Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: Using Time as a Weapon

Episode Date: February 26, 2024

Temporal motivation theory.Teaching others to have thick skin.All or nothing fallacy.The Path, The Code, The Evaluation. What is this?Joining the military while disapproving of Government decisions.Getting over your ex as you start a new chapter in life.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Jocko Underground Podcast number 119. Sitting here with Echo Charles E.C. You mentioned something to me. The temporal motivation theory. And when I started looking to what this is, I realized that it's an opportunity for us, you know, we, people, to utilize time as a weapon, utilizing the temporal motivation theories.

So doing some interweb research, Wikipedia. What's the deal with Wikipedia? Marginal. Like, trust but verify, I think. Yeah. It's a trust but verify scenario. Yeah.

Kind of like the friend that kind of knows a lot about a lot, you know? Yeah. And you're like, oh, what up. But they're just drop some rando stuff. Yeah. Maybe once in a while they'll grab some wrong info. I don't know. I think there's certain.

areas that you can faithfully kind of utilize Wikipedia. Yeah. And something like this is pretty much in the zone of, yeah, no one's trying to out, no one's out there trying to confuse or propagandize temporal motivation theory. Yeah. If this was some political thing or something, then you got a whole other situation you got to go through.

Yeah, a lot of times about, if it's about people. Yeah, if it's about people, you're definitely, yeah, there's, might be some question marks sometimes. But it's a place to start, right? That's what we're doing. And look, we're not investing in temporal motivation theory with money. We're not making any claims.

We're not putting this in a book. We're just discussing something. So here's what Wikipedia had to say. Temporal motivation theory is an integrative motivational theory developed by Pierce, Steele, and Cornelius J. Koenig. The theory emphasizes time as a critical motivation factor. I totally agree with that. And you and I have talked about this before.

If you if it's a if it's a let's say it's a Tuesday and I got a flight and I got to leave the house at six for the flight I get up and dude that workout's going to be good fast focused I wake up on a Sunday I don't have to be open I don't have to be at open mat until 10. Yeah That's five and a half hours from when I wake up right I got all kinds of time I be stretching contemplating maybe making a new playlist on the music. I'm App, right? There's all kinds of things. The time is not on my side in that case. So the temporal motivation theory formula can be applied to human behavior, procrastination,

and goal setting. According to Lord Diefendorf, Schmidt, and Hall, the theory, quote, models the motivating power of approaching deadlines, arguing that the utility, that the perceived utility of a given activity increases exponentially as the deadline near. these and similar ideas have been applied to the pervasive phenomenon of procrastination end quote so as the deadline approaches you're going to be more focused look we all figured that well when I was in like high school and you had to study for something you didn't study for it you know the test is in two weeks yep right you're not studying there's 14 days in two weeks you're not studying until day 13 yeah then you're studying yep Now, when I was in college, bro, I was so freaking disciplined. Bro, I would have like a 20-page paper due in a month. Yeah.

I would write like two pages a day for 10 days, have the whole thing done, edit it. I would be done with it. Yeah. Completely done. How old are you in college? I was 28, dude. 28, okay. This is unfair. It's totally unfair.

Anything past 25 that you're going to shift into that kind of mode for sure. I would hope so. Yeah, yeah, one little for sure. But 18, yeah, that's the whole, like this temporal motivation theory. That's what it's called it. Yeah. Is like the whole reason words like cramming exists or whatever. There's a whole, there's a whole freaking verbiage around.

Oh, yeah. All community, whole culture, if you will. Oh, yeah. You know, yeah, writing papers, like all that kind of stuff or whatever. Actually, the classic one, I think, even with grown adults, is the, you know how you're, you were like, maybe on a weekend or whatever spring clean, I don't know, whatever. You're like, I'm gonna clean up around here.

Just, you know, it's just time, right? And you know, you clean up some stuff as you clean. Like you see a hat you had, let me put this hat on, you're looking at it. Like you're doing else. But let somebody be coming over. If somebody's coming over, man, my wife is like,

I'm sure a lot of wives are like this too. But yeah, she's highly susceptible to this temporal motivation theory when it comes to cleaning up when people are coming over. She's like freaking boom, boom. And here's the thing. It actually works pretty good. You can clean up pretty solid when someone's coming over, you know.

But yeah, man, that's real. You can clean in seven minutes or seven hours. Outcome looks the same just about. Yes, sir. You know what I mean? You're breaking, you find some old book that you once thought about reading. Yeah, so.

You know exactly what to do with it. Another thing it says here, to see, and this is a good example, probably just kind of similar to what we just talked about, but to see how temporal motivation theory can be applied in an example, consider a student given one month the study for a final exam, the student is given two options, studying and socializing.

The student enjoys socializing but needs to achieve a good grade. The reward of studying is not immediate. This is a key point. The reward of studying is not immediate. It's a month away. So since it's not immediate, thus at the beginning of the student study period, the motivation to study is lower than the motivation to socialize because you can get that reward from socialization, socializing immediately.

Like, oh, we're going to our party and meet this girl, like all. all these fun things are going to happen. You don't get any of that. You get no gratification from studying immediately. Within the next month, no gratification. However, as the study period diminishes from several weeks to several days, the motivation to study will surpass the motivation to socialize,

which it does, because now the person's cramming. They're not even, they're going to skip that party now. So this is a factual kind of thing. So what does it mean to us? I think there's a couple things. Number one, we talked about this with Kalipa, too, setting a timer. Right?

