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- [00:01]
Jocko Willink
So we got to podcast 500 and there was a lot of information put out. I think it was over 1000 hours of. Of information being put out, clearly, some of it just historical documentation. I mean, some of the people that we had on that had lived through things that were just part of history, and we got the oral history from them. So that was very cool. Obviously, we did. The original staple was historical book reviews out of print military books from back in the day, which was awesome and very enjoyable to do. And then some of them, you know, we're just interviewing people with various experiences. And I, in the beginning, a lot of time I would talk about, you know, looking at human nature and through the eyes of leadership, through the lens of leadership, through the lens of history. So those. Those things are still things that I enjoy doing a lot. And I think we are still going to release like, straight up Jocko podcast number whatever. I guess the next one will be 501. We'll do that. Are you still good with doing those, Charles?
- [01:33]
Echo Charles
Yeah, thanks.
- [01:34]
Jocko Willink
You still press record, but also, you know, it was. There's a lot behind those. You know, there's. When it's interesting when people say, oh, say thanks to your team. We don't really have a team. Like, you and me are the team, and one of us does the bulk of the work. So that was the team. The team was just us two. You know, you're doing all the technical side, me doing all the research and all that. So, you know, we're still going to do those podcasts, just not as often. And part of the reason, too, is because it's a lot to ask of people to find the lessons and calculate and correlate those lessons that are often deeply embedded in stories. And there's lots of context required. And sometimes the lessons are delivered indirectly over the course of time. You know, there was a time where someone could say, you know, I'm having trouble with leadership, and someone else could tell them, oh, you should start listening to Jocko podcast. And they'd listen to it and they'd go, oh, cool, there's 22 episodes. They can listen to them and get started to get a good handle. But then after a while, when there's 500 episodes in a thousand hours, some of that is it's. It's too hard to gather the information and plus to parse out like, oh, is this just a history lesson? Because sometimes people just want a history lesson. They want to talk to, you know, they want to hear from a guy that landed at Tarawa or a guy that was on Iwo Jima or someone that was in Auschwitz, or, you know, someone that was in the Korean War, they want to hear from that person what's their perspective. And sometimes they want to have like, oh, wait, what about just straight leadership information or, you know, any type of sort of human nature that people want to learn about. And so I, and after, you know, probably after about 100 episodes, you couldn't just say to someone, hey, just start listening to Joggle podcast. And you're going to learn a lot because there's too much. So I know that people, myself included, want information in a simple, clear, concise manner. They want it directly. Right? I mean, I. That's one of the laws of combat leadership. Simple, clear, concise. And from the time aspect and the information aspect, there's nothing simple, clear and concise about over 1000 hours of, of stuff being put out there. So I figured what would be good would be to distill some of these lessons down into a more simple format. And I figured since there are very dedicated people that enjoy the original podcast, the Jocko podcast, we probably need to separate them a little bit, you know, so people can say, oh, this is a Jocko podcast. And someone that likes to hear an interview or likes to hear a historical book review, they can go, oh, cool, this is what I'm. This is what I'm here for. But then there's also people that are like, oh, you know, I don't have time for a four hour historical podcast today. I don't have, I don't have a room for that in my day. I still want to learn some lessons. So I was thinking of, you know, okay, well, what do we, we have Jocko Podcast. Maybe something, a new name for it. And again, this is all iterative because I gotta breathe a little bit. You know what I mean? You, you might think, oh, you know, hey, we got some of this one. Here's the plan going forward. But actually, no, like, okay, let's. It's like in combat, when there's something happening, you don't just make a call. You don't just go, oh, attack. Or oh, retreat. No, you say, oh, look, we. I used to teach this. Sometimes you got to let it develop a little bit, you know, you got to see what's. Got to see what's happening. So I think we got to do a little bit of that, breathe a little bit and listen, you know, because people are gonna give us feedback, which is cool. But as I think about, like, one of the, one of the things that popped in my name, popped into my head for a name, was the manual podcast. And what I liked about it because there's layers for one thing. There's layers. The layers being, you know, I've, we've reviewed a lot of manuals on this podcast. I've myself have written what I called field manuals. The Discipline of Freedom. Field manual, Leadership strategies and Tactics. Field manual. So I've written some manuals, but in that same vein, same word, different meaning. Lately I've been talking a lot about, about having to switch into manual mode, which means we're not just going through the motions on something, but we are going to be in direct control of our thoughts and our actions. And this, this is something that I've thought about for a long time. You, you get into, you know, you and I have talked about cruise control, right? Being in cruise control. Being in cruise control sounds cool. And especially if you have a modern vehicle with adaptive cruise control and lane keeping assist.
