Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: Learn From Others. Who Would Win In a Fight? Jocko Or Joe Rogan? Getting In Business With Your Spouse?

Episode Date: May 14, 2021

Learning from others. Jocko's process.Adjusting your delivery and tone for different personalities.Going Into Business with Your Spouse?Introducing Daughters to Sports. The Best way.When some of your team members don't take ownership right away?Who would win in a fight between Jocko and Joe Rogan?Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Jocko Underground Podcast, number 18, with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. All right, so I was, got to ask this, like, multitude of times, especially I was on a Jordan Peterson podcast a little bit ago, and I talked a bunch about writing, and I also talked about reading, and then obviously read the books for the podcast all the time, is what's the procedure look like? How am I doing this? What am I doing? What's the procedure for reading the book? So there's also the procedure of selecting a book for the podcast.

So I get sent so many books. And then books lead to other books. And then I end up with a lot of books. I have a lot of books now. And I can't read them all because I have more books than I, then, you know, we only do one one Jocko podcast a week. And I have more books than that. So I got to figure out.

which book is gonna be. So the first thing I do is I do an assessment of the book. Look, you know, somebody sends me a book for World War II, from NOM, right? From World War I, from whatever. They said, you know, somebody suggested a book. I read about a book. You know, I get the, I'm doing research for one book

and I pull the string on one of those books and I find another book and I look at the bibliography and I find another book and it's written first person. So you can see where this comes from. I mean, the books, the resources out there are unlimited. I have my default, by the way, my default mode is order it. That's my default mode. I'm going to order it.

But then on top of all the books that I order, people send me books. So first I do a little assessment. I can almost guarantee you, I'm going to open it up and read like the first page and see what it, see how it hits. See how it lands. You can kind of get a feeling right there. You're like, oh, dang, I'm already kind of sucked into this thing. Then, I know this might sound like spoiler alert, but I'll go to the end of the book and see what kind of closing last couple pages. Like, where are we at?

Where'd this end up? How is this finishing? And then I'll start like looking through the book in the middle and start looking for how is this thing written. And I'll look for a spot to read, you know, about maybe it's an actual. battle. Maybe it's after a battle, but I'll look for something like that. You know, I'll be looking for keywords as I'm scanning. I'll be looking for mortar fire, right? I'll be looking for bayonets fixed. I'll be looking for stuff like that to find out what, and then I'll start reading that section and see how well it's written. And that's kind of, look, so many of the

books are good. So many books are great, but I can't read them all. And so I got to make kind of a decision based on that procedure right now, right there, the opening, the closing, and then sort of a sampling of the middle. And then, okay, so once I decide, all right, we're going in with this book, we're going to do this. Occasionally, I'll misjudge. I've probably misjudged five books so far where I read the opener, read the closing, read a middle part like, yeah, this is legit. And then I read it and I was like, well, you know, I got, let's say 42 pages into it. And I'm like, no, I misjudged it. Put it on the, put it on the other pile.

Are you at liberty to say which ones those were? Not really. But none of them were, no one sent me a book where I was like, oh, this is good. No, it actually. Right. Like their book or something like this. Yeah, no one doesn't send anything like that. But I've definitely had books where some historical, I can, there was one book that I read

that I really wanted to do a certain subject. And I got a book that seemed like it would be. right and I invested probably 50 pages into it, kept waiting for it to. And one of the key components was it wasn't a first person book. So it was an account, right? It was a historical account, which we've done some historical accounts. But if there's enough first person accounts in the historical account, then it can be used. This one didn't have really much for first person, no quotes, you know, Lance Corporal Smith said, boom, and you got two pages of dialogue. from Lance Corporal Smith getting it.

You know what I mean? So that's, so I've, that's been a couple that I've walked away from, you know, midstream. But generally I do pretty good.

Generally, I do a pretty good assessment. And so then what I do, then I read the book. When I read the book the first time, I'm going, I'm reading the entire thing. And I'm,

anything that's cool, good, impactful, meaningful, lesson, I'm highlighting. I have orange highlighters, by the way. Yellow,

too light. Orange is good. I understand. So I go through with the orange highlighter, read it, and some books I'm freaking highlighting all kinds of it. I mean, it gets, I have to control myself sometimes and pull back a little bit because I can get crazy with the highlight.

And then I'm thinking, I'm going to read a freaking audio book here and just read the whole book. Don't want to do that. So I'll highlight it. But sometimes I am highlighting whole pages. Sometimes I've just got two, three, four pages of a battle scene that's epic. And I'm like, yep, I'm reading this whole thing. That's all there is to it.

