Pod Insights Jocko Podcast Jocko Underground: TOXIC PRODUCTIVITY | Consistency with a Hectic and Unpredictable Work Schedule About this episode Toxic Productivity.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Jocko Willink? This is the Jocko Underground Podcast. It's number 51. Sitting here with Echo Charles EC, Echo Charles. And heard a new term recently, very recently. You were present when I heard it for the first time. The term was came from my daughter, my oldest daughter. The term is toxic productivity.
0:22 Jocko Willink? And she was making some, she was making some statements about it. She was also maybe making some mild accusations about it.
0:32 Speaker 01 Mild.
0:33 Jocko Willink? Mild accusations. I know that you posted a little, a little, a little clip of that, saying that my mere presence can cause stress and cause some feelings of maybe you should be working.
0:49 Speaker 01 Yeah.
0:51 Jocko Willink? So my daughter was saying that she lives in the house of productivity trademark. And or what it was like when she did live in the house of productivity. So she brought up this, this concept of toxic productivity. And you know, you can, you can see, all kidding aside, when you hear it, you're like, oh yeah, I can see where that can happen. Right. And we, I'm sure we know people where they are.
1:15 Jocko Willink? They're, they're, they're being, this is where I get in my mind, people that are being so productive that they're not being productive. Right. So we'll go into it a little bit. So I looked it up on Psychology Today, psychologytoday.com.
1:28 Jocko Willink? What is toxic productivity? Yes, it's a real thing. The need to constantly do can turn toxic and is often ineffectual and unproductive. Cultures of toxic productivity exist in countries, organizations, and within ourselves. Man, you'd get some people in the military.
1:46 Jocko Willink? It's not healthy what they're doing. Like they are just working and ignoring everything else in their lives. And it's not good. And they end up with unbalanced lives. They end up with divorce. They end up with their kids being messed up, you know, or having issues or whatever. Their wife having issues. But it's really easy to have that happen in the military. But it happens in, in, in every organization. Then you know, when you think of countries like Japan.
2:14 Jocko Willink? I don't know what it's like right now, but when I was growing up more in the eighties, Japan was like full on.
2:21 Jocko Willink? Toxic productivity. Suicide rate was crazy back then there. And then the last thing it says, the key tenet or the basic tenet of of toxic productivity. Oh, well, it's in countries, in organizations and within ourselves. So you can have it within yourself. You're like, I gotta do something, I gotta do something. I feel bad. You get that guilt going and then taking time to reflect and decide on a course of action is better than reacting and doing mindlessly. This was an interesting one. They're saying that that some people that have this element of toxic productivity, when there's something occurs, instead of thinking about it and thinking of a rational way to solve the problem, they just start like randomly doing stuff. And that's problematic.
3:06 Jocko Willink? Which I well, most of the time I find people, they they inaction is their problem. Right? So they're not taking action. That's a problem. And I guess you go too far in the other direction. You have people taking action for
3:24 Jocko Willink? that they shouldn't be taking. And it doesn't make any sense. So the toxic productivity is destructive rather than productive. So I had a saying in the SEAL teams. Have you ever heard of the term the leaning rest, the front leaning rest?
3:37 Speaker 01 You said it.
3:38 Jocko Willink? Okay, so the front leaning rest is the push up position. Okay, so that's called the, I don't know. It's probably an army saying, because the army will give stuff some weird names. So they'd be like, get down on the front leaning rest, right? And then there was also another term from the military called forward leaning. Like, hey, we want to be forward leaning on this, right? Okay, cool. So you got these two things, forward leaning and front leaning rest. And what I used to tell guys is, hey, don't be so far forward leaning that you're in the leaning rest. Meaning I'm so, I'm working so hard to be ready that I'm actually not ready for anything because I'm you know, let's say you've got a, let's say you might have a parachute. But you're using a Zodiac launched from a, launched from an aircraft with parachutes.
4:22 Jocko Willink? And so you think you might have that. Okay, well, let's start building it. And it takes a whole bunch of time and effort to get this thing called a duck built. So you're, you're doing all this work. Well, Oh, then it changes. You're you're actually going to use Humvees. So now you start getting all your Humvees and you can see where I'm going with this. Eventually, you're so far forward leaning that you're in the leaning rest and you're actually tiring yourself out for no reason. So you've got to be careful of that. And I think that's a great tenet to to keep in mind. Don't be so far forward leaning that you're in the leaning rest. Again, this the weird aspect of this was this thing. And here's another quote, they say not enough diagnostics diagnostics, they just try and go fix something. Which again, to me, usually people have the problem with they don't want to take action. They're scared to take action or they're nervous about taking action.
