Jocko Underground: Learn From Others. Who Would Win In a Fight? Jocko Or Joe Rogan? Getting In Business With Your Spouse?

Learning from others. Jocko's process. Adjusting your delivery and tone for different personalities. Going Into Business with Your Spouse? Introducing Daughters to Sports. The Best way. When some of your team members don't take ownership right away? Who would win in a fight between Jocko and Joe Rogan? Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is the Jocko Underground Podcast, number 18, with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:11Jocko Willink?

  Alright, so I was, got asked this like multitude of times, especially, I was on the Jordan Peterson podcast a little bit ago, and I talked a bunch about writing, and I also talked about reading, and then obviously read the books for the podcast all the time. Is what's the procedure look like? How am I doing this? What am I, what's the procedure for reading the book? So, there's also the procedure of selecting a book for the podcast. So I get sent so many books, and then books lead to other books, and then I end up with a lot of books. I get, I have a lot of books now. And I can't read them all, because I have more books than I, than, you know, we only do one pod, one Jocko podcast a week,

• 0:56Jocko Willink?

  and I have more books than that. So I gotta figure out which book is gonna be. So, the first thing I do is I do an assessment of the book. Look, you know, somebody sends me a book from World War II, from NOM, right? From World War I, from the rep, from whatever. They said, you know, somebody suggested a book, I read about a book. You know, I get the, I'm doing research for one book, and I pull the string on one of those books, and I find another book, and I look at the bibliography, and I find another book, and it's written first person, so you can see where this comes from. I mean, the books, the resources out there are unlimited. I have my default, by the way, my default mode is order it. That's my default mode, I'm gonna order it.

• 1:38Jocko Willink?

  But then, on top of all the books that I order, people send me books.

• 1:45Jocko Willink?

  So first I do a little assessment. I can almost guarantee you, I'm gonna open it up and read like the first page.

• 1:53Jocko Willink?

  And see what it see what see how it hits, see how it lands. You can tell you can kind of you get a feeling right there. You're like, oh dang, I'm already kind of sucked into this thing. Then I know this might sound like spoiler alert, but I'll go to the end of the book. And see what kind of closing last couple pages like where we at, where did this end up? How's this finishing?

• 2:17Jocko Willink?

  And then I'll start like looking through the book in the middle and start looking for. How is this thing written? And I'll look for a spot to read, you know, about. Maybe it's an actual battle. Maybe it's after a battle, but I'll look for something like that. You know, I'll be looking for keywords as I'm scanning. I'll be looking for mortar fire. Right? I'll be looking for bayonets fixed. I'll be looking for stuff like that to find out what, and then I'll start reading that section and see how well it's written. And and that's kind of. Look, so many of the books are good. So many books are great. But.

• 2:55Jocko Willink?

  I can't read them all. And so I got to make kind of a decision based on that procedure right now, right there, the opening, the closing, and then sort of a sampling of the middle. And then, okay, so once I decide, all right, we're going in with this book, we're going to do this. Occasionally I'll misjudge. I've probably misjudged five books so far where I. Oh, read the opener, read the closing, read a middle part like, yeah, this is legit. And then I read it and I was like, well, you know, I got. Let's say forty two pages into it and I'm like, no, I misjudged it. Put it on the, put it on the other pile.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  Are you at liberty to say which ones those were?

• 3:35Jocko Willink?

  Not really, but none of them were. No one sent me a book where I was like, oh, this is good. No, it actually.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Right, like their book?

• 3:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no one, no one's done anything like that, but I've definitely had books where. Some historical, I can, there was one book that I read that I really wanted to do a certain subject and I got a book that seemed like it would be right. And I invested probably 50 pages into it, kept waiting for it to, and one of the key components was it was a, it wasn't a first person book. So it was an account, right? It was a historical account, which we've done some historical accounts. But if, if there's enough first person accounts in the historical account, then it can be used. This one didn't have really much for first person, no quotes, you know?

• 4:22Jocko Willink?

  Lance Corporal Smith said, boom, and you got two pages of dialogue from Lance Corporal Smith getting it. You know what I mean? So that's, so I've, I've, that's been a couple that I've walked away from, you know, midstream. But generally I do pretty good. Generally I, I do a pretty good assessment. And so then what I do, then I read the book. When I read the book the first time, I'm go, I'm reading the entire thing and I'm, anything that's cool, good, impactful, meaningful, lesson, I'm highlighting, I have orange highlighters, by the way. Yellow to light. Orange is good.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  I understand.

• 5:02Jocko Willink?

  So I go through with the orange highlighter, read it and I'll, some, some books I'm freaking highlighting all kinds of, I mean, it gets, I have to control myself sometimes and pull back a little bit because I can get crazy with the highlight and then I'm thinking, I'm always going to read a freaking audio book here and just read the whole book, don't want to do that. So I, I'll highlight it and, but sometimes I am highlighting whole pages. Sometimes I've just got two, three, four pages of a battle scene that's epic and I'm like, yep, I'm reading this whole thing. That's all there is to it. So I'll highlight the whole book. Then I kind of think about it and um, as far as the podcast goes, as far as the podcast goes, then, then when it's time to record the podcast, then I go through it again and

• 5:45Jocko Willink?

  I go and I have these red pens, these red like fine tip pens and I'll outline and mark up exactly what I am actually going to read on the podcast and then arrows that lead me to the next section and areas that I'm not going to read. And so that's how I end up doing that. And I have like little marks for notes if I've got some note about something or, you know, they mentioned a general's name and then I got a note in there. I use a bunch of stickies and all this crap. But.

• 6:14Jocko Willink?

