Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: It Will Take Longer Than You Think. It's Hofstadter's Law | Comparing Yourself to Her Past Boyfriends | You Lost Your Cool

Episode Date: September 26, 2022

Hofstadter's Law: It will always take longer than you think.Staying disciplined when you're training for something important.Dating a girl and can't stop comparing yourself to her past dudes.I lost my temper at work. It may be un-fixable.Trying to get other's on my level.Female coworker lashes out a lot, but otherwise a good worker.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Jocko Underground Podcasts with Echo Charles sitting across from me at the table of woe here So little something called Hofsteader's law Which is a law to theory created by Douglas Hofstadter who is a Pulitzer Prize Nonfiction winning author He's a scholar of physics and cognitive science and he means made this law and what I what kind of like about this law it's a little bit of a joke in a way he even named it after himself which is kind of kind of funny like it's if you if you find something or discover something and other people you know designate

it but when you're just like hey this is my law in the basically the law is that things take a lot longer than you think they're going to and so the way he describes it is it always takes longer than you expect even when you take into account Hofstader's law. That's the law itself. So even when you know it's going to take longer, which is Hofstader's law, it's still going to take you longer than that. So things are going to take longer than we expect them to take. And we have to plan for that. And he originally used this, I believe, around explaining why it was taking chess computer.

so long to beat humans they kept saying oh humans are gonna be beat by that by computers and chess you know in a year and then it was like well not quite a year of five years it ended up taking you know a couple decades before computers could legitimately beat humans and chess so there was some there was like a little bit of a reference to computer programming which which got me into reading about another rule which is called the 90-90 rule, which comes directly from computer programming. And it says,

I think you'll appreciate this one, the first 90% of code accounts for the first 90% of development time. The remaining 10% of code accounts for the other 90% of development time. So 90 plus 90 is 180. So I'm going to take you 180% of time to get the thing done. And what I found interesting about that is, And I thought that I thought that you would appreciate this as well.

This means that big progress is made kind of early, but it takes a lot of effort to continue to improve. So when we think about lifting, right, you get someone into lifting out of the gate, they're making the gains. It's called newbie gains. Right. Newby gains. And but those final touches, I mean, to go from like a bench press of 135 to 250 like people can make up that pretty quick you know because they just never worked out you know then all of a sudden they get to that but then when they get to 250 it takes a while

to get them to 275 and then they get to 300 and then they get to like 315 three wheels right three wheels all day yeah but to go from for someone that's like that's a good bench they go from three wheels to go to like 340 it might take them six months maybe longer so so it applies there you know it's like also you don't you don't really do any of your own like home building or projects do you yeah like fixing stuff but not building no yeah there's another thing where like when you build your house or you remodel your kitchen or you add a room onto your house which i've done all these things that last like bit of trim and stuff yeah so they say like the the carpenter's house is

never complete because he gets once it gets lit moved in it he's like I'm not doing that other stuff yeah but this is why you know I've been talking about lately that extreme ownership leadership loop of like what you need to think about when you're making a decision and I put time at the top and the reason I put time at the top is because it's a one thing we can't really can't manipulate you can't control it at all now what we can control is what we do. We can control how we can get ahead.

We can prepare ourselves and be ready ahead of the power curve. But you don't have any control over time, so you've got to think about it. Now, this is the other thing. What you and I were just talking about, the big moves, right? The big moves come in the beginning. However, that being said, this is a Jocko's rule. Just kidding. But another thing to think about is the big moves.

moves come, but you actually have to start. And probably the biggest, hardest move in any project, in any endeavor is the first step. The first time you go to jiu-jitsu is the hardest time you'll ever go to jih Tzu, right? The first time you ever go to jiu-jitsu is probably going to be the hardest time you ever have to go to jiu-jitsu. The first time you go to the gym is probably going to be the hardest time you'll ever have to go the gym and maybe maybe it's like oh the first two weeks right the full all those two weeks it's like you're getting in the habit first time you go in the cold tub yeah it gets easier cold tub

gets easier I'm cold right now I went I got out of the cold tub a couple hours ago and I'm still cold right now yeah that's real I turned off I turned off the AC in our space here because I'm freezing I understand it is cold in here too yeah it is cold in here and I'm I was in a cold tub and brought my core temperature down to whatever. So these are good things to think about. See, this is what's, I use this example of like if you go into my house and I tell you, I'm gonna scare you. I'm not gonna be able to scare you. Awareness.

Yeah. Just awareness is, it makes you so much more prepared and makes you be able to contend with things so much better. So by being aware of the fact that number one, one, the first step is the hardest step. You should be aware of that. And if you know that, you're like, all right, I'm going to have to like go harder right now. I'm going to have to put more effort because I need to go to the gym and I haven't worked out before. Or my first day of fasting, it's going to be so hard.

You've got to know that it's going to be hard. And if you're mentally prepared for that, it's going to be better for you. I had a really good conversation. I think it was also at camp. I was talking to Jonathan and Ann. they have a first in nutrition. Montgomery. Yeah, yeah.

The Montgomery team. And they were talking, so they help people with nutrition, right? And yeah, first in nutrition. And as we were talking, you know, they, they, what they tell people or one of their taglines is you can eat anything, but you can't eat everything. which is which makes sense right so if you really love pizza okay we can put it on your schedule or your plan but you know here's what you're going to have to sacrifice here's what you can't if you're going to have pizza you can't have and you and by the way having pizza doesn't mean having

three quarters of a freaking pie right having pizza you can have it but you're going to have a slice and you're only going to have it on Wednesdays or whatever so You can have anything, but you can't have everything. Okay, cool. So that was the first part. But then what I related to was, you know, they were like, you know, talking about how much you can eat of something. And I started recognizing that the expectations that you have play a huge part. And here's how I know this for a fact.

What's your favorite dessert to eat? Me? Yeah. Either homemade chocolate chip cookies or chocolate cake. Okay, let's go with chocolate chip cookies and let's say you're eating no no, no, we'll go with cake. So you're eating your cake. Sure. And I roll in.

You've got a big slice of cake, right? And I go, bro, that looks really good. Can I have a bite? Sure. Will you give me a bite? I would give you a bite. Okay. So, and how would you feel about you have the, you've taken two bites of your cake.

I roll in, I go, can I have a bite? You say yes. How do you feel about that? Fine. Fine. Okay, now check this out. You're down to your last, there's one more bite. Oh, yeah, yeah.

I roll in and I say, oh, can I have that bite? You may still give it to me, but how do you feel about it? You don't feel good. No. This has happened to me 10,000 times in my life, right? 10,000 times where people, you know, you get to your last piece of steak or you get to your last piece of dessert or you got one more like freaking cookie left in the bag of those like little cookies that are bite size you know what I'm saying yeah so you what

happens is what I realized that feeling comes from the expectation because when there's one bite left you're excited about having the last bite you already ate the whole freaking piece of cake yeah but it's in your head that you got one more bite yeah and so when I set that expectation on you You got issues, dude. Like, I'm like, hey, dude, give me the, I, sorry, when I take that expectation from you, it's going to hurt you. Yeah. And it pisses you off. So my point in saying this is, from like an eating perspective, if you go, oh, I'm only going to have one slice of pizza.

That's all I get. And you set that expectation. 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.

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