Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: There Are No Solutions, Only Trade-Offs.

Episode Date: April 1, 2022

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This is the Jock Underground Podcast. It's number 46. Echo Charles is here with me. I got something for to kick this off today. I want to talk to you about something. A little quote. The quote is, there are no solutions,

only trade-offs. You try to get the best trade-off you can get. That's all you can hope for. That is a quote from Thomas Sowell, famous economist. He's written, he's written like $89 or something. I'm actually just ordering them all.

Because that guy, The points he makes are phenomenal. The book that I kind of is one of my favorite books. It's called Basic Economics. I've raised it at certain points on the podcast. Haven't ever covered the thing in full. But anyways, Thomas, if you don't know who he is, go look him up. He's freaking awesome.

But there's no solutions, only tradeoffs. And this is certainly a good, it's a good way of thinking that a lot of people don't really. A lot of people don't really understand it, right? You've got to recognize that you're not always going to get what you want. You're only going to get some of what you want. And even to get some of what you want, you're going to have to give up something else. That's the way it works. And people don't want to admit that.

And when I heard this from Thomas Soul, the first time I heard I didn't hear it from Thomas Soul at all. I was trying to buy my first house. and I was looking at various properties. You know, I had the real estate agent, you know, giving me the looks, showing me very, and I was being kind of finicky. You know, like, well, I don't know about that. And finally, my real estate agent who got frustrated with me

probably because I shut down a couple of deals where I was like, eh, yeah, not really. Finally, my real estate agent says, every house is going to have advantages and disadvantages. Every house. Every single house that you want. It's going to have a big yard, but it's going to be a small house. Or it's going to be a small house, but it's going to have a big yard.

Or it's going to have a low price, but it needs work. Or it's going to be in good shape, but it's going to have a high price. Or it's going to have a bad layout that's flexible. Or it's going to have a good layout, but there's not much flexibility to it. Or it's going to have, hey, a bunch of privacy, but it's hard to get to. Or it's going to be easy to get to, but you don't have a lot of privacy. So the list goes on and on. And a lot of times it's just the price versus whatever.

You know, oh, you can live in this neighborhood, but it costs more. You can have a bigger house, but it costs more. Sometimes that's the, that's the, that's the variable. But here's why I wanted to bring this up. It's real obvious, but sometimes we fail to recognize what the tradeoffs are and that we can actually parse them out and figure out what part of the deal you want to keep. What is actually important to you? So that you can keep the things that you care about and you can let go of the things that you don't really care about.

So when you're putting a deal together, you've got to think about this. But here's the thing. This is the important part. This is your life too. Right? This is actually your life too. You don't get to do everything you want to do. You don't.

Nobody does. You don't get to spend time with your family and, Focus on work and focus on training and focus on learning and focus on relaxing and learning a new skill. You don't get to focus on everything. It doesn't work that way. We have to pay attention to it though. And fundamentally what it boils down to is you need to prioritize and execute. But with the time that you have in your life that you want to focus, you got to weigh out and parse out what's actually really important to you.

so you can get the best, let's say the best deal out of light. You have to understand what's on the table. You've got to understand what's on the table. And I think that's the mistake. People don't even know what's on the table. They don't pay attention to what's on the table. Like they don't pay attention to what the tradeoffs are. They don't pay attention to what they care about or what they don't care about.

And sometimes they care about something that somebody else cares about and they're thinking that now that's important. or they just see what's real obvious and they just grab whatever they can without thinking about what they're going to leave on the table. You know, you're going to, you can only fit so much in your hands and some of it's going to get left behind.

So you've got to think about that. You've got to pay attention to that. Because if you're not paying attention to it, you're going to leave some things on the table and you're going to look up and you won't be able to hold anything else. So pay attention. probably a good situation to detach, take a step back.

How do you do that? Write down what's on the table. Actually, write it down. That's how you detach from it. You write it down. You make a list of what's on the table. You make a list of what's at stake. You make a list of what the tradeoffs are.

And then you prioritize that list to make sure that the tradeoffs. Because there's no solution. There's no perfect solution. You're only going to get tradeoffs. So pay attention so that you're trading off. the right things so you can keep as much of what you want as you can and you can let go the things that you don't care about Little life advice from Thomas Seoul Woody I remember a long time ago I did this interview with this um it was like a magazine what you got interviewed? Yeah

Yeah check and it's like and they're talking about work work balance or work life life work balance Yeah like how do you do and maybe the guy thought of I was more busy than I really was. But I do, but that did make me think though. It made me think like, wait a second. Yeah, like I do kind of like I don't stress like, oh, I'm not paying enough attention to this or that. But so and my answer ended up being, I only care like about four things, really.

Like I don't care about like my fashion or you know how like some people you can see they care about. And I'm not knocking fashion. No, no. But some people don't care about it, myself included. Care. Yeah, exactly right. And I wouldn't even say I don't care about it. I'm saying I care very little about it. I'm not over here like staying up at night stressing about I need to spend more time in my fashion. But there's like four things I cared about. And it was like, you know, my family, my work like health and fitness and then like jiu jitza or something. That's kind of it, really, you know? It's a good list right there. Right?

I mean, what else is there really? I mean, so anyway, my question is like, do you, like, what do you care about

you think? Like, what's your, I mean, it's the same stuff. But here's the thing. You're not going to get, you can't get, you can't give 100%

to your family. Can't. Yeah. And you can't give 100% to your work. You can't. And you can't give 100% to your health and fitness.

You can't. Yeah. And you can't give 100% to jujitsu. Yeah. You can only give, you only have 100%. Yeah. So you got to be careful

And pay attention to what you're going to leave on the table Yeah That's what you got to do It's the way it is you're only going to get tradeoffs Not a solution doesn't exist Yeah, so really by its own nature you you essentially if you can cut that down The more you cut that down the better off you're gonna be the less things you need Yeah like you know less less moving parts or whatever less parts taking you know taking away from the other

But when you think about and especially if you take this this element this element this element this like the trade always a trade off you know got it man you could you could trim away a lot of BS in your life definitely do that because you're probably spending time doing stuff that literally you actually not only is it stuff that you don't really care about the stuff that you actually know is bad right yeah I mean stuff that you legitimately know is not beneficial to you it's not helping your family it's not helping your work it's not helping your jit-suitz it's not helping your health and fitness

there you are doing it you're trading it off it's it's it's a bad move so that's another good point you got to pay attention not to just the things you want but what are you investing in that you don't even want at all and you're investing into it that's sad yeah and that's a big price too right because you know the whole thing i mean this is kind of a it's not a cliche because it's so so so so true where you you probably spend some some money on the on the BS stuff for sure you do but you spend time on it like you know the kind of well here's the thing though what is money it is time yeah you traded your time for some money at some point now you're just using that money to spend somewhere else yeah

time is the ultimate thing right yeah that every money all the money that you have you have you had to invest time into yeah that's weird i mean which is another good reason why you want to set your life up so that you so that you're that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the jocco 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 are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors.

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