345: Life is All Based On The Decisions That YOU Make. So Live a Good One.

This is Jocko, podcast number 345 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

Good evening.

So, just got back from an event at Echelon Front. It's event that we call the council. And what is we have a small group of about 20 leaders. We do it out in a very remote location in Northeast Washington state. And it's an opportunity to really get in depth with some leadership tools, with some high level leaders that are running, in most cases, very large organizations. And when I was up there, I just wanted to share some of what I talked about while I was there. And actually one specific.

Idea that I first conceptualized at the council last year, 2021. So in 2021 I went up there and essentially what happened was it was a pretty interesting dynamic. I get up there and we're sitting down. It's a small group, there's like 15 or 20 people there. And Leif was telling a story about us being overseas or us going through training. And he kind of told a story where I came in at some point and made like a leadership decision and boom, it helped solve whatever the scenario was. And then Andrew Paul was up there and Andrew Paul told a story that was going on. And then I came in and kind of made some decision and. And then Leif told another one. And so for whatever reason, they both told a couple stories, each.

That were illustrating some leadership point. And the, in the stories, they, it made me look like this decisive, good leader, which is cool, great. And you know, but of course, you know, we're all telling stories about each other, but a couple of the leaders that were there after this one session, they approached me and they, they said something along the lines of, you know, you just have such great natural leadership instincts. And of course my ego is immediately.

Like, oh, hell yeah, right?

Oh yeah, yeah, of course. And then, you know, so we had a quick conversation and they just said, oh, so it's so nice. It's so cool to hear these stories where you have these leadership instincts. And I said, yeah, you know, it's pretty cool. I'm pretty cool, you know, kind of that ego idiocy.

And then as I thought about it and we were on a break, and as I thought about was actually a break at the end of the day, as I thought about, I thought, well, that's actually not cool at all. Because if my leadership is just some natural instinct, then that implies that it's something that I can't teach you, right? I can't teach you. I can't Teach. Teach you something that is only instinctive. So as I thought about it, I also realized not only is that bad, but I also realized that there was plenty of times in my life where, especially when I was younger and I didn't have much experience as a leader, where I didn't make good decisions or I didn't even realize I needed to make a decision. And so as I'm sitting there thinking about this during this break, I realized that I had learned.

To lead and I developed knowledge and developed kind of a process that was so embedded in my brain that it seemed like instinct. And when these guys hear the story, it seems like instinct, but it's not instinct. It's more of a process.

And so I sat in my room and I went through and just sort of wrote down the process that I use, the things that I think about when I'm making a decision. And I. And since then I've implemented that and teach it at Echelon Front, and I've added a couple things to it since that timeframe and basically call it the Extreme Ownership Leadership Loop. And the reason is because Extreme Ownership, the book that Leif and I wrote, kind of that term just kind of encompasses the broad principles that we try and operate by.

And there's a reason that I use the term loop. The reason I use the term loop is clearly taken from the OODA loop. Observe, orient, decide and act.

And when you are making a decision, you can utilize that loop. Observe, orient, decide and act. And what that means is real quick brief on that. First of all, you observe means you look around and see what's happening. Then you orient. You see where you are in that, in what you have observed. Then you decide what you should do and then you act on it. And once you've acted, you go back to looking around and see how your actions impacted what's happening. And then you orient yourself inside this new picture and then you decide what you should do now. And then you act again and you just keep running this loop. And every time you take an action, it's going to change the situation a little bit. And then you have to observe that feedback, orient yourself with that new feedback. And then you make another decision. And this becomes a little loop that you run over and over again. And it comes from flying jets and in combat and dog fights.

And it's a way that you win. And the way that you win is by making this, making decisions and observing and orient yourself, deciding what you can do and acting faster than the other person can do it. And if you can do that, you'll win. And this also applies in Jiu Jitsu, obviously.

So.

That'S a loop that you need to run when it comes to making decisions. And this is a similar process to apply in this, in this leadership decision.

Loop that I think through when I'm trying to make a decision. And again, a lot of times it seems like it's just some instinct, but there's. There's a thought process behind it. And listen, the OODA loop, for the most part, the OODA loop, I view it as more of a tactical decision.

In a physical realm.

Against.

An enemy or a competitor. It's. It's sort of a. An interaction between you and someone else in a physical and in. Usually in a physical domain, whether it's fighter, whether it's tactical maneuver on the battlefield. That's why it's so applicable to combat, because in combat you're going against another person. So there's. As you. As you decide and act, that's going to cause a reaction that you have to then calculate into your new observations, into your new orientation. And so the OODA loop really is about. It takes place in the physical realm for the most part.

This, this loop that I'm talking about, this, this eo, this extreme ownership leadership loop, it's usually.

I shouldn't say usually not about physical decisions. It's. But it's. It's equally applicable to conceptual ideas or conceptual plans or. And this is important about human interaction. That's not physical, It's. It's more the conflict of ideas.

So one loop is, in my mind, more of something that takes place in the physical realm. This EO leadership loop takes place more in the conceptual realm. Does that, does that make sense?

Yeah, fully, like in a social, verbal, all that, you know.

Right.

And what this loop does is it provides a checklist or a framework of things to consider while making a decision. And listen, when you first hear this, there's a bunch of them, a bunch of things to think about. And what's weird is I had been doing this for so long that it seemed to other people and really to me as instinct. And it wasn't until I said, wait a second, is this really instinct or is this something I learned? Well, I know I used to not have it, therefore it can't be instinct. Instinct. I must have learned it. What exactly am I thinking? What am I considering when I'm out there trying to make a decision in a leadership situation?

So let's talk through some of these things. And there's a whole Bunch of dynamics going on here. And I don't want to simplify this to a point where you go, oh, this is just a checklist. Here's the 19 or 14 or whatever number of things. And you just follow this checklist because each one of these things is a conceptual item.

There's a big difference between a conceptual idea and a physical thing because the physical thing is in this position. It has this mass, it has this weight, it has this. This takes up this place in the world. An idea, a concept, a plan, by its very nature, is fluid. So all these things, for the most part, are somewhat fluid. Now, there's something about the first thing that I think about when I'm making some kind of a decision that's actually not fluid at all. And that's why it's number one.

And that is time. That's the number one thing I think about. The first thing that I consider when I'm making decision is time. Because. And the reason is because this is the one thing that's not fluid. It. It is what it is. It is what it is, and you can't stop it. Can't stop it. You know talking to Kerry Helton. Sure, you know him.

Kdog.

K. Dog. That's right. He was talking about Marine Corps boot camp, and he had a good little hint for anybody that's going through something tough. And his. The thing that he thought about was these drill instructors.

They might be all powerful in Marine Corps boot camp. They are all powerful, near godlike figures, but guess what? They can't stop the clock. And no one can stop the clock. And I, you, us, we. We have no influence over time. We do have influence over actions, clearly, but we don't have influence over time. That clock is going to keep going. Look, you can. You can.

You can get ahead of it, but by working hard, by thinking ahead. And that's why it's the first thing that I think about.

But you can't stop it, no matter what. That's why I can't stand being late. That's why.

When going to the airport, I'm gonna show up early. I. Look, not crazy early, but I'm gonna show up early enough that nothing is going to make me panic. Nothing is gonna make me agitated. The TSA dude's taking his time. Cool. I got time. And you ever notice when you're late for something, everything goes against you?

Yeah.

Yeah, Right.

Feels like if you're.

If you're on time, green lights. Yeah. If you're late, red lights all day. Not only that, but weird red lights, right?

Anomalous.

How long is a red light when you're late? I think it's forever. But the weird thing is it's the same. It's just that you're different, your mentality is different.

I tell you that story about the other day, speaking of like mentality. So was it rei, the store?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sports store. It's good.

So I'm in rei and I got a Sprinter.

Sure.

Vehicle.

It's a good vehicle for sure.

Four wheel drive, sprinter, no big deal. And. And I get it. Okay. So do you know that sprinters are a thing? Do you know that?

I know that now, yes.

Yeah, they're a thing.

My wife told me that when she saw yours.

Yep. And not only are they a thing, there's a. There's also a big negative perception of them because they're expensive and people, like, drive them around and they. And they're into people that might have. Sprinters, might be into sort of outdoors type sports. And a lot of times people that are outdoors type sports don't have a ton of money. Right. So, hey, look at rock climbing. Right? Rock Climbing Camp 4 Yosemite. Their actual name for themselves is dirt bags. Hey, we don't have money. We live in a little freaking Toyota Corolla. We sleep in a tent. Like that's what they're doing. So you get those kind of people. You get surf bums. Right. You and I have talked about the fact that bums.

Yeah.

Is a lifestyle. There's a bunch of them. Surf bums, jujitsu bums, rock climbing bums, ski bums. So there's a bunch of bums. Right. Well, all of those lifestyles can also include people that might drive sprinters. The bougie. The bougie of the group, the bougie people. Right. So I'm a bougie person, I guess, because I got a sprinter. And guess what? I like to surf. I like to ski, I go to Yosemite. Right. So I do those things.

Mm.

So I'm at REI to pick up a bicycle.

Sure.

And as I'm pulling out, I'm leaving. And by the way, I'm in no rush whatsoever. Time is on my side. I. I'm listening to a. An audiobook. I'm totally chill. I don't have to. It was. I. I think we weren't recording that day. I had done like a couple calls in the morning for Echelon Front. I was in no rush, just. Just kind of enjoying, like I was working in the morning and it was like a nice little. A little mini vacation, to be honest with you, driving to rei. You know, you go to rei, you get up there, you get to look around, see some cool gear. Nice. Yeah, so that's my mindset, just cruising. And by the way, it's midday, so this isn't the weekend. This is like on a Tuesday or something. There's no panic in the world. No one's even in there. It's like it's after. I'll tell you how clear this was. It's after, like the lunchtime rush on a Tuesday. Just complete chill.

Nice.

So as I'm pulling out, I won't try and explain the whole thing, but there's like a three way intersection in the parking lot.

And I'm. So I back out my Sprinter and there's another truck that I'm now head to head with. He wants to go right to get out, I want to go left to get out. And incomes a little. A little Volkswagen vanigan synchro. So what this is, this is a four wheel drive Volkswagen van. Very rare, very cool. Like one of the coolest. It's a very. I won't say it's one of the coolest vehicles in the world, but it's definitely in my top. That's a cool vehicle. They're super rare. So synchro. That's a four wheel drive van.

Oh, yeah. A little Volkswagen van.

Yeah, I love vans, so. Which is why I have a sprinter.

Yes, sir.

So I see this van and I'm kind of like, oh, dude, that's a sick, you know, four wheel drive synchro van. That's super rare. They're hard to get. And the, the truck wants to go right. He goes right. I'm like, cool. You know, that guy's being cool. He, he or I give him like the little hand wave, right?

Hey, go.

Cause I'm super chill, by the way. I'm looking at this cool synchro. So I give the guy a hand wave in the truck. I'm like, hey man, go ahead. So he pulls out. And then I think that the synchro wants to make a right. So I look at him, I give him the hand wave, just like, hey man, come on. And I was, you know, the next hand signal would have been thumbs up. I might have even, I may have even rolled down the window and said like, sweet ride. Yeah, that's a sweet ride, man. Respect, Props. Yeah, I give him the hand signal. Like, yeah, go ahead, man. You. You can make the right turn. And then I'LL get out after you. You know, you get head of the line privileges.

Yeah, yeah, Right.

You go first.

Letting him go.

And guess what he does? He starts freaking. You know, of course, behind a windscreen, I can't hear what he's saying. Gets. Starts going crazy on me. Like. Like, he's like. He's yelling. And. And what he was basically saying was he wanted me to move because the parking space I had just pulled out of, he had pulled into. And by the way, there was multiple parking spaces. There was no factor. But, man, he was mad.

