Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: TOXIC PRODUCTIVITY | Consistency with a Hectic and Unpredictable Work Schedule

Episode Date: May 16, 2022

Toxic Productivity.Best Training for reservists.The stresses of building a house or something meaningful.Navy SEALS training to deal with ocean wildlife threats.How to plan and execute in a stressful environment with very little rest.Workouts with a hectic and unpredictable work schedule.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Jocko Underground podcast. It's number 51 sitting here with Echo Charles, EC, Echo Charlie. And I heard a new term recently, very recently. You were present when I heard it for the first time. The term came from my daughter, my oldest daughter. The term is toxic productivity. And she was making some statements about it. She was also maybe making some mild accusations.

about it. Mild. Mild accusations. I know that you posted a little, a little clip of that saying that my mere presence can cause stress and cause some feelings of maybe you should be working. Yeah. So my daughter was saying that she lives in the house of productivity trademark.

Yeah. Or what it was like when she did live in the house of productivity. So she brought up this concept of toxic productivity. And you know, you can see all kidding aside when you hear it. You're like, oh, yeah, I can see where that can happen, right? And we, I'm sure we know people where they are, they're, they're being, this is where I get in my mind. People that are being so productive that they're not being productive, right? So we'll go into it a little bit.

So I looked it up on psychology today, psychology today.com. What is toxic productivity? Yes, it's a real thing. The need to constantly do can turn toxic and is often ineffectual and unproductive. Cultures of toxic productivity exist in countries, organizations, and within ourselves. Man, you'd get some people in the military. It's not healthy what they're doing. Like they are just working and ignoring everything else in their lives.

And it's not good. And they end up with unbalanced lives. They end up with divorce. They end up with their kids being messed up or having issues or whatever. having issues but it's really easy to have that happen in the military but it happens in in every organization then you know when you think of countries like Japan I don't know what it's like right now but when I was growing up more in the 80s Japan was like full on toxic productivity suicide rate was crazy back then there

and then the last thing it says the key tenet or the basic tenet of of toxic productivity. Oh, well, it's in countries, in organizations, and within ourselves. So you can have it within yourself. You're like, I gotta do something. I feel bad. You get that guilt going. And then taking time to reflect and decide on a course of action is better than reacting

and doing mindlessly. This was an interesting one. They're saying that some people that have this element of toxic productivity, when there's something occurs, instead of thinking about it and thinking of a rational way to solve the problem, they just start like, randomly doing stuff. And that's problematic. Which I,

well, most of the time I find people, they, inaction is their problem. Right? So they're not taking action. That's a problem. And I guess you go too far in the other direction.

You have people taking action for, that they shouldn't be taking. Again, it doesn't make any sense. So the toxic productivity is destructive, rather than productive. So I had a saying in the SEAL teams, have you ever heard of the term

the leaning rest, the front leaning rest? You said it. Okay, so the front leaning rest is the push-up position. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so that's called the, I don't know, it's probably an army saying

because the army will give stuff some weird names. So they'd be like, get down on the front-leaning rest, right? And then there was also another term from the military called forward-leaning. Like, hey, we want to be forward-leaning on this, right? Okay, cool. So you got these two things, forward-leaning and front-leaning rest.

And what I used to tell guys is, hey, don't be so far forward leaning that you're in the leaning rest. Meaning I'm so, I'm working so hard to be ready that I'm actually not ready for anything. Because I'm, you know, let's say you've got a, let's say you might have a parachute. You're using a zodiac launch from a launch from an aircraft with parachutes. And so you think you might have that. Okay, well, let's start building it. And it takes a whole bunch of time and effort to get this thing called a duck built. So you're, you're doing all this.

work well oh then it changes you're actually gonna use humvees so now you start getting all your hump and you can see where I'm going to this eventually you're so far forward leaning that you're in the leaning rest and you're actually tiring yourself out for no reason so you got to be careful of that and I think that's a a great tenant to to keep in mind don't be so far forward leaning that you're in the leaning rest again this the weird aspect of this was this thing and here's another quote they say not enough diagnostics they just try and go fix something Which again, to me, usually people have the problem with they don't want to take action.

They're scared to take action or they're nervous about taking action. Normally it's not just jumping in to try and fix it, but you do see that occasionally. Just like any other dichotomy, if you go to an extreme, it's going to be bad. The extreme of not taking action and the extreme of taking action without actually assessing, that can be bad as well. Normally people tend to not take action. This is the other side of the spectrum. And here's where we can get kind of interesting. It's the need to publicly display how much you are, in quotes, doing.

And I was like, oh, am I highly guilty of this? I could be. I definitely say, hey, I'm waking up in the morning, right? And I worked out. That's kind of all I really say. That's the only thing I really publicly display. Yeah, I mean, any kind of regular basis for sure. Yeah.

So, but there are definitely people, I'm on the grind, right? Yeah. I mean, yours is, I don't know if it's because I'm around or not, but you, it's almost like you just imply it, maybe. I don't know. Or maybe it's just my, on my hand, I just feel it. Yeah. Because technically, I don't think you put that out, like to show that you're constantly doing.

I don't think so. Well, if I wanted to show what I was doing, I would show a lot more because I don't really, I don't spend a bunch of time. Hey, I'm getting ready for a podcast right now. Oh, hey, I'm writing my next book. Hey, I'm getting ready to go to a board meeting right now. Like, I don't. Right.

