480: Learn To Read, Write, And Think.

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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 480 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. So I went to college to study English. Why did I go to study? Why did I go to college to study English? I went because I had already been in the SEAL teams for what had been 10 years at that point. And I knew that writing was very important. I was, I'd become an officer. Now I knew that writing was very important. You're writing awards, you're writing evaluations, you're writing concept of operations, you're writing operational summaries. It's a lot of writing. I know that sounds weird. And then on top of that, you're reading a bunch. You're reading orders, general orders. You're reading and you have to understand rules of engagement.

• 0:45Jocko Willink?

  You're reading and you're under, you have to understand after actions reports. You're reading and you have to understand lessons learned. So there's a lot of reading and a lot of writing. And what I realized was the better you could write and read, the better you could do your job. The better you could execute your mission because you can, you can formulate good concepts of operations that will get approved, the better you could summarize what you've done in an operational summary. So you can accomplish your mission better and you can take care of your team better. Because you've got awards and you want your guys to get awards. And you're, you're writing your evaluations for your guys, which is how they get promoted. And on top of all that, obviously, when you're in a leadership position in the military,

• 1:30Jocko Willink?

  you've got to be able to speak. You've got to be able to convey plans. You've got to be able to explain your ideas. You've got to be able to talk through tactics. You've got to be able to explain missions and answer questions in order to get approval. Up, all that's up the chain of command. And, and then down the chain of command, you've got to speak in a way that the troops actually understand what you're saying and understand what the plan is. And if you have miscommunications or misunderstandings, they can have catastrophic outcomes for real.

• 2:02Jocko Willink?

  So the better you write, the better you can speak. And really, the better you can think. And I've said this before, when you write is a form of detachment. It's it's 18 inches of detachment. You move 18 inches away from your idea when you write them down. So you can look at it and you can make more sense of it. So because of all that.

• 2:23Jocko Willink?

  When I went to college, I studied English, which meant I took classes on literature, which is I took classes on, you know, books, poems, plays, the whole nine yards, bro. I was in there. And I took classes on grammar. I took classes on syntax. I took classes on etymology, where words came from.

• 2:45Jocko Willink?

  And quite frankly, enjoyed it all, learned a lot.

• 2:50Jocko Willink?

  And I learned mostly from Shakespeare. From reading Shakespeare. Now, why did I learn a lot from Shakespeare? Shakespeare is written in English. But it's actually written in something called early modern English, which was around from like 1500 to 1800. Before that, there was something called Old English, which was 450 to 1100 and then Middle English, which is 1100 to 1500. If you've ever heard someone speak in Old English, you can't understand it. It sounds freaking wicked cool. But it's you can't understand it.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  Wait, Old English is when you said?

• 3:31Jocko Willink?

  450 to 1100.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  Is that the like speak it?

• 3:35Jocko Willink?

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  Before that even?

• 3:37Jocko Willink?

  We're getting there. That's way before it. Like you can't understand. I should have brought some in and read it. You can't understand.

• 3:45Jocko Willink?

  Any better than you can understand Spanish, like occasionally hear a word in Spanish that'll be like himnasio. And you're like, oh, is that that could be gym, right? Gymnasium, right? So it's kind of the same level of of comprehensions. That's Old English. Then Middle English, you can understand a little bit more, but it's still it's not something you're going to understand openly. And then you get to late modern English. There's early modern English. So early modern English, and this is this is early modern English is like 1500 to 1800. Shakespeare was around 1600. So that's what he's writing. It's something called early modern English. What we speak is called late modern English, starting around 1800 to the present.

• 4:30Jocko Willink?

  There's differences. Some of them are pretty significant. There's, there's different word orders that they use. This is where you have things like dost and half and thou and thee and thy. They're, they're all in there, but those are pretty, those are, you can kind of, we even know what those mean right now. But there's other things, there's inconsistent spellings. So when you're reading something, you're like, you don't know what it is. There's archaic words that just don't get used anymore. And so late modern English and what we speak today is very similar, very similar. But it's not the same. It's not the same. And the very first time I read Shakespeare, I was, I didn't understand it. Didn't understand it. And what

• 5:14Jocko Willink?

  I explain to people is you don't understand it when you first read Shakespeare. You, you'll, you'll understand chunks of it, but you're not going to understand the meaning. So what I learned how to do was I had to accept the fact. You know how I wrote in Way of the Warrior Kid about the kid who, Mark, he doesn't know his timetable, so he thinks he's stupid. And Uncle Jake's like, well, bro, did you study? And he's like, well, no. And he says, well, you need to study. I went through that same little three minute evolution where I'm reading Shakespeare going, dude, I don't understand this. Am I an idiot? Oh no, this is a little bit, basically a different language. So how am I supposed to be able to understand it? No, you gotta get out a dictionary and you gotta break it down and you gotta figure

• 5:57Jocko Willink?

  out what every word means. And then you get understanding of it. You, we use this dictionary called the OED, the Oxford English Dictionary, which gives you where the word came from, when it was first used, how it was used over time. Look, it's very in-depth. And with Shakespeare, what you end up realizing is that every word is being used for a very specific reason. Then it has depth and it has meaning and it has nuance and it has layers. The words have layers. Every word counts. So that's what, so I got a lot out of that.

• 6:43Jocko Willink?

  And then when I was got back to the Navy, eventually I had to teach people how to write better. So evaluations, I got 150 people at Trade Ed. 150 people that need to be evaluated. They need written evaluations. The part of it is a number score. We covered that on Podcast 174. It's like the, the, we covered the Marine Corps one and then Navy one, but it's you get ranked one to five on your little traits, but you also have a little write-up area. And the write-up area is very important. And it's a certain, I think it's 17 lines that you have. And you've got to be able to make those 17 lines impactful. Because this is how you get people promoted.

• 7:28Jocko Willink?

  Cause when they're doing their promotion board, the guy's not in the room. There's no interview. It's just that piece of paper. The number score and what does it say about him? So the better you write about the people,

• 7:42Jocko Willink?

  the more chance they have of getting promoted. So my first year at Trade Ed, I just had my warrant officers, pretty much there's a warrant officer that's in charge of each one of the cells, land warfare, maritime operations, CQC assaults. So there's a warrant officer in charge of each one of them. I had them give me their write-ups, their, their drafts of the evaluations.

• 8:06Jocko Willink?

  And they weren't good. But I did it too late. So I, in other words, I asked for, let's say they were due like in, uh, in November. Well, I did, I said, okay, you guys turn them in, you know, November 1st. They turn them in November 1st. They're, they're not good. No offense to my boys that are out there listening to me right now, but you guys know they weren't good. And I'll tell you how they knew it. So I, it was too late though, to have them go and re, so I rewrote them all. Sat in my office, came into work early and just for three weeks, just sat there and rewrote them all. So I knew that that was bad. So the next year earlier, much earlier, you know, two months or three months in advance,

• 8:51Jocko Willink?

  I said, okay, everyone, write the evaluation for your best guy. And then we're gonna have a meeting and we had a meeting and I got everyone together and I just brought them up like their evaluation, those 17 lines that they had written, I brought them up one by one. And you know, the very first one I remember bringing up, I like put it on, it was the, it was the warrant officers and the master chief's not bringing up, put one up on the board and just, I just read the first line aloud. And you could tell right away, like everyone's just, right? It just sounded bad. Everyone knew it. And we just went through that one and kind of like, okay, what are we trying to say there? We rewrote that line and went did line by line, talked them through the word choice, talked them through simplifying, talking through removing the words and adding words

• 9:33Jocko Willink?

  and the passive voice versus the, the, the active voice, just went through the basic English with them. And then sent that back to go try again. And that's what they did. And, and now the next time when they, when they had learned how to write, basically, because you don't get, there's no freaking English classes in the Navy. There's no SEAL warrant officer that went to an English class. No, they're just going with what they'd learned in high school, which they probably dropped out of, right? So, but this time, as soon as they learned that process, they were a lot better. So, last week, you and I got a question on the underground.

• 10:13Jocko Willink?

  The underground podcast. And it was basically from a guy who'd been, you know, he's sending emails to his team. And his boss came and was like, hey, your emails are not good. They're offending people. They're causing problems. And he, he wanted to do better.

• 10:31Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, we, we answered the question, but I'm, I kept thinking about that because.

• 10:39Jocko Willink?

  Writing is very difficult and it's so important. It is so important. You ever had a received an email that pissed you off?

• 10:49Speaker 01

  I'm sure I have, but yeah.

• 10:53Jocko Willink?

  That's the you ever received a text that pissed you off? You see what I'm saying? Those are written words. And writing is very, very difficult to convey a message in writing that you want to pass to someone. And as a leader, this is something that you have to do a lot of. And by the way, we're all leaders. So writing is a skill and it's not a natural skill. Unfortunately, it's not natural.

• 11:18Jocko Willink?

  Any more than playing guitar is natural, any more than weightlifting is natural or gymnastics is natural. Now, are there people that are naturally a little bit better at weightlifting? Yes, there are. Are there people that are naturally a little bit better at gymnastics? Yes, there are. Are there people that are naturally a little bit better at music? Yes. But it doesn't matter how natural you are at music. If you don't pick up a guitar and practice, you won't be able to play it. And even if you are naturally gifted and you play it a little bit, you won't be really good unless you practice, unless you learn, unless you learn that skill. And it's the same thing with gymnastics. It's the same thing with weightlifting. It's the same thing with basketball. It's the same thing with anything. It's not a natural skill, but you can get better at all of them. And you can get better at writing.

• 11:59Jocko Willink?

  And when you get better at writing, it will not just improve your writing. It'll improve the way that you speak. It'll improve the way that you think and it will improve the way that you lead.

• 12:10Jocko Willink?

  So I was kind of gnawing on that and I felt like this question that we got asked, even though we did our best to answer it. There's more to it. You know, I threw some things out in that podcast like, hey, here's some steps you can take. But number one, I think people need to recognize the importance of it. And number two, how hard it is. And number three, that it's a skill. So I was, you know, being me. I had recently seen a, a recently published document from the Command and General Staff College. It's military school that commanders and generals go to, to learn how to be commanders and generals.

• 12:53Jocko Willink?

  And it's, it's called the professional writing guide.

• 12:58Jocko Willink?

  It is from the Command and General Staff College. And I was like, I want, you know, because you think military, right? You get a little nervous. You're like, oh no, here we go. It's gonna be strange. Uh, but I looked at it, I was like, oh. Pretty good stuff in here. Project editors, a guy named Trent Lythgoe. And then there's a bunch of contributors, Alan Boyce, Sean Kalik, Richard McConnell, Mary Knoll, Bruce Reader, and they were all working for a group chair named Marvin Nichols. So here's a bunch of people, a committee, which I'm not a big fan of committees. But a committee put together, and I thought it would be good to bring this out. Because if you interact with other people,

• 13:41Jocko Willink?

  whether it's text, whether it's email, whether it's actually writing letters, or writing directions, or writing instructions, or protocols for people. If you don't think about what you're doing, you won't become a good writer. And if you're, if you don't become a good writer, it's going to negatively impact the way you speak, the way you think, and the way you lead. So, there we go.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Let me ask you this. Do you, do you?

• 14:06Jocko Willink?