- [07:00]
Echo Charles
Sure.
- [07:00]
Jocko Willink
Like you're kind of not driving, you know, your Cadillac does that, doesn't it?
- [07:05]
Echo Charles
I, you know, it does a lot of things. Yeah, sure.
- [07:08]
Jocko Willink
Do you have to put your hands on the wheel?
- [07:09]
Echo Charles
No, I don't. But you know, I understand what you mean.
- [07:12]
Jocko Willink
I got a Ford, it's got something called Blue Cruise. And you don't have to have your hands on the wheel sometimes. Yeah, it's cool for driving. Right. But let's face it, you're think things can go wrong.
- [07:25]
Echo Charles
Yeah, fully.
- [07:26]
Jocko Willink
When you're in this Blue Cruise. What's the Cadillac thing called?
- [07:29]
Echo Charles
Super Cruise.
- [07:30]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's, it's cool when you're driving, but it's not the best way to operate in life. One of the things, one of the earliest places that I experienced this was in the SEAL teams is a new guy. You're a new guy in the SEAL teams. And when you're going through close quarters combat training, cqc. It used to be called CQB Close Quarters Battle and then they changed it. Nomenclature is very important. They changed it to Close Quarters Combat cqc.
- [08:03]
Echo Charles
Sure.
- [08:04]
Jocko Willink
Well, when you're, when you're a new guy, the, the manipulation of the safety on your weapon is very important. So you have to put your weapon on safe at the right time, take your weapon off safe, put it back on safe, and there's people watching you. And in the beginning you're very conscious of it. You're like thinking about it, but pretty quickly your brain is taking over. And what's weird about being a New guy is you're not used to being in that auto. Automaton mode where you don't have to think about it just happens. So as a new guy, you, like, go into a room, you shoot a couple targets, you take your weapon off safe, you shoot a couple of targets, you get done, you. You start moving to the next room. And as you're moving, you're like, oh, wait a second, is my weapon unsafe? Because you don't remember doing it, and luckily you did. And. But it takes a little time to get used to. But that's how quickly even something as important like you can get fired from the SEAL teams. They can. They can kick you out of the SEAL teams. If you're not safe, you get safety violations. So even something that is important is as important as safing your weapon as a new guy. Most important thing in the world. And you're like, wait a second, did I do it or not? Because you went into this automatic, you went into this cruise control mode, so. And then eventually you get to a point where you just know you saved your weapon. It's just part of your. It's just part of your system. Eventually you have to learn what you need to think about and what things can be kind of automatic. And this ties into a word that I have. I don't know if I've officially adopted the word yet. I may or may not have adopted the word. The word intentionality, even. You're getting nervous when I say it, right? Because it's. It's like a hippie, new age thing, right?
- [10:05]
Echo Charles
Yeah, yeah.
- [10:06]
Jocko Willink
You know, be intentional.
- [10:08]
Echo Charles
Right.
- [10:08]
Jocko Willink
Even you have to. You have to kind of whisper it when you say it, you know, so you can give the right mana. You know what I mean? I like to live intentionally, right. So. So that kind of scares me. That kind of stuff makes me nervous. But I. I was talking about it. I was. I was talking to a group of people and I. I trapped myself where the only word I could use was intentional. I, like, trapped myself. And what I said was, you know, or whatever. I said, hey, when you're doing this, in this situation, you've got to be intentional about what you're doing, right?