You know what I mean? I mean, I could do that. Yeah. There are people who do it straight up a lot, a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, I get it. So that's a little bit. So that, I suppose that would be like the same version of, you know,

where Instagram, where people put on the filter that makes, them look young or whatever you know what I mean so now I'm putting on a quote filter on my life to make it look like I'm doing all these productive things productivity filter productivity filter yeah so but then if you're a person that's not feeling like you're being productive enough yeah well now you think you go oh gosh well that goes over there he already did three workouts today plus he made a video I'm not doing anything I don't work more right so you can feel like a sense of guilt yeah I get well that's with everything right with I mean that's the whole um complaint or one of the many complaints about social media is that yeah the image that's let

people not everyone but the image that people put forward is like a like it's not the accurate image of their life you know it's like either the highlights or the you know whatever highlights they want to put forward it's filtered it's filtered in a way but that's different than the actual physical like digital filter you know that's yeah even though it's kind of all does the same yeah doing the same thing conceptually but they you know like people who put like they want to make like they travel to all these exotic places or whatever, you know, that stuff. Or someone like, you know what's a big one? Bro, they're having things where you could like rent the inside of a plane.

Yeah. So you could sit on there and be like, oh, how do you go off to Vegas for the weekend? And I think the ones I've seen were like jokes, but I don't know if people do that's in real life or not. I'm sure they have to. But it's like it'll show the split screen, right? The Instagram, then reality. And then it'll have like a girl looking out the window of a plane. And then the reality is she's looking out the window of like a or through a washing machine window.

Oh, yeah. You know, where it like looks like a plane window. But yeah, that even applies to productivity. Yeah. Right. There's like working on my whatever, you know, working on this, workout time, all this stuff, right? Yeah, huh? That's crazy.

So, activity filter. You shouldn't feel bad about that. Another thing they say is doing enough is never enough. Business is not good for actual productivity. That's a good thing to think about. So then they had a little list of things of how to overcome this. And this is again, this is from psychology today.com. Give yourself permission to discern.

Not everything needs to be tended to or resolved immediately by you. In fact, we don't always have to be the one to intervene, even if it feels like we're the ones that need to intervene. Ask yourself, what is the worst? that will happen if I take 24 hours to think about this before leaping in action. That's good. And what I like to overlay on that is decentralized command, right? If you are in charge of things, there's a lot of things you shouldn't have to jump into. And as a matter of fact, if you have to jump into things, it's not a good sign for how you're

performing as a leader. If every time there's an issue, you got to be like, hey, Echo, let me show you how to do this. And let me, let me call that client. Let me show you how to edit this video. Like, that's not good. That shows that I'm micromanaging, basically. But that's a nice little ego boost, right? Makes me feel good.

Makes me feel like I'm important when that happens. The next thing, exercise your emotional intelligence. Take some time to consider and appreciate what you're feeling about the issue and your desire to intervene. Name the feelings that comes up for you. What is the unmet need behind the feelings that propel you to jump into action? That's a good thing. Of course, they don't mention the word detach in here, which you won't be able to do this if you don't detach. What does this tell you about your current leadership style?

So they're actually talking about leadership. But what's interesting here is that's a good thing to do. When you have an emotional feeling, pull the thread. That's the term I use. Pull the thread on that feeling and see what it's coming from. If I'm frustrated or I feel like I need to get down there and help you, if I actually pull the thread, I'm like, oh, that's just my ego wanting to show echo that I know how to do this stuff. Or it's my ego wanting to prove that I'm the guy in charge.

And so pull the thread on that emotion. Most of the time you're going to find ego at the end of that thread, by the way, Especially the negative emotions. Anger, frustration, jealousy. You won't admit to the jealousy one because then you have to admit that it's your ego. But a lot of times you're like, oh, dude. You know, Echo, I'll come down and teach that class. You know what's like, why don't you let Echo teach the class?

You know what I'm saying? Because I want to be the guy on the podium. I want to be the guy on the mat showing everybody what's up. So pull the thread on that. The next thing they say is cultivate your curiosity. Huh. Spend some more time in a contemplated. phase to understand your desired outcome parties involved issues factors of options and their

implications okay so once again they're talking about detachment open ask open-ended questions and listen mindfully to the responses as you build an informed picture of what what might be going on this keeps you in reflection and diagnosis longer yeah they've got they're talking about someone that that really is seeing a problem and then just immediately take an action without checking out again to me that's not the norm the norm is inaction be choosy about your action not every situation and or issue requires our action

be choosy about when you'll interview that kind of said that already and then enact boundaries and practice self-care take time out from doing walk in nature meditate play sports relax do jujitsu I'm sorry, I just feel relax, enjoy hobbies, family life, socializing. Okay, so that's cool. What does that really say?

It says you should do jiu-jitsu, you should surf, you should play guitar, play ukulele, you know, whatever we're doing. And that does, those things are all good. So I, when I read that whole thing, that they're kind of recommendations to me, all those things say you need to be able to detach, take a step back. And something I've been saying a lot lately is the solution to the problem is not in the problem. So if you're in the problem, you're not going to see the solution. You've got to get out of that problem. You've got to be able to detach. If you're busy all the time, you're not going to see the big picture. You're not going to be able to think strategic if you're doing little tactical things all the time. So get away from that. Get away from that. That is not a good way to go through life. Fighting immediate firefights that are right in front of you. You won't win the war. You might win a lot of firefights, but you won't win the war because the enemy's maneuvering on you. They're building a Huge supply chain to be able to outgun you.

They're they're creating more troops. They're they're recruiting and and training more troops. So you're just sitting there in gunfights and you might be winning. You know like today we won. Hey, let's go. Let's go again. And you're winning, but you're not winning in the big picture. Yeah.

Yeah. So I did write this down. This this will make sense. You know how I said I don't really, that's not a normal thing for people to take action. But you know where it is? knee jerk reactions, right? We even have a word for it, right? Knee jerk reaction.

Knee jerk reactions aren't good. So if you have a knee jerk reaction, every time something goes wrong, you're like jumping in and trying to do stuff, that's a knee jerk. That is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground podcast. So if you wanna continue to listen,

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