  Journal? No.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  So, but you, you know what I mean by journal, right? Or like daily? Because I guess there's different levels of journaling, right? So even, because you still write down your workouts too, right?

• 14:17Jocko Willink?

  Yep, I do that. Is that journaling?

• 14:19Speaker 01

  I guess, right?

• 14:20Jocko Willink?

  I journal that.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, in that way you do.

• 14:23Jocko Willink?

  I wish I would have journaled. And it's so, especially on deployments. Because everything kind of becomes a blur. The closest thing I have to journals from deployments, and this is kind of useful, is I, I had a, like a notebook. And I actually have six, I think from Ramadi, I think I have six of these small spiral bound notebooks, but I would bring them to all these meetings and briefs and events with me.

• 14:57Jocko Willink?

  And I would take notes, you know, if I went to a brigade meeting, I'd come back and tell the guys what was going on if I was in as sitting through one of our briefs or a battalion brief, I would take notes and ask questions or whatever. And I have all those with me.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. So in a way.

• 15:13Jocko Willink?

  There's no dates in it though, unfortunately, but the thing it is, most of them are, some of them have dates, but a lot of them have mission numbers. So like when task unit Ramadi was going on a mission, I would have sit in the brief and take notes for like, hey, what about this? Hey, did you de-conflict with these guys? It would just be a series of notes, but it would say, you know, our, our missions were numbered and named. And so, and I wouldn't usually write the name. I would just write the number. It'd say, you know, RAM three, two, nine, because there was other task units that had their mission numbers and they had different names. Like there was a group in Haban, Habania, and they were like H A B, like Hab three, two, four. So those were a set of numbers,

• 15:56Jocko Willink?

  a set of missions. And then wherever the other group was Fallujah, F A L two, C, two, seven, two. So everyone's numbering our own things. So mine said, RAM nine, four, or we didn't get up to nine hundred, but RAM two, nine, six. So I have those notes.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:13Jocko Willink?

  But it's not really a journal. I wish it was. I wish I would have done the, uh, the audio, even the audio thing of telling what's happening each day, because everything, you heard when, when General McFarland was on and like, everything in my mind, the timing is weird. The timing, my, my, in my mind, how long things took is not accurate. Like I was like, dang, we did three or four combat outposts in like a few weeks and they were all so big. Plus you're awake for so long. I wish I would have done a better job of that. And I tell people now, I'm like, hey, if you, even if you write down. You know, uh, what's today? Blah, blah, blah. Here's the date. Here's what I did today.

• 16:56Jocko Willink?

  Even that to use as reference in the future is very, is a very smart thing to do.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. It makes a big difference.

• 17:01Jocko Willink?

  Now I have workout books going out, going back, you know, years.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  And your dates on those.

• 17:07Jocko Willink?

  Decades. Yes.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. So they kinda, even those notes, they kinda serve in it in, I mean, journals for a lot of reasons. But the workout notes, uh, even the notes from your, your missions and stuff, it kinda went like, if you go back and read them, a lot of memories will probably come popping back in like, oh, I do remember that, which you maybe wouldn't have remembered, you know? Otherwise, but yeah, I, in school, elementary school, I remember it was like, they made us write in a journal just for 15 minutes or something every day.

• 17:35Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's so good.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:37Jocko Willink?

  When my, when my son went to J. Rob wrestling camp, when that was a thing, and you had to keep a journal there. It's so freaking cool to see. So yes, I, even though I don't journal, I think it's awesome and I, I would recommend anyone does that. Especially nowadays with the technology that you have, that you could hit a record and be like, hey, this is the day, even if you made a video of yourself every day.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:59Jocko Willink?

  And just said, hey, it's, uh, January 4th, uh, just got done working out. I got this project going on. And I, you know, hurt my left shoulder yesterday, but it's healing. You know what I mean? Just like random stuff like that. Is very useful because time becomes very, very skewed and

• 18:21Jocko Willink?

  unrecognizable in some cases.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:24Jocko Willink?

  In your mind.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. My mother sent me a package of old stuff randomly. Probably she was probably cleaning out some stuff and you know, there's, so there's old drawings that we drew and all this other stuff. One, and one of the things was a paper, you know, there's a, I guess we still have, you know, the yellow paper, right? That you write on, the line paper is written on that.

• 18:45Jocko Willink?

  Legal pad. Yeah.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:46Jocko Willink?

  It's called a legal pad. Yep.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it was in pencil too, which I don't know, it kinda adds to the oldness of it. But, um, it was like, it was like a journal, but you could tell, I don't really remember doing it, but you could tell as punishment. Cause I did something, I think I. For lack of a better way of putting it, abandoned my younger brother in town. We went down to Klowa Town, which is a town I'm quite. And after school, hell yeah, after school, it was me, my two brothers, some friends and my younger brother. I abandoned him at some point. It was like, kind of like a thing. They had to go search for him and not search, like call the authorities, nothing. But you know, it's like, hey, where's your brother? Well, oh dang, I don't know. We lost him. So we, you know, had to go search around town, got him. Anyway, it looked like it was punishment for that, for me losing him essentially.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  So I had, it was basically a, an account of what happened that whole day. But I was like, what? Nine, 10 years old, maybe, you know? And um, yeah, it's funny to see just every, all the detail that even the unwritten detail, like just like the fact that it was in pencil, my handwriting at the time and like, you know, the grammar imperfections and stuff like that. It's like, it really tells this like robust kind of story, even though some details are obviously left out. You can kind of, you mix that with your memory and you can kind of start to learn a little bit about the past, you know?

• 20:05Jocko Willink?

  Totally.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was weird.

• 20:07Jocko Willink?

  That's good stuff and, and that's going to be one of the things we'll talk about today. It's just like, the more you write, the better you'll get. There's no doubt about it. The more you write, the better you get. So let's jump into this book again. This book right here is called, uh, it's called the Command and General Staff, Staff, College Professional Writing Guide. That's what we're doing. So it kicks off here. It says professional writing, the Command and General Staff College Writing Guide aims to command and general staff college, CGSC students improve their writing skills. But this guide isn't just for CGSC students. It can help all Army professionals craft writing that meets Army standards, being clear, concise, well organized and easy to read and understand. So even though it's talking about the Army, that's, guess what?

• 20:52Jocko Willink?

  That's what you want to do as a human. You want your writing to be clear, concise, well organized, easy to read and understand. That's what we want. This guide's central idea is that writing is a process, not a product. This is important because if you don't understand that and you think that the first thing you write is going to be, should be good to go, you're a total idiot. Which I was, and you know what's cool is I have giraffes, especially. Writing Extreme Ownership, we have like all the drafts, because you know they digitally get saved. Oh, yeah, yeah. So we have drafts, like the very first draft of Extreme Ownership, it's so bad. It's so bad. And then by the time we wrote the dichotomy of leadership, it was like, oh, this cleaned up.

• 21:36Jocko Willink?

  And now meanwhile, I was writing Warrior Kid, Warrior Kid One, Warrior Kid Two, Warrior Kid Three, then I wrote Discipline Goes Freedom Field Manual. But, and then came dichotomy. And so now I'm like actually writing a lot and editing a lot. So I see like the first draft of dichotomy, it's much better. By the time I got to Leadership Strategy and Tactics, the first draft is like Advanced. It is way better than the first draft of Extreme Ownership. And then, you know, you get to the later Warrior Kid books, those are, the amount of editing was much less because I was just better. I got better over time. And, and by the way, this is coming from someone that wrote a bunch of papers during college and all that crap.

• 22:16Jocko Willink?

  So even Extreme Ownership was, was really bad and I had written a lot and I had paid attention to writing. Like when you're writing those evals, evaluations and awards and stuff, that's very, very precise writing that has a high demand for accuracy and competency. So I learned that what they're saying here, writing is a process. That's what it is. It says here, find the word of encouragement. You can write, you will struggle, but all writers do because writing is hard. Do not be disappointed when your writing is not born perfect. Writing never is, rewrite it, use the process, this guide can help. Very important.

• 22:58Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, this is what, this is what triggered me to talk about this. When you write an email, that's an important email, you have to write a draft first, you have to go back and edit it and I'll get into that stuff. But just because I'm talking about writing books, you have to do this with an email too. You have to do this with procedures that you're writing. You have to do this with a text message, right? If you're writing a serious text message, you gotta write through that thing, you gotta check it.

• 23:24Jocko Willink?

  And we'll talk about how to do that. But, but so if you're sitting here thinking, well, I'm not writing any books, press stop. No, I'm talking about writing a freaking email. I'm talking about writing a text to your kids. How does it come across? You need to think about these things. So that's what we're doing. Um, then I was a little nervous because the kickoff of this thing was like full military activity and it's writing process, quick guide. And it's this graph and it says, plan, analyze the task, make a writing plan. Next is research, gather strong evidence, avoid bias, take organized notes, keep track of sources. It just goes through this whole protocol. Uh, the next is the draft, write an introduction, main body and conclusion, organize the main body logically, state claims clearly and support them

• 24:07Jocko Willink?

  with evidence and reasoning, consider art counter arguments, integrate, and it goes through this whole thing. I'm not going to read them all. And look, is it wrong? No, it's not wrong. It's a hundred percent right. But it's very military minded to take this creative process and break it down. And that's actually a good thing. I'm not saying it's bad, but it goes through, the first thing you do is come up with a plan. The next thing you're going to do is do research. The next thing you're going to do is write a draft, then you're going to revise the draft, then you're going to edit the draft. And then you're going to submit it. That's what it does. And then it go, and then it gives you sort of like what you're trying to accomplish. What you're trying to accomplish is, is come up with a coherent thesis and then advance that coherent thesis.

• 24:52Jocko Willink?

  And then, you know, use clear concise sentences and prefer active. So it's giving you a bunch of advice like that. And eventually it's telling you that you're going to be submitting this document. So

• 25:04Jocko Willink?

  moving into this, this first chapter, which is kind of introduction, introducing the whole thing.

• 25:09Jocko Willink?

  Writing is hard work. William Zinser, um, quote here, writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time or even the third time. Think about that. Think about that. Very few sentences come out the right time, or even the third time, or sorry, come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. You'll find that writing is hard. It's, writing is hard. It's, if you find that writing is hard, it's because it is hard. Now going to the passage here. Effective professional writing is purposeful, credible, and clear. Purposeful writing achieves its aim by meeting the reader's needs. Credible writing is objective and supported by strong evidence and sound reasoning. Finally, clear writing is simple, concise, and easy to understand. Purposeful,

• 25:54Jocko Willink?

  credible, clear writing meets the academic demands and professional demands of military leadership. So, the thing is, this isn't only about writing professional things. This is everything that you do. This is when you write an email to your spouse about what you want to do. This is, everything that you do should, now look, it doesn't mean that you're gonna have, what is it here, credible, you don't have to bring up credible sources when you email your wife about something, although you may do that. Hey, I looked into the paint that we want to get. Here's the paint that I recommend. Here's why I recommend it. You see what I'm saying?

• 26:32Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:33Jocko Willink?