Yeah.

And he was, like, getting all hostile and, like, doing this to me, and I was just like. And of course what I did. Smiled at him and waved at him. Anyways, I didn't give him props for a synchro. So if you're listening. Nice synchro, bro. And I hope your synchro and the fact that you have a cool vehicle like that, I hope that it soothes your soul a little bit. Because he's an older dude, too. He was at least my age. He wasn't a spring chicken. And there's no reason for him to be stressed out on a Tuesday at 1300 or 1330 in the afternoon at REI. No reason. No reason. So in his mind, whatever was happening for the time factor was a problem for me. It was no factor. But you can't get that stuff back. You can't adjust time. So we have to stay ahead of time. So when I'm making a decision, the first thing that I'm going to assess is how much time do I have? Here's another thing. How fast are things changing? That's a time factor you have to look at. Okay, I see things are changing, but how fast are they changing? Because if they're changing rapidly, I might have to decide quicker. If they're changing slowly, maybe I can take a little bit more time. Are there things that I can do to buy myself more time? I know I said we can't control time, but you can do things that can earn you some time back. Maybe there's an iterative step that I can take that will slow things down a little bit on my side. Again, I can't stop the clock, but I can slow them down. So that's what I'm going to do. I don't have any control over time, and I'm going to think about that. I'm going to consider it. The number one element in my calculus is time. And here's something else that I realize.

Some human beings have a better sense of Time than others. This is just a thing. Some human beings are more aware of time than others. There are people that are late habitually, right?

Yes.

Do we know this?

We do know.

Actually. Somebody at the council asked me, like, hey, how do you deal with Echo being late all the time? And I had to give them the information that you're actually not. I think you've only been literally late once or twice for recording the podcast. Yeah, yeah, it's once or twice. Now, do you cut it down to literally 32 seconds? And actually if we included when you are maybe like 45 seconds late, yeah, we might have to add to that number, but there's no time. There's a very small number of actual violations.

But there's. There are some people that are late all the time. There are people that think that things are going to take five minutes and they take 20 and that's how they see time. And so they're late all the time. So if you're one of those people, and this is going to be a constant theme, if you're one of those people and you know that you don't understand time and you don't pay attention to time, the worse you are with time. If you're a person that's habitually late, this should not only be the number one thing in your decision making, it should be number one in your. And it should be printed in bold, large font so that you make sure that you get it. Now, listen, I'm actually good with time.

In fact, sometimes I'm even too good with time. And I'll tell you exactly what I mean by that. Sometimes if I think, let's say, let's say we were gonna record the podcast at 10 o' clock and I was like, okay, in order to record the podcast at 10 o', clock, I gotta leave at 9:30. That gives me a half an hour to get here. It only takes 15 minutes to get here, tops. Unless something wild happens or I hit every single red light or something. So I might be like, oh, I need to take out the garbage right now. But that's gonna take me an extra two minutes. And there's a.0001% chance that I hit every red light. And now that two minutes that it took me to take out the garbage, now I'm late. So I didn't take out the garbage. So sometimes I have to consciously say, yes, I can fit this in, yes, I can get that done. And that that is a good thing to do. But.

I'm almost never late. I would say Never. But of course I'm sure there's been some time in the last 50 years where I was late for something, but I'm almost, almost never late.

And probably. And what I think is that's because of this loop that I run in my head. I always think about time first and that. So the reason I'm never late is because I think about this all the time.

So know yourself. And if you're a person that constantly underestimates how much time it'll take to do something, know yourself, understand your own bias. And this is actually one of the things loop is understanding your own biases is where you got to run that and make sure that you're going to have enough time to do something. Chuck?

Yeah, fully. And regardless of my record of not being late very much, here I am one of those people that I underestimate. How did you put it? Underestimate how much time I have. Overestimate.

Yeah. Overestimate how much time you have. Underestimate how much time something is going to take.

Yes.

Interestingly, if we were to talk about how often you were late for Jiu Jitsu. That's a big number. Yeah, that's a big number.

The majority. Yeah. Yeah. It was weird actually, in the beginning when I, when I was coming up, I was never late, but. And I think you're the one who said this to me kind of bluntly, long time ago where you said something like, oh, it's because you don't think it's important or something like this, but. And I realized it's true. Even though most of the time I wouldn't admit that, admit that to the person that I'm late with or whatever, the entity or whatever. When I worked in the nightclub, I was late most of the time. And I'm not saying, and I'm not saying like, you know, I was supposed to be there at 6 and I was there at like 6:30. It wasn't that. It was a kind 601, 603.

How about 6:08, 608?

You know, as you get up past five minutes late, it was less, but, but it not being important for like that was literally the case. And not to say my job wasn't important. I'm not saying that. I'm saying the of me being ahead of time or before 6 o', clock, that wasn't important to me. If I was 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 minutes late, that was fine with me. For this reason, now that I analyze it, because I could be doing more important things than in that five minutes, you know, or in that one minute or in that two minutes kind of a thing, kind of a thought I had in my head. And now most more important things.

Taking a nap, you know, taking. Watching stuff. That. The way I saw it was. And this is me totally analyzing it mentally. I didn't. This wasn't in my mind the whole time, like, oh, yeah, this, this TV show is way more important than me getting. It wasn't like that. It was just as it turns out, that, like, dang, why would I essentially go to where I have to be kind of a thing when I want to do this and I don't have to be there. I don't have to be there at 659 or 559.

One of my SEAL buddies when I was going to college, there was another SEAL that was on going to college as well. And we actually made a deal because in order to, in order to be on time for something, you. Because of parking at this particular college. And eventually I figured out that I would just throw my bike, my bike in the back of my van and just whip, you know, whip the bike out and bike to elder class, park, park way away from campus and just jump on my bike and drive or ride the bike. But when we would be studying together and we'd be like, hey, we'll study it. You know, I'll meet you at 9 o' clock to study. We did this a few times. And then eventually. And you know, he was like a guy like me, married with kids. So we didn't want to. If we didn't have to.

Be at campus, we didn't want to be there. Not to mention jiu jitsu, not to mention surfing. So there's a bunch of other things we'd all rather be doing. So we made a deal. I was like, hey, I'll see you around nine. And he was like, yeah. Because that way if you rolled up and it took you an extra four minutes to find parking, you weren't like, dude. Because the only way to ensure you weren't going to be four minutes late was to be a half an hour early. You see what I'm saying? The only way to. It cost you 26 minutes.

Yeah.

Of life in order to ensure that you weren't going to be four minutes late. And so we, we were like, hey, listen, around nine. And we actually had the conversation because both of us squared away, like, hey, being late is the worst thing in the world. And we made a agreement, a gentleman's agreement, that in this particular scenario you had.

You had slack.

Yeah.

And when you got there, you got there, it wasn't going to be 20 minutes late, but it was going to be four minutes. It might give me six minutes, might be three minutes. So we had that little gentleman's agreement.

So the target is 9, but target.

Is 9 and I'll be there. And if you're not there, I know 100% why, it's because you weren't going to leave 26 minutes earlier to be there on time. Because it didn't make sense. Because I'd rather he was with his kids or he was surfing or he was doing jiu jitsu. Actually he did, but I knew he was doing something that was more important than sitting and waiting for me to show up to prove that we could both be on time.

Yeah. So that's interesting how you say it or that's an interesting concept because that's essentially the agreement I made with my work. Yeah, they didn't make that agreement, but I did too. Where it's like, hey, I'm not going to give up. Because it was the same kind of scenario where you have to look for parking. Sure, you could pay for parking, but now what? I got to pay extra to be at work kind of a thing. And I'm not saying that's good or bad. I'm not saying that that should be the case or shouldn't be the case. I'm just saying that's what I thought at the time.

So that was the agreement in echoes.

Yes sir, exactly right. So you know, Downtown San Diego, 6:00pm Especially on those Thursday, Friday, Saturday scenarios, it's like, it's hard to find parking. Or it can be anyway. So yeah, so I'd be like, okay, I'm gonna go at the, my opportune time, my best time in my mind. And hey, if it's, if I'm struggling finding parking, I'm struggling finding parking, you.

Know, that's in your mind.

It was no factor the gentleman's agreement.

Cuz you would have had leave legitimately probably a half an hour early to ensure 100% that you were going to be on time.

Yeah, probably a little bit more. Exactly right. Like to ensure like the kind. No, you gotta be here before six or whatever kind of a thing to ensure. Yeah, it's like half an hour. It's like, bro, it's not even in my mind, it's not even fair. How about this? How about this?

We'll decide a reasonable amount of time I have to leave the house, how about that. And if parking is abnormally scarce or traffic, we're gonna pay that price together. How about that?

The traffic thing is weird too, because that's an excuse that people use. Like, oh, yeah, I really hit traffic. And if you live in California, you're like, bro, yeah, yeah, you got to, you got to calculate for that. Come on.

Yeah. Yep. I agree.

It's kind of not a valid excuse. Unless, let's say you and I work in office every single day and we, we make that agreement. Like, hey, our goal is 9 o', clock, but I understand. I don't want you to leave an hour early to make sure you get here at that time. And I go, hey, man, you leave your house like you said, you leave your house before this time.

Reasonable.

I knew that there's going to be some, There could be some variables.

Yeah. And especially if they're like, the variables really vary because like the traffic thing, and I don't know about your roots, you know, in San Diego, whatever. But as far as the routine goes, very loose routine that I have, it's. I know when the traffic is going to be, you know, it's pretty predictable. You know, you got your anomalous accident or some hold up on the road every once in a great, great, great while. But so it is. I. To me, anyway, I think that factoring the traffic is, is a fair thing. Like you gotta, you gotta, hey, if it takes 15 more minutes on this.

Tuesday after rush hour.

Yeah. Versus Sunday morning or whatever, then that's part of the agreement. You gotta, you gotta factor that in. But Sunday morning, let's say Sunday morning every time we're recording and then, or whatever we're doing. And then no traffic. And then one day there's like traffic because there's some event at the beach or something.

I do expect a little bit of, what do you call, leeway? Leeway.

Okay. Kind of, I guess so that is time. First thing you got to be thinking about.

Causes stress, get ahead of it. The next thing. And this should really come as no surprise. The next things that I think about are the four laws of combat leadership, Cover, move, simple, prioritize and execute. Decentralized command. But I think about them in a very particular way.

So if I'm making a decision, the first thing I think about is cover, move. The number one thing is, am I supporting.

My teammates? Does this help the team? Am I putting my team first?

So I want you to think about that. The first thing I think about is time because I have no control about it. The second Thing I do is make sure that I am not putting myself ahead of the team, and I'm not making a decision that's going to leave anyone else on the team in the lurch. Right. And this will immediately.

Vector you in the correct direction. Because anytime that you as a human are making decision and it's based on benefiting you, there's a really good chance that that's a bad call. And from a leadership perspective, there's a huge chance. As a matter of fact, I'm gonna go ahead and say that's a bad call.

The, the, the military term is supporting distance. So Echo, if I'm working with you, if my fire team or my squad or my platoon is supporting your fire team, your squad, your platoon, I have to stay within a distance where I am able to support you. That means usually my weapons can cover where you may be attacked from, and my communications can speak to you directly. And generally speaking, in an infantry scenario, I want to be where I can actually see you. I can actually, you know, put on my night vision or at least pull out my, you know, pull out my binoculars and see where you are and go, I got him. I know exactly where he is. The minute that we're out of that supporting distance, there's going to be a problem. So from a, like a tactical perspective, that's a great thing to think about. But from a leadership perspective, cover and move is, am I being supportive of the rest of my team? And if you're not.

It'S going to be a problem. Now here's a couple things to watch out for. Some people have a tendency to look out for themselves. And.

