Jocko Underground: It's Time To Reset. New Authority, How to Motivate The Unmotivated

Is it time to reset? How? To Join or not to Join. The writing process (or any big task). New Leader advice. Fell off the path... 150 lbs ago. Should I stay or should I go? Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is the Jocko Underground Podcast with Echo Charles, sitting across the table from me. And I am Jocko Willink.

• 0:11Jocko Willink?

  Control, Alt, Delete. Do you remember Control, Alt, Delete? Is that still a thing?

• 0:15Speaker 01

  It is still a thing.

• 0:16Jocko Willink?

  So I use an Apple computer system.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  So what is yours? Command?

• 0:21Jocko Willink?

  Well, what's interesting is, here's what's interesting. Straight up, honestly, when you have a Apple computer, you don't even really remember what the reset button is because it doesn't happen very often. And I know there's some software engineer reason for this. Colonels? Is that, is that something to do with kernels?

• 0:38Speaker 01

  I don't know what kernels is.

• 0:39Jocko Willink?

  I don't know either, but the way the Apple system is designed, it doesn't get, it doesn't get jammed up as much as the Windows operating system.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 0:52Jocko Willink?

  That's just this, those are just facts, bro.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 0:54Jocko Willink?

  When I went, I went on deployment one time before I went on deployment, I used that, I used Windows my whole life, like most people, right? I guess most people. At the time, most people were using Windows and in the military, it's 100% Windows. They don't want no Apples. And I was going on deployment and somebody, one of my friends just kept telling me, "Apple, Apple, Apple, Apple, Apple", like hype, hype, hype, hype, right? So finally, I got my wife on Apple computer before I went on deployment. And when I came home, and so I got it set up for it, and it's a little different. It's a little bit different, you know, you're kind of a little bit unsure. There's some techniques that are different. Have you ever even used an Apple?

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 1:37Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so I didn't know these techniques, but got the thing set up for my wife. I come home from deployment, what, six, seven months later, I come home and

• 1:49Jocko Willink?

  the computer is on, whatever, and I'm like working with it. And for some reason, it came up, I said, "Well, how, you know, how many times have you had to restart this?" She said, "Zero. Zero times." The computer was up and running for six straight months. Now, look, it wasn't like it's under massive stress of high-level computations, but sure enough, the thing kept up and running. And when I, because a Windows computer at that time, this is like 2003, 2004, if you got a Windows computer, you were resetting that thing maybe once every other day. You had to, you had to do what I'm talking about, which is a little bit of the old Control, Alt, Delete. I don't know what that thing is on a Apple computer.

• 2:32Jocko Willink?

  On the Apple computer, I usually just turn it off or just hold the power button down. If something goes wrong, which doesn't go wrong for months, for months, stays up and running. Does your Windows computer stay up and running?

• 2:43Speaker 01

  Uh, no, you're, I'm, what I'm thinking about your whole scenario, I'm like, what are you doing? That makes you have to go control alt delete, even on a Windows.

• 2:53Jocko Willink?

  No, but this is back in the day.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  Back in the day, and then it must have been like kind of a clunky computer.

• 2:58Jocko Willink?

  Probably, yeah.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  I mean, okay, a video editing, okay.

• 3:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  You put in some high, high resolution freaking files.

• 3:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  And then you start trying to do effects and all at the same time. Oh yeah, control alt delete for sure. But not Jocko in 2004, that's not, that's not happening with you.

• 3:15Jocko Willink?

  One email and a Word document. Why is that thing locking up?

• 3:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, unless you're opening some spam or something like this where you know how they send you the spam and you gotta execute.

• 3:25Jocko Willink?

  I don't know, but, but you know, when I was going to college, the only thing I, like, just to put it in perspective, truly the only thing I would be doing on these things was literally, I don't think I've ever edited a video. Maybe I've edited now, I've edited a couple on my phone. On my telephone, I'd edit a video now.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:42Jocko Willink?

  Cause I got skills.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  A little bit different, but yeah, yeah, for sure.

• 3:48Jocko Willink?

  So, control alt delete or power down, what, what are these things for? These are, these are like physical actions that you can take when the software on your computer or on your phone or on your printer is confused or locked up or bogged down with too much information or not enough information or it's just going into brain freeze, right? That's what happens. Is that why it happens? Cause I don't really know.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  I'd say that's a good analogy for sure.

• 4:18Jocko Willink?

  So what you do is you override the software with the hardware, with the hard shutdown. You override it. You say, hey, listen, all these little weird ones and zeros that you've got going on, we're just, we're just cutting the power. That's what you do. You override it.

• 4:35Jocko Willink?

  Well, the same thing actually happens to us as humans. See what I'm saying? I can see you're nodding your head.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  You're nodding your head. You're like, yes.

• 4:42Jocko Willink?

  Darko's gone on this. We, in our own heads, in our own heads, we get bogged down. We get distractions. We get rationalizations going on. We get debates going on in your own head. And what I'm telling you now is that the solution to these brain cycles, where they get caught in a continuous cycle of distraction or caught in a continuous cycle of rationalization or whatever, the solution is the same.

• 5:16Jocko Willink?

  It's a hard action that you have to do to, to, it's a manual override. We have the capability of manually overriding our software.

• 5:30Jocko Willink?

  And the way you do that is by taking action. So it's, again, here's the problem. Like if, imagine if the, if the computer had a, a robot arm, a robot hand, let's say. And it was aimed, there's a finger on the robot hand and it was aimed at the button.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Sure. Which button?

• 5:52Jocko Willink?

