Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: Being Supportive At Home.

Episode Date: July 8, 2024

How to get your team on board with training and not slack off.When to quit. When to pivot.Does every transgression deserve punishment / disciplinary action?No time for an effective workout routine.How to best be supportive at home.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Jocko Underground podcast number 133 sitting here with Echo Charles. He just went on a very long, long story. That was approximately 24 minutes in length. And it was about how someone else told the story that no one was interested in. And I was not interested in his story at all. And yet I sat there. So, you know, that's what we're doing. That's how we're kicking things off.

I appreciate your patience for sure. Did you really not realize until you were done how ironic that story was? It was ironic, but I feel like it was kind of now that I'm thinking about it, I feel like it was like a message, you know, like from the universe. It's like you got to learn your own, you know, it's like that kind of scenario. That was good. Thanks for your involvement, man. Appreciate it.

All right. Well, let's get this from Q&A. Okay. What do we got? My wife and I have four young kids and my wife feels that she's being called to stay home with them. She's leaving a great paying job that she likes, but the call to be home with the kids before they grow up is greater. I'm 100% support her decision. I have coined an acronym, CHL, which is Chief Home Officer, as she will be running the house and raising our kids.

My wife would admit I'm more orderly and willing to help. I like things in their place and a clean house. I often joke that I'm going to come home to a mess and she will be eating bonbons while the kids run. The order of the house is sometimes a point of contention. My wife grew up in a lot of clutter in her family, but she is much more conscientious about this than she was. I truly believe she will create structure and be a rock star, CHO. She starts staying home with it in the coming weeks. What steps can I take to change my perspective and take more ownership of myself when it comes to expectations? I know I need to be willing to help and that things aren't always going to be perfect. I also know

it's important to show gratitude for what she does. Bottom line is, I want to be a better father and husband without being bothered by the little things. Thanks for getting me on the path. Well, yeah, you luckily have a pretty good perspective here and you realize that you kind of need to get over it, get over some stuff.

Because with four kids, trying to keep things perfectly ordered is a waste of time and energy and it's not going to help your kids or your wife or your relationship. You're going to have, wait, letting the kids run wild. I hope your kids are running wild.

But that's what you want. You want your kids running wild. That's what you want. You don't want them totally out of control. You want to put some parameters, but you want them to be like, that's what's having kids. That's how they grow up.

That's how they become interactive with other human beings. That's how they test their limitations. That's how they learn. We need to put them in boot camp. No. We haven't run a while. So it's awesome.

So we don't want to waste a bunch of time and effort and frustration because the towels aren't aligned, right? That being said, look, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, a, a level of cleanliness, functionally clean. You want to functionally clean. You want to set a functionally clean standard that we're going to hold as a family, by the way. Look, when things aren't functionally clean, you can't find things. You trip over things. Things get broken. Things get lost.

Things are disordered. Right? That's a problem. But there's also, you know, anally retentive OCD paranoia about the, of towels being aligned, which is bad. So what are the standards we're talking about? I'm talking about standards like, look, the kitchen, when we get done cooking at night,

before we go to bed, we clean the kitchen. The food's cleaned up. We don't want ants or other freaking bugs in our house. When we're done playing with the toys, we put them away. Do they have to be aligned in the toy box? Nope, there's got to be out of, they should be off the floor.

The bed's got to be assembled. And notice I said the bed's got to be assembled. It doesn't need to be made. It just means the covers have to be on it. The pillows have to be at the top. The covers are not on the floor. They're not in a ball. They're on it.

It probably takes four minutes to make a bed or six minutes to make a bed. It takes 30 seconds to assemble a bed. Right? Put the comforter back on. It was all twop. Boom, boom, boom. Pillows at the top. You're good.

The garbage, when it gets full, we empty it. We're not cramming it. There's not stuff falling out. Dirty clothes, going in the hamper. That's it. No big deal. Dirty clothes are going in the hamper. We're not leaving them strewn on the floor.

Strew. So those are kind of these functional standards that I'm talking about. Is there going to be dust on things? Yep. Is the floor not going to be swept? Yep. are the kids clothes getting ironed? No, they are not.

Is the Tupperware drawer perfectly ordered? Nope, it's not. Is the microwave clean? Because you know you put spaghetti in the microwave and it explodes and there's like little things in there, right? Is that an inspectable daily item? No, it's not. It doesn't really matter.