  And then it gets into this writing myths, which I thought were worth going over. Many people have mistaken beliefs about writing. One of the most common and harmful is that the ability to write well is a rare gift or unique talent. Writing is neither. Writing is a skill that people can learn and improve. Again, this is just reinforcing what I kicked off with. Anyone willing to work at it can learn to write well. Other writing myths include, here's a myth. Myth, writing is easy for good writers, but hard for weak writers. Fact, writing is hard for everyone. Good writers write well because they work hard at it. Their first drafts are just as terrible as everyone else's and may require many rewrites, rewrites. Ernest Hemingway, for example, rewrote the last page of A Farewell to Arms 47 times.

• 27:20Jocko Willink?

  Myth, good writers use big words to sound smart. Simple words sound dumb. Fact, the best writers use simple, clear, concise language. Good writing is easy to read and understand, whereas fancy language muddies writing and can often hide weak ideas. Good to know. Myth, only weak writers need feedback. Fact, all writers benefit from feedback. The best writers seek it out. Feedback helps writers develop and improve. Even successful professional writers get feedback from their editors. Fact, all true.

• 27:56Jocko Willink?

  So, if you can get someone to look at your stuff, it's gonna help you.

• 28:02Jocko Willink?

  And it's gonna hurt a little bit. That's one of the most direct, one of the times where I find, you know, direct feedback as opposed to indirect is like writing. You know, like, hey, this sentence doesn't make sense. Leif and I, when we were going back and forth, especially on extreme ownership with dichotomy as well, but because we needed, because we were worse writers. And as we, as you're doing it, you're getting better. You know, you get better each time. And, but yeah, I'd be like, you know, Leif would send me like, hey, this sentence doesn't make any sense. This paragraph seems like a waste. And I'd send him back like on, because he's reviewing my writing and I'm reviewing his writing. And we're just going back and forth, but just, there's no sort of like tact.

• 28:44Jocko Willink?

  It was just very, bro, like, because I think both of us knew that both of us were trying to achieve the same goal. Of get a good product out there.

• 28:54Jocko Willink?

  Uh, next one, myth, good writers have everything figured out before they start writing. Fact, writers rarely know exactly what they will write until they write it. Writing is not just a way of communicating, it is a way of learning. Moving ideas from the brain to the page reveals their strengths and weaknesses. The process of rewriting what is on the page strengthens and sharpens the thinking behind it. Essays evolve as writing and thinking become clearer. Right? So important to think about. If you, I can tell you right now.

• 29:28Jocko Willink?

  Like I got so much better and so did Leif at articulating cover and move and simple and prioritize next year cuz we wrote about them. Now, that will happen with anything. If you're gonna go into a meeting and you're gonna present an idea and you don't write about that idea, you don't at least give yourself some bullet points, hopefully a little bit more detailed than bullet points. There's a decent chance you fall on your face. If you're like, alright, I'm gonna go into this meeting and I'm gonna put out some word about some stuff or I'm gonna present some ideas, you better write that stuff down so you can articulate it better.

• 29:59Jocko Willink?

  And it's not just so you can articulate it better, it's so you can understand it better.

• 30:04Jocko Willink?

  Writing is very helpful in help in in your ability to think. Another myth, good writing is beautiful. To be sure, here's the fact, to be sure, good literary writing is beautiful. But people read literature for fun in their personal time. At work, people are busy, they expect effective writing that gets to the point.

• 30:26Jocko Willink?

  And the next one myth, good writing is a matter of opinion. Fact, although beautiful writing is a matter of opinion, good professional writing is not. Cognitive science has discovered well-defined strategy that help writers communicate their ideas. These strategies underpin this writing guide. So there is a difference, right? We're not writing poetry over here. Now, when you're writing poetry, cool, that is subjective. Oh, I think that's a beautiful poem. I think it's stupid. Okay, cool. But what they're saying here is if you're writing a presenting an idea or a case, there's a professional way to do that. And there's cognitive research that shows like, oh yeah, if you present your idea like this and it has these connections and it ties it together, that will be more understood than this dipshit stuff you're doing over here.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  You ever read a food blog?

• 31:15Jocko Willink?

  I don't think so.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  Doesn't seem like something you read, but you never know. So, so I know that food blogs or recipe blog type. Blogs, writing, whatever, get a lot of flack for something which I think what you're talking about now. So let's say there's a recipe of some steak, right? Hell yeah, right? So you're like, oh, there's an article on how to cook the perfect steak. You're like, hell yeah, you open it up, you start reading. And then the author of this article, who may or may not be a chef, they'll be like, well, it started when I was eight years old and I was by the campfire and all this. And you start getting really angry because like, Brad, just tell me how to make the steak. You see what I'm saying? But they kind of flipped it a little bit like they didn't uh,

• 31:59Speaker 01

  maybe consider their audience, I think a lot of the times where they're like, hey, let me focus on certain dynamics of this writing versus the content of the of the writing that I'm kind of conveying. See what I'm saying?

• 32:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, so you're saying certain times you want to hear the story and certain times you don't.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Right? Under what circumstances would the story matter? Usually not about a recipe scenario, see what I'm saying?

• 32:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, true. But if you want to convey a reason why you do things a certain way, then telling a story around it might be important.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think, yeah, under a lot of circumstances, those stories are so helpful.

• 32:36Jocko Willink?

  Yep. I mean, that's basically, again, going back to whether it's a way of the warrior kid or, you know, leadership, strategy and tactics or extreme ownership. These books are stories that make you understand the principle. And it's usually a good idea to do that. Now, like in leadership, strategy and tactics, I talk about, here's a principle. Here's a story that kind of represents that. And here's the breakdown of the recipe. So there's times where you got to use all three of those things to get the message across.

• 33:05Jocko Willink?

  Getting into the writing process, the secret to writing is rewriting. This is again, something you just don't understand when you, if you think you're just going to write a sentence, it's going to be good. Nope. Writing is not just turning words, ideas into words, sentences and paragraphs. That is drafting, which is only one activity in the writing process. All writers draft and all first drafts are terrible. Yes, all of them. Writing is a process that involves six activities, planning, research, drafting, revisiting, or sorry revising, editing, and submitting. So it goes through planning, which is assessing the writing task and building a writing plan to accomplish it. Research is collecting, organizing, and analyzing evidence. Drafting is turning ideas and facts into

• 33:49Jocko Willink?

  words, sentences, and paragraphs. Revision is rewriting a draft to improve substance, organization, coherence, and cohesion. Editing involves rewriting revision to make it simple, clear, and concise. And by the way, you know what, Ashlan Front, we say language has to be simple, clear, and concise. I don't know where I originally, I think, I think I just use those words. And here they're getting used. Again, it's not, not, nothing crazy, but I don't know if they seeped into my brain from somewhere else. They very well could have. But we always say simple, clear, and concise language. And here it is. Here they say, writing a revision to make it clear, simple, and concise. There you go. Submitting includes proofreading the final draft and submitting the product. Okay, cool. So there's the process.

• 34:31Jocko Willink?

  The writing process is nonlinear. Writers go back and forth between these activities as they write and rewrite. Although frustrating at times, this laborious back and forth is necessary to transform disjointed drafts into effortless essays. Fair enough. And this is an important part. Tools, not rules. This is a guide, not a rulebook. Writing is not about following rules. It's about making choices. And I just let someone know this the other day. I said, there was someone that was working on something, not an official document, not a fully creative document, but they were worried about the editors. And I said, the

• 35:12Jocko Willink?

  right, the editor is not the writer. You're the writer. You're the writer. If you make a decision, and this is true when you get, if you go in the publishing world, and people start telling you they want, like, I think this would be better. You should definitely listen to them and try and understand their perspective. But if you, you should also balance that with the fact that it's your piece. And you can't let somebody just change it. You can let them change some things. You know, that's a good point. You have an open mind, but you also have to know when to say, nope, that's actually the sentence I want there. And here's why. So that's important to think about. It's, there's rules. For instance, I tend to start sentences with the word and, which is like kind of a no-no. But I do it. And

• 35:55Speaker 01

  You say it's kind of a no-no, like it's like, because that's what I learned about the word and.

• 36:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 36:00Speaker 01

  Starting is it's like, it's kind of a no-no.

• 36:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because it's supposed to join two different sentences or join two different ideas in one sentence. I'm going to go shopping today and then go to the gym. That's the way it's supposed to be used. So when you say, I'm going shopping today, period, and gonna go to the gym, it, you can see it has a little bit of a different meaning. Now, that's not the perfect use for it, but I'm saying, but there are times where for me, that's exactly what I want to say. And there's a reason for it. So sometimes when I would turn in a publication, whether it was Final Spin, or whether it was Warrior Kid or whatever. You know, sometimes they would say, hey, you start starting the sentence with the word and or starting with and here. And sometimes it'd be like, yeah, that's a good point. Doesn't make sense there. But sometimes I'd say, yeah, and here's why.

• 36:48Jocko Willink?

  Because I want that to be a standalone thought. I gotta do this, this, and this, and this, period. And I was still thinking about this. You see what I'm saying?

• 36:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:57Jocko Willink?

  So some, so you gotta take these rules and you gotta, you gotta utilize them, but you can't, you can't be a slave to them. Sometimes you gotta push back. Uh, and it explains that in here. For example, chapter six in this book advises writers to avoid hyperbole, but chapter five ignores this advice by directly, by directing writers to quote murder your darlings. A hyper, a hyperbolic statement urging writers to be ruthless in cutting murdering passages, darlings, that do not advance the thesis. So here they are, they're admitting. They're saying, hey, don't use hyperbole, that you shouldn't use that. And then their next chapter is murder your darlings, which is total hyperbole. So, keep that in mind. Using passive voice is another writing choice.

• 37:43Jocko Willink?

  The style standard advises writers to use active voice, yet chapter six discusses several situations in which passive voice is more effective. So, you're gonna have rules and sometimes you're gonna have to break the rules when you're writing.

• 37:58Jocko Willink?

  Chapter two.

• 38:01Jocko Willink?

  Plan, writing is thinking on plate paper. And this is a, this is a very army activity here. Professional writing begins with a directed purpose. Right? Analyze and understand the task. So this is very army-ish. I gotta throw this out there because it says make a writing plan. And look, they're correct. They're correct. You should make a writing plan. You should. Day one, Monday. Analyze task and be written, begin research. Tuesday, finish research. Wednesday, write the draft. Thursday, revise and additional research and drafting. Friday, rest. Saturday, revise. Sunday, rest. Monday, edit. Tuesday, extra day. Wednesday, proofread and submit.

• 38:45Jocko Willink?

  So they break it down and then they, that's like a short essay writing plan. And it is good. It is good. If you don't have a plan, nothing's ever going to get done.

• 38:56Jocko Willink?

  So if you are going to write something, come up with a plan, come up with a timeline. When is it going to be due? All those things. You've heard me a thousand times. If you want to write something, you want to write a book, you want to write a screenplay, thousand words a day. That's what you gotta do. That's my plan. I'm gonna write a thousand words a day after I figure out kind of the story and the arc of the story. And then it becomes very easy to write a thousand words a day. Chapter three, research. And it's, there's a whole thing. It's like, th- this is really a like professional, like fully professional writing. You know, research and keeping track of sources and two column research note format and citation software. So there's a bunch of stuff in here I'm not going to go over. Arguments.

• 39:41Jocko Willink?