- [10:44]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
- [10:45]
Jocko Willink
And then I thought about what we do in the military, because if you think about what you do in the military, being intentional is absolutely required. And there's actually. There's actually a protocol for being intentional. And it's real obvious. Plan, execute, debrief. That. That's how. That's how you're intentional. So we come up With a plan, right? We assess the situation. We, we come up with various courses of actions. We grade those courses of actions and figure out which one is going to work best. And then once we've, once we've decided which course of action we're going to use, then we come up with a plan. So that's part one. That, that is being intentional, right? I am going to come up with a plan. Then you go and execute the plan. We go and do the thing that we, we said we're going to execute. And obviously this can be challenging. This is sometimes the hardest thing about doing something is actually doing the thing. And then what we do is we debrief, which is what we do with. We debrief to the point that it's almost a little bit ridiculous. Sometimes in the SEAL teams, we debrief everything. So. But then we figure out what we did right, what we did wrong, and what we can do better. So you combine those three things and now we're being intentional. We're being intentional. We plan, we execute, and we debrief. Now where can you do this? This is the same as not being on cruise control, right? Because if you're on cruise control, you're just going through the motions of whatever your habits are. So you don't, you don't want to live like that, right? So, so where can you do this? Where can you take yourself out of cruise control and where can you become. When can you shift into manual mode? Before you go to bed at night, write down what you're supposed to do tomorrow. Think about the advantage that that gives you when you wake up. And you don't have to figure out what it is you're supposed to do today. Because when you, when you wake up, you're. You got brain fog. It's confusion. You were dreaming about random freakin pickles and like, you know, who knows what you're dreaming about? Sure. Just chaos. And. Well, but when you actually write down what you're supposed to do, and I do believe this, when you write down what you're supposed to do, first of all, it allows you to sleep because you're kind of like, okay, cool, I know what I'm going to be doing tomorrow. And I think there's some kind of brain activity that starts solving and, and calculating those things while you're sleeping.
- [13:31]
Echo Charles
Yeah, yeah, there's a concur. Oh yeah, yeah, there's a priming effect 100%. It's kind of like, I mean, I don't know if I'm. If everyone's like this or not, but you ever been, like, focusing or working on something and then someone in, just out of the blue comes in with some other stuff, and you're like, bro, like, I dig it, but right now is not the time. I'm doing this. It's like a feeling, you know, so because you're not primed for this thing, you're primed for the thing in front of you or the thing you're. That you're about to do. Whatever. Whatever your schedule is, whatever. But yeah, if you're already kind of like, maybe like on a weird subconscious level or on a certain level of, you know, certain mental level, you're primed already, or you begin the priming process, and it's not like, super active. It's not taking that much energy, you know, so you kind of. It's kind of like if. If someone said, hey, you have a. You have a jiu jitsu match right now, then you're like, oh, right now, really? Like, if you kind of scramble mentally a little bit, as opposed to. Or when compared to, hey, you got a jiu jitsu match in four weeks, you know, then you. Then you can begin the priming process. You see, I'm saying that really, that.
- [14:42]
Jocko Willink
Jams up people when they're competing.
- [14:44]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
- [14:44]
Jocko Willink
And, you know, we think we have an hour, and all of a sudden it's time to go. Now, that jams people up.
- [14:52]
Echo Charles
Makes sense.
- [14:53]
Jocko Willink
So, yes, writing down, giving yourself a little time to process, that isn't it. That is an area where you can manually take control of your life. Same thing with, like, with working out, Right. What are you going to do tomorrow in your workout? What's the plan? What are the goals? What are the numbers you want to hit? Right. What are the. What are the sets and reps? What time are you gonna make? What's the mandatory. What's the minimum mandatory. That's happening. You know, you can do it for fuel, right. You can say, okay, what am I gonna eat tomorrow?