Some people.

If they have that tendency, one of the worst things about that tendencies, that tendency is they don't think anyone else can see it.

And I'm telling you right now, when people are getting screwed, they see it. And in whatever subtle way, whatever, whatever maneuver you're doing that you think no one else can see that you're leaving people, everyone can see it. They can see it. Thousand percent. They can see what's going on. So if you think you might be a person, and this goes back to what are your own personal balance biases. If you are a person that goes through life that kind of looks out for yourself, this is where you need to index in the right direction appropriately to make up the fact that you're a little bit of a person that takes care of yourself. So just watch out for that. And the way you watch out for that is, is by when you're making decision this is the second thing you ask yourself, am I making this decision and it's only going to benefit me? And more important, am I supporting my teammates with this decision that I'm going to make? And if you're not, reconsider.

The next one is keeping things simple.

How complicated is this decision or how much complexity will this decision add to our situation?

And that's really a great way to think about it. Will this decision take our current situation and simplify it? If it's going to do that, that's very, very helpful. If this decision is going to make things more complex, this is usually not a good decision. So the minute you say, oh, we just need to get some more people down here into the mix, and all sudden you think to yourself, wait a second, that's actually going to make things more complicated? Reconsider again. You can still. You can. Hey, any one of these things that I'm saying right now, there are situations where you have to still push through it. It's when you're not thinking about it, when you're not being intentional about your decision, that's when you're gonna have a problem. Most important, when you don't even recognize. A lot of times people are making things more complex. They don't even know it because they're not considering things that I'm talking about. Sometimes they're screwing people over. They're not even thinking about it. Look, there's sometimes where I'm screwing over Echo with my decision, but I don't. You know, and I just don't think he's gonna notice or. I don't care. Sometimes I'm doing it, and I just. I don't even recognize the fact that, oh, I didn't realize Echo was gonna get left out in the cold. One time. Freaking Leif Bavid. We were staying in a hotel at the muster, and we had, like. I had a room. He had a room, and they were. They were joined by, like, a unit room or whatever. Like a. Like a. What's that word?

Common area.

Yeah, a common area. But actually, my. The. The entrance to my room was through the common area, and then. So to get into my room, you'd go through the common area, and then I'd go into my room. Leif had. He could go into the common area and then his room or he could go through the hallway. And so we went to pt and I forget how it happened, but he locked the common area door, so. And then we got split up. When I came back, I didn't have the key to his room. You know, that little. You know, like the key, the mechanical lock on a door? He had swung that thing shut, so we were laughing. He was actually trying to help me out, but he locked me out of my room, which was awesome. Sure. He didn't know. He didn't know that. He didn't know that we were all both gonna leave through his room. So, anyways, my point is, sometimes you're doing things and you don't understand the secondary effects. So that's one of the. That's one of the benefits of having a checklist. Because the minute you say, oh, wait a second, Jocko might actually have to come back in, and I won't be with him, so therefore, I should open the door from the inside.

Cool.

Got it. Done.

Sometimes I say, oh, I wanted to do this thing. Oh, but am I really covering for Echo? No, I'm not. I gotta help them out. Okay, so this. The. One of the uses of running this loop and going through this checklist is you make sure you're not doing something that doesn't make sense, that you didn't. That you weren't aware of.

So make sure that you are covering for the rest of your team. Make sure you are putting the team first when you make a decision.

Next one, simple. Well, I already covered simple. Making sure things aren't complicated. The next one is prioritize and execute. Does this decision that I'm about to make match the priorities that we should be focused on?

That's step number one. Hey, wait a second. I'm about to go in this direction. Does that even help us getting where we want to go? Then you kind of have to dig a little bit deeper. Are the priorities that I'm focused on right now? Are they even correct? Because sometimes what you're focused on right now changes, and you have to adapt. If you and I are rolling and I'm trying to defend an arm lock, you're trying to arm lock me, and all of a sudden you get my neck. Guess what the priority is. Priority is my neck. Protect your neck, Right? So priorities are going to change.

And so you have to make sure when you make a decision that you're supporting the right priority or you're supporting the priority that you have designated. And you also have to double check that the priority that you're focused on is the right one, or the priorities plural that you're focused on are the right ones, plural.

And then once again, you gotta check your own tendencies, because some people have a tendency to get distracted.

And if you're a person that has tendency to get distracted.

Then you need to double down on making sure you focus on the right priorities. Some people have a tendency to try and accomplish too much. They have the tendency to be like. Those people might usually have a also a bad relationship with time where they think they can do more than they have time for. And then they also say, I can do that, I can do that, I can do that. Even though I have a good relationship with time, sometimes I do try and bite off more than I can chew, but not very often. Most of the time, I don't do that. Most of the time I could actually take the garbage out before I go to Jiu Jitsu, but I don't want to be two minutes late. So therefore I'm going to take the garbage out later. I should have taken it out. I should have rolled the dice that there's a 0.001% that I'm a minute and 28 seconds late.

So know what your tendencies? There's people that have a tendency to shift priorities too often, similar to being distracted, right? But they're like, no, we need to focus on this. And then three days later, no, we need to focus on this. And then three days later, no, we need to focus on this. That actually happens.

And of course, there's some people that get fixated on a priority that may or may not matter as time goes on. So that can happen as well. So when you are making a decision, check your priority list and make sure that your decision supports the priority. And then also double check that the priority you're focused on or priorities that you are focused on are the right ones. Pretty straightforward, decentralized command.

Here's a really good rule of thumb. If you're in a leadership position, the decision that I'm about to make, can I decentralize and delegate the action?

So as soon as I'm thinking of doing something, I think to myself, oh, can I turn this over to someone else? So, hey, we got to get that building cleared. Yes, we're going to clear that building. Hey, Leif, grab your squad, grab your platoon, grab your team. Go get that building clear. Can I turn it over to someone else? Hey, Echo, we need to come up with some cool graphics for this event that we're gonna do. Can I turn that over to you? I wanna know if I can. Because my goal is to not be focused on doing things myself. Because the minute that I'm doing something myself, I can't look up and I can't look out, which is going to impair my ability to lead.

This also allows me to be aware. And again, so much of this is awareness. It allows me to be aware that sometimes there's something that I do have to do. And I've got to say, hey, Echo, I've got to go do this thing. Cover me or, hey, Echo, I'm going to be going and executing on this thing. Watch my back or look up and out while I'm doing this. So these are all things that, again, it's okay to make those decisions as long as you're aware of it. But the minute I go, hey, I'm going to go execute this thing, and I don't tell you to look out now, now we get flanked.

We're looking, hopefully with decentralized command. We're hoping. And the goal is that we are only doing things that only we can do. I only want to do things that only I can do. Everything else I want to. I want to have someone else on the team do it. That's the goal. And by the way, the things that only I can do, I eventually want to train someone else to be able to do those things.

How do you balance the.

Okay, remember, you know, your. Your. It was. Your story about somebody came to you, was like, you know, I need this advice, whatever. And you said, put them in charge of something. They put. And then that person put them in charge of something that was really undesirable, like cleaning.

Cleaning toilets at Seal Team 2 on the second deck. You know, that was the mission someone was tasked with in order to give them more responsibility.

Right.

And it didn't help the situation. It made them more mad.

So, so how do you find the balance? Because kind of in a way that kind of in a matter of speaking translates over to what you're talking about now, where it's like, hey, can I delegate this? Can I delegate this? Which a lot of. A lot of times, depending on the project of delegation, it can empower someone. It can help the whole group because they can do this. While you're doing, quote, unquote, more important things or whatever, how do you balance, like, what you delegate them to do with something important or whatever versus something that. Because, you know, some things need to be done, but no one really wants to do it kind of a thing.

Hey, if something sucks, I'm gonna get in there and do it somehow. This is the picking up brass story, right? Because picking up brass, it's real easy to say, you know what, guys, I gotta go back to meet with the commanding officer. I gotta go Back and prep a brief. So I'll be back in the air conditioned office back in San Diego while you guys are out here in 120° hit picking up brass. Real easy to say that. So decisions like that, I'm gonna be very cautious, and I'm gonna weigh my leadership capital, which we'll get to. Because if. Look, does this mean if the commanding officer's like, hey, I need a brief tomorrow. I'm like, sorry, sir, I'm picking up brass. No, it doesn't mean that. But I better prioritize building relationship with the troops, making sure they understand that I don't mind getting my hands dirty. Don't mind getting my knees freaking cut up. Don't mind having blisters on my hands from picking up hot brass out in the desert. That's what I'm gonna do. So there's some. There's some variables that we have to weigh into, and that's also why good deals give them away. You know, hey, someone's got to go ashore early and, and spend an extra four days in wherever, this nice vacation area of Thailand. Yeah, it's like, oh, no, I'm gonna go on the advent. That's like, no, no. Hey, Echo. You got it. Take these guys, make sure we have, you know, the stuff that we need for the training in Thailand. And you're like, awesome, right? Yeah. So that's how I weigh it out. Just, just. I have to, I have to. I have to assess the suck meter.

Yeah.

And if you're a person that always sees the suck meter high and runs the other way, everybody knows it.

Yeah.

So don't do it.

So it's kind of a little balancing act, game within the game kind of a thing.

100%.

Yeah. Because if you just be rigid, or this is what it seems like anyway, if you just be rigid to the, hey, I'm always going to delegate. And then it's. When it comes to, you know, I'm gonna. Oh, trash needs to be taken out.

Yeah, I got.

I got an extra three minutes or whatever. No, but no, no, no, I'm sticking to the rule. Delegate. Delegate. You know, kind of a thing.

No things that suck. Try not to delegate. And look, that could also mean if you're the platoon commander, guess what you're doing all day? Cleaning the toilets, Picking up brass. Like you could be. You could assign yourself every task. That kind of sucks. Yeah. And we don't want to do that. So we have to put that into the calculus. We don't just delegate things that suck in Fact, you know, Leif tells a story. We were going through our dive portion of training, and diving kind of sucks. You know, it's cold, wet, miserable, long, boring. And some people think. And so a lot of guys, given the opportunity, they have meetings to attend during dive. They have whatever reports to write. Yeah. And Leif and Seth, you know, they were kind of, like, surprised. Here I am, got my wetsuit on, got my fins out, we're ready to go dive. Ready to go. Spend four hours turtle backing around San Diego bay and making three hours on bag in the darkness. You know, bored out of your mind, but that's what you do. So that's one of those things where if it sucks, use caution while delegating.

Make sense fully.

Yeah, fully. It's a. Yeah, it's the kind of more of the approach to it, right. Where it's like, you got to understand the overall picture of what you. What are you doing here? You know, and why are you doing it kind of a thing. So if you have more important things to do, you delegate these things. They're all important because they're all pieces of the puzzle.

Right.

But, yeah, there's another, like I said, game kind of going on where.

You want to be looking out for everyone in that little additional way, you know, and you're gonna sacrifice little parts of kind of yourself.

Yeah, yeah.

To kind of do it.

So we kind of got the four laws of combat covered. The next thing I'm gonna think about, and this is a big one, is making sure that our ego is not driving this decision, which you would be shocked and dismayed at the number of decisions that are driven by ego. Driven by ego. They're almost 100%, in some cases, driven by ego. Am I making this decision based on my ego? Am I imposing it as punishment, subconscious punishment, on someone who questioned me?

Am I forcing this to prove to echo that my plan was the better plan?

