Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: Is It Reasonable to Relax Your Situational Awareness Sometimes?

Episode Date: June 22, 2026

>Join Jocko Underground Full Episodes< 1. Sleep or Stay Alert?Question: As a frequent traveler, how do you balance situational awareness with the need to sleep while traveling?2. Is It Time to Leave Law Enforcement?Question: With police officers increasingly being prosecuted after use-of-force incidents, when should an officer consider changing careers?3. Missing the Team I BuiltQuestion: After leaving a leadership role I built from the ground up for a larger company, why do I feel less fulfilled and how do I regain my motivation?4. Dream or Loyalty?Question: Should I pursue my lifelong dream of becoming a Marine officer or stay loyal to the wildland firefighting crew that invested in me?5. Push Through or Let Him Quit?Question: How do I help my troubled younger brother build confidence and discipline when he wants to quit boxing like he quit other activities?Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Junko Underground podcast number 218 with Carrie Hilton as Echo is currently very, very preoccupied with a extended vacation. So Carrie's here in his stead. What's up? Ready to get it done. Let's go. And we got some questions from you all from the troopers on the front lines where the rubber meets the road.

and we will try and provide in some cases answers, in some cases recommendations, in some cases guidance, and at a minimum, some courses of action that you can proceed down to try and navigate this little thing that we're doing called life. What do we got? First question.

Jocko, I fly a lot and keep situational awareness both at the airport and in the air paramount in my mind. However, sometimes I'm just tired, man, and I want to sleep, but I find it difficult to allow myself that rest, especially when family is with me for fear of missing something. As a fellow frequent traveler, how do you find this balance, if any? Many thanks. Check. Well, first of all, it's good to have some concerns, right?

We definitely want to have situational awareness. We definitely want to make sure we know what's going on around us. And when we're traveling, there's a lot going on. And it certainly is a time where fatigue can get in kick in because long travel, get up earlier than we normally do. We stay up later packing. Like there's a bunch of things that can add to us being tired. Sometimes I mean, not something. I plan to be tired on the plane.

That's what I plan to do. I'll get a little bit extra work in before I get on the plane, which generally means I'm a little bit tired. So cool. You're going to be tired. That's understandable. There's a couple of things going on here. airports are safe. Generally speaking, airports are safe.

There are security people all over the place. There's metal detectors before you go in there. There's cameras everywhere. Like those things are basically in lockdown, right? So the number of bad actors in, generally speaking, in an airport, are relatively small. Now, look, obviously there are occasional terror activities that go on or criminal activities that go on, but even criminal activities. Like, there's not too many places in the world where,

if you leave a bag somewhere, it's going to get taken care of. Like they're going to announce it. And by the way, no one's going to take it. Like, you leave a bag on the street somewhere. It's gone in three minutes. You leave a bag in the airport. It'll stay there because everyone knows that there's cameras everywhere.

There's just like airports are pretty freaking secure. Now, that being said, I, you know, I'm not going to, I'm generally not going to sleep in the terminal. that would have to be some crazy you know overnight some kind of situation canceled flights something like that where i'm actually going to sleep in the terminal i just generally would just not sleep i would just btf around in the terminal right i've probably purposefully slept in the terminal a handful of times and this is one of those things where part of it's like oh well i'll find some place where there's no one else around and sleep there.

I think in an airport situation, like I might do that if I was stranded in a city. I might try and find some place where there's nobody. But in an airport scenario, I think I was just sleep where other people are because, again, there's so few bad actors that if somebody decides to try and rip you off or try and do some nefarious shit to you,

like everyone will see it, right? And they'll be like, what are you doing? Whereas in the city, you can actually find places that are desolate enough where you could probably get some Zs, you know, in some area where no one's going to find you. Um, that's in the terminal, right? So I'm going to try not to sleep in a terminal.

Hey, once I'm an airborne in a plane, uh, this is a, a highly contained environment. There's air marshals on board generally. And if something crazy happens, I'm going to know about it real quick. So I sleep straight up. I get onto a airplane into a plane. that thing takes off, I have no problem being asleep.

The chances that something so drastic happens that I need to be awake, like, because let's face it, if the plane is crashing, I don't have any, I'm not going to have much influence over that, you know, it's going to, the plane's going to rip apart. I'll have my parachute on by that time, and I'll get out and pop my parachute and be good to go. Just kidding. that does you always if you know how to skydive you're always like wouldn't it make sense wouldn't it make sense if i had a parachute with me because it would because you could just like

bail out and just pop your parachute and be good GTG but you know if someone's if someone like decides to hijack the plane i'm gonna like i'm gonna be woken up within three seconds and again i also you I do window seats, so I'm not exposed in the aisle. Even if someone tried to get to me while I was asleep, I'm going to know about it. So, yeah, when I get on a plane, I'm going to get some sleep. So I guess that would be my recommendation to you. Suck it up in the terminal. Stay alert as much as you can.

And then once you get on a plane and you're really tired, cool, get some sleep, put your head. 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 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 Jocko 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 don't have to be under the control of sponsors.

And we're doing it so we can give you more control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us. And to do that, we are, we're building a website right now where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen this Legion of Troopers that are in the game with us. So thank you. It's jocco underground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you.

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