Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: Contrarian Thinking As a Framework to Discover Things that are Counterintuitive.

Episode Date: February 14, 2023

Contrarian Thinking. Tracking fitness. Dealing with a cancer diagnosis. Becoming a SEAL at 39 years old. Dealing with daughters growing up. Untrained Large Male VS Trained small female. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Jocko Underground podcast number 79 sitting here with Echo Charles. E.C. Echo Charlie. Yes. M. Joccoaulik. Contrarian thinking is a tool, I believe. And the reason I believe it's a tool is because I think it allows us to discover things that are counterintuitive, which is positive, which you need help to get to.

You need help finding counterintuitive ideas and finding counterintuitive solutions. You need help finding them because they're by nature counterintuitive. So your intuition is probably wrong and you're thinking it's this, but it's not that. And so you need help finding counterintuitive ideas and solutions. So the reason is counterintuitive thinking goes against, conventional wisdom sometimes it even goes against common sense right there's times where you're looking at a counterintuitive idea and it doesn't make sense this happens this is a bro science problem by the way sure because bro you ever heard a

bro science explanation that makes 100% sense yeah most of it and then someone just presents actual facts to you yes and you think hmm I'm completely wrong right so sometimes intuitive thinking is wrong, completely wrong. So even though it makes total common sense, but it doesn't work. So I, the reason I bring this up is because I talk about counterintuitive solutions a lot.

The reason I probably end up spending a lot of time talking about them and explaining them to people and teaching them is because they're counterintuitive, people don't get them easily. You want the team to buy into the plan? How do you get them to do that? The intuitive response is, Oh, you first of all, you need to explain the why.

There's a bunch of reasons that actually makes sense. But the counterintuitive one is you let them come up with the plan. And as soon as people hear, they go, oh, yeah, that's right. Or here's another one that I've been telling a lot of people lately. You want someone to listen to you? You want your team to listen to you? How do you get your team to listen to you? Yell louder?

No. Explain more explicitly? No. You want someone to listen to you. Listen to them. Counterintuitive, but it works. So that's what counterintuitive is. Now contrarian or contrarian thinking is intentionally going against the grain.

It's intentionally going against popular opinion. And sometimes the thing with contrarian thinking is it often, or actually the goal of contrarian thinking is to be against traditional wisdom. That's the goal of it. The goal isn't to be smarter. The goal isn't to be have a better plan the goal isn't to have a better idea the goal isn't to have a better solution the goal is just to be Contraryant it's just to be against traditional wisdom Whereas counterintuitive thinking is to actually figure out what the best idea idea is even if it happens to be against the norm

So I worked for a guy one time that was very contrarian Contrarian guy and and It was good because he would get like new ideas you know he'd throw something out there. It would be a new idea and you'd think cool. But then I realized after a little while that everything that he said was the contrarian view. And he didn't care if it was going to take more time. He didn't care if it wasn't the best idea. It was just that it was different. So my recommendation is to think like a contrarian. So think as contrarian as you can so that you are able to see counterintuitive ideas,

but at the same time, don't be contrarian just for the sake of being contrarian. And don't get stuck in the zone or in the lane. Don't get stuck in the lane of being contrarian. Reed Hoffman. He's a guy. He's a billionaire venture capitalist guy from Greylock Partners. He founded LinkedIn.

So if you've heard of him, that's probably where you've heard of him. He's attributed of using this phrase encouraging people to have strong beliefs loosely held. Right? So you have very strong belief, but you don't hold on to it. And I think this is a good way to look at being a contrarian. It's like you're going to think the opposite, but you're not going to just think that way. Try hard to think of new ideas, but don't get married to them. Um, to be able to look at a problem, be like, hey, maybe we could do this a totally different way.