  It does get into arguments here. Writers gather evidence to support arguments. Arguments are claims supported by evidence and reasoning. Naturally, arguments are central to argumentative essays, but they are also important in most professional military writing. For example, the running estimates army staff officers build during planning require strong arguments. Staff officers gather evidence such as facts and assumptions about friendly forces, the enemy, civilians and the environment. They analyze this information and recommend courses of action to the commander. These recommendations are claims. We should do X. The staff officers must support with evidence from the running estimate for these reasons, etc. So.

• 40:24Jocko Willink?

  What's good about this is, look, if you're writing a book, it's different, but if you're writing a proposal to your marketing chief, your chief marketing officer, and you want a certain amount of money, well, you've got to make an argument of why you should get this money. So this is a very good protocol to follow. Arguments are, back to the book, arguments are found, arguments are everywhere in professional writing, point papers, white papers, decision papers, even an award recommendation is an argument that someone should receive an award for certain achievements. There's your claim is the award and achievements are the evidence. So even when you're writing awards, you've got to be doing this. And then it goes into bias here. And it says, I'm fast forwarding, I'm not reading this

• 41:07Jocko Willink?

  whole book, but fast forward bias, bias is any deviation from the truth, intentional or unintentional, that leads to false conclusions. And it goes through some of them. Confirmation bias means collecting and interpreting evidence in a way that confirms the author's predetermined conclusion. It involves gathering evidence to support a conclusion while avoiding downplaying or being unfairly skeptical of disconfirming evidence. Distorting the facts means using exaggerated or imprecise language to make information seem more or less extreme than it is. For example, everyone knows Douglas MacArthur was a terrible leader. Everyone is an exaggeration and terrible is imprecise. What's cool, what is awesome about this book

• 41:50Jocko Willink?

  is all the examples in the book are military examples. So it's, it's like, I love that part of it, actually. Misrepresenting sources means paraphrasing or summarizing information incompletely or misleadingly. This bias often occurs when authors distort the original author's intent by quoting a source out of context. Inflammatory bias occurs when writers use language that elicits an unfair emotional response. For example, labeling the irregular soldier of the American Revolution as patriots or terrorists could elicit emotions that lead a reader to biased conclusions. And then it just talks about how to avoid some of these biases.

• 42:33Jocko Willink?

  You know, use credible resources and sources, focus on facts, not an opinion. Here's a good one, though. Keep an open mind. Having a preliminary guess hypothesis about a topic is normal, but do not commit to a position before doing at least some research. Read broadly. Study the range of views on a topic. Avoid gathering evidence only from sources that agree with a preliminary hypothesis. Be willing to change your position. During research, writers sometimes discover that the evidence for their initial position is weak. If so, they must modify or reject weakly supported claims.

• 43:13Jocko Willink?

  So it's very interesting and important that you go into your theory, your hypothesis with an open mind.

• 43:23Jocko Willink?

  And you don't just try and bolster your own opinion, which is a freaking bad move. But this is like, there's so much press, like you can read any, you know, go to the right wing media or the left wing media. You can see this stuff all all day. See those headlines that they produce, you know? And it's like, one of them is Elon Musk and Doge save trillions of dollars. And the other headline is Elon Musk and Doge cut hundreds, thousands of jobs. Like, there you go. Word is, word is in the game.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  That inflammatory bias, I never heard of that, but I've heard of that, obviously. That, um, even that, now that we understand this, I think you see it pretty much everywhere.

• 44:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, of course.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  Pretty much, like even in headlines, inflammatory, you know, leaving hundreds jobless.

• 44:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  See what I'm saying? It's like, dang.

• 44:22Speaker 01

  Eyes open for that kind of stuff.

• 44:25Jocko Willink?

  Chapter four, draft. When you first start writing, you're scared to death that if you don't get that sentence right, that minute, it's never going to show up again, and it isn't. But it doesn't matter. Another one will, and it'll probably be better. And I don't mind writing badly for a couple of days because I know I can fix it and fix it again and again and again. It'll be better. That's from Tony Morrison. This is a.

• 44:51Jocko Willink?

  A very, very critical thing to understand. We'll get into it. Drafting is turning ideas and research into words, sentences, or paragraphs. The goal of drafting is to quickly write the bulk of the essay without stopping to fix style and correction problem or correctness problems. Drafting focuses on quantity, not quality. So this is what I call making the clay. For me to use that term before. Making the clay. So what if you're a sculptor? You go to the, the art store. If you want to make a clay pot. Sure. You go to the art store and you buy the clay. And then you take that and you form it into the pot. Right? Sure. With writing, you have to make the clay yourself.

• 45:36Jocko Willink?

  And that is just getting the words on paper and then you take them and shape them. This is, I'm good at making clay. Leif, he's like constantly going back and rewriting a sentence that he just wrote. Like I'll write 20 pages and not change one single thing and then go back and edit it. Leif will be like one sentence and he'll go back and edit it. You know, that's just the way his mind works. Uh, fast drafting is tough. Many writers cannot resist revising and editing as they draft. Leif Babbin, my brother Leif. But this slows writing and waste effort. As we see in chapter five, first drafts often require significant cuts.

• 46:16Jocko Willink?

  Rewriting while drafting risks wasting time improving passages that may end up being cut during revision. And that is crazy. I do remember Leif and I were doing like some of the final edits on Extreme Ownership. And we were just X-ing out whole paragraphs. You know, like half a page gone. Cause it'd be some weird like little offshoot of a story. And we're like, does that really add? Like, nope. X.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. You you ever come across those deleted scenes from movies, right? And you know, they're always fun to watch, but some of them you're like, bro, I can't believe they filmed this whole thing. This whole thing, you know, it took like more than a day of shooting.

• 47:00Jocko Willink?

  Oh, for sure. I'm currently living through that.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  There you go. But it's always surprising. Well, not always, but it's a lot of times surprising how much they just did not include. And yeah, a lot of time, well, in my experience, a lot of time it's for that reason of, hey, it's it's not necessary.

• 47:19Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And it's way better to just throw the right to write it in there, just like when you're shooting a film. Here I am, Mr. Film Guy. But like when you're shooting a film, you want to get as many different versions and many different takes as you can.

• 47:29Speaker 01

  Totally makes sense.

• 47:30Jocko Willink?

  And so that way you go day of, like, well, hey, we might as well shoot it. Let's get it. Hey, let's get, you know, get him spitting the drink out when he's done. Oh, that might be too much. Get him just making a grimace face. Get him turning around and, you know, spitting it out all over the floor. That's you get them all.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:48Jocko Willink?

  And so when you're writing, you'll kind of do that. You kind of like throw these little variations in there because you want to have those options.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  Better to have it and not need it.

• 47:57Jocko Willink?

  Oh, for sure.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  Than need it and not have it.

• 47:59Jocko Willink?

  And the other crazy, it hurts, though.

• 48:01Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 48:02Jocko Willink?

  Both of them, like X now, some of those things and edits in a in in my books where I'm like, yeah, that's right. It doesn't really make sense. And definitely, I mean, I've seen some Warrior Kid stuff go to the the cutting room floor, as they call it. And you go, gosh, that's such a cool little moment, you know, really, really. And then and then you look at it and you go, for the good of the entire that the entire holistic view, they're right, I'm right, or they're right, or I'm wrong, or whatever.

• 48:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:36Jocko Willink?

  Because and it's really difficult because, you know, a movie's an hour and a half, two hours long.

• 48:42Jocko Willink?

  And you might not recognize like, oh, I didn't really realize I was kind of pulled off track and this, this story didn't, you know, I, I got to learn something, but it didn't, it didn't deliver me anything in the end. Like I make a movie about Echo and at one point I'm like, and here's Echo, you know, pouring some lucky charms and he's sitting, watching TV. Well, it's cool that I know that and you're maybe you're doing funny stuff, picking the marshmallows. Like there's a bunch of funny things that can happen there, but it didn't add to our story. And so therefore gotta go. And that was, might've been some of your, some of your best acting, bro. Could've been there.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  So there is this, what? I was reading some book, this book. I can't remember what book it is. It's about this, the creative process. Anyway, the idea here, and this is what they called it, um, fetishizing techniques. So in, and this is pretty much any creative thing where like, um, like writing, for example, if you, if you like to use certain words, I just love this word, right? And you made this sentence that was like, dang, that sentence really came out really good, right? But it didn't, you know, it didn't make the cutting room floor or whatever. It didn't add to the story. We'll say it was unnecessary, but you go to bat for that sentence to keep it in because you fetishized your technique.

• 49:54Speaker 01

  Where it's like, okay, so in video making, me and Carrie will laugh about this. I usually, I, I used to use, uh, lens flares, right? Like artificial lens flares, make it look more dramatic. I freaking love the technique, you know?

• 50:07Speaker 01

  Nowadays a little bit less, but at the time I loved the technique. That's fetishizing the techniques to put lens flares on something that does not need lens flares, you know? But since I love lens flares, I'm fetishizing it and, you know, freaking, uh, going down on my way to keep it, and keep it in there. But I ruined the overall work in a way, you know, you run that, oh, I know what it was. The book, you know, the forty eight laws of power guy?

• 50:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 50:29Speaker 01

  Green, green. Yeah. He has a book called mastery. I'm pretty sure that's where it's from. Don't, watch out for fetishizing techniques. So it's like, just like how you said, like, if I, I'm pouring the lucky charms and maybe I liked the way the light shined off my head or something like this. And I've really thought the way I delivered that line or whatever was really good. Oh man, I really need that. I'm fetishizing my technique right there, you know? But it doesn't add to the story.

• 50:52Jocko Willink?

  It can hurt, man. It can hurt in the writing realm. It can hurt now, again, I mean, like the movie realm. You're like, God, that's such a good spot, but I kind of get it.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  I understand.

• 51:03Jocko Willink?

  Kind of get it. There's a Some things that you could do this in writing, you can do this and you can do this when you speak. So when you make a point, when you speak.

• 51:15Jocko Willink?

  And your point is made, be quiet.

• 51:20Jocko Willink?

  Now, I could say that and I could say when your point, when you make a point and you speak, be quiet. Because then that moment of when you were quiet will let thing, thing, you see, I just did it. I just kept talking when I didn't need to keep talking. So you gotta be careful that well, that can happen in writing. Were you like adding too many things in where that point that you want to make is now diminished? And same things in film, it's like, oh, this was cool. This was a cool, like eight to 10, this was a five, this was a six, this was a seven. And those are all really good and then I got the nine at the end. Well, it's better just to go zero, zero, two, zero, one, nine. Boom, ah. See what I'm saying?

• 52:02Speaker 01

  But that's even with like regular conversation, that's what so. Probably used to do this thing, I don't know if I feel like this is an example of that. It's just so small and subtle, but it's there. So let's say me and you are watching a movie, we're little kids, right? We're watching a movie, you come in halfway through the movie or whatever, I'm following the movie, I'm tracking it hardcore. And you're like, oh, what happened, who's this? And you're like, oh, this guy is about to go on this trip with this guy, but this guy, the actual killer, the guy with the red. Let's say there's four guys in the scene, the guy with the red shirt, the guy with the blonde, see right there, you know? And I'd be like, okay, you already know the guy with the red shirt, you already know, but I want to over like. I want to make sure that you got it, you got my point, so I overstated, I over explained it, over everything.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  But Brad, you get in the way of your own, your own mission, you seem saying when you do that kind of stuff.

• 52:48Jocko Willink?