- [15:23]
Echo Charles
Because.
- [15:24]
Jocko Willink
Because leaving these things to chance. That's Cheetos. You know what I'm saying?
- [15:30]
Echo Charles
Oh, yeah, yeah. The. You. My wife will be like, hey, what do you want for dinner?
- [15:37]
Jocko Willink
Right?
- [15:39]
Echo Charles
I don't know. Freaking. I'm doing this other thing, you know? But if we. But if she. Or we. Whatever. And this is just in principle, obviously, it's not a huge deal, but in principle, if we had that written down the day before or two days before, you see him saying if. If these things were written down, you don't have to Think about that kind of stuff you already know. Just refer to your notes. You see what I'm saying?
- [15:59]
Jocko Willink
And you can, like the. The detached assessment of what you should eat tomorrow is way better than the. I'm hungry. I'm gonna open the fridge and see what's happening.
- [16:11]
Echo Charles
Yep. The auto mode.
- [16:13]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, just the cruise control modes. Pulling out the crap. So that's an area where if you take control and you go into manual mode, you're going to do a better thing. You can do it for conversations that you're going to have, right? You're gonna, you know, meet. Have a business meeting with a. With a partner or potential partner. Why not take five minutes to come up with a damn plan before you roll in there? Maybe it's. You have to meet with one of your employees. Why not come up with a plan, three minutes of what you're going to talk about, how you're going to say it to them. What contingencies do you need to have? Maybe you can do this protocol for your Saturday, you know what I'm saying? Instead of just letting Saturday happen to you. What time are you gonna wake up? What are you gonna do for a workout? What's the workout gonna be? When are you gonna spend time with your kids? When are you gonna spend time with your. Your spouse? When are you gonna get the stupid chores done around the house that you got to get done? And if you. If you actually plan what that Saturday is gonna look like, I guarantee it's going better. Guaranteed to go better. If you let cruise control run, your Saturday. Saturday disappears.
- [17:25]
Echo Charles
Yeah. Yeah.
- [17:28]
Jocko Willink
So this is all. These are examples of switching to manual. Manual mode, getting control. Just don't let your Saturdays happen to you. Take control of your Saturdays. Take control of your Sundays, your Mondays, your Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. See what I'm saying?
- [17:47]
Echo Charles
Go.
- [17:47]
Jocko Willink
Don't. Don't go into cruise control. Go into manual mode. What's. What's. What's natural is cruise control. Because, look, as cavemen, we're not supposed to survive, like, you know, till tomorrow. We're just thinking about. We're just thinking about right now, right? So it's. And those animalistic instincts that you have, they're going to keep you alive for right now, right? For right now. They're gonna keep you alive because you're gonna eat something because it's in front of you, gonna eat it. Or if you get a chance to rest, you're gonna rest. You're not gonna expend any extra energy, right?
- [18:20]
Echo Charles
So. So the.
- [18:24]
Jocko Willink
Natural mode is cruise control. Taking the easiest route, using the least amount of energy, getting through whatever situation you're in with minimal friction. And unfortunately, in modern life, that just leads to a disaster. So this is. We want to get in that situation where we can switch to manual mode. But it's not easy. It's not easy. One thing that's, that makes it not easy is it happens without recognition, right? Like when you're driving and all of a sudden 15 minutes went by and you don't remember it, but you didn't, you didn't switch. You didn't switch into cruise control. It switched on you. Or did I turn off the toaster oven? Did I lock the door or not? Right. Where did you park the car? Right. You go to the, the mall and you don't remember where you parked the car because you were in full cruise control. Did this, this is one that happens to me. Did I pack that thing that I need for the trip? You know, I don't even remember. I always have it.
- [19:37]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
- [19:39]
Jocko Willink
But I'll be going to the airport. Like, wow, wait a second. Did I bring Time War?