5:07 Jocko Willink? Normally, it's not just jumping in to try and fix it. But you do see that occasionally, just like any other, just like any other dichotomy. If you go to an extreme, it's going to be bad. The extreme of not taking action, the extreme of taking action without actually assessing, that can be bad as well. Normally, people tend to not take action. This is the other side of the spectrum. And here's where we can get kind of interesting. It's the need to publicly display how much you are in quotes, doing. And I was like, oh, am I highly guilty of this? I could be. I definitely say, hey, I'm waking up in the morning, right? And I worked out.
5:48 Jocko Willink? That's kind of all I really say. That's the only thing I really publicly display.
5:54 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, kind of regular basis, for sure.
5:56 Jocko Willink? Yeah. So but there are definitely people, I'm on the grind, right?
6:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, even I mean, yours is, I don't know if it's because I'm around or not, but you, it's almost like you just imply it, maybe. I don't know. Or maybe it's just my on my hand, I just feel it. Yeah. Because technically, I don't think you put that out, like to to show that you're constantly doing. I don't think so.
6:22 Jocko Willink? Well, if I wanted to show what I was doing, I would show a lot more because I don't really, I don't spend a bunch of time, hey, I'm getting ready for a podcast right now. Oh, hey, I'm writing my next book. Hey, I'm getting ready to go to a board meeting right now. Like, I don't.
6:34 Speaker 01 Right.
6:34 Jocko Willink? You know what I mean? I mean, I could do that.
6:37 Speaker 01 There are people who do it straight up a lot, a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, I get it.
6:45 Jocko Willink? So. That's a little bit. So that I suppose that would be like the same version of, you know, where Instagram, where people put on the filter that makes them look young or whatever. So now I'm putting on a quote filter on my life to make it look like I'm doing all these productive things.
7:05 Speaker 01 Productivity filter.
7:06 Jocko Willink? Productivity filter.
7:08 Speaker 01 Yeah.
7:09 Jocko Willink? So, but then if you're a person that's not feeling like you're being productive enough. Well, now you think you go, oh gosh, well, Echo's over there. He already did three workouts today. Plus he made a video. I'm not doing anything. I'd work more.
7:21 Speaker 01 Right.
7:21 Jocko Willink? So you can feel like a sense of guilt.
7:23 Speaker 01 Yeah. I get, well, that's with everything, right? With, I mean, that's the whole complaint or one of the many complaints about social media is that, yeah, the image that's letting people, not everyone, but the image that people put forward is like a, like it's not the accurate image of their life. You know, it's like either the highlights or the, you know, whatever highlights they want to put forward.
7:42 Jocko Willink? Filtered.
7:43 Speaker 01 It's filtered in a way, but that's different than the actual physical, like digital filter, you know?
7:48 Jocko Willink? Yeah.
7:49 Speaker 01 Even though it's kind of all does the same thing.
7:51 Jocko Willink? Doing the same thing.
7:52 Speaker 01 Conceptually, but they, you know, like people who put, like they want to make like they travel to all these exotic places or whatever, you know, that stuff. And or someone like the, you know, what's a big one?
8:03 Jocko Willink? Bro, they're having things where you could like rent the inside of a plane. So you could sit on there and be like, oh, heading over to Vegas for the weekend.
8:14 Speaker 01 And I think the ones I seen were like joke, were jokes, but I don't know if people do this in real life or not. I'm sure they have to. But it's like, um, it'll show the split screen, right? The Instagram, then reality. And then it'll have like a girl looking out the window of a plane. And then the reality is she's looking out the window of like a, um, or through a washing machine window.
8:36 Jocko Willink? Oh, yeah.
8:37 Speaker 01 You know, where it like looks like a plane window and it's,
8:41 Speaker 01 but yeah, that even applies to productivity.
8:43 Jocko Willink? Yeah.
8:44 Speaker 01 Right? There's like working on my whatever, you know, working on this workout time, all this stuff, right? Yeah. Huh. That's crazy.
8:52 Jocko Willink? So. You shouldn't feel bad about that. Um, uh, another thing they say is doing enough is never enough. Busyness is not good for actual productivity. That's a good thing to think about. So then they had a little list of things of how to overcome this.
9:10 Jocko Willink? Uh, give you, and this is again, this is from psychologytoday.com.