So you have to be extremely cautious of that. And the thing that we have to be careful of is that our ego can absolutely not even. Your ego is going to lie to you. That's what our ego does. Our ego is going to lie to us. And it's tricky, too. Your ego's smart. Your ego's. It's like the devil. You ever seen the movie the Exorcist? Yes. So in the movie the Exorcist, the devil knows the things to say to the priest that's gonna, like, get him. And your ego is equally smart as the devil. And it knows. My ego's like, hey, hey, Jocko, this. Hey, I know. I get extreme ownership. Hey, I buy into extreme ownership 100%. But this time is actually really is Echo's fault. Echoes Plant's really not as good as yours. I get it. I know you want to be humble, but, hey, if you're humble now, it's actually going to cost you in the long. That's the way your ego talks to you. It's like a little savage in there, just manipulating. So you got to be very careful. Careful of that. The other thing that happens is if it's. If your ego's running the decision, have you listened to anybody else? Have you listened to other people with an open mind? Do you have an open mind? So be careful of that, because sometimes we're listening but not hearing. And then a good little sanity check. Am I doing this? Am I using this decision? Am I driving this decision with my rank, with my position.

Even with my experience? And let me explain what that sounds like. The idea of driving. It sounds good, right? It sounds good for me to say, hey, I'm more experienced. That's why I'm making this decision. Yeah, but that's the equivalent as, dude, I've been doing this for 20 years. You need to shut up and listen to me. Any of those things. Any of those. If the main driver of your decision and the way you're convincing people is through experience or through rank or through position or authority, you already lost. You already. Let me just not say you lost, but you need to reconsider what's happening, because if I can't articulate to you, Echo Charles, why I made this decision without saying, because I outrank you or because I'm in charge of this or because I have. Because I've done this type of thing 20 times. If I have to go there, that means I'm not really. I can't articulate why we're going with my plan, and that's a problem. And the problem most likely is my ego.

So use caution on that. And right. Tied up next to that is emotion.

Am I making an emotional decision? I mean, what a smart little thing to check on. And if you check on it, you're gonna realize that it's a bad. That it's a bad move. People make emotional decisions all the time, and by the way, they almost never turn out good. Am I mad? Am I frustrated? Am I vengeful? Am I fearful?

Am I guilty? Guilt is an emotion that'll make you do something that you know you shouldn't do. Fear is an emotion that'll make you do something that you shouldn't do.

Frustration. I'm getting frustrated. You know what, just go ahead and do it right? These are horrible things.

So check with yourself and make sure that your emotions are not driving the decision. Now listen, here's the other thing. Here's the dichotomy is your emotions do still have to be part of the calculus. They gotta be part of the calculus. You gotta calculate your own emotions to get the answer. You gotta calculate the emotions of the team to get the answer. Because if the team is all mad about doing this thing and I say, you know what though, logically we should do it, all right guys, this is the logical answer. Go do it. And all it does is make everyone matter. First of all, are you going to execute well? Are you going to do a good job? Are you trustworthy while you're out there and you're mad? What did it do to my leadership? Capitalism. All these problems it's going to cause. All these problems it's going to cause. So I have to put emotions into the calculus.

But it can't be the overwhelming driver of my decision making. It has to be a component. But it should be a small component in most cases. Meaning if I know that making some decision is going to make the entire team totally irate, I need to wait it a little bit more because the emotion's stronger.

But you have to calculate it. And if you're not aware of it, if you're not paying attention to it, then it's not gonna, it's not gonna work out the way you want it to. It's gonna actually cause bad decisions.

Next one. Perspective. Perspective. People throw this around, People throw this around. Make sure you know what other people's perspectives is. But they only throw it around when they think about it. But a lot of times we get locked into our perspective and that's bad. I want to see as many different perspectives on a subject, on a topic, on an idea that I can. I want to know my peers perspectives, I want to know my subordinates perspectives, I want to know my superiors perspectives. I want to know my competitors or my enemy's perspective. What are they actually seeing right now? The more angles I see of a target or of a problem.

The more, the better I can understand it. And the better I can understand it, the better off I'm going to be. We have this thing. When you, when you do a reconnaissance of a target, a building or a compound, when you, when you do it, what you try and do is you try and move around the Entire perimeter over a period of time. You try and see it from every different possible angle. If you don't see something from every possible angle, there's something that you're missing. And that thing that you're missing could be a critical component of the target or of the problem. So by asking your subordinates, hey, what does this look like to you? By asking your peers, like, hey, what do you see here? By asking your boss, hey, what does it look like from your perspective? By doing that, it's going to give you a better understanding of the target, of the problem, of the issue, and then you can better formulate a plan. And by the way, my default mode is to take when someone else says, hey, Jocko, I see a solution, my default mode is to try and utilize their solution, try and utilize their plan, try and utilize their idea. That's my default mode.

Now, if there's a leadership vacuum, and I wrote about this in Leadership Strategy tactics field manual. If there's a vacuum, no one's making a decision. Sure. I'm going to step in, I'm going to give you some little hints here. When there's a leadership vacuum, I'm going to let that leadership vacuum develop it a little bit extra. Just a little bit extra. I'm going to let that void, let the presence of that silence, of that non direction, of that lack of leadership, I'm going to let it sit there for an extra second, two seconds. Why am I doing that? Because I want everyone to know that there's a leadership void. And it doesn't take long, it takes a second, takes 2 seconds, 3 seconds. And all of a sudden everyone goes, oh. And when everyone knows there's a leadership void, everyone is primed to execute. Everyone is ready to receive orders.

So if there's a leadership void, I'm going to make sure everyone can feel it. By the way, those extra two, three seconds, I'm actually confirming the plan in my head that I have formulated. So now my plan is going to be two or three seconds further developed and better. And then I make the call. And yes, I'm gonna make a small call, iterative decision. And if someone else happens to make a call at the same time, guess what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna support their call. Cause that's my default mode.

My default mode is to support someone else's call because that is the easiest way to move forward with a plan. The easiest way to move forward with a plan isn't with Eko has a plan and I have a plan to Convince Echo that my plan is better. The easiest way, the quickest way to move is say, echo sounds good. I'm on board. What do you want me to do? How can I support unless Echo's plan is freaking, you know, horrible? Actually, let me rephrase that in a more distinct way. Unless Echo's plan is unviable, it's an unviable plan that will not work if it's a minimally viable plan, if it's. You know, if it'll get the job done, you have a minimally viable plan, and I have a viable plan. So that means mine might be a little bit better, but now I have to convince you of that. I have to explain why. And by the way, when I say I'm going to support your plan, I can probably bring some additional viability to your plan that can make your plan better than mine was in the first place. So that's what I'm going to do. That's the easiest way to do it. Now, what do we need to think about here is we need to think about the fact that we almost all. Here's a bias, that almost all of us have the same bias, which is my idea is the best idea.

That's our general consideration as humans, that my idea is the best idea. So know that you have that bias. I actually go hard against that bias. And quite frankly, sometimes I go too hard against that bias. Sometimes someone's got a plan, I'm like, and it might not. It might be minimal. Really? Minimally viable.

Sure.

And I'll be like, you know what? We'll go with it. Sometimes I do that a little bit too much. So I know that.

Why do you think you do that?

I just want to be supportive. Don't want to be a imposing tyrant on the team and someone. And generally, I'm, like, thinking to myself, well, you know my plans. Good. But, you know, we can probably make Eggles plan worse. I would rather do it.

Why?

I'll tell you why. I literally believe what I'm saying right now. It's usually easier for me just to support your plan than it is for me to convince you of this other plan and explain it to you. I can uptake your plan pretty quick. I get it.

Cool.

Let's go execute that thing. I'm supporting you. Let's run with it. And then I'm detached from your plan, so I can see a little bit more when it's my plan. All of a sudden, I got to manage that whole thing, and I'm staring right into it. And I don't know how good you are at being detached and trying to adjust things. You might not be as good as me. So you know what? I'm going to let you. Detachment is a harder skill than the planning and execution, or it's a rarer skill. If I tell you to go and execute something, there's a good chance you'll be able to do it. If I tell you, hey, I'm going to go execute, you detach and sit on the outside and try and give me some broad guidance about how I can do better. That's a harder job because most of the time you'll be like, I'm starting to execute my plan. You're going to jump in there with me. You're going to start doing it too. So that's why I sort of over index on allowing. On providing support or allowing people to do things that Maybe I don't 100% agree with. Right. I mean, you've done some stuff where I've been like, well.

That didn't seem to be the best idea, was it? And we can look back post mortem.

Is this a Christmas music thing?

Christmas music, That's a good one, right?

All right.

You know, sure. Some things happen. You're like, not good. That's not what we were looking for at all. Did you say you didn't even know that was a Christmas song?

Yeah, that's correct, bruh. I know. I don't know. Sorry. I do now, though, so, you know.

You gotta watch out for that one. So that's the deal. It's perspective. You have to actually pull yourself back and try and see other people's perspectives. And the best way to do that is. Is by talking to them, asking them good questions about what they see. You're not going to be a freaking. What's the word? A psychic. That I can see what Echo sees. I don't go into a meditative state and get. And go into your brain. No, I go, hey, Echo, what does that look like to you? This is not. This isn't freaking. This isn't freaking remote viewing. This isn't remote viewing. This isn't remote viewing. What's the deal with Rome? Do you think it's true?

I don't know.

They had big programs with it in the military. There's a movie about it.

Yeah. I mean, I don't if it is true. I don't know how it works at all. It doesn't seem.

Guys are really good at guessing.

Maybe, you know. Well, a lot of the. What do you Call, like, the psychic. You know, mediums and mind readers and stuff. That's, as it turns out, from what I understand what it is, it's not guessing, but it's like guessing about, like, they react to cues with you, like how you respond. So it's like I'm seeing red. And then if they do something, they're like, okay, red is something, you know, do you know a person name? And they go real basic names first. And so. Because I'm feeling a John or a gym.

Yeah.

You know, like, that would be even.

Even broader. Is like, do you know anyone that's. Do you know one that's experienced trouble in their life right now? And if I see you, like, then I'm like, it. Wait, are they sick? You know what I mean?

And at the same time, my mind is awake. Do I. Then I search for everyone in my whole. It's like, whether it's significant or not, you kind of make it so it's like a dance going on.

Maybe we'll have a remote viewer on the program, because the military had, like, a remote viewer group people that. That's what they did, sit in a room and go into a meditative state and look for, you know, missile launch pads, stuff like this.

I guess the argument for and against it in a matter of speaking is kind of the same thing where it's like, your brain is so complex, and we, you know, there's a lot of stuff about your brain and all that. This stuff that we don't know. So it's possible, but at the same time, it's kind of like, all right, well, I don't see how your eyes can, like, see something that they don't see, and it's your brain, you know, like, it doesn't make sense. Given what we do know. It doesn't make sense.

Eddie Bravo has a podcast now, and it's called Look Into It. I think it's called Look into it, which is a freaking great name. And this makes me think, you know, maybe we need to get Eddie Bravo to look into it and see what's up. See what's up with remote viewing. He. Because he's looking into a bunch of stuff.

Oh, yeah. You know why it's called Look Into It?

I think it's because of what I just said. Is there another reason?

Yeah, well, that's the thing that there was a.

Was it a meme kind of that he.

He was on a podcast. I forget which one it was, but it was one, you know, one of Joe Rogan's podcast He was on there, and then they got into this heated, like, argument about, you know, one of the things that Eddie Bravo really kind of purports maybe wasn't UFOs. What was it? I don't know. 9, 11 maybe. I don't know. I forget what it was. But he kept saying, you just haven't looked into it. You just haven't looked into it. Kind of, you know, I mean, that was kind of his defense to a lot of things, but he said it so many times that, like, it became a thing.

Well, it's a great name for his podcast because that's what he's doing is out there looking into it. The weird thing about looking into things these days is you can kind of find what you want to.

Whatever you want. Yeah, that's true.

Huh? There's. There's all kinds of things to find what you want. Yeah, to find.

We have this trampoline. Oh, yeah. And. Okay, so we have this trampoline.