  Yep, yep, you gotta, there's a, it's also when you hit something too much on the head. So I think I heard Rogan, Joe Rogan talking about this. Like if you're doing comedy. If I give the punchline too early, it doesn't work because, because you haven't even. If I'm telling you a joke and I give you the punchline too early, you haven't even computed. What's happening? So if I give it too early, it doesn't work. If I give it too late, you already figured out the punchline in your own head and it's not, it's not there. So I need to get you to a point where you're thinking, what could the punchline be?

• 53:32Jocko Willink?

  But you don't quite know, you've, you've put the calculus together to figure out that there's going to be an answer and you understand the question, you don't know what the answer is. If I give it, if I give you the answer too quick, you don't even know what the question was. If I give you the answer too late, you figured it out for yourself. So that's the kind of thing you gotta pay attention to. And it's the same thing when you're trying to make a point with your writing. If you hint at something nine times, well, they already figured out, now it's a foregone conclusion. If you don't, if you come out of left field with your principle or your point, then it's like, wait, what is this in reference to? So you gotta land it.

• 54:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:05Jocko Willink?

  You gotta land it. That's what we're doing.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's crazy how that small subtlety can make the difference between someone who's like good. And yeah, comedy is like, that one feels like it, it hits so hard on it's done right and wrong. Because it's like they really have to invoke certain emotions or whatever, but, um, but it goes for anything. But it's crazy how just that little, literally like not even half a second.

• 54:27Jocko Willink?

  Not even half a second.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  And all it is timing, forget the tone, which is part of it too, of course. But just, let's say just the timing alone, half a second can be literally be the difference of something being good versus straight up junk.

• 54:39Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Like I missed it, I missed it.

• 54:41Speaker 01

  Missed it.

• 54:42Jocko Willink?

  Or I already knew that. And so it's not funny. Obviously that's the answer. You know, uh, why did the chicken cross the road? You know, like you need to understand what that is before, to get to the other side of wherever the punchline is. So it's very, that's the way all this stuff is. You want to have people to have some indication of it in their brain, but not have the solidified answer. They gotta have, they gotta understand the question. Know that there's an answer, not quite sure what it is, and then give it to them.

• 55:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:16Jocko Willink?

  If you wait till they already figured out, it's not funny, or it's not good. It's not a good point.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:20Jocko Willink?

  So that's what we're doing. That's, you know, movies where it all comes to like the sixth sense?

• 55:27Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 55:27Jocko Willink?

  Where it all comes together in the end and you go, oh damn.

• 55:31Speaker 01

  Oh, like the twist, you mean?

• 55:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the twist and same thing with, um, with.

• 55:35Speaker 01

  Fight Club.

• 55:36Jocko Willink?

  Fight Club, right? That's all like, oh, you're, you're, you're with the whole story, but then you go, oh, it all makes sense in the end.

• 55:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:42Jocko Willink?

  Imagine if like you could go too long with that. Where it's like, oh, or you could be too, the two things could be so far separated that you're like, wait a second. Oh, you're trying to say that that was all fake? Like you gotta land it.

• 55:54Speaker 01

  Perfect example. Yeah, you got, and you got a hint at it.

• 55:58Jocko Willink?

  Got a hint.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  You can't give it away.

• 55:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 56:00Speaker 01

  Cause if you don't hint at it at all, yeah, it just like I said, it comes out a left field and it doesn't make sense. And you're kind of insulted in a way, you know? So it's like just that subtle.

• 56:10Jocko Willink?

  You ever seen one of those mystery movies where you're like, the killer? It's, it's like one, you never could have figured that out.

• 56:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 56:19Jocko Willink?

  That's a crap mystery.

• 56:20Speaker 01

  They don't hint at it, you know?

• 56:21Jocko Willink?

  And the other end of the mystery movie is like, you know who did it?

• 56:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:24Jocko Willink?

  So it's gotta be right there. It's gotta be right there in the middle. Check. Uh, do not try to write a perfect first draft or even a good one. All first drafts are ugly. Do not try and make them otherwise. Draft fast. Uh, then this thing goes into this whole like formatting deal, which I'm not even going to get into. Structure, introduction, main body, conclusion. It goes through a bunch of this stuff because it's talking about writing army manuals and whatnot, which is cool. The chapter five is revise. When a draft is completed, the job of writing can begin. This is similar to Tim Ferriss and he, he told me this.

• 57:07Jocko Willink?

  And then he's like said it a bunch, but he says, oh yeah, when you're done writing your book, you're halfway there, which is probably an underestimate, right? You're or an overestimate, you're probably not even have like when you're done with your first draft, you're about, you're probably not even halfway there. I will say though, as I've written more books, I'm way closer. Like Extreme Ownership wasn't even halfway there. It's probably 30% there. Leadership Strategy and Tactics was probably 70% there. Way of the Warrior Kid 5 was like, pretty good.

• 57:41Speaker 01

  Makes sense.

• 57:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because you get better at it.

• 57:46Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, revising means re-seeing. Writing to ensure it says what the writer intends. Paper level revision improves the essay's substance and organization. Paragraph level revisions improves paragraphs. Think about when you're going to a meeting and you've thought through and you've written down and you've, you've said something to yourself and then you go, I could say that a little bit better. And you dial all that in and you go into the meeting.

• 58:10Jocko Willink?

  You're going to be so much better off. And that's what this is. Writing is thinking. Writing is not the product of thinking. It is thinking. Drafting helps writers discover what they know about a topic. Revising often reveals that they know less than they need to. Arguments that seem strong during drafting may appear less so when revisited. This process of thinking on paper prompts writers to do more research and drafting. I've had people say,

• 58:38Jocko Willink?

  either they were writing me a question, right? They, I was going to write you an email, but then I figured out the answer. They'll say like, they'll, someone will be asking me a question and as they're asking me a question, they already know the answer.

• 58:48Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 58:48Jocko Willink?

  And they're like, I know what you're going to say. It's like, yeah, I'm gonna say, good. No, but that, that, that happens and that's what writing does for you.

• 58:54Speaker 01

  It totally does. Also too, and I don't know if you're going to say this or not, so forgive me if I spoiler, but.

• 59:00Jocko Willink?

  Give away the punchline?

• 59:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, so you say writing is thinking. So you know how like, okay, we got to write little scripts, you know, for, I don't know, Choco Fuel video or something, you know, whatever. Where you could start, and they say this with like any kind of process, strategies, you know, your, your writing process, you know, some people, they say, hey, just start with the end. You know, these are all process strategies. Where you could go on and they say, when you're staring at the blank paper is the most frightening part of writing or whatever, staring at it. So they, they say. Just start, just write something, right? For this reason, because writing is thinking. It's like if you're sitting on the blank paper, it makes sense that it's like, well, you're not doing much thinking right now. You're trying for sure, you know? But you're gonna do a lot more thinking if you actually start writing.

• 59:46Speaker 01

  So, and if you notice, whether this happens every single time, or sometimes, to me, pretty much every time. If you just start writing something, first word that comes to mind when you think about whatever you're trying to write first word, just write the first word for sentence, you'd be surprised how many more sentences follow. Some good, some bad, but it's part of that, the actual thinking process. You know what I'm saying? The first line and the last line you write, there was no plan right there. You, you thought of one word and then you start, you, you sort of thought your way through it essentially, just through writing.

• 1:00:16Jocko Willink?

  So it is. There are some people on, on Twitter X.

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:00:20Jocko Willink?

  That, like when I post in the morning, whatever I post, they'll, they'll write Jocko prompts and they'll like write some kind of, write about whatever, you know, if I said, uh, uh, uh, get up and get after it. And they'll be like, get up, do it again. You know, they'll like write these little things, kind of, it's kind of like the same thing you're talking about. Yeah. Little additional oomph on the whole thing.

• 1:00:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:41Jocko Willink?

  You know? But to your point, once you start writing, it, it will flow, for lack of a better word.

• 1:00:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, so much, like basically that first line will say provokes more thought, which provokes more lines.

• 1:00:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:59Speaker 01

  Which provokes more.

• 1:01:00Jocko Willink?

  It's sort of like when we talk about, hey, if you don't know what you're doing, start walking.

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:04Jocko Willink?

  It's the same thing, like if you don't know what to write, start writing and you'll start, you, at least maybe you'll figure out like this is a dumb sentence. I need to do a different one. Okay, go do, do a different one, no factor. Uh, it says, good writers sometimes discover in the act of writing that what looked persuasive when floating vaguely in the mind looks foolish when moored to the page. Deidre McCloskey, which is what I say, this, this is detachment. Oh, I wanna, you know, I got a good idea. Write it down, write it down and look at it.

• 1:01:36Jocko Willink?

  I'm not sure how we could overcome this. Okay, write it down and look at it. That is detachment. It will, you will see it more clearly. There's a weird thing when you're in the SEAL Teams. You come up, well, you gotta go attack a target. And you come up with a plan, like a really rough plan. You, you can't, you have to actually start planning before you figure out if it's gonna work or not. Like at some point you go, eh, like, hey, I think we should hit it from the north. You go, okay, cool. Like, let's start that planning. You, you, you have to start the planning to see if it's gonna work or not. And that's the same thing, what you were just talking about, like, I, I have an idea. I have to start writing to see if it's a good idea or not. I have to start. Cause you might, eh, we're gonna attack from the north. Okay, cool. Go start the planning. Hey, we started the planning. We looked at the terrain. It turns out there's a big cliff. We won't be able to get it up and over. Okay, cool.

• 1:02:21Jocko Willink?

  Well, now we know that. So it gives us three choices, you know, southeast, west. Well, let's go look at those. But you have to start the planning. You have to start bringing some granularity to the picture before you know if it's gonna be functional or not. Yeah. So, very good. Writing is a form of detachment that is extremely helpful. Next thing, to revise a paper, reread it to answer these questions. Does the paper achieve its purpose? Does it answer the questions? Does the introduction discuss the topic, state the thesis? This is very technical. Is the thesis statement clear? Does each major section in the paragraph in the main body build? So this is sort of just a way to revise these more technical papers. Professional papers, I should have used, I like that word, technical.

• 1:03:06Jocko Willink?

  And then it's got a quote here, the very, the essence of writing is rewriting. Very few writers say on their first try exactly what they wanna say. It's like, yep, ain't that the truth? And here's the murder your darlings piece. Paper level revision often reveals passages that do not advance the thesis. That's a good way of saying what we were talking about. Does not advance the thesis, doesn't advance the plot, doesn't show us anything more about the character. And by the way, if I show, like, if I wanna show Echo Charles as being an OCD type person and I show him like organizing his silverware and then organizing his plates, and then the next scene, I show him organizing his toothbrush and his, it's like, at a certain point, we already know the thing.

• 1:03:48Jocko Willink?

  So is it adding? No. Remove them. Or as experienced writers say, murder your darlings. Ooh, as this dramatic metaphor implies, removing unnecessary passages is often painful. Writing is hard work. Throwing away some of that work can feel like killing something loved. But removing excess is essential to produce clear, concise writing. Good writers are ruthless editors. Pretty cool. When you write a story, you're telling yourself the story. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story, and that is Stephen King. And it's got this meal model, this meal model here. Meal is a model for organizing paragraphs.

• 1:04:29Jocko Willink?