  There's still something that's, that's, that I have learned, I would say about reading. And it's been primarily from doing the podcast. Which is how I'm actually reading the book. And I think I did this before, but I did it subconsciously. Now I do it consciously. When I'm reading a book, it's not really a book that I'm reading. It's either a story that I'm hearing from someone, first person in my head. Like I'm hearing this story, or oddly enough, it's a story that I am telling.

• 6:54Jocko Willink?

  So I'm reading it as if I'm telling the story that I'm the person that lived it, which is weird, right? So I'm actually reading this as if it's me and I'm going to tell the story to you. Or I'm actually like in the mindset of I'm living what's on the page. So that's to me is how I am really connecting with what I'm reading. Is I'm, I'm in that frame of mind. I also read, and I know this, this actually is not good. I read at the speed that I talked just about, which sucks because it takes me a long time to read stuff.

• 7:39Jocko Willink?

  But that means that it, when I'm reading it, it's like someone's telling me a story. Or it's like I'm telling someone a story. So it's more engaging for me in my brain. And then I have the overlays, right? I have the, the, the conscious and subconscious overlays of Extreme Ownership, of cover, move and simple and prioritize and execute and decentralized command and dichotomy. So I've got those overlays and so those things are, I'm, I'm scanning for those things. I'm looking for them or I'm not consciously looking for them like, oh, that's covered move right there. Oh, that's, you know, oh, that's a simple plan. That's going to work. I'm doing that. So I've got that additional overlay, that additional context to what I'm reading. And I'm also looking for outliers. So I'm looking for things that don't match up with my

• 8:23Jocko Willink?

  theoretical principles. I remember when I read one of Tilt's books. And he split forces. And I was like, dang, I don't know. This doesn't sound like a good idea. And I asked him on the podcast, I said, you know, I'm, I felt weird asking him, right? As I'm like, it's tilt, bro. We don't want to mess with tilt. And I said, hey, tilt, you know, here you are. You're going in this jungle situation and you split forces. I said, I was like, I was like, you know, I always kind of thought it was a bad thing. He goes, it was the only time I did it and it worked out horribly. And I was like, yes. Thank you. Look, you, sometimes you do have to split forces, but you have to use caution when you do it. So I have that context of what I know, what I believe, then the outliers from what I know and what I believe.

• 9:07Jocko Willink?

  And, and when I say what I believe, that means it's what I believe, but I also realize that books can present questions to what I believe, which is awesome. Because if I get a question to what I believe, that's a positive thing because now I'm gonna either learn more about my belief being correct, or maybe my belief is incorrect and I'm open-minded to that and I actually want it.

• 9:29Jocko Willink?

  So I have those overlays and then I have the overlays of when I'm reading, how things fit together that I'm reading. And this is on multiple levels. In the book itself, when you're reading in a book,

• 9:44Jocko Willink?

  you gotta remember that that's a complete world, right? And that page, that section that you're reading is connected to everything else that's in there. And sometimes we get, because you're, you're detached from it and you turn the page, it's like, we're not thinking about that anymore. So I consciously am thinking about, hey, this is actually happening in the context of this whole entire book.

• 10:04Jocko Willink?

  And then how does this whole entire book fit in the context of other books about this particular battle, this particular war, this particular situation? War in general, how does it fit in? How does this compare to the whole world? What's going on in the world? And then how does it compare to my world? What I've been through, what I've experienced, the knowledge that I have or don't have?

• 10:30Jocko Willink?

  And, and what I'm looking for, obviously, what I'm looking for is trying to find lessons, find new lessons, possibly relearn lessons that I've already learned, learned, or reinforce the same lessons. And then, all of this provides me with perspective, so that I can more holistically understand human nature. That's what, that's what I'm doing. That's what we're doing. And, you know, there's a, speaking of books, I was just reading a book, and there's a quote

• 11:15Jocko Willink?

  in there from Otto von Bismarck, who's a German chancellor for three wars. And he's always, he's always in these pictures with these kind of militaristic general uniforms on, you know, with the shoulder, gold shoulder pads, the big, all that stuff. He was like a reservist for a few weeks or something. He wasn't like, and apparently he was begrudgingly a soldier for a very short period of time. But, you know, once you're the chancellor, you're like, you know what? I want that freaking general outfit. Well, there's a, there's a book by B. H. Liddell Hart, who's a whole nother, we have a whole,

• 11:56Jocko Willink?

  we have a whole library of books from him that he wrote. He was a really profoundly impactful British military soldier, officer, fought in World War I, wounded, sent back, sent back again. I mean, just, he, he, he went through a lot, and he had an incredibly... Fluid mind and incredible understanding of military tactics and I we haven't even broached. It's one of those things where there's a couple of books right now. I've got in the waiting that I'm wait that I I'm like, hey, when I open, when I go on this, it's going to be, it's going to be,

• 12:39Jocko Willink?

  it's going to take four, five, six, seven podcasts to do. And so I've got some of those books in the waiting right now. B H L Del Hard is one of them.

• 12:50Jocko Willink?

  But the quote is that I'm getting to that I was reading in his book today. Fools say that they learn from experience. I prefer to profit from others' experience. So what does that mean? That means read. That means put yourself. So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground podcast. So if you want to continue to listen,

• 13:14Jocko Willink?

  go to Jocko Underground dot com and subscribe and we're doing this. We're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their control and we are doing this so that we can support the Jocko podcast, which will remain as is free for all, as long as we can keep it that way. But we, but we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors. And we're doing it so we can give you

• 13:46Jocko Willink?

  more control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us.

• 13:52Jocko Willink?

  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 Jocko Underground dot com. It costs eight dollars and 18 cents a month. And if you can't afford to support us,

• 14:12Jocko Willink?

  we can still support you. Just email assistance at Jocko Underground dot com and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.