It's.

It's called a rebounder. It's like, essentially like a regular little trampoline, but it's like, I don't know, more robust. I don't know, whatever.

How big is it?

Like the regular sized ones, like this table, maybe a little bigger.

That's not a regular size. So when I think trampoline, I think of something that you. That is like 15ft across.

Yeah, yeah.

Like a leg breaker. Yeah, yeah. But this thing is like one of those fitness trampolines where you jump on it.

Yeah, exactly. Right. But it's the one where it's like, there's no noise. It's called a rebounder, if I'm not mistaken. So anyway, one of the claims is that. Oh, yeah, it does something to your lymph system.

Okay.

Like, it, like, does something to it elevates it somehow. Makes it better, you know, the pressure. And. And here's the thing. That could be 100% true. It could be.

Look into it.

Yeah, you look into it. So I go and look in and you know, my wife, she's like saying, yeah, my dad told me, and this, and he has one. And let's face it, the kids jump on it. It's fun. That's my main kind of catalyst or whatever.

Didn't even have to look into that.

Lymph or no lymph systems. It's fun. The kids freaking love it. And whatever. It's good for your legs too, obviously.

But I'm like, if I'm gonna talk trash, which I do just jokingly, because I don't I don't know if it helps your lymph system or not. If I'm gonna talk trash, I should at least look into it. So I looked into it, and sure enough, it says, yeah, it does this to your limp system. But then. But then, just like what you're alluding to, where you kind of got to consider the source, you know? And then, oh, what? I'm gonna spend my day looking into this. Five websites that said this. Now I gotta determine the credibility. So it's, like, hard, you know?

Yeah, there's all kinds of. Cruz, you can make a website that has. Oh, click here for the supporting documentation. But you also wrote the supporting documentation.

Right? Right.

So even when you're looking into it, you're not looking in the right place.

Yeah, it's true, man.

What. What. What platform is Eddie Bravo's? Do you know what? It's on a platform? I don't know if it's on an open platform.

Oh, I don't know.

I have to look into it.

So there you go.

Perspective. You got to look into some other people's perspectives and figure out what the whole target, what the whole problem looks like. So there you go. Perspective. Spend some time. Put that on your checklist. The perspective you have, by the way, is not the whole thing. And there's a good chance that your perspective is actually wrong. Right. Hey, I don't see any enemy on this target. All you need to do is go 90 degrees in the other direction. You could see a bunch of enemies sitting behind a building.

Hey, make your bias that your perspective is probably a little bit off. Maybe even make your bias that you're. That you're wrong, that what you see is not the whole picture, that what you see is actually a bad picture. That's what I think of my perspective. I think, you know what? This is what I see. And I know my gut instinct is like, I know I'm not seeing everything, and there's more to the picture, and I need to figure out what that is. Make that part of your checklist.

Next thing is mission. So.

Is the decision that you're about to make, does it support the mission that you're actually trying to execute on and not actually more important than that? Does it support your overall strategic mission? And this is. This causes all kinds of. There's a. There's a term out there. Have you ever heard the term mission creep?

Yeah.

Yeah. It's a pretty common term. Now, this is because people don't run this leadership loop in their brain, and they don't ask themselves, hold on a second. What's our mission? What's our overall mission? And is this in support of it? If I make the decision, it's going to help us reach our strategic goals. All kinds of people make that mistake, and we can't allow for that. So what you do is you just run a quick check and say, hold on. Does this support the tactical mission that we're trying to execute? Does this support the strategic mission that we're trying to achieve? And if it doesn't, you know, it's a bad decision.

Next one, Leadership capital.

And this is one that I recently added to this list.

And.

And. And the reason that I added to the list is because at some point, I was having a discussion with somebody, and I realized, actually, let me rephrase this. I was making a decision, and I realized that the main thing that I was calculating was how much this was going to cost me from a leadership capital perspective. And so, first of all, what is leadership capital? Leadership capital is the fact that you can only get people to do so much.

As a leader, you can only get people to do so much. There's a. When you ask somebody to do something, it costs. It costs you leadership capital. And if they don't want to do it, it costs more.

And if they want to do it, then it costs less. And if they do it on their own accord, then it's very cheap, maybe even free. And if you let them do what they want, you're kind of collecting some leadership capital.

So just the very. Any interaction that I have with Echo Charles, if I say, hey, get this done. Hey, hey, do this. Hey, make a video about this. That cost me leadership capital. Cost me leadership capital.

Especially if you don't want to do. Has costing me even more leaders. Now, look, I might have some leadership capital with you. And you're like, all right, fine. I'll do it if you want to do it. If I'm like, hey, make a video with robots exploding, you're like, oh, hell yeah. Right? It didn't cost me very much. Now, if I say to you, man, I wish we had more videos with robots exploding, you were like, dude, I'm going to make a sick one. That's very cheap. You're still working, so maybe it cost me a little something. But if I say, hey, man, I have no idea what to do. What do you think we should do? And you're like, we need to make a video with robots exploding.

I go, there.

That's awesome. I actually gained some leadership capital. So everything when you're, when you're, when people are interacting with you, there's going to be leadership capital spent.

We. And by the way, every interaction that I have with you, not nevermind just a tasking, but when we interact with each other, there's leadership capital being exchanged. And we as people always think we have more leadership capital than we do. Here's a couple of things that will throw you for a loop. You think rank gives you a bunch of leadership capital. It doesn't, it doesn't rank. It gives you a little tiny bit because hey man, you know, obviously I'm in this position and you haven't been here as long as me and I've done this stuff before. So there's an element of leadership capital that comes with rank.

But it's not as much as we think. Actually. When I give ownership to someone, when I say, hey Echo, you go ahead and run this project the way you want, you seem to, you seem to have a good grasp on it. That actually earns me leadership capital. So giving ownership earns leadership capital. Listening to someone, as simple as that might sound, gives me leadership capital. When you come to me and say I want to talk to you about something, I go, oh. And I get out my notebook and I say, hey, tell me what you got. You're saying, I have this idea of doing this and I'm writing it down. That gives me leadership capital.

You could do like a little, whether it be for echelon front or whatever, you could do like a fun little quiz, right. And it's like leadership capital quiz. Like is this spending it or earning it? Right. And you could do little thing. You could probably go pretty deep with that.

You can go real deep. I've done, I've covered that in the academy. How to earn leadership capital.

Yeah.

And what costs leadership capital. So you definitely. It's. That's good. We could, we could do it on here at some point as well.

It's surprising how much listening to people gives you leadership capital. And usually when I talk about the, the opposite of that is when people go, oh yeah, he's right. Because listen, if you start telling me something, I cut you off.

Right. You might not realize the weight of when you're telling me something. I listen to you youu might not. It's like a subconscious. You be subconsciously giving me leadership capital.

But when I cut you off and you're trying to express something to me and I just cut you off and I'm like, yeah, hey look, let's get to the topic of the day. Yeah, you're just. That. That cost me a lot of leadership capital just like any. And that's just do with respect.

You know what you were talking about earlier, A crappy job.

If.

If we got something, if we got to go pick up brass and I'm out there doing it with you, leadership capital goes up. If I'm in the air conditioning place, leadership capital goes down. So there's all these things that are going on.

Bro.

It gets kind of tricky too, though. And maybe this is my little pea brain mind going too deep into it. Maybe it's not. But like, let's say you, okay, you know your story, right? The patches, right? So you let. We'll say you let something slide, right? You let something slide sometimes that under certain circumstances that can gain. You may have. You gain leadership capital, but under other circumstances, you can lose it. It's the same action. You let something slide, but it's like, oh, you got to understand, that's why.

We wrote the dichotomy of leadership.

Yeah. That's why a quiz would be great.

And that's why leadership is tricky. It's tricky because you. You gotta. You gotta assess that. And that's why I'm talking about this, this leadership loop, because so often people aren't actually just checking with someone's like, wait a second, I wonder how bad Echo actually wants to do this. I wonder what this costing me. Yeah.

The. The reason that it weighs so heavily for me, first of all, it's because leadership capital is the currency of winning. If you want to win, you got to have a bunch of leadership capital built up. And I put so much weight on leadership capital.

Because this is interesting thing to think about. Most of the time.

One idea, it's only a little bit better than some other idea, right? Very rarely are you and I working at a company or in a military unit or part of a team, and your idea is so radically different from mine that I'm willing to. That. That I even need to think about, hey, is that a good decision or not? Usually your idea is pretty good. You're like, in your mind, you're like, hey, I want to explode Star wars robots, and I think you should explode Terminator robots. Right? Are those two things worth arguing about?

No.

No. Are they worth it? They're not. I think one thing, you think another thing. But the things that we're thinking are very closely related. So therefore, what trumps the idea? Because the ideas are so close.

What trumps the idea is leadership capital. We have a common goal. We have a common capability. We have common experiences. And we're gonna come up with pretty similar plans because we're both coming from the same place, therefore your plan is probably gonna be viable. And because your plan is viable, because what I say, you want Star wars, okay? Because you want Terminator robots and I want Star wars robots. They're both viable. But because they're both viable, I make the expenditure of leadership capital a very heavy weighted element of my decision.

Because the decision between Star wars robots or Terminator robot isn't going to make that much of a difference. Now. Are there people that freaking dig in about what robot needs to die? Hell, yeah, there are. And they're idiots for doing it. I don't care. I don't care. And the reason I don't care is because building leadership capital is the strategic move. That's the strategic move. Because if we're spending leadership capital all the time, we won't have any left or, well, even worse, we'll end up in debt. And that's not going to end well because, by the way, when I don't have any leadership capital with you and I ask you to do something, you're not going to do it. If I have a ton of leadership capital and I need you to do something and there's no time to talk about it and you don't believe in it, but I need to get it done, I can actually spend some of that leadership capital. We can move forward.

So.

That'S what I'm gonna do when I'm making a decision as to whether or not to go left or right or use Terminator robots or Star wars robots, I'm going to put a huge amount of weight on how much leadership capital this is going to cost me and see and weigh whether this is.

Whether this is the right move or not. Most of the time it's not. Most of the time it's not. Leadership capital is more valuable than any other elements in the world.

Leadership capital, it's everything that's wrapped up in leadership capital. Trust, integrity, vision, unity. There's all these things that are wrapped up in it. That's what makes it so valuable. It's like this. This thing that has so much power, and yet people throw it away. They don't even realize how valuable is. I'll just throw it away on this, that, or the other thing.

Yeah.

Like, hey, Echo, you just need to get this done. Boom. I just. I just spent freaking however many units worth of leadership capital. Dude, you just need to be quiet and get this done. Boom. I just. Throwing money away.

Yeah. Hey.

Hey, Jocko, I gotta go to. Hey, look, I don't need to hear your ideas right now. We need to move forward. Okay, cool. That just cost me. It's like everything we do, people just throw it away like it's nothing. They bring. They break out the freaking. They go into debt. They go. And then they end up bankrupt.

Leadership.

You ever met someone that has no leadership capital left?

Yes, I have.

Yeah. Like, you work for someone that's an asshole. You work for someone that doesn't listen. Anybody else. They have no leadership capital.

Yeah.

And. And. And maybe they can make some things happen early on because they have the authority or they have the experience or they have the position that. And that they can actually make a little bit of progress. Then the leadership capital's gone. Everything just falls apart. Yeah.

And that's like a back. And I said this before, so I don't need to go too deep into it, but you know how, like, you have an old boss that you used to work for, and he was just a dick or whatever, and you don't work there anymore. You work at a better job now, you know, and then maybe see that old boss somewhere. The way you feel about him, you can see his leadership capital is at zero at that point.