  Meal stands for main idea, evidence, and analysis, and link back to the larger claim. I know I circled this for a reason. It says, "The topic sentence states the paragraph's main idea. The middle sentence discusses the evidence and the analysis that support the main idea. The last sentence links the paragraph to the main idea of the paragraph section or paper." Eh, not bad. I don't know why I got hyped on that. Usually I have some like, good reason. I don't know why that thing hyped me. Or I make a note if I think I'm gonna forget it. Uh, next one, chapter six, fast forward. Clutter is the disease of American writing. Williams Zinser. And again, I've used Williams Zinser quote a few times. He wrote this book called On Writing Well, which is kind of a,

• 1:05:13Jocko Willink?

  kind of a, you know, the kind of a very hot, uh, good standard. Let's kind of love. You wanna learn how to write, get on Writing Well by Zinser. So, um, that's why he's quoted in here a bunch.

• 1:05:24Jocko Willink?

  Writing standards to focus on when editing.

• 1:05:29Jocko Willink?

  First part is style. Write clearly so the text is easy to read and understand. Prefer clear, concise sentences. Prefer simple words and omit unnecessary words.

• 1:05:44Jocko Willink?

  Prefer active voice. Maintain a professional tone, formal, but conversational and confident. So what's interesting to note here is it says, "Prefer clear, concise languages. Prefer simple words." So you might, you've got to lean towards those, have a bias towards those, but you might have to go with the other methodology sometimes.

• 1:06:08Jocko Willink?

  Correctness. Use conventional punctuation, spelling, and grammar. Cite all sources and format citations correctly.

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, you gotta use the proper stuff, proper. I took a class in college called Advanced Grammar and Syntax.

• 1:06:27Jocko Willink?

  What's crazy is like, English is the wildest, dumbest language. Like, there's things in English that make no sense whatsoever. You know, like, it's just, it just rules that, rules that applies ninety-two percent of the time.

• 1:06:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:43Jocko Willink?

  And then it's just out of left field with some, just look at our dumb spellings we have in English. They make no sense.

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, and there's, man, I come across these like explanations for all this, and I think it has to do with, because English is a mix of this and that.

• 1:06:57Jocko Willink?

  No, there's always a reason for it.

• 1:06:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, but at the end of the day.

• 1:07:02Speaker 01

  There's this comedian back in the day, eighties, seventies, maybe, Gallagher was his name.

• 1:07:06Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, I remember, like, Smash Watermelons.

• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, but he did some very insightful, you know, monologues and stuff like that sometime. And so one time he went over English.

• 1:07:17Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:07:18Speaker 01

  And he was like, I was in school or something along the lines of, I was in school and they're telling me to take, take my class seriously, but why would I take this class seriously when it doesn't take me seriously or something like that, right? Then he goes and he does little diagram where it's like, okay, uh, what is it? It was like womb, tomb, some, numb, all these words that rhyme with each other and or are spelt like each other, but just change the first letter. And it becomes a whole different word and sound different or whatever. And it's like, but man, I remember as a little kid, I was like, yeah, bro, why is that? It'd be way more simple if it was more cohesive or whatever. But man, it gets, and it goes deep, too.

• 1:07:56Jocko Willink?

  Yep. At some point,

• 1:07:59Jocko Willink?

  hopefully, these things will evolve. But the reason that English is like that is one of the things that makes English so widely used is that it is very adaptive. But, you know, just like democracy, you know, you got, you got outliers that like make it, it's not perfect. Nah, it's not always pretty. You know, like, you're gonna get some, get some wild things going on.

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:22Jocko Willink?

  Like, you know, the word right. I'm sitting here looking at my notes. I'm like, right. Well, there's W R I T E. And then there's right, R I G H T. And then there's R I T E. Three words all spelled different, all mean random different things.

• 1:08:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:38Jocko Willink?

  Like a rite of passage.

• 1:08:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:40Jocko Willink?

  Or I have the right to do this, or I'm gonna write this down. Like this is one example off the top of my notes right here that is all jacked up.

• 1:08:47Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, then you go, you have live and live, which kind are the same thing, but they're different. They're spelled the exact same way. So now you guys, you can't just read the word, you gotta read the sentence to even know what the word means. Like bra, it kinda gets a.

• 1:09:00Jocko Willink?

  Or lead and led.

• 1:09:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:03Jocko Willink?

  And led.

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  Read and read and.

• 1:09:04Jocko Willink?

  Yes, freaking gets crazy.

• 1:09:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it comes to the point where you, you basically just gotta memorize stuff.

• 1:09:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, some of it you just gotta, you just gotta memorize.

• 1:09:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:14Jocko Willink?

  But that's why also.

• 1:09:17Jocko Willink?

  If English is like, there's leeway in English. Like I'll do it that way if I want to. Hey, I went to war. For the word jujitsu, the way that we spell jujitsu. J I U hyphen J I T S U. That was not the accepted way. I think it might, it was my editors, like we can't, no, this is wrong. Here's this, here's the Oxford English Dictionary, here's the Japanese, everyone was like, no. But the way we spell it. Us modern jujitsu players, the way we spell it, they would, they were like, I had to go to war. To spell jujitsu, the way we spell jujitsu.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:56Jocko Willink?

  And, and I won.

• 1:09:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:58Jocko Willink?

  And I, it'll be interesting to see in a few years if that becomes the, the way that we, everyone spells jujitsu.

• 1:10:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz it's, cuz tech, I guess even on a technical level, it's, it's a different thing. That's why, right, than the like Japanese jujitsu, whatever.

• 1:10:14Jocko Willink?

  It is, but it isn't.

• 1:10:16Speaker 01

  Right, but at the end of the day.

• 1:10:17Jocko Willink?

  But it isn't.

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  Either, okay, so look, I guess this, this will kinda be. Reduced to a philosophical argument.

• 1:10:26Jocko Willink?

  Fair enough.

• 1:10:27Speaker 01

  But Yushanji Hibiro, who is explaining this.

• 1:10:31Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  Where, yeah, there was an original way, just like there was an original actual jujitsu. But things, basically between then and now, things change. And the spelling is just one of those things. And they're for these reasons and all this stuff. So it's like, yeah, you can stick to the original way in whatever way you want. And at the end of the day, you can change and do this or whatever. But hey, this is like the general understood.

• 1:10:54Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  Thing.

• 1:10:55Jocko Willink?

  I should have the notes because they weren't just, they were giving me multiple different options like, well, J U J, they were giving me that option. They gave me a bunch of options. None of them were the way that we spell it right now.

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:11:07Jocko Willink?

  And so I had to hold the, hold the line on that one.

• 1:11:10Speaker 01

  Well, they, I guess the question would at the end of the day be, what is the thing that we are doing when we say, when we say jujitsu? That came from Helen Carlos. How were they spelling it? When they were like, hey, UFC won 1993, Denver, Colorado. This guy does karate. This guy does ninjitsu. This guy, Hoist Gracie, does Gracie jujitsu. How is that one spelled? That's how we're spelling it.

• 1:11:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's how I spelled it.

• 1:11:40Speaker 01

  Otherwise, we're doing something else.

• 1:11:42Jocko Willink?

  That's like when these people try to tell me how to tie my belt. You know how I tie my belt? The way Hicks and Gracie told me how to tie my belt. Roger that. That's what I'm doing.

• 1:11:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, there you go.

• 1:11:52Jocko Willink?

  All right, um, little quote here. The first duty in writing a sentence is to make it clear. Once again, that's Deidre McCloskey. Here's a couple clear writing. They give a couple examples, vague versus concrete. Ridgeway's leadership impacted the Eighth Army. It's kind of vague, right? Here's the concrete version. Ridgeway improved the Eighth Army's fighting spirit. Much more concrete. Vague. Napoleon had a lot of leadership experience. Concrete. Napoleon had 10 years of leadership experience. Vague. The S4 is working the fuel problem. Concrete. The S4 ordered extra deliveries to fix the fuel problem. So just things to think about. And again,

• 1:12:36Jocko Willink?

  well, reading these things aloud, you can, you can almost immediately see the differences. Cliche. Finding the enemy is like finding a needle in the haystack. Concrete. Finding the enemy is difficult. Cliche, she thinks outside the box. Concrete, she thinks creatively. I think outside the box is used so much right now that creatively is a better way of saying it. Hyperbole, the battalion commander wanted to kill them. Concrete, the battalion commander was angry.

• 1:13:09Jocko Willink?

  Hyperbole, Ridgway was the epitome of military leadership. Concrete, Ridgway was an effective leader. Now, look, there's gonna be times when either one of those is gonna work, one working better than the other.

• 1:13:23Jocko Willink?

  And then there's a section on active and passive voice, which is something that you learn in English, which you should pay attention to. Passive voice, the high ground was occupied, was occupied by the battalion and the attack was defeated. As opposed to active voice, which is preferred in most cases, the battalion occupied the high ground and defeated the attack.

• 1:13:46Jocko Willink?

  Here's a simpler version. Passive voice, the operation was planned by Patton. Active voice, Patton planned the operation. See how those two work?

• 1:13:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:56Jocko Willink?

  And you see the superiority of it?

• 1:13:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:00Jocko Willink?

  So we always try and use active voice as much as we possibly can unless there's a reason. And then it's got a bunch of like complex words versus simple words. Assistance versus help. Numerous versus many. Initial versus first. Sufficient versus enough. Attempt versus try. Utilize versus use. Expedite versus hurry. Erroneous versus wrong. Cognizant versus aware. So do sometimes, does it make sense to use a word that is more specific and it really lands perfectly? Yeah. Absolutely. But sometimes the word, the simplest straightforward word is the word that you want to go with. Uh, here's a wordy version.

• 1:14:45Jocko Willink?

  Wordy versus versus, wordy version versus concise version. Eisenhower took an opportunity to conduct a rapid assessment of the problem that he was facing. Concise. Eisenhower assessed the problem.

• 1:15:03Jocko Willink?

  Wordy. Coda failed to demonstrate an ability as the commander to understand the operational environment he was operating in.

• 1:15:14Jocko Willink?

  Concise. Coda did not understand the operational environment. So much better.

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, sometimes.

• 1:15:21Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes, yes, sometimes. If you're bringing more perspective, detail, nuance to a statement that's important, absolutely, absolutely. But there's a reason that you kind of tracked on that one. Coda failed to demonstrate an ability as a commander to understand the operational environment he was operating in. That's a lot, right?

• 1:15:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, fully.

• 1:15:44Jocko Willink?

  Coda did not understand the operational environment. That is just boom, straightforward.

• 1:15:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you're right. At the end of the day, and I'm basically checking my bias right now, because I do like, like, the comedy elements of things. So in a lot of cases, so,

• 1:16:02Speaker 01

  you know how you can downplay stuff, and you can like upplay stuff, you know? So basically, you can use a wordy version to downplay something, and you'd use a less, what is it, concise version to upplay stuff. So, okay, Leif Babin, our friend, we love him. He said, he says, when he's talking about BUDs, when he's talking about training, we're talking about training, and he was like, I'm not, he was like, I'm talking about advanced training. I'm not talking about BUDs. BUDs is just a screening process to screen out the people who we don't think have the characteristics to be successful on the battlefield. That's how he put it. It's a wordy version, right? And you even said it, I don't know when you, I forget when

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  you said it, you were like, yeah, basically to weed out the pussies. That's what you said. That's the concise version. See what I'm saying? But the reason that I found that like funny is because when you think, well, yeah, but just emotionally, I think. When you say weed out the pussies, that's kind of how it feels. You know, Bud's is hard. It's hardcore. You gotta be tough. You gotta be kind of hardcore. And when you make it through, you're badass, right? That's kind of the feeling of Bud's anyway. Just the feeling. I'm saying the words, the feeling. So when you say it in that wordy, like, it just simply screens out the individuals. We don't think have the characteristics of being discussed on the battlefield. It's kind of like you downplay the badassness and just really reduce it to this really technical kind of thing. It's funny.