So I'll highlight the whole book. Then I kind of think about it. And as far as the podcast goes, as far as the podcast goes, then when it's time to record the podcast, then I go through it again. And I go and I have these red pens, these red, like, fine tip pens. And I'll outline and mark up exactly what I am actually going to read on the podcast. and then arrows that lead me to the next section and areas that I'm not going to read. And so that's how I end up doing that.

And I have like little marks for notes if I've got some note about something or they mention a general's name and then I got a note in there. I use a bunch of stickies and all this crap. But there's still something that's that I have learned, I would say, about reading. And it's been primarily from doing the podcast.

which is how I'm actually reading the book and I think I did this before but I did it subconsciously now I do it consciously when I'm reading a book it's not really a book that I'm reading it's either a story that I'm hearing from someone first person in my head like I'm hearing this story or oddly enough it's a story that I am telling so I'm reading it as if I'm telling the story that I'm the person that lived it Which is weird, right? So I'm actually reading this as if it's me and I'm going to tell the story to you. Or I'm actually like in the mindset of I'm living what's on the page.

So that's to me is how I am really connecting with what I'm reading. Is I'm in that frame of mind. I also read and I know this actually is not. not good. I read at the speed that I talk just about, which sucks because it takes me a long time to read stuff. But that means that it, when I'm reading it, it's like someone's telling me a story or it's like I'm telling someone a story. So it's more engaging for me in my brain. And then I have the overlays, right? I have the conscious and subconscious overlays of extreme ownership, of cover and move and simple and prioritize and execute and decentralized command and dichotomy. So I've got those overlays. And so those things are, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm scanning for those things. I'm looking for them or not consciously looking for them. Like, oh, that's cover move right there.

Oh, that's a simple plan. That's going to work. I'm doing that. So I've got that additional overlay, that additional context to what I'm reading. And I'm also looking for outliers. So I'm looking for things that don't match up with my theoretical principles.

I remember when I read one of Tilt's books and he split forces. And I was like, dang, I don't know. This doesn't sound. like a good eye and and I asked him on the podcast I said you know I'm I've I felt weird asking him right as I'm like it's tilt bro you know what I'm late with tilt and I said hey tilt you know here you are you're going in this jungle situation and you split forces I said I was like I was like you know I always kind of thought it was a bad thing he was the only time I did and it worked out

horribly I was like yes they're going to look you sometimes you do have to split forces but you have to use caution when you do it so I have that context of what I know what I I believe than the outliers from what I know and what I believe. And when I say what I believe, that means it's what I believe. But I also realize that books can present questions to what I believe, which is awesome. Because if I get a question to what I believe, that's a positive thing because now I'm going to either learn more about my belief being correct or maybe my belief is incorrect. And I'm open-minded to that.

And I actually want it. So I have those overlays. And then I have the overlays of when I'm reading how things fit together that I'm reading. And this is on multiple levels. In the book itself, when you're reading in a book, you got to remember that that's a complete world. Right. And that page, that section that you're reading is connected to everything else that's in there. And sometimes we get because you're detached from it and you turn the page, it's like we're not thinking about that anymore.

So I consciously am thinking about, hey, this is actually happening in the context of this whole entire. book and then how does this whole entire book fit in the context of other books about this particular battle this particular war this particular situation war in general how does it fit in how does this compare to the whole world what's going on in the world and then how does it compare to my world what I've been through what I've experienced the knowledge that I have or don't have and and what I'm looking for, obviously what I'm looking for is trying to find lessons, find new lessons, possibly relearn lessons that I've already learned or reinforce the same lessons.

And then all of this provides me with perspective so that I can more holistically understand human nature. that's what that's what I'm doing that's what we're doing and you know there's a speaking of books I was just reading a book and there's a quote in there from Otto von Bismarck who's a German chancellor for three wars

and he's always he's always in these pictures with these kind of militaristic general uniforms on you know with the shoulder gold shoulder pads the big all that stuff he was like a reservist for a few weeks or something he was he wasn't like and apparently

he was begrudgingly a soldier for a very short period of time. But, you know, once you're the chancellor, you're like, you know what? I want that freaking general outfit. Well, there's a book by B.H. Liddell Hart, who's a whole other. We have a whole, we have a whole library of books from him that he wrote. He was a really profoundly impactful. British military soldier officer fought in World War I wounded sent back sent back again I mean just

he went through a lot and he had an incredibly fluid mind and incredible understanding of military tactics and I we haven't even broached it's one of those things where there's a couple books right now I've got in the waiting that I'm wait that I'm like hey when I open When I go on this, it's going to be, it's going to take four, five, six, seven podcast to do. And so I've got some of those books in the waiting right now. B.H. Liddell Hard is one of them. But the quote is that I'm getting to that I was reading in his book today. Fools say that they learn from experience.

I prefer to profit from others' experience. So what does that mean? That means read. That means purchase. 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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