Zero. So that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna consider leadership capital, and it's gonna weigh very heavily. And by the way, the reason I didn't put this on the list originally, because it was so. It was so integral to the way, I think I didn't even see it there. You know, I mean, it was just one of those things. It was almost like if you. If I was to put down what do you need every day, Echo, you'd be like, hey, I need a good workout. I need to get a good steak. I want to roll Jiu Jitsu. And I. But what about oxygen? What about air? You're like, well, yeah, obviously, that's Leadership capital, for me, was like, breathing air. It was that integral to my day. I didn't even see it was there.

Yeah. So, yeah, now that you bring it up, though, it's like, it's not like, air. Right. Because it's so, like, people don't.

Actually wrong.

It is like, air.

It is, but they're ignoring it.

So it's like, well, it is, but people don't realize how valuable it says. They can't breathe, so they don't even realize it's there. And they're there, like, just wasting it. And it doesn't matter. It'll always be there. No, it's not. You get choked out. That's what happens. Tell me you're not concerned about air when you get that guillotine chill sunk on you.

I am concerned about air at that point.

Real concerned, yes. So be careful.

Tell me if you think this is an example of being in touch with leadership capital.

So, you know, as you know, we have this dog now. Small dog. Never wanted a dog. I didn't want a dog.

What's your dog's name?

Maya. It's a small little weed. What do you call it? Yorkie, I think.

I don't know what you call. Because I don't have the dog, bro.

You know what it's called anyway? One of these little small dogs. Whatever. Whatever. It's cute. Whatever. I never wanted the dog, though. Why are you gonna. We're gonna add another thing to the light simple life. All the kids want dogs. My wife maybe. Maybe she wanted the dog, maybe not. But she hears it from the kids every day. Oh, my gosh. Every time the kids see a dog.

Yeah.

And there's people in our neighborhood. Neighborhood with cool little dogs and stuff, and they're nice dogs, and so they're great examples of dogs all around, constantly being reminded how they don't have a dog. Right. So finally I'm like, hey, all right. I kind of went through this loop a little bit in a small way where I'm like, hey, you, Leadership capital.

At some point in there.

Exactly. Right? So I'm like, all right, now, this.

Would be actually an interesting thing for us to do, is go through your decision to get a dog and assess your leadership loop on this thing. Right. I mean, you know, time. Well, you do have plenty of time to make this decision. So you didn't, like, rush one week and be like, okay, we need to get a dog now. You know, you took time to consider it.

Two years, by the way.

So there you go. Cover move. You were like, hey, if we don't get a dog, is that putting me first? Yes, it is. And so you kind of made that decision, like, okay, got to put the team first. Yeah. Simple. This is one. One of those things. We're like, well, this is going to actually make things more complex. So you had to put that into the calculus. Right. Prioritize and execute. Well, is it one of our priorities? Well, we saw some family unity being. Being created, and so that was a positive thing. So the priority kind of stepped up a little bit because we want the family to be tight and yeah.

And there's other elements in that, too, because, you know, like, okay, so my daughter's 9, so getting a small dog, too. This is like a small. It's not like some big Great Dane where it's like more responsibility, whatever. It's a small little dog. Minimal, arguably responsibility, comparatively speaking. And you have a pet that it actually is responsible. Responsibility for the kid, obviously, being supported by us, of course, you know, but she gets to learn a little bit of that responsibility, sacrifice, you know, and stuff like that. So it was a net as far as priorities go and the developmental elements of a kid. And let's face it, like.

Is it unreasonable for a kid to have a childhood pet? Is that unreasonable?

No, no, it's good. And as you just mentioned, pretty normal. There's lessons to be learned.

Exactly.

Which goes into decentralized command. You know, that. Is this something you can decentralize? So did you go, oh, we're going to get this dog and then I'm going to have to walk it, I'm going to have to feed it? No. You were probably like, hey, I'm not cleaning up dog shit, right. I'm not going to be the one that feeds everyone. So you knew you could decentralize some of this stuff. So that is additionally positive here. Was it your ego that was getting in the way a little bit? Because, hey, check it out. Let's face it, the dog is going to take a little attention away from Echo Charles. Just a little bit. Right. And plus, you might have been like, hey, this my house. Yeah, right. You could get into that mode.

And that. That is.

I'm not saying you did, but it could be a little bit.

Maybe not necessarily in that particular way, like, this is my house that I make. There was. It wasn't that. It was more about like, oh, yeah, everyone wants this dog, but what about what I want? It was like that. And I was like, bro, that's kind of whack. You know, when I realized that, good.

Okay.

Emotion, you had to at least check the emotion that you were having and that everyone else was having, because if you don't, you. You weighed in how happy everyone's going to be. And that countered how, like, somewhat frustrated you were going to be. You actually went through this and thought to yourself, you know what? Them being super happy outweighs me being a little bit aggravated. So you put. You did the calculus of the emotion, made the right call. Mission. Does this help our mission as a family? Again? Helps bring the family together. There's lessons to be learned. We have something to talk about. We have. What's that? A common affection towards this thing, even though this thing is small and weak and doesn't really protect us from anything.

Which is okay, but it gets the kids outside even more. You know, all this stuff.

Leadership cap. So this is where we get to. So now you got to a point where as leadership capital you were. And how did you calculate that? On the dog purchase, which in a.

Small way went back to measuring the emotions and comparing them. But it was essentially that, like, people. Everyone knew that I didn't want a dog. In fact, they've been knowing it for two years. I'm not the kind of person, whatever that. That's like, no, you know, like, I don't complain about that kind of stuff. But they. Everyone knew that I was not really into it at all.

When we got it. I didn't be like, yeah, I wasn't into it, but I did it anyway for you guys. None of that kind of stuff. I was just kind of like. I was like, hey, if that's what we're doing, let's do it. And I'm so. Actually, I will clean up after it as a priority, but I'm down for the support hundred percent. So when. When it was time to get the dog or whatever, I was like, I basically got on board and I figured. And I guess in terms of leadership cap, I wasn't thinking of it in terms of leadership capital, but I wasn't thinking of it in terms of like, hey, what would. Like, what's the right thing to do here? And something that would, if I get on board in a positive way, in a conducive way, that's going to be better off for everybody. So that's just what I did. But kind of maybe, how should I say, inadvertently or whatever, just not thinking. Thinking of it. I'm sure that did. Because people know that I didn't want the dog. But meanwhile, I have a good attitude about it. I'm still cleaning up. And let's face it, the is the classic tale, right? Where the dad doesn't want the dog, then the dad ends up being the best friend of the dog kind of a thing. You know, we're not quite there yet, but I have embraced the dog on a personal level. Teeny, tiny dog check. So I feel like if they even notice, who knows, they're little kids, you know, they.

I guarantee you got some leadership capital out of this. Guaranteed.

Yeah.

And that's good. That's good because over time also, you. You gotta think how much Am I spending leadership capital when this is the one thing they want and I'm not getting it for him? Yeah, that's. That could be a problem. And it's. I shouldn't even say, like, it probably wouldn't actually be that big of a problem. And the reason it's not that big of a problem because it's a huge ask. Right? It's a huge ask. A dog is a big deal, man. Yeah. You can't just be getting a dog on a whim you need. You should go through this checklist before you go and invest in a dog or pick up a dog from the dog pound or whatever you're gonna do.

Here's what I do have in mind. Consciously in regards to leadership capital. If I complain about that dog or, or about having the dog. Not even necessarily about the dog, because you can complain about like, Frick, the dog's barking, you know, whatever. But if I complain about having the dog.

Yep.

That is like, to me, it feels like I'm like spending so much of that leadership capital because it's like, I never wanted that dog. You know, making everyone feel guilty or something like this. Never.

It's.

It's against the straight up morals.

Yeah, that would be.

That's how strict I think that would be bad.

So leadership capital. Put that in the calculus. It's more valuable than the air that you breathe from a leadership perspective. Now, the next thing is as, and I've mentioned this a bunch already, but as I'm judging or assessing all these aspects of a decision, I am going to the whole time pay attention to my own bias.

You know, do I tend to think that I have too much leadership capital because there's people that are like that. They think, oh, hey, man, don't worry, I'm Jocko, man. People are just. No, do I underestimate the amount of leadership capital that I have? First of all, that's rare and it's usually not true, but those are things that I am going to do. I am going to constantly be assessing my own bias. So you might want to throw onto your leadership loop bias assessment to make sure that you're not making a mistake because of the biases that you have. And, or you can put, or you can put that into each one of these topics. Ego, emotion, mission, leadership capital. You can put bias into each one of those subcategories to say, you know what? I know I'm always get. Let my ego get in the way. Or maybe you're saying the other opposite side, you know, I'm never confident enough with my decisions.

On time. Right. What's your bias? Do you think everything takes five minutes when it only takes a half an hour? Calculate that bias.

And then the last thing I'm going to say here is something that I like to think about.

Am I looking at the symptoms or am I looking at the root cause?

Because.

A lot of times this solution that's right in front of your face actually a solution to a symptom. And we see this like 2D solution that's right in front of us and it's usually obvious. And here's what's tricky. It's usually right.

Usually the first, you know, if Echo's doing something or if we. If we got to come up with a plan and I come up with a quick plan to solve a problem, usually that first plan that we both see is a solution and it will work. But there's a good chance that we're both reacting to a symptom and not to the disease. So I like to just check myself and say, is what I'm looking at the symptom or is it. Or is it the actual root cause of the problem? And is the solution that's being proposed or the plan I'm coming up with, is it a 2D solution for something that's right in front of me or is it a 3D that will actually get us a long term solution?

So that's what I'm going to look at now. Here's what messes us up in this loop, and it's pretty similar to what can mess you up in the OODA loop. Number one is you can get stuck in any one of these areas. Just like you get stuck in the OODA loop. In the OODA loop, you can get stuck observing. You're just looking around, looking around, trying to, trying to see what you see. You're trying to get every angle and you get stuck there. You get stuck looking around and you get shot down. Maybe you get stuck orienting yourself. You're like, wait, hold on, where are they? Where am I? Hold on, let me see exactly where I'm in. You get shot down, maybe you get stuck in the decision, wait, should I go left, should I go right? Should I left, go right? I don't know. There's advantage to going left, there's advantage going right. You get shot down or act, you just, you won't take action. You don't do the action, you get shot down. So if you get stuck in any of these as well, same thing if you get stuck Thinking about any of these things, and you let it become the focus. I want to make sure my ego is not a problem. And that's what you focus on. You don't consider time. You don't consider emotion. You don't consider the mission. So you can't get stuck on any of these things.

You can't get stuck.

You have to let the loop continue to flow. And you know what you're going to figure out? You're going to figure out that there's some things that you're good at in this loop, and there's some things that you're bad at in this loop. Maybe your ego is not a problem, but you have a problem with time. Maybe your emotion isn't a problem, but you always get distracted by different missions.

Maybe you cover and move really well, but you don't realize that you expend leadership capital on stuff that doesn't matter.

So you want to continually observe these things, and you want to over index on the things that you know you are weak at. So that's the number one way that we get messed up when we're making decisions. The number two things we don't. We ignore the feedback that we're getting, which is such a disaster. It's such a disaster to ignore the feedback that we're getting. And you know the point I made earlier about Echo Charles and how my ego is going to lie to me?

Your ego is lying 100% of the time.

Let's.

Let me just say that my ego is saying, you know, actually, in this case, Jocko, look, I know. I get it. But this Echo really is the problem. He really is the problem. That. And when I ignore that, the fact that. I'm sorry, not that I ignore, but I let my ego convince me that, you know what? This time, just this one time, my ego's right. It's not. Or just this one time, hey, this is an emotional decision. It's the right thing to do. You know, Jocko said you need to put emotions into calculus, and I'm pissed. So we're gonna do it. No.