• 1:17:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because, okay, I get it. Yeah, because it is funny, because it's also like when you say, when someone's like, oh, yeah, we had an enemy fighter that was moving down the street towards our position and we interdicted him and eliminated the threat.

• 1:17:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:17:40Jocko Willink?

  As opposed, as opposed to like, oh, he smoked that fool.

• 1:17:44Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 1:17:45Jocko Willink?

  So both those, they, both those things have a moment where, yes, that's the correct version to use for the correct response that you're looking to get, for the message that you're trying to convey.

• 1:17:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:55Jocko Willink?

  They, they, they're both can be correct, depending on the time that they're delivered.

• 1:17:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:00Jocko Willink?

  One, there's one time where they would be totally incorrect to be like, we smoked him, or we weeded out the pussies. Like, there's times where that's just not the thing to say.

• 1:18:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:08Jocko Willink?

  Just like there's times where that long, arduous, technical version would be the not thing to say.

• 1:18:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:14Jocko Willink?

  So that's the way it works. We gotta, we gotta choose. That's why, that's why this is only a guide.

• 1:18:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:19Jocko Willink?

  Because you gotta know your audience. You gotta know the message that you're trying to convey.

• 1:18:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:24Jocko Willink?

  Uh, fast forward a little bit here. So, avoid nominalizations. Nominalizations are nouns created from other parts of speech, such as adjectives, quick becomes quickness. Other nouns, favorite becomes favoritism. And verbs, prepare becomes preparation. Nominalizations clutter writing because they require writers to add a verb to make sentences work. So, and they just, uh, this is, to me, is just the, the interesting thing about the English language. The nominalization, conduct an attack. You could just say attack.

• 1:19:01Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:19:02Jocko Willink?

  Nominalization, conduct a defense, or defend. Make preparations. Prepare, dude.

• 1:19:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:09Jocko Willink?

  Uh, make a decision. Decide. Take action. Act. Uh, give a response. Respond. Bring to an end. End. Hold a meeting. Meet.

• 1:19:26Jocko Willink?

  Make a recommendation, recommend, take into consideration, consider, have the ability, can.

• 1:19:39Jocko Willink?

  So very smart to do that.

• 1:19:44Jocko Willink?

  And almost done with this, but the, the, the final chapter is submit and I'll close this out here. Because this is probably, this is kind of what I wanted to get to, proofreading.

• 1:19:58Jocko Willink?

  Proofreading for errors is the last step before submitting techniques for effective proofreading included. These are the important things to think about. Let the paper rest for a day or two after the final edit. What does that mean in, to us? It means if you're about to send a text, freaking, write the text in your notes. So you don't accidentally hit the send button. Come back to it an hour later and reread it. Email, same thing. You gotta write an email to someone like that's, that's a meaningful email. Write it without putting the address. I was with someone the other day and they, they were like, gonna start making edits and they removed the address of, that way they didn't actually hit send. It's problematic. So don't put the address in there and write the email.

• 1:20:42Jocko Willink?

  And depending on how much time you have, an hour, two hours, next day, you can read that thing with a fresh mind. It's so important to do that. Next one, read the paper aloud to hear errors.

• 1:20:56Jocko Willink?

  Very smart. This is, for me, this is the best. The first step to take and it makes a huge difference. When I, when I brought my warrant officers and mass troops in and was like, okay, put up the evaluation, I'm gonna read your first sentence aloud. As soon as I did that, everyone, everyone probably improved 50% right then just by going and doing that. Cause things sound good or bad when you read them aloud.

• 1:21:21Speaker 01

  And yeah, I guess this is kind of a side note, but still I think relevant where you you gotta be responsible with reading that kind of stuff though, too, though, in this way. So you ever watch Fight Club?

• 1:21:33Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:21:33Speaker 01

  We all love Fight Club. So the famous line in Fight Club is first rule of Fight Club. You do not talk about Fight Club. When Tyler Durden says it sounds dope. Always has, always will. We're gonna love it. There's a part in Fight Club where Ed Norton is at work. And his boss finds a copy of the rules of Fight Club in like the printer or whatever, right? He finds it and he comes in his office, super irritated with the with the guy Ed Norton. And he goes, the first rule of Fight Club is you don't talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club, is this yours? So he read it in that tone to make it sound stupid. See what I'm saying? So you gotta be responsible with this kind of stuff.

• 1:22:14Jocko Willink?

  Yes, and you you have to proactively do that. So if I'm writing, if I'm writing you Echo Charles, an email that I know is about a sensitive topic, something that you're very, you're very emotional about, I gotta read it like that. I gotta read it in a negative way. Cause and actually, I know Jamie does this at the at the assembly. They have a couple of emails and they'll read them in two different tones. And where that came from was Jamie called me and she was like, tell me about this client wrote this email. And she's like, listen to this email. And she was pissed, right? And I go, okay, I go, let me read it. And it was totally different.

• 1:22:57Jocko Willink?

  Because when I say, hey, Echo, I wanted to ask you a question.

• 1:23:05Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:23:07Jocko Willink?

  Echo, I want to ask you a question. You see what I'm saying? Like, it's totally different. Just in, just in the tone. So you're right, you have to pay attention to how that thing is going to sound. And you have to read it from the worst case scenario. Read it that Echo Charles is looking to be mad at me. So it doesn't say, hey, Echo, I wanted to ask you a question. It says, hey, Echo, I want to ask you a question. Totally different things.

• 1:23:36Jocko Willink?

  So you're right. You have to read things aloud and and so you'll get some of it'll just be the comprehension of it, but the tone will definitely start to come out if you do it properly. And this one is a little bit more for the way that you've written it. It's read the paper one sentence at a time from end to beginning. This technique focuses the writer on one sentence at a time rather than big ideas. So if you really want to, this is if you're really trying to clean up a document. You read one sentence at the time from the end of it and read it backwards because it makes you. It makes you really focus on the act, each actual individual sentence. Uh, the next one, ask a friend or someone else, preferably someone who is not familiar with the

• 1:24:18Jocko Willink?

  subject to read it and give feedback. That's good. And I'd say. You absolutely. If you have a document that's important, you have to have someone else read it.

• 1:24:31Jocko Willink?

  At a minimum, you got to give yourself time away from that document. And there's you reach a certain point. If you've edited something 50 times, like your 51st is worthless. I don't know that I should try and come up with a realistic number. And it's probably different for different people. Like I've worked with editors before. Like professional editors, bro, they're they're psycho. Because they can edit something 500 times and still be like, notice something that's wrong. Like I remember we on on Extreme Ownership, there was a, there was a really late version. Like post publisher editors where like leadership or something was spelled wrong. We're like, damn dude, that's scary.

• 1:25:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:15Jocko Willink?

  That's scary. So. Give yourself time away from it so it becomes fresh in your mind again. And that's, but it's, but also having someone that hasn't seen it yet is a very powerful way to do it. Um, and get things cleaned up as much as you can before you give it to someone else. Because otherwise, you know, I talk about mowing grass. So if you have like a field.

• 1:25:42Jocko Willink?

  You look at the field, it all looks like, let's call it five inch grass, it's overgrown, right? You don't see that there's rocks and sticks, you don't even see them. So you gotta get out there and get it down to three inches, now you can go out and remove some sticks. Once you got the sticks out of there, now you can get, you can start to really do good editing. So for the courtesy of the person that's gonna be reading it, get it mowed down to a point that you've gotten the big sticks out of there. You don't want them hitting rocks and stuff on their mower. You know, it's, it's not cool, cuz then they're not gonna see the smaller errors that are in there.

• 1:26:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, that, and even that, that whole, um, it's like sleeping on it or whatever, like detaching yourself from it for a little bit to reintroduce yourself to it, to see it with fresh eyes. It feels like all of this actually, in one way or another, applies to most creative, like work.

• 1:26:40Jocko Willink?

  That's probably accurate.

• 1:26:41Speaker 01

  The, so, every once in a while, we'll find out, or we'll realize that if you have something that isn't quite working, right? Let's say it's like, eh, it's like not part, this could be better, it's one little sentence in a book, or whatever. But you're so tunnel vision of from reading it over and over and over and writing and reading and reading over and over, you start, before you correct it, I mean. You start, your brain almost subconsciously starts to slowly accept it as being like correct, or just fine, or part of the thing, cuz you're just so used to it, you know? So now when you watch it, it doesn't stick out as hardcore as a big mistake, cuz just cuz you're just used to it.

• 1:27:20Speaker 01

  You're used to it, you're not like, you haven't accepted it on, on a creative level, you've accepted it on more of a routine level, you see what I'm saying? So then, yeah, when you, when you abandon it for a little bit, then come back, it'll start to stick out more, you know, if it's incorrect.

• 1:27:36Jocko Willink?

  Uh, and then the last one, it just talks about software raids, which I haven't used Grammarly, Hemingway editor, the writer's diet, Microsoft. I haven't used any of these.

• 1:27:46Jocko Willink?

  And now, of course, now you've got ChatGPT and the other Grok, which is Twitter's or X's AI. So you got other tools that can do this stuff now, which I haven't used those. I've used, uh, I've put stuff into, like when I, when I edit on, I use Microsoft, they, they're giving you grammar subject suggestions. You can get, one thing that's kind of cool, you can do with ChatGPT or some of these other ones is, let's say you've got, you know, you've got a thesaurus that will give you another word for a word.

• 1:28:27Jocko Willink?

  But if you've got a phrase, you know, uh, I'm getting nickel and dimed over here, right? What's another way of saying that? You, you can go into ChatGPT and say, what's another way of saying nickel and dime? So there are some, it's almost like a, a sentence, the source that you can use. So those, those can be good, but those are other ways to proofread and there you go. That's what I got. Then the, the rest of this thing is like a bunch of sections on like fonts, which is funny for the military, because the, the military makes fun of the fact that like, you used the wrong font on this slide. Like that's for real formatting citations, bibliography, usage conventions. There's a freaking professional writing rubric in here, which is how to judge work, which I thought was funny.

• 1:29:13Jocko Willink?

  And then finally, there's just the conclusion that they say, publishing, writing is an essential part of being a professional soldier. Writing connects people and ideas and it promotes professional discourse and debate. The writing and publishing process is challenging but rewarding. Write and publish. You might change the army, the army. So there you go. That's it. Um, writing connects people, writing connects ideas, writing makes you smarter. Writing will help you speak better. Writing will help you think better. Writing is not easy.

• 1:29:50Jocko Willink?