You know what's a great way to start off with contrarian thinking when you're trying to solve a problem is to just say, why do we even need to solve this problem? Like, why do we even need to do this? You ever heard someone, uh, actually was who was it with? I was a Dr. Luke and we were talking about passing the knee shield, you know, guard, jiu jiu-jitsu, if you're not a jit-to player. And he was saying he was talking to Jeff Gleuk. And Jeff Glover's like how do I you know he's like Jeff how do I get past this and he puts him in the knee shield and then Jeff just steps back All of a sudden there's no no more knee shield. It's gone. Yeah Why would you? Why do you he's that's the answer that Jeff is giving? Why would why do you even need to get by that thing go a different way?

So if you're looking at a problem if you're looking at something that needs planning if you're looking at something that needs a solution And you wait a second why we even try trying to solve this right now? You ever have that you know you you got the guy who's trying to figure out how to pick the lock to the door and then someone else just like slides open the window because it's open you know it's like that kind of thing why you're trying to solve this the way that you see this is by being detached by taking a contrarian look at something well here's another good little contrarian statement to ask yourself what if this was already done what do we

be worried about it would we be thinking about it right What would we be if this wasn't if we weren't focused on this right now if this just disappeared? What would we be focused on? All of a sudden you say wait a second we're focused on something very small that's right in front of us, but it's not gonna really have a big impact over a long period of time So those are some questions to ask yourself to try and break yourself out of normalized thinking to try and get yourself in a contrarian mindset You know do we even need to do this is there a totally different way to do this? What if this was already done those are some questions you can ask you? yourself and if you so that you can think like a contrarian and you'll see new perspectives but like I said don't get stuck there don't be a person that is

just going against the grain just so they can go against the grain that's annoying yeah it's annoying yeah I kind of like the idea of like I said counterintuitive those are those are hard to find when you find them they're more efficient they're better and sometimes you can find those solutions by thinking in a contrarian manner. So there you go. My topic for the day. Counterintuitive.

Like there's a recently kind of went down a little rabbit hole with like decision making. And one that was counterintuitive is that more choices is better. Yep. So you know how like a and you know like most counterintuitive things when someone can effectively explain it. You're like okay, that makes sense. It's not intuitive, but it makes sense with the explanation. But yeah, the choices thing is a big one. If you have like three choices or two choices, that's an easy decision.

Or it tends to be an easier decision. But then so there was this experiment where I think this is what it was. It was people from the Ukraine, I think. They grabbed them. They said, what's the differences here? And they had all these different brands of soda. And they're like, it's like, how many choices do you have here? They said one choice.

They're like, why is it one choice? because you have a choice of soda. It does, like, the differences between all this soda or whatever is like there's no choice there. That's just soda. And then they said, okay, they have a bunch of sodas. They have an orange juice and they have a milk. How many choices?

Three choices. So they kind of went down like, why is this one choice or different brands? They taste different or whatever. But in their mind, I guess, like, it has a lot to do with where you're from, your environment, all this stuff, where that they didn't present as a bunch of choices because that's not the routine in regards to soda. Sounds like interesting. Well, there's there's all kinds of when it comes to having multiple choices. It is certainly

Much easier to make a quick decision between two choices. Yeah Is a lot and there's a there's a law for this. There's like one of those theoretical laws and I can't remember what it is But like if you have two choices The amount of time it takes you to select between a and B compared to a B and C is a big expert exponential factor. Yeah. So you want to minimize the number of choices that you have in a stressful situation Because it's gonna make a make it a lot easier for you to make a very quick decision As opposed to if you have four three choices or four choices

Yeah, you know even on the battlefield we have like a set number of immediate action drills that we're gonna follow we have 38 plays Yeah, you know we got like 12 yeah and they're all pretty simple yeah, so yes, minimum minimize the number of choice so that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the jaco underground podcast so if you want to continue to listen go to jocco underground dot com and subscribe and we're doing this we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms so we are not subject to their control and we're doing this so that we can support the jocco podcast which will remain as is free for all as long as we can keep it that way but we but we are doing this so we

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