We ignore feedback. And of course, this comes from a lack of humility when you're being told something even in your own head, but you ignore it. Like, you know, I know Echo might kind of get screwed by this decision, but, you know, he's not going to notice. Boom. You're just lying to yourself. You're ignoring the feedback, and that's going to cost you. And so in order to do that, this comes back to a fundamental. A fundamental Skill of leadership that I wrote about in Leadership strategy and Tactics, and that is the ability to take a step back and detach. That's the only way you're gonna see this stuff. You can't. Detachment is a superpower, and the reason that detachment is a superpower is because the solution to the problem is not in the problem.

The solution to the problem will not be found inside the problem. You got to step outside the problem in order to see the solution. Don't get wrapped up in the problem itself.

Instead, take a step back. Run through this loop so you can make better decisions. And what is an important thing to recognize? You might be thinking like, oh, well, I'm not, you know, the CEO of some big company, and I don't even need to make a bunch of decisions. Guess what? Life is a series of decisions all day, every day. That's what life is. Everything that you do is a decision.

It's almost like the binary decision which I wrote about in Disciplining with Freedom manual. Everything that you do is a decision. They're not always necessarily binary, but when you live life, you're making decisions. Everything you do is a decision.

So because everything you do is a decision, once you realize that, you should detach and you should have a protocol for making decisions, because then your decisions will be better. And you should have the humility to realize when you aren't making good decisions and when you get that feedback and realize, oh, I gotta make some different decisions now. And then you make adjustments and you make better decisions, and you move on.

But. And what's beautiful about this is it means that if everything in your life is based on the decisions you're making, guess what? You have a lot of control over your life.

Based on the decisions that you make.

So make good decisions. It's gonna make you a better person. It's gonna make you a better leader. It's going to give you a better life.

All right, there you go. Echo. Charles.

Yes, sir.

Speaking of good decisions, I know there's some ways that people could decide to support themselves a little bit better.

Yeah, it's true.

And they could support this podcast while they're doing it. It's true. They could support America while they're doing it.

Very true. Yeah.

Which is kind of a big deal.

Yeah.

Especially considering how tenuous the world is right now. World's a tenuous place.

Sure.

There's other elements out there making a move.

Yeah.

You know, got China making a move. They're out there making a move.

Yeah.

They're trying to Take the. Russia's out there, they're making a move.

Yeah.

People are stepping up.

Moves are being made.

Moves are being made. And are we going to sit back now? Does this mean you need to pick up a rifle and go to war? No. But I'll tell you what you can do. You can support America.

Mm.

I know a good way to do that.

Yeah, me too. Well, it starts with ourselves, Right. I think a lot of the time.

No doubt about it.

Good decisions where look, other people not making decisions for you unless you're letting them. But you want to make good decisions for yourself, right? I would imagine so. It starts with yourself. We're take caring, taking care of ourself, physically, mentally deciding to.

That's what we're doing.

It's true.

Yep.

Yep. So we're working out, of course, 100% we're reading. You know that.

Yes, we are.

We should be, at the very least listening.

Wait, are you reading?

I'm reading here and there, bro.

I don't know about this. Wait a second here. What are you reading?

Well, there was. Okay, so there's a book because you.

Can'T reference Mind Games, which you read nine years ago.

Yeah, probably.

And that's. I think that may be the only book you've ever referenced since I've known you.

Oh, no, no, I've. Okay, what do we got? What's on the.

What's on the docket?

Echo, Charles, I more so than I'm a tell you what's currently on the docket, because they'd have to, you know.

But wait a second, bro, you can be honest. We're telling each other the truth. This is like leadership, you know, capital we're trying to build. If you're not going to tell me, like, oh, no, no, right now, I'm not reading anything, jocko, because, you know, it's summertime and I was in Hawaii and. So we're not reading anything unless you are.

Yes. So.

So what are we reading right now?

Nothing.

Or this book.

So it depends, because that's a spectrum.

You should own this 100% right now, otherwise it's not gonna.

Look, here's the 100 truth on the matter. So I have Kindle books and audiobooks. Like, you know, some are halfway done, some are all done, some are whatever. So when. How much time has to be elapsed between the last time I was into one of these books actually, like reading it or listening to it to now? How much time has to pass before I'm technically not reading?

Let's just say A week. Okay.

We might not be reading.

But.

All right. That being said, that's kind of a bummer. That means that the books that you're reading or even listening to must not be that captivating or.

Well, yeah, I mean, I guess in a matter of speaking technically. Yeah. But that doesn't mean that they're not captivating that much. Might mean that other things that I'm.

Doing, they're competing with life. And life is. Life is captivating, which is a good thing.

Yes, sir.

Right. But I never thought of that comeback. You know, some people, like, I'm reading three books a week. Be like, oh, that's cool. I'm actually living.

Yeah, right.

That could be a little bit of a dichotomy.

Could be, yes. And obviously that's going to depend because reading three books a week, one. We don't know how fast they read or listen or whatever or what they're doing. You know, what if they're going on miles runs, redoing the same thing. You know, it's kind of a. You know, so it can be an awesome. It can be kind of what you're alluding to, where it's like, what if I'm flexing, though? That's fine. Oh, wait, Flexing with the. I'm reading. That's just a flex.

Like. Like.

Fourth book I've read this month.

Right, right. Just to sort of branch flexing, like. Yeah, well, you know, there are many.

Variations of flexing because it'd be an interesting reflex. Would be like, I don't have time to read books.

Yeah. Or that could be an excuse.

It could be an excuse.

Yeah. So it just depends. It's a dichotomy.

Okay, so where. Where is Echo Charles? The last book that I finish.

We were considering the last book that I finished, which was recently. I don't know, whatever. FEMALE actually, I read it twice. Was the Four Agreements recommended by Jason Gardner? Yeah. That's a good one.

And you guys. I heard you guys talking about it, and you seemed both, you know, you were both concurred that it was good, good stuff.

And a lot of times that. That type of agreement book. And I mean, this type. That type of book in this particular particular way is. It's real, like. Like it has a lot of spiritual, like, terms, you know, but. And, you know, usually spiritual terms are real. Like, they land on different people in different ways.

I'm not tracking spiritual term. I. E. What. What's the spiritual term?

Like, you know, calling things black magic or. Because he'll use that term. A lot.

Yeah, but he's using. He's using those terms because I. I heard you guys talking about it, and I think I might have even been talking to you a little bit about it or Jason. Those are just like an analogy. Like, this type of attitude is black magic. That's negative.

Yes. So I took it in that way.

Okay. Like, it's not like he was literal black magic.

Yeah. And every once in a while it kind of felt like that. But either way, I never took it as that. Like, to me, that's not the useful part of it. The useful part is many other things. But. But anytime they say something like black magic, I know what he's saying. I know what you mean. I think I do anyway. I believe I do. So I. I just. I put it that way. Took it in that way. But, yeah. So that being said, the spiritual parts, even with those spiritual parts or whatever, like, what he was saying with all the four agreements is, like, very. It was. It's a good one. It's a good one. And a lot of it might not come as, like, a surprise. Like, oh, man, I totally didn't know that. But just like a lot of books about, like, ways to think and regard yourself in the world and stuff, it's like, okay, that's. That makes sense. Or that's a good reminder.

You know, it's kind of like what we just covered. There's a lot of people that we. Of course, you should consider if you're screwing over your. Your buddy. Yep. And it seems obvious, but.

There'S times that people do this. Aware, unaware. And I think the big warning there is, like, you think no one notices everybody else. So, yeah, some things can be. Actually, I think when something seems obvious, usually that's affirming to, like, this is. This has got to be. This is pretty true because I know I felt this way, and now I'm seeing this guy felt this way, and now I. You know, so it becomes like a thing.

Yeah. And sometimes it just puts certain things, certain elements into perspective that you might not have realized how important they are or how prevalent they are in day to day, you know, stuff.

Awareness.

Yeah.

When you're aware. Aware of things, you become just. Awareness is a huge step up in understanding and reacting properly and interacting properly with the world.

Like the idea that you actually brought up a few times today. The idea that, like, people notice, like what? Like, well, I see what you're doing, or I see. Whether it be your intention or when they're getting screwed over, whatever. Like, the. The idea that people can see what's going on.

That.

I think that's one of the many things that's like. It helps to understand how big of a thing that is. Like, you know, how it's like. Yeah, sometimes they'll notice, sometimes they won't. It kind of feels like that sometimes they notice. Oh, yeah. People know it. Like, you know how. And I've said this before, I got it from Sam Harris, where it's like, when you name drop someone, it's like everyone sees you name dropping and it's not even like a noble thing.

You mean when you talk about. I got this from Sam Harris after.

We hung out this one day. You know, it was awesome.

But.

But that's like, you know, one of the many examples of. Sure, maybe somebody caught it, but, you know, I'm sure it was effective when I did. But everyone noticed the same way you'll notice when someone else does it. You know, it's kind of one of those things. But. And there's a lot of things like that, you know, so. Yeah, that. I think that book overall was a lot of that, but some stuff was like, oh, that is a good way to look at things. Yeah.

And. And sometimes when somebody's written something out and they've explained it, it clarifies it for you. It increases your understanding. And the better understanding you have, then the more you can interact with that properly, you can utilize that as a tool. Yeah, that's good stuff. So, yeah, we want to read.

Very unvarying levels.

Yeah. Because I'm reading one book a week over here.

Flex.

Good.

If you're reading one book a week, that's good. Yeah. It's hard to say that that's bad.

Yeah. I. I don't actually know if I. There was a while where I was reading one book every week when we were doing the podcast, and it was like, almost all books. Yeah. And then it seemed like we went a little. A bunch of people were coming on for interviews, so that was a little bit more interview centric. So. But I. This, I can say there is no period of time of more than two days where I haven't read something.

Oh, damn.

Yeah. So that's kind of where I'm at. But that's not a flex, bro. Cuz guess what? Maybe I should be, you know, surfing or getting in fights at rei. Sure. Hell, yeah. Parking lot situations.

But, oh, we are working out every day.

You know Joel Tudor. Yeah, you know, of course Joel Tudor.

He.

If you don't know, he's surfer and a jiu Jitsu guy and an awesome guy. But. But he, like, posted something. Something about, like, basically kook surfers, like, you know, surfer starter kit, Malibu surfer starter kit. In one of the pictures was like, a sprinter. I responded on this post, I was like, hey, bro, I got a sprinter. Yeah, so sorry, Joel. Sorry, Joel. I got a sprinter there, people.

Well, so it's kind of a confirmation, really, in a small way. Oh, call me a kooka.

That's messed up. I was up on the horses, and I asked the guys, the cow, the actual cowboys, I said, hey. I said, hey, in surfing, if you're a. If you don't know how to surf, but you have a surfboard and you're paddling out, but you have no idea what you're doing, then you're a kook. I said, what's that called on horseback riding? And because that's me, because I don't know how to ride a horse. And they said, it's a dude.

Huh.

So there's a thing called a dude ranch, which is basically for city slickers to go out and, like, be a cowboy for a little while.

I didn't know that.

And so if you're one of those people, then you are a dude.

That's weird. I've heard of dude.

There was another word that they told me as well, but I can't remember it. Yeah, that's funny. But I was one of those. I am one of those. On a horse.

You're a dude.

Yeah.

That's funny. There was a show called hey, dude, and it was about a dude ranch. And it was. I think it was on, like, Nickelodeon too, or something back in the day. In the day. Well, hey, man, learn something new every day. See, sometimes you don't even have to read. You just come listen to Jocko being a dude or whatever you're being over there. But we are working out every day.

Yes, yes.

Like, currently working out.

Like, you can make that claim. You don't have to. You don't have to sort of put. Put explanations around. That claim, bro, you're faced with. Was so guilty when you said you read, I was like, please don't lie.

