, Jiu Jitsu, CrossFit.

• 1:05:53Jocko Willink?

  If you're, if you own a Jiu Jitsu school, CrossFit, you own a gym, a powerlifting gym, whatever. Email J F sales at Jocko Fuel dot com. If you want to sell Jocko Fuel in your box. Also, we make clothing. Lot of clothing. We just don't, we don't pay, uh, some sweatshop filled with slave labor in China to make our, our clothing. We make it here in America.

• 1:06:20Jocko Willink?

  From the dirt to the shirt. OriginUSA.com. That's what we're doing. Jeans, gi's, Jiu Jitsu gi's. I just saw Dean List. He's wearing that Origin gi, looking pretty sharp. You ever trained gi with Dean List?

• 1:06:36Echo Charles?

  Yes.

• 1:06:36Jocko Willink?

  You think cuz he cuz he's known as a no gi practitioner. You think, oh, I'm gonna get the gi on, I'm gonna kind of jack him up. Ain't happening, bro. Ain't happening at all.

• 1:06:47Echo Charles?

  No.

• 1:06:48Jocko Willink?

  He's he's it's actually in some ways worse. Cause maybe you can slip around a little bit. You got that no gi, but that gi on. So yeah, get your gi, jeans, boots. You guys know the deal. Support freedom. OriginUSA.com.

• 1:07:04Echo Charles?

  Yeah, it's true. Also, Jocko's dot com, Jocko's store. Discipline equals freedom. We're representing it on the path. A lot of us are. So yeah, this is how you can get your stuff. Also, uh, Shirt Locker, uh, subscription scenario. You get a new shirt, new design every month.

• 1:07:19Echo Charles?

  Look into that one. Um, it's all at Jocko's store dot com. People, what?

• 1:07:23Jocko Willink?

  What?

• 1:07:24Echo Charles?

  People seem to, I'm just saying, look into it. I'm not saying, hey, go here, buy this. I'm not saying that.

• 1:07:28Jocko Willink?

  Look into it.

• 1:07:29Echo Charles?

  Hey, man, check it out. You like something? Get something. Jocko's store dot com is where it's at.

• 1:07:35Jocko Willink?

  There you go. Uh, PrimalBeef.com. Steak. And what? Ground beef?

• 1:07:43Jocko Willink?

  You want the good stuff?

• 1:07:45Echo Charles?

  Yes.

• 1:07:45Jocko Willink?

  Go to PrimalBeef.com, go to ColoradoCraftBeef.com. Two awesome companies making awesome steak. Just tasty, just good for you.

• 1:07:54Echo Charles?

  Bracking on a steak thing.

• 1:07:56Jocko Willink?

  Oh, really?

• 1:07:56Echo Charles?

  Three days in a row, boom, boom, boom, boom. I got the process down.

• 1:07:59Jocko Willink?

  That's that's not even in the game for me.

• 1:08:01Echo Charles?

  In a row, no, for real? Oh dang, yeah, I really do the same thing three or more in a row.

• 1:08:10Jocko Willink?

  I would just eat a ribeye and a Caesar salad every day for the rest of my life, honestly.

• 1:08:14Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:15Jocko Willink?

  If my wife was like down.

• 1:08:19Echo Charles?

  I get it. Yeah, it makes sense, but for me, yeah, that was a little streak.

• 1:08:23Jocko Willink?

  What what cuts?

• 1:08:25Echo Charles?

  Ribeye.

• 1:08:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Ribeye's the deal.

• 1:08:27Echo Charles?

  Oh, yeah, agree.

• 1:08:28Jocko Willink?

  Is that every, but not everyone thinks that. Not everyone thinks ribeye's the deal.

• 1:08:32Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:33Jocko Willink?

  There's people that like New York. There's people that like tri-tip. Like, there's other people that like other stuff.

• 1:08:38Echo Charles?

  Yeah, fully. And actually, my kids and wife, they don't like the like the fatty part. Yeah, they like the leaner part, which, hey, man, I guess.

• 1:08:46Jocko Willink?

  We got a deal. We got a deal.

• 1:08:49Echo Charles?

  No problem. I'm not gonna complain about them, but.

• 1:08:50Jocko Willink?

  We got a deal.

• 1:08:51Echo Charles?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:52Jocko Willink?

  So check out, you want some awesome steak, ColoradoCraftBeef.com, PrimalBeef.com. Subscribe to the podcast. Also, check out Jocko Wonder Ground.

• 1:09:00Jocko Willink?

  We talk about some adjacent topics there YouTube channel. We've got a bunch of YouTube channels. We've got Jocko Podcast YouTube channel. We've got Jocko Fuel YouTube channel. We've got Echelon Front YouTube channel. We've got Origin USA YouTube channel. Check out all those YouTube channels. Find out what's going on behind the scenes in some of these scenarios and also get some detailed information about what's, about what can help you. Psychological Warfare, flipsidecanvas.com. Dakota Meyer, making cool stuff to hang on your wall. I've written a bunch of books about leadership. Check them out. Check out the kids' books. You're on the path. When do you like your kid to be on the path? There's nothing better, nothing better than getting your kid on the right path. Get them the books, The Way of the Warrior Kid Series.

• 1:09:43Jocko Willink?

  Also, we have a leadership consultancy. It's called Echelon Front. Go to echelonfront.com if you want help with leadership inside your organization. We also have an online training academy. Everything that we talk about, we teach. And everything that we talk about and we teach will help you in all aspects of your life. So go to extremeownership.com and learn how to lead, learn how to interact with other people, learn how to plan, learn how to execute. That's what we teach. Extremeownership.com. Also, if you want to help service members, active or retired, you want to help their families, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org.

• 1:10:28Jocko Willink?

  Also, Micah Fink, heroesandhorses.org, taking folks up into the wilderness so they can find themselves. And on top of that, you've got Jimmy May's organization, BeyondTheBrotherhood.org. He's helping guys transition into the civilian sector. If you want to connect with us, we're out there. We're on the interwebs. I'm at Jocko Willink, Echo's at Echo Charles. Just watch out for the algorithm. It's a big lie. It's a big attack on your lizard brain. So don't let your lizard brain win. And to all our military members that are out there standing the watch and protecting our way of life, thank you for your service. And to the veterans

• 1:11:09Jocko Willink?

  who have served, thank you for what you have done. And also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, Secret Service, and all other first responders. Thank you for your service as well. And everyone else out there, you got things to do.

• 1:11:29Jocko Willink?

  You have capabilities, you have potential, don't waste it. Don't waste it. Set your goals, write them down, come up with a plan, write out the plan.

• 1:11:41Jocko Willink?

  And then execute, execute, execute. Get it done, do it now, don't make excuses, make sure your motives are solid.

• 1:11:54Jocko Willink?

  Then take ownership of what you do and how you live.

• 1:12:00Jocko Willink?

  And that's what we're doing. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko, out.