Is the fridge a little bit sketchy? you know what I mean it's a little bit it's a little bit sketchy like we're not we're not gonna put it in a what's we're not putting in a commercial

for fridges no no because it's a little bit sketchy there's like some stuff over there it's like you know it's a little bit sketchy the windows how often we clean the windows

not super often like oh the kids face prints and fingerprints are on it who cares I don't care. I actually enjoy it. I enjoy when my kid, my microwave is a little bit jacked up.

I enjoy when the freaking, there's fingerprints on the counter. You know what I mean? You got the stainless steel fridge. There's kids fingerprints on it. Good. Good. And by the way,

if this bothers you, probably your ego bothering you. Either that it's some weirdness bothering you. Because it shouldn't bother you. Rug vacuumed? Eh, occasionally. But I'm not freaking out

because there's some lint out there. You know, a long time ago, someone, I had a picture of my gym floor. Aftermath picture of the gym floor. Hell yeah. And someone chimed in, you know, get some discipline and, you know, clean your floor. Yeah.

Don't care. Functional space. Oh, there's chalk on my gym floor. Gee, I use it. Yeah. You know, what's the point in making my bed? I got to get in there again tonight. You know what I'm saying?

I'm going to push the freaking covers underneath the thing, like the sides. Hospital corners. Hospital corners. Am I doing that? No, I'm not doing that. I don't even, when I get into bed, if I go to a hotel and I get in the bed, I pull the freaking covers out from being tucked in because it's too tight. Too tight.

Right? Yes, sir. We're doing functional cleanliness because we live in a functional space. It's not a museum in in when I went to OCS officer candidate school sure they had this term museum I think it was museum piece so guys would have like a fake t-shirt it wasn't fake it's a real t-shirt but it had been folded to the perfect standards and they never wore it they had museum piece boots that were highly polished but they never actually wore them they had museum piece belt buckles because if you got a scratch in your belt buck

you're going to get in trouble. So I'm not going to put that one in my inspection locker going to have an museum piece in there. You ever been to those houses? You ever been to someone's house where you can tell like it seems like no one lives there? Yeah, Scotty Lewis. So you know, Scottie Lewis?

Yeah, all day. And I have more tease him, but he was a cleanly guy. And that's the first thing I thought of, by the way, when you're like freaking hospital corner like all this stuff. Bro, we went to his house, Big Island, by the way. And yeah, I remember thinking, wow, this is like a museum cleanliness. scenario and kind of told part of the story so long a long way with me saying yeah I do yeah

did do you when's the last time you talked to Squatty no I don't know the other day have you been to his house now no we did he get married yeah yeah he's married kids the whole deal do you think that the house is that clean it's not as clean I would imagine that it's not as clean as the house that I saw but you know if I know Squatty Lewis which I do I'm sure there was some Squatty Lewis influence. Yeah. Cracking up in there. Yeah, for sure.

Functionally clean is what we're looking for. Functionally clean is what we're looking for. You know, it's another thing like weapons. Like you can clean your gun to a point where you're cleaning the bluing off the gun, right? And you're spending so much time. You should have shot more. Like if you went and shop for an hour and then you cleaned your weapon for, two hours what would have been better you shop for two hours and cleaned it for an hour

it wasn't quite as clean but it's functionally clean it's literally no negative impact in fact it's kind of positive yeah um functionally clean is what we're looking for just like well that's what we want with our weapons that's what we want with our house and by the way kids can do a lot kids can do a lot get them after cleaning hey just like everything else don't make it don't make them hate cleaning because they'll turn into slop you ever seen the kid that goes away for the first time out of their house and everything's a disaster everything's a slob yeah that's they probably had squatty lewis for a dad relief you know what i'm saying they never freaking cleaning again it's like no that's not we we want to make it fun we want to let them understand the why we want to make it rewarding

let your wife the chief home officer let her freaking run the show let her set the same standards, dude. Everything that you say to her that criticizes the way she's doing her job, I don't care how well-intentioned you are, there's zero possibility that it lands in a positive way. I think you're right about that. Okay. Maybe it's a 1% possibility, but I shouldn't even say that. I think it's zero.

I agree. When you say, hey, you know, the dishes should be shut up. Don't say it. It's your crap. When you say, you know, I noticed that this area of the floor is. Be quiet. So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground podcast. So if you want to continue to listen, go to jocco underground.com and subscribe.

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