- [19:44]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
- [19:44]
Jocko Willink
You know what I mean? Like, it's, it's and it's there, but I did it in full cruise control. So going into cruise control happens without us consciously deciding to go into that mode. And there's actually different, like, psychological names for this. Automatic processing, procedural memory, just procedural memory. You're just doing, doing the thing. Here's a good, A good name, good term. Cognitive offload. Cognitive offload. This is when you just let your surroundings or your routine or your, you know, devices carry part of your mental load. Now we can use this to our advantage, right? That let making and making notes about what you have to do tomorrow. That's cognitive offload. You don't think about it anymore. You already have it.
- [20:35]
Echo Charles
Right? The to do list.
- [20:37]
Jocko Willink
That to do list is cognitive offload. That's a good thing. But when you let your phone be the cognitive offload. When you let. Let Netflix be the cognitive offload, when you let the. We just go with the flow. I was just driving and there was a detour and the. There was a car in front of me, and then there was a vehicle that was clearly like part of the whole construction process in front of that car. And that construction vehicle was delivering some material to, like, the construction that was happening on the road. And the. That kind of like in this detour, that vehicle pulled off to, like, start offloading. And the car in front of me was just so, in cognitive offload, it just followed the car, it followed this truck into the construction site. And there's a dude, like, waving his hands, you know, guy with a slow sign. He's waving his hands at the car, and he's looking at me, and. And we like, locked eyes. And he kind of gave me like, the look of like, dude, I'm glad you're freaking. Have a brain.
- [21:43]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
- [21:43]
Jocko Willink
But the person in front of me, total cognitive offload, procedural memory. Just follow the car in front of you, and we're gonna be good, bro.
- [21:49]
Echo Charles
That's. That's real.
- [21:51]
Jocko Willink
Oh, I just literally saw it 15 minutes ago, in fact, there.
- [21:55]
Echo Charles
And I told you the story before where. Cuz, like, when I got my bouncer, you got to get certified to be a security guy.
- [22:04]
Jocko Willink
I didn't know you were a certified bouncer.
- [22:07]
Echo Charles
And they teach you this within the event of a fire. Two things that they say, you got to keep in mind, you need to be like a leader scenario where. Because there's two things that phenomenon that that'll happen, and it's that it's like people just automatically follow crowds. And then the other one was people will automatically go out the way they came in. So basically it's like, hey, you got to be. The follow the crowd thing is like, hey, you got to be calm. Because if some one person panics and the next person panics and everyone panics because their brain just automatically goes into. Well, there's a panic situation. And then the other one was. Yeah, they automatically go where they came in.
- [22:45]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, the exit is right here.
- [22:47]
Echo Charles
Big red exit or whatever. And they still do that. So. Yeah, that's real. That's really. In so many situations.
- [22:53]
Jocko Willink
And this. What I'm saying, this problem that we all have is very common. Here's another word I would say it's an adjacent term, inattentional blindness. Failing to see things that are happening because you're focused elsewhere.
- [23:06]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
- [23:09]
Jocko Willink
Yeah.
- [23:10]
Echo Charles
You ever heard the. The idea that we only use 10% of our brain?
- [23:13]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, right.
- [23:14]
Echo Charles
They say. I mean. And I don't know where we came down on that one, if that one's true or not true, whatever. But I think it's like 10 of your attention. And I wouldn't be surprised if it's even less, bro, because maybe for me, but you. Okay, so I was changing a battery in a smoke detector yesterday. And so in this particular room, the ceiling was really high, so I had to get a ladder. That's when you know it's high. You get a freaking. One of these huge ladders. So I went up and I was barefoot on the ladder and I was changing and the, the battery in there was like taped in there. So I don't know if you remember what a smoke detector battery. You got to undo it. And the wires are still connected. So my hands are up above, right? So I'm got up. I gotta focus because the tick. The. The time is ticking because my shoulders get tired, you know, all this stuff. So I'm like, at least the people.