I was trying to. I was trying to do the calculus because that's a legitimate question. Because, like, if you say, oh, I'm working out. Right, but you haven't worked out in two weeks. You're like, bro, you're not working out. You're currently not working out, actually. But if it's been like, two days, that's like, okay. You could have just Been coming off a rest weekend or something like this, and you're still in the program. You see what I'm saying? Or working out. So with reading, how is that? I never thought about it. So look, if I read last night before I went to bed or something. Easy, right? I know the answer. Oh, I'm reading this. Last night I was reading this. But let's face it, it's been three weeks.

So that was the gift.

Three weeks is kind of a gift, isn't it? Yeah. Huh. It.

It.

Yeah.

Yeah. I'm gonna agree with you.

Kind of a gift.

Yeah.

I'm giving you the opportunity to tell the truth.

Wait, wait, what do you mean three weeks is a gift?

I'm saying me saying. Oh, you. You were reading three weeks ago, you were reading.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Me.

It's kind of me being not generous.

Yeah. Technically, I don't know. I've never done the. The math and the technical, you know, evaluation. But if you compare it to working.

Out, never get interrogated.

I know, Me too. Me too.

If you compare it to working out, then, no, I'm not reading. Currently not reading. But here's the thing too, though.

Did you already lift today?

No, not yet.

This afternoon.

Squats today.

Okay. Either way, the mental prep going?

Yeah, a little bit.

But here's the thing about reading versus working out. You can pick up a book for like 10 minutes, you can read three pages working out. If I go do one, two sets of curls, is that a workout? I know. It's btn. I know, I know. BTN is better than nothing.

Yeah.

Which is a non philosophy, in my opinion. But that's just my opinion. How about this? We'll use that philosophy very sparingly. How about that? All right. But you see what I'm saying, though?

Yes. You can read a short amount, and it still is providing legitimate benefits and progress.

Yeah.

Whereas two sets of curls. Well, it is btn. If you believe in that philosophy, which Echo doesn't, I would say it truly is btn. It is better than nothing.

Yeah. But if I go two sets of curls, and then now I say, you know what? That's gonna be my workout routine, bruh. After about two months, it's kind of like an N. Nothing. I'm kind of speaking. So. Okay, look, we got to the bottom of it. Thank you, jocko, for your input. We're hopefully reading, we're hopefully working out. We're hopefully improving ourselves so we can deal with the world in a better way to make better decisions. Right, Right.

So get some Jocko fuel. JockoFuel.com get yourself some more. Get yourself some. Hey, this is. This is. Of all the things we're going to say about Jocko F Fuel. The flavors of the Discipline Go drinks have been radically upgraded. They were based on my taste buds before. My taste buds are not normal. My taste buds weren't appropriate to judge the taste of a drink for the world.

I had to run that through the leadership decision loop. Yeah. And say, wait, my perspective on this is not correct. Yeah. Other people have a more.

A better palette for the job. And we also want something that's more universally loved. So we redid all the flavors. All the flavors are now awesome. You may have had one flavor that you really like before and you might have had two that you just like. These are gross down for you. Now you'll at least like all the flavors. Yeah. And there will be three and maybe five of them that you love.

Yeah, I would say so. Probably true.

Totally redid them all. They taste delicious. If you tried them when they were based on my palate, I apologize.

Yeah.

I'm taking ownership of the fact that I had a very sensitive palate to sweetness. And a little bit of sweetness tasted like sugar cane in my mouth. That wasn't the truth. Besides this, we made him better.

You just drink water, though. Pretty.

That's what I'm saying. That's why my palate was so jacked.

And now. And recently I got on the water train. So the only thing that I drink is water. Every once in a while I'll have like a milk shake. Actually, I have that more. But even now, everything is way sweeter. Everything if you just drink water before. I have an occasional Gatorade here. Maybe some. You know, the kids got some. Some orange.

Well, that's a good example too. Mango. I didn't like your mango flavor of Discipline Go Mango Mayhem. And now it tastes really good. It's still not my favorite of the group, but I will definitely enjoy drinking it. So we're good.

Yep. I feel like we're good too.

So there you go. Get out here and get you some of that. Also, we got the hunt gear coming. OriginUSA.com get yourself some American made hunt gear. And listen, that's just. That's just what we have to do in the world right now. There's, like I said, there's people that are stepping up, people that are not good and they're stepping up and they're trying to take over. And you don't need to necessarily pick up a rifle to go to War, but right now, it's an economic war. And if you pick up some Origin USA Gear, that's going to help us win the war. So we have to fight a war. That's the goal. Let's be economically strong. So go to OriginUSA.com, get a ghee, because you should be training Jujitsu case, just in case the war does come. Get some hunt gear just in case the war does come. You can hunt the enemy, but in the meantime, you can hunt deer, elk, whatever else it is you want to hunt. Get yourself some of that also. We have a store. Don't we have a store?

We do.

Okay. What's that all about?

It's called Giaco store. You want to represent why we're, you know, improving ourselves, making good decisions. You want to represent discipline equals freedom, which is kind of the overarching kind of thing for this whole thing. More disciplined you are, the more freedom you have. Anyway, you want to represent. We got some cool shirts and hats and hoodies and whatnot. Some merch. But it's better than just merch, though, by the way. A lot of thought and effort and careful, meticulous consideration has been put into all these elements.

You should put that into every package that you send out. I'm gonna just let everybody know that careful time consideration has been put into this.

Oh, yeah, but. And it's true. There are many people. And when I say many, I mean for countless people that have said these, like, this called the shirts and stuff. Like, it's my favorite.

The new shirt that you have on right now, this is called the standard issue. Right.

Discipline equals freedom. Standard issue. So it's a new one.

And there's. There's multiple color ways.

Colorways. Yeah, you might. You might recognize the. You know, the colors and what they.

Represent, but if you don't, there's gonna layer there.

Yes.

People need to figure out what the layers mean.

Yep. Simple, but maybe not easy kind of.

A thing I actually didn't figure out. You guys told me I may have figured out. If I would have maybe seen. Seen them all at the same time and done a consideration, I might have figured it out. But I didn't. I didn't figure out. But also, I looked at him for, like, three seconds. I was like, all right, do tell me.

Well, when you looked at the one, you were like, that's what that is. And then all. All you had to do is apply that same thinking to all of them. You'd be like, I see what's going on here, but. Yeah, but either way, layers there for sure. But if you don't. If you don't know the layers, it doesn't. Doesn't even matter. You just choose the color that you like or the colors.

And then if you do understand the layers. And it kind of matters too.

Yes, sir.

Doesn't matter if you don't get them, but if you get them, it's kind of does matter.

Yeah.

Let's face it. Because if you listen, you know.

This is the way I see it. This one is kind of like this why we call it standard issue. It's kind of like the main one we're positioning as kind of the main. Discipline equals freedom. The standard. If you have this one, you're. You're. That's the standard.

You got the standard issue.

Yep. Like, if you don't have it, like, are you even in the game or what? I'm not saying you're not, but you see what I'm saying?

There's a question.

You don't have the standard issue is what I'm saying.

All right, there you go.

So, yeah, we also have the shirt locker. Don't forget about that subscription. One shirt, a new shirt, one month there, new, different designs, a little bit more creative. I would say those are pretty good ones coming out.

Yeah, you gave me a brief on the one that's coming out. I'll say it's. It's affirmative.

Yeah, it's good.

Is that next. When's that? How far out is that?

So August.

September.

September.

Oh, that's a good one for September. All right, awesome. Subscribe to the podcast. You know that a Jocko underground dot com. We've been putting some out there. If you want to get some questions to us, we'll respond to those directly. And it's also given us the ability to have our own platform to make sure that whenever we get banned from this one, which could happen at any time, or they might just say, hey, from now on, when you listen to this podcast, we're going to insert our own advertisements in here.

So we don't like that. That's why we made jocko underground.com so if you want to go there, subscribe to that YouTube channel. If you want to see awesome assistant directing from me, sure. You can check out that and I'll get you covered down. Thanks. Thanks. Psychological warfare on mp3 flipsidecanvas.com Dakota Meyer. I've written a bunch of books about leadership. Check them out. Only Cry for the Living by Holly. Holly McKay. That's Jocko Publishing. She wrote that book. She risked her life to go write that book. So she's been on the podcast. The book is insane to read and it will teach you about the world and about evil in the world. So check that out. We also have Echelonfront Leadership Consultancy, Echelonfront.com if you want me to come and talk to your company, let us know. Echelonfront.com if you need help, we can help you. If you want to go to the editing events that I've been talking about, things like the Muster, things like the Council, things like EF Battlefield, just. Just come and check those. The next EF Battlefield is sold out, but it's that little bighorn looking at that. Looking forward to that. I think the next muster is in Atlanta, Hotlanta, October 12th to 14th. We sell out everything. So if you want to come, get there quick. And also we have the online training academy. I mentioned that a couple times today, teaching people how to lead in their life. And a lot of times people think, oh, I don't need to learn how to lead. I'm only in charge of three people. Or I don't know how to lead because I'm not even in charge of anyone. Guess what? You are in charge of someone. You. You're making decisions all the time. You have a family, you have peers that you need to lead. You have to lead your boss. I know that seems crazy.

So go to extreme ownership.com if you want to get in on that online training. Part of the reason we built that is to make it more accessible to more people. That's the mission of Echelon Front, to pass on the leadership lessons we learned and the lead. The Echelon Front team can't get to everybody, but now we can. Extreme ownership.com go and check it out. And if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Gold star families, Check out my Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an incredible charity organization where she provides most. Most of what she does. She does a bunch of things. I would say that the best thing that she does. Well, I don't say the best thing. How can I say this? One of the most impactful things that she does, and she does a lot of impactful things, is she provides medical help for veterans that is not provided for by the Veterans Administration. So hyperbaric chambers. One of the primary things she does to take someone that's having issues and pay for them to go to a location where they have a hyperbaric Chamber, put them on the right nutrition, give them the right vitamins, get their. Get their health squared away for 30 days. Everything's paid for. 30 days of recovery from the impact of combat and trauma. That's one of the things that she does. So that's atAmerica's mighty warriors.org so check that one out. And then, of course, I was talking about being on a horse today, and I'm a dude, sure. Meaning I'm not skilled, but you can. When you're out there in the wilderness and you're interacting with an animal and you're in the open air, it's. It's a very positive thing for your mental and physical health. So Micah Fink, he has this thing called Heroes and Horses at heroes and horses.org he takes veterans into the wilderness for 41 days. And it's horseback, it's camping, it's staying out on the trail, and guys are coming back renewed and reanimated for life. So check out heroesandhorses.org he's been on the podcast. I'm sure we'll get him back on here again at some point. But he's got a great charity, as does Mama Lee. So check those things out if you want to support. And if you want to check in with us, we're on social media, on Twitter, on the gram, on Facebook, Echoes at Echo. Charles. I'm at Jocko Willink. Listen, and if you're gonna go on there, all I'm saying is be careful, because there's an algorithm that's looking to grab you by the throat. Don't let it be ready for it. Don't let it run your life. Get off your phone.

And of course, to all those military folks out there in the world that are making decisions every day that provide us freedom and security, thank you for what you do. And also thanks to police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and police, border patrol and secret service and all the first responders. Thank you for protecting our freedom and security here at home.

And everyone else out there. Life is all decisions, and everything you do.

Is based on decisions that you make.

So think about the process and think about the amount of control that these decisions give you over your own own life, and think about the impact that these decisions have in your life. So don't just let them happen.

Make them happen. Make them happen by being aware of your decisions and make them happen by having a protocol so you make the right decisions to do the right things so you can be a better leader, a better person and lead a better life. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko out.