  The on off, the on off or the reset button. So it's

• 5:59Jocko Willink?

  it's aimed at that. And if you're in normal operating, you could say, oh, shut the computer down. And that robot hand would press the button, right? Okay, cool. But when it's in brain freeze, it can't even do that, right? It just, it's just locked up. That happens to us in our brains, right? We, we know we're supposed to work out and we just go into lock mode. We know we're, we're supposed to go talk to our subordinate about the fact that they're late for the third time. And you know, you should do it, but instead you just go into brain lock. Maybe your wife's doing something that's, could be detrimental to the relation, right?

• 6:44Jocko Willink?

  And you know you should say something, even you know you should take an indirect approach, but you know you need to contend with this scenario that's happening. But what do you do? Nothing. Brain lock. So you freeze. So what I'm saying is you can actually do a manual override of these situations and you can, you need to make yourself take action.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  So you're saying take action in that direction that you're intentionally or intending to?

• 7:12Jocko Willink?

  Yes. Take action in that direction that you know you should. And, but the hard part about it is your brain is the one that's controlling that robot finger. That's the hard part. You have to, you have to, that's why you have to be able to detach from it. You have to be able to take a step outside of your software system and just slam your fist onto that finger and make that thing hit reset, which means when the alarm clock goes off in the morning, get up. Don't wait, don't hesitate. When the alarm clock goes off in the morning, get up. When you get into the gym, like, you know what, here's a, here's a, here's an example. When we're gonna roll, the, when we come in, when everyone gets on the mat, I immediately

• 7:55Jocko Willink?

  start the clock for five minutes to start stretching, right? You have five minutes to stretch. If you don't put a clock on that, how long are we stretching for?

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Forever.

• 8:06Jocko Willink?

  Could be a long time because you know, people are stretching, they're kind of talking.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:09Jocko Willink?

  They got things to tell you, yeah, real important stuff.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  That's real, that's real.

• 8:14Jocko Willink?

  So when you go in there, start the clock. You should put a, you should put a timer on everything that you do, basically.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 8:20Jocko Willink?

  Basically, that's what should be happening. Everything that you do, you should say, all right, I have to commence, you should be a countdown to go and then a certain amount of time to get her done. That's the way you need to operate. That takes you out of this software brain lock that you can get inside your own head. So that's my recommendation.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, you um, that that's such a good idea, the clock thing. So even workouts, because I'm the same way. Well, I know you already know that about me because I'm the one, number one culprit with the talking thing.

• 8:49Jocko Willink?

  Well, you you ever seen when I I I'll put like a a post on the gram?

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 8:56Jocko Willink?

  And I'll say something like, uh, hesitated, stretched, procrastinating. You know, I'll be especially on, let's face it, on on leg day, you know, when we're squatting.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:10Jocko Willink?

  Can spend an inordinate amount of time stretching.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:13Jocko Willink?

  You can spend an inordinate amount of time checking your form, you know, with the PVC pipe.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:19Jocko Willink?

  You know, you're just doing all kinds of dumb stuff because you know, because you know what you should be doing.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:23Jocko Willink?

  So you need to get over that.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:27Jocko Willink?

  You have five minutes to stretch, son.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's like, well, I mean, obviously depends on your body, but five minutes is a long time. It's solid right there. Again, depends, so that don't, but um, yeah, if you don't and it depends on what kind of person you are. But yeah, if you got other stuff on your mind, especially if you have other stuff on your mind, don't let it be like three, four things on your mind. And then now you gotta go focus on some thing, meanwhile, these things pull, and then, yeah, you get that weird brain lock thing. Um, I would, and tell me, tell me what you think about this. So I thought when I first, when you first started going into it, control, delete. I was like, oh, yeah, that's like a vacation. You take a vacation.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  That's what it is, in a way, in a, in a.

• 10:12Jocko Willink?

  Your mind's, your mind's always in the tropics. I was gonna say the gutter, but it's actually in the tropics. It's actually down the beach.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 10:20Jocko Willink?

  It's actually over by the pool.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  So you got, uh, chronic, what's the two, chronic and acute, we'll say. So it feels like you're talking about like acute brain lock, we'll call it for lack of a better, but if you got chronic brain lock, where it's like, you can't think of this direction where you need to go or this and that.

• 10:37Jocko Willink?

  Life.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, your whole life is sort of bogging down. Yeah. And you feel like, because you know, you can get, and it's like a version of tunnel vision or whatever, where you're like going in this direction. You're like, man, it's not, it's not like, I can't figure this thing out, whatever direction you're going in. And you've been working at it for how long and it's still not just, it's not producing. And then you, a lot of times your solution is to detach because from a different perspective, you're like, oh shoot, I missed all this other stuff and then boom. But vacation in a big way, depends on where you go, depends on what you're doing, it depends on who you with, but vacation in a big way can provide that.

• 11:16Jocko Willink?

  Then why aren't you coming up with Nobel Prize winning ideas on a regular basis, homie? You should have cured cancer by now, bruh.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Anyway, it's true though. Think about it. Even if you physically go like super high, like on a mountain or something like that, like it'll kind of provide that for your brain. It's true.

• 11:40Jocko Willink?

  That is true. Uh, what you said about me detaching to find a solution to the problem? I was talking about this on the academy the other day and what I said was the solution to the problem is not inside the problem. And when you're in the inside the problem, you're not going to see the solution. It's not. That is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground podcast. So if you want to continue to listen, go to JacoUnderground.com and subscribe and we're doing this, we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their

• 12:20Jocko Willink?

  control and we are doing this so that we can support the Jocko podcast, which will remain as is free for all, as long as we can keep it that way. But we, but we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors and we're doing it so we can give you more control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us. And to do that, we are, we're building a website right now where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So thank you. It's JacoUnderground.com.

• 12:59Jocko Willink?

  It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you. Just email [email protected] and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.