- [24:04]
Jocko Willink
That are here for the combat stories will be freaking fired up to hear this one. You'd have a battery in your hand and just show we're getting tired.
- [24:12]
Echo Charles
I'm telling. Okay, so this, this is an attention story. Like how, how you literally won't pay attention to like what's going on, even if it's a loud signal. We'll say in principle. So I'm. I'm changing this battery, right? So I got to undo the tape and then I have to make sure like the battery fits in perfect. And then. And it's upside, you know, you're upside down, right? So the battery can fall out because you got to take off the tape. So anyway, I'm trying to focus on this like freaking full on bomb defense refusal, freaking mental scenario. Getting it in. So I get it in. Finally I switch the other battery. Boom. I put it in, right? I put it in. Boom. Boom. Done. And you know where, you know when you get a little task done, it's like a little mental, like gratification and you can almost, almost like you can exhale, right? So boom, I exhale. And then all of a sudden I realized my feet hurt real bad. Just right then and there. And I'm like, frick. Because that ladder had this weird rough, like surface to it, you know, And I was barefoot, feet were kind of sensitive. And Brian, it started hurting just all of a sudden, right when the battery went in, I clicked it on. My feet started hurting bad. I'm like, bro. And I'm like, oh, this thing that I climbed down or whatever. But I was like, wait a second. I didn't even feel that while I was putting the battery in because I was so attentive. You know, my attention was so attentive to that freaking task. See what I'm saying? But I'm telling you, that's how life is like.
- [25:30]
Jocko Willink
You.
- [25:31]
Echo Charles
You have any idea how much stuff you're missing in life? Because we're focused on this or that or whatever. So see what I'm saying?
- [25:37]
Jocko Willink
Yep. Another good story of raw survival for check. Here's another good. 1. Preconscious processing, mental operations and information handling that occur just outside of immediate conscious awareness. But the readily accessible. They're readily accessible and can be brought to consciousness with little effort or the right trigger. Right. So things can be happening and you. They're right just outside of like the conscious. They're just kind of happening. And all it takes is. Wait a second, what's that? Well, I need to get focused on this thing which again to me this is important because if you're not paying attention to it, you won't see what's happening. If you're not paying attention to it, you won't see what's happening. You'll just be following that car in front of you and you'll be sitting inside of a construction site. But I think, I think my favorite of these different terms is 1. Behavioral inertia. Behavioral inertia. Inertia is just that, you know, inertia does not cause anything to happen. It's just sort of like. It's just the steady state of what's happening. You know, the body at rest tends to stay at rest. The body emotion tends to stay at motion. That's inertia. That's inertia. And inertia is a passive thing. It's just, it's just happening. It's not making the thing go, but it's going and it's going to keep going or it's not. It's not going to make the thing stop, but it stopped and it's going to be hard to move because that's inertia. So the idea that you have behavioral inertia, just the tendency just to keep kind of doing what you're doing is. It is scary. It turns you into an npc, which I know you're familiar with this term.
- [27:29]
Echo Charles
Sure.
- [27:30]
Jocko Willink
It turns you into a non player character. Because non player characters can only like go through the motions that the, the whatever seven, you know, things that they can do with their hands. You ever seen those videos of people being NPCs like real life people being NPCs. Have you ever seen those?
- [27:47]
Echo Charles
The where they're like physically acting? Like they're acting. Yeah, they're physically.
- [27:50]
Jocko Willink
And they'll like say the same thing again. Like they're like, they're an npc but they're in real life. I always think those are pretty funny. But it's strange that there's. That we do that we just get into the mode of we're just habitual behavioral inertia. We're just going to keep doing the same thing. Well, just do it. Just do the thing. Now. Can some of those things be good? Yeah. And you were talking before hit record today. You know, you, you have some behavioral inertia that's good. Like when you wake up in the morning, you're gonna, you're gonna lift. At least you're in that mode right now. Recently. Yeah.