9:15 Jocko Willink? Give yourself permission to discern. Not everything needs to be tended to or resolved immediately by you. In fact, we don't always have to be the one to intervene, even if it feels like we're the ones that need to intervene. Ask yourself, what is the worst thing that will happen if I take 24 hours to think about this before leaping in action? Ah, that's, that's good. And what I like to overlay on that is decentralized command. Right? If you are in charge of things, there's a lot of things you shouldn't have to jump into. And as a matter of fact, if you have to jump into things, it's not a good sign for how you're performing as a leader. If every time there's an issue, you gotta be like, hey Echo, let me show you how to do this. Or, and let me, let me, let me call that client. Or let me show you how to edit this video. Like, that's not, that's not good. That's, shows that I'm micromanaging, basically. Uh, but that's a nice little ego boost, right?
9:58 Jocko Willink? Makes me feel good, makes me feel like I'm important when that happens. Uh, the next thing, exercise your emotional intelligence. Take some time to consider and appreciate what you're feeling about the issue and your desire to intervene. Name the feelings that comes up for you. What is the unmet need behind the feelings that propel you to jump into action? That's a good thing. Of course, they don't mention the word detachment here, which you won't be able to do this if you don't detach. What does this tell you about your current leadership style? So they're actually talking about leadership. But what's interesting here is that's a good thing to do. When you have a, when you have a, an emotional feeling, pull the thread, that's the term I use. Pull the thread on that feeling and see where it's coming from.
10:42 Jocko Willink? If I'm frustrated, or I feel like I need to get down there and help you, if I actually pull the thread, I'm like, oh, that's just my ego wanting to show Echo that I know how to do this stuff. Or it's my ego wanting to prove that I'm the guy in charge. And so pull the thread on that emotion. Most of the time, you're gonna find ego at the end of that thread, by the way, especially the negative emotions.
11:00 Speaker 01 Yeah.
11:01 Jocko Willink? Anger, frustration, jealousy. You won't admit to the jealousy one, because then you have to admit that it's your ego. But a lot of times, you're like, oh, you know, Echo, I'll come down and teach that class. You know, it's like, why don't you let Echo teach the class? You know what I'm saying? Because I want to be the guy on the, on the podium. I want to be the guy on the mat showing everybody what's up. So pull the thread on that. The next thing they say is cultivate your curiosity. Spend some more time in a contemplative phase to understand your desired outcome. Parties involved, issues, factors, options, and their implications. Okay, so once again, they're talking about detachment. Open, ask open ended questions and listen mindfully to the responses as you build an informed
11:45 Jocko Willink? picture of what might be going on. This keeps you in reflection and diagnoses longer. Yeah, they've got, they're talking about someone that, that really is seeing a problem and then just immediately taking action without checking it out. Again, to me, that's nor, that's not the norm. The norm is inaction. Be choosy about your action. Not every situation and or issue requires our action. Be choosy about when you are interviewing. That kind of said that already. And then enact boundaries and practice self-care. Take time out from doing. Walk in nature, meditate, play sports, relax, do jujitsu. I'm sorry, relax, enjoy hobbies, family life,
12:30 Jocko Willink? socializing. Okay, so that's cool. What does that really say? It says you should do jujitsu, you should surf, you should play guitar, play ukulele, you know, whatever we're doing. And that does, those things are all good. So I, when I read that whole thing, that they're kind of recommendations, to me, all those things say you need to be able to detach, take a step back.
12:52 Jocko Willink? And something I've been saying a lot lately is the solution to the problem is not in the problem. So if you're in the problem, you're not going to see the solution. You've got to get out of that problem. You've got to be able to detach. If you're busy all the time, you're not going to see the big picture. You're not going to be able to think strategic if you're doing little tactical things all the time. So get away from that. Get away from that. That is not a good way to go through life. Fighting immediate firefights that are right in front of you. You won't win the war. You might win a lot of firefights, but you won't win the war because the enemy's maneuvering on you. They're building a huge supply chain to be able to outgun you. They're, they're creating more troops. They're, they're recruiting and, and training
13:34 Jocko Willink? more troops. So you're just sitting there in gunfights and you might be winning. You know, like today we won. Hey, let's go, let's go again. And you're winning, but you're not winning in the big picture. Yeah. Yeah. So I did write this down. This, this will make sense. You know how I said I don't really, that's not a normal thing for people to take action, but you know where it is? Knee jerk reactions, right? We even have a word for it, right? Knee jerk reaction. Knee jerk reactions aren't good. So if you have a knee jerk reaction, every time something goes wrong, you're like jumping in and trying to do stuff, that's a knee jerk.
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