  It is a skill that you have to learn and you should focus on it. You should recognize it. And you should go out and you should write more. You'll get better at it. It'll make you better at everything. So there we go. That's what I got. Uh, and by the way, we can't just write and think and speak and get smarter. Those are all cognitive processes. Guess what else we're doing? Lay it on me. Physical activities. We're training. We're spelling jujitsu right and we're training jujitsu. And we're getting after it. So that means we're gonna need fuel. We recommend Jocko Fuel. Jocko Fuel dot com. You can get protein. You can get hydration. You can get greens. You can get energy drink. You can get pre-workout.

• 1:30:33Jocko Willink?

  I've started trying pre-workout at certain times.

• 1:30:38Jocko Willink?

  It's a wild ride. Yeah, it's a wild ride. So we got that. We got joint health. You know, joint warfare, super krill. We got everything that you need. You need to be healthier, stronger, smarter, better. Jocko Fuel dot com. You can get it there. You can also get it at Walmart. You can get it at Wawa Vitamin Shop, GNC, Military Commissaries, Afees, Hannaford Dash Stores down in Maryland, Wake Forest, Shop Right, HEB down in Texas. Meyer up in the Midwest, Wegmans, Harris Teeter, Publix down in Florida. We got you covered. Also Lifetime Fitness, Shields, and then a bunch of little gyms, small gyms all over the place. Jujitsu gyms, spelled correctly.

• 1:31:16Jocko Willink?

  Powerlifting gyms. We got you. If you don't have it there, email J F Sales at Jocko Fuel dot com. That's what we got going on. Also. OriginUSA.com. Making everything that you need to wear. I had a suitcase the other day that was entirely packed with Origin USA. Oh, Origin. Yeah. We got it all. I guess I didn't have, we have, there are Origin socks. I don't have any at this time. Oh, dang. Which is a bummer. That makes one of us. You got Origin socks? Hell, yeah. I do. Okay. Well, we got everything that you need. Workout clothing.

• 1:31:52Jocko Willink?

  Jiu Jitsu clothing, rash guards, gis, Jiu Jitsu belts, by the way. We still haven't determined what belt is going to be utilized. We're sticking with the old one right now. The new one? I don't know. We'll see. Hunt gear, rain jackets, wind jackets, jeans, obviously, boots, just everything that you need. By the way, did you get the new boots yet? Did you get a pair of mock toes yet?

• 1:32:15Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:32:17Jocko Willink?

  Game changer.

• 1:32:17Speaker 01

  All day.

• 1:32:18Jocko Willink?

  All day, all day. So, check it out, originusa.com. These things are not made by slave labor. They're not made by 12-year-old girls who are being abused. They're not made by people that are chained in a factory somewhere in unsafe working conditions. No, this stuff is made here in America.

• 1:32:40Jocko Willink?

  Made by freedom. Originusa.com, check it out.

• 1:32:43Speaker 01

  True. Also, Jocko has a store called Jocko Store, so, hey, look. We're all on this path. Some of us together, some of us solo, you know? It's all our own path, but if you want to represent on this path.

• 1:32:57Speaker 01

  Attire-wise. Discipline equals freedom is where you can get your shirts, hats, hoodies. Some shorts on there as well, some socks on there, various things. JacoStore.com. Hey, look, so you know, so I was reading this book.

• 1:33:15Speaker 01

  Habit books, like Atomic Habits.

• 1:33:19Speaker 01

  So, one of the premises in there was

• 1:33:23Speaker 01

  reduce friction, right? Reduce the friction of your habit, you know, make it, make it this, make it that, but you gotta reduce the friction. You know how like, and you talk about this where if you want to get on a better diet or whatever, just keep the junk food out of your house? That's reducing the friction. You see the junk food, there's friction there against your new habit that you want, see what I'm saying? Anyway, reduce the friction. So, if you put on a shirt that says Discipline Equals Freedom, and you want to get, you want to improve your workout schedule or something like this, reduces the friction. Bruh, I dare you to skip a workout wearing Discipline Equals Freedom.

• 1:33:55Jocko Willink?

  Not happening.

• 1:33:55Speaker 01

  Bruh, it's not gonna happen.

• 1:33:56Jocko Willink?

  Not happening. Hundred percent.

• 1:33:58Speaker 01

  Impossible.

• 1:33:59Jocko Willink?

  Hundred percent?

• 1:33:59Speaker 01

  It's literally impossible, hundred percent. Also on Jocko Store is the Shirt Locker. New designs every month, subscription scenario. Little bit outside of the box. We get creative with it, you know?

• 1:34:10Jocko Willink?

  You almost lost Dave Burke?

• 1:34:12Speaker 01

  Almost brought him right back in.

• 1:34:13Jocko Willink?

  Back in. What'd you bring him back in with?

• 1:34:16Speaker 01

  It was a covert anti-drinking.

• 1:34:19Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's right.

• 1:34:21Speaker 01

  Discipline, no, put it this way, discipline instead of beer. How about that? That's more what it is.

• 1:34:25Jocko Willink?

  I like it.

• 1:34:26Speaker 01

  Anyway, it's called the Shirt Locker. It's on jocko store.com. So, you know, check that out.

• 1:34:30Jocko Willink?

  Get some. Also primalbeef.com, coloradocraftbeef.com. We need, look, we need lean sentences. That sound good. We also need steak that tastes good. So primalbeef.com, coloradocraftbeef.com. Steak, burgers, hot dogs, jerky. Beef tallow, by the way, from coloradocraftbeef.com. Just, we got what you need. So if you need steak, you need beef products, primalbeef.com, coloradocraftbeef.com. Awesome people, awesome families, awesome companies. America, let's go.

• 1:35:09Speaker 01

  Brad, you wanna real quick, a short, easy recipe here? Speaking of friction, so primal beef, whichever, get your ground beef, right?

• 1:35:19Speaker 01

  Three eggs, so one pound of ground beef, give or take. Three eggs, cage-free, pasture-raised, ideally.

• 1:35:29Speaker 01

  Do you know Famous Dave's Rib Rub? You ever heard of this?

• 1:35:32Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:35:33Speaker 01

  It's called Famous Dave's Rib Rub. You put some of that in there. Boom, cook. Cook it all up in a pan.

• 1:35:38Jocko Willink?

  In one big basket?

• 1:35:39Speaker 01

  Big deal. Yep, one big pan.

• 1:35:41Jocko Willink?

  How much does it taste like eggs?

• 1:35:43Speaker 01

  None. I like the two. No, I put it this, yeah, when you hit a chunk of egg, you know, yeah, you know.

• 1:35:49Jocko Willink?

  But it's weird, if you don't smell an egg, an egg doesn't taste like anything. It's the smell of an egg, like, you know what I mean?

• 1:35:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:55Jocko Willink?

  Like when I'm eating Chinese food and there's some eggs in there, I don't, it doesn't taste at all like eggs.

• 1:35:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, you're right about that. Yeah, you are, now that I think of it. Well, okay.

• 1:36:04Jocko Willink?

  You're damn right.

• 1:36:07Speaker 01

  So my and with the eggs, this is how I do it. I cook it up first without the eggs. Right at the last minute, I crack the three eggs on top, kind of like gourmet style. I do not mix them in. I used to mix in a bunch of egg whites. I used to, but it's like, you know. Plus I hear the cholesterol from the egg yolks is good for you.

• 1:36:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:25Speaker 01

  Good for development in many ways. Anyway, I crack them. I don't mix them in. I put the, I turn it off. I put the, the, the top, the cap, what do you call it? The, the cover. So the eggs cook like just ever so subtly over the surface. See what I'm saying? Then I make jasmine rice.

• 1:36:41Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:36:41Speaker 01

  Bro.

• 1:36:43Jocko Willink?

  Good to go.

• 1:36:43Speaker 01

  Freaking, boom, mix them all together if you like, but yes. Uh, about eighty, no, like a hundred grams of protein in that one. So that's like a post-workout scenario. Easily digestible carbohydrates.

• 1:36:58Jocko Willink?

  Jasmine rice.

• 1:36:59Speaker 01

  Jasmine rice.

• 1:37:02Speaker 01

  Omega three fatty acids.

• 1:37:03Jocko Willink?

  Good.

• 1:37:04Speaker 01

  Bro, the whole spectrum of nutrients for, for gains. That's a good, it's a easy, quick, good, easy recipe right there.

• 1:37:10Jocko Willink?

  Check. Awesome. There you go. Also subscribe to this podcast. Also subscribe to Jocko Underground. Also the YouTube channels. Psychological Warfare. Written a bunch of books, by the way. One of them's getting made into a movie or actually like it's kind of the first two that got made into a movie.

• 1:37:30Jocko Willink?

  Those are Wave the Warrior Kid, one, two, three, four, and five, Mikey and the Dragons, and then a bunch, you know, speaking of creative process, Final Spin over there, wrote a little novel activity. So there you go. Bunch of books, leadership books, the whole nine yards. Also, we have a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. Go to eshlofront.com for the deets. Did I say the deets? Yes, I did. I'm turning, I'm getting practicing communications.

• 1:37:56Speaker 01

  Hell yeah.

• 1:37:57Jocko Willink?

  You know?

• 1:37:59Jocko Willink?

  We got the muster.

• 1:38:01Jocko Willink?

  That you can attend that. The next one is San Antonio, Texas, April 29th through May 1st. We also have the council. We have Battlefield. And then if you want us to come to your company, we will come into your company and we will help you with your leadership. That's echelonfront.com. We also have an online training academy. These leadership principles that we talk about, these are skills, just like writing is a skill, leadership is a skill. And you can use this leadership skill, just like writing, when you're writing a text to your wife, or your husband, or you're writing a text, or a formal email to your board. Either way, it's the same skill set. Same thing with leadership. You're leading

• 1:38:42Jocko Willink?

  your spouse, you're leading your kids, or you're leading your board members. Use these skills. If you want to learn these skills, go to extremeownership.com. And also, if you want to help out service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Gold Star families, check out Markley's mom, she's got an amazing organization. It's America's Mighty Warriors. And if you want to help them out, or you want to donate, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. Also, don't forget about heroesandhorses.org, up in Montana, with Micah Fink. And then finally, Jimmy May's organization, BeyondTheBrotherhood.org. If you want to connect with us, I'm at Jaco.com. And on social media, I'm at Jocko Willink and that goes at Echo Charles. Just don't, just don't waste a bunch of time there because

• 1:39:26Jocko Willink?

  you could be writing, you could be getting smarter, could be lifting, getting stronger, could be sprinting, getting faster. Don't let the algorithm make you dumber, slower, and weaker. Thanks to all the military personnel out there on the front lines protecting us. But also in the intellectual zone, making sure our troops know how to lead, and read, and write, and think. So thanks to all those military personnel teaching us how to think. Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, Secret Service, as well as all other first responders. Thanks for keeping us safe here on the home front. And everyone else out there, your mind

• 1:40:11Jocko Willink?

  is like your body.

• 1:40:15Jocko Willink?

  You need to learn skills. You need to train it. You need to exercise it. You need to make your mind strong. You need to make your body strong. You need to make your mind nimble. You need to make your body nimble. You need to train. You need to push. You need to fuel it properly. You need to make your mind better.

• 1:40:36Jocko Willink?

  And one of the best ways to do that is to write.

• 1:40:40Jocko Willink?

  It's also a critical component of leading and of winning. So get out, some paper, pick up a pen, go get after it. Until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.