- [28:25]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
- [28:26]
Jocko Willink
Well, I'm in fully in that mood. Like when I wake up, there's just behavioral inertia. I'm gonna get up, get out of bed, gonna go work out.
- [28:32]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
- [28:33]
Jocko Willink
Sometimes a little bit too much. I needed some pre workout the other day. I didn't take it. I wished I would have afterwards because I was like, I kind of, I was very tired, I was very sore. I kind of wanted to chill and I should have just gone full pre workout. You know, five o' clock in the morning, pre workout, let's go.
- [28:50]
Echo Charles
But I didn't.
- [28:51]
Jocko Willink
But sometimes you, sometimes you need that hitter.
- [28:52]
Echo Charles
Yeah. Yeah, fully. Yeah, fully. And I think that, and assuming like, you know, I'm not an expert on behavioral inertia. I just learned that today. You know that about me. But the, the principle still remains. Regardless of when it happens or what you need or what, it's still part of your day because it's just been part of your day. There's no like, hey, I need to pattern, pattern interrupt my whole thing and start working out now. You know, working out just nor. That's normal.
- [29:18]
Jocko Willink
Normal.
- [29:19]
Echo Charles
Regardless of when it is like, yeah, I'll wake like me, I'll wake up, yes, I'll work out. But it'll be like the run or walk or whatever. And then, you know, it's like a routine. But if there's no workout, that's the weird stopping of the inertia. See what I'm saying?
- [29:31]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. So exactly. We look down on NPCs. That's like a, that's like an insult on. On Twitter. X. Right. It's an insult in the world to call someone like, oh, that just an npc. Just a non player character. They just been programmed, right?
- [29:46]
Echo Charles
Yeah. It's like they're, they don't mean nothing. They're meaningless, insignificant, irrelevant.
- [29:51]
Jocko Willink
If we're not careful, we become them. We have to engage our brains. And I think when I was thinking about this podcast, you know, I think sometimes I need that. I need to break my own behavioral inertia. I need to make sure I'm not being an npc. And I think other people are the same way. And I think that, you know, doing something where we can help people switch into manual mode. Right? Doing something where you can help people snap out of their behavioral inertia. Make me think. Make you think? Because here's the deal. If we allow behavioral inertia to be in control, many of the things that we do will be wrong. Because we have bad habits, we have bad behaviors. And like I said earlier, we're programmed as humans to take the path of least resistance. That's what our genetic programming is. To save energy, to follow familiar patterns. From a physiological perspective, we're programmed to overeat. We're programmed to. To have a bias towards physical inactivity. Like we're programmed for that. That includes avoiding physical activity if we can. It includes over indexing on rest. It includes avoidance of discomfort.
- [31:32]
Echo Charles
Right?
- [31:32]
Jocko Willink
We don't want to be too tired. We don't want to be too hot. We don't want to be too cold. We don't want to be too uncomfortable. That's all. That's all. Something that is programmed into us, you know, And. And then from a. From a psychological perspective, we're programmed with impatience. We're programmed with selfishness. We're programmed with jealousy. With. Programmed to have a closed mind. Like you are programmed psychologically. You don't hear anybody else's ideas. We're programmed to avoid responsibility. Clearly, we oppose taking ownership. We're programmed for a lack of concentration. Because in the caveman days, if you got too focused on that one thing, you would get attacked by a saber toothed tiger. So you. So you're just constantly kind of looking around, going from this going to that. Here's another thing. We're programmed to think negatively, right? We're drawn towards negative information. Why? Because positive information doesn't kill the caveman. Negative information kills the caveman. I want to know what happened. I walk up on a scene and there's bad stuff and good stuff. I want to know about the bad stuff because the good stuff isn't gonna kill me. The bad stuff is gonna kill me. We're programmed to avoid change. We're programmed to conform to social pressure. We're programmed. We're programmed to procrastinate things that are going to be good in the long term. Because we're programmed for immediate gratification. That's what we're programmed for. That. That's. We want to get food right now. We want to feel good right now. We want to get warm right now. Well, that's what we're programmed for. That's how we stayed alive. Before we had freaking Instacart and Ubereats and controlled temperature in our house. Before all these things, you had to just, look, if I can get warmer right now, I'm gonna get warm right now. If I can get food right now, I'm gonna eat it all. All of it. That's the way we're programmed. So if you don't engage your brain, you will follow your human programming. I will follow my human programming. And in order to resist that, we have to shift into manual mode. We have to take control of our minds. Mind control. And that's what I'm thinking about doing here. Helping each other get our minds right.
- [34:07]
Echo Charles
So all these. A lot of this overlaps with the cognitive biases. Right? You know, we're programmed to. To do these things or whatever. And you're right there for. They're kind of. They're basically a defense or protection, like, mechanism. But so this comprehensively, this is auto. Right. Auto mode or. Or automatic mode. Right. So at any given moment, switching to manual. You'd be surprised how much that helps you. Actually, you said this a long time ago, and it applied to something a little bit different. But the. To me, the principle, like, literally is this. When you said, I made a shirt about it, said, what are you doing right now? You know that, Like, I know it was slightly different because you applied it to, like, your guys, right? When you're training guys, and it's like, hey, you got to be constant looking for something, like, to do whatever, like, what are you doing right now? But when you said that, it stuck with me. And every once in a while, like, you know, you can kind of feel it. You can kind of feel yourself in that auto inertia mode, especially when it builds up a little bit, you know?
- [35:10]
Jocko Willink
Yeah.
- [35:10]
Echo Charles
And then, bro, I use that well. I'll be like, hey, like, what are you doing right now? Like, literally, what are you doing? Like, it's almost like. And then you kind of have this weird mental detachment from, like, your whole life, everything you did today, yesterday, last week, anything that you, you know, like, do you. Are you planning on anything? Like, do you have a goal right now? Like, what are you doing right now? It's like the whole thing. Bride helps. And then you can be like, oh, yeah, look, I've been doing this. Just automatically, I'm. Stop that. Let me do this other thing instead. You know, you can start making these conscious decisions.
- [35:37]
Jocko Willink
Yep. Yeah. That came from being out in the field training guys, and you'd see some young SEAL or old SEAL, and there's chaos. There's confusion going on and just walking say, like, what are you doing right now? And they would not know. They would not know what they were doing. And so if you're, if you don't know what you're doing, they're just going with the flow. Well, there's problems out there. And then I used to say the same thing to my kids. It used to really piss them off.
- [36:04]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
- [36:04]
Jocko Willink
You know, I'd say, what are you, what are you doing? What are you doing right now? They took great offensive. Why did they take offense to it?
- [36:10]
Echo Charles
Well, because.
- [36:11]
Jocko Willink
Because they knew. They were cruising.
- [36:12]
Echo Charles
They knew. Well, look, this, I don't want to get into whole thing, but you have a certain. There's an element to your presence that kind of magnifies certain thing. You're right. At the end of the day, you're right. But I think a more accurate way of putting it is it's not because they knew, they knew, knew they were doing the wrong thing or they knew they were not doing the right thing. It was that they know that you think they're doing the wrong thing or not doing the right thing. And they have a lot of value in your, you know, opinion and your dad and you're the authority and you're. You and all this other stuff. So it amplifies. You're right, though. You're correct. Like what you're saying is correct. But that's why. Yeah.
- [36:50]
Jocko Willink
And that's why it's important to ask yourself that over and over again. What are you doing right now? And that will help you shift into manual mode. And if you shift into manual mode and you take control of what's happening, things will get better. And that's what we're doing here. This is the manual podcast, episode one. If you want to support, go to jockofuel.com check out originusa.com jocastore.com and echelonfront.com thanks for listening. Until next time. This is Ekko and Jocko out.