Setting a timer on your work. Definitely will help the workout saying that you will get done by this certain time even scheduling something So like hey, I'll be done. I'll be driving. I'll be doing this. I'll be leaving. I'll be whatever I'm doing I'm gonna get it done by this time Yeah, that's very helpful but that means you got to give yourself some kind of a reward too If I do this if I get it done by then then I'll allow myself to do this other thing, you know? I was on a flight. I wanted to watch some thing. What was it? I forget what I was gonna I wanted to watch something I had like a cross-country flight, six-hour flight, right? And I had some downloaded thing I wanted to watch.

And I said, all right, I'll watch that as soon as I get done writing 4,000 words. Yeah. Oh, damn. Okay. So that took me three hours and 30 minutes or something, three hours and 40 minutes. Yeah. But I powered through it because I wanted to watch this thing. Oh, yeah.

Now, if I've done it the other way around. Oh, yeah. Who knows what watching one thing might have led to. You know what I'm. saying but it's interesting i was truly like writing fast the normally of a thousand words an hour i was under my normal time yeah kind of pushing the pace a little bit yeah trying to get it done good stuff was the quality there you got to edit stuff anyways bro when it comes to writing yeah so let's get the words out yeah and that's the risk you run regardless right the quality

like if you're yeah yeah yeah you're when you're writing you can't you can't get too focused on the quality of your writing while you're writing um the first of writing is making the clay. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Look, when you're making the clay, you can't expect the clay to be perfect.

When you're building a house, your framing is not going to be perfect. It's just not. That's why you do finish work. You hone it. You edit it. That's what you're doing when you're, you frame the house.

You ever framed a house before? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I helped my dad frame. Yeah. So when you're framing a house, it's rough, you know? It's like, yeah, it's pretty close.

Like, it's in there. But then when you're doing drywall, it gets closer. and then when you tape and mud the drywall, it gets perfect. That's funny how that sequence is like kind of without everything. Like a lot of stuff. Yeah, yeah. Does it do that?

Do you do that with the video editing? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, 100%. Yeah. And the CGI stuff too. Yeah. It starts kind of rough.

Oh, yeah, because I've seen like, you know, beeple. Bleeple. Is it bleeple? I thought. The video. Yeah, yeah. Digital artists. Yeah.

Yeah. Sometimes he'll post sort of the progression. of something. And so you'll see like a weird looking shape doesn't have much detail. So yeah, there's the draft. Yep. Yeah, you get the main motion

and the main this and the main that they need. Yeah, yeah, exactly right. That's interesting. So yeah, I would say most things have that. But setting a timer and then giving yourself some kind of reward to meet the time is a very positive thing. And here's another thing I've been talking about

lately with people is doing strategic things first. Doing the things that don't give you the immediate gratification. So, for instance, this is a good setup for life. You know, there's something that you want to do that's going to give you immediate gratification? Yeah. What is that thing?

Whether it's going to jiu-jitsu, whether it's eating, right? Whether it's, well, this is two good ones, right? Eating, going to jihitsu, maybe, yeah, let's just use those two. Look, I'm not going to go to jih Tzu until I get done writing. Or I'm not going to go to jit-u unless I already worked out. or I'm definitely not going to eat until I've earned it by lifting. Yeah. I mean, of course, with all due respect, I think a more understandable, relatable one is I'm not

kind of like watch my favorite show that I got recorded or whatever, something like that. Oh, you don't see Jiu Jitsu as that much of a reward? I think sometimes Jiu Jitsu can be viewed as like one of those things you got to put in work, like part of the work. But yeah, in your case and actually after you stop competing and stuff like that, it does become that what you're saying for sure but some people if they're not into jiu-jitsu necessarily they might not that might not land on them on a real level you know watching something that's gonna allow your brain to be inactive and absorbing and like

non-productive yeah non-taxing it's gonna get like it's gonna get like it's not a massage because a massage is beneficial it's almost it's almost like getting drunk Yeah, like your mind's gonna get a break. It's gonna be able to do nothing. Yeah. That's what watching TV is. Yeah, it's essentially watching Netflix is. Yeah, I mean, I guess for lack of a term, it's like, and I think it does it is beneficial kind of categorize this in your own brain where it's like there's like passive consumption and there's like active consumption. So like if you have something that's really like in your case surfing, right? Surfing is like active consumption where it's like, brother, there's not sometimes when you're surfing and, you know, whether it be snowboarding, surfing, whatever, something that you do, there is a development of skill in the whole process of it, like over time. But at the same time, you do it just because, man, just being in this moment, like the immediate gratification

is high level as well. You know, so that's active consumption. Passive is like, yeah, you're watching Netflix or something, like where you're just laying there and it's all coming into your eyes or even going on like a tour. You know how like people go on vacation and they go on like some tour on a tour bus or a tour cruise or something like this? That's passive as opposed to like, oh, I'm going on a hunting vacation or a freaking snowboarding vacation.

Yeah, dude, my my vacations don't ever feel like I'm cruising. It's not passive. No, no, no. I feel like I'm going to be doing more work. Yeah. Sometimes when I get done with a vacation, I'm like, yo, I need a vacation. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Check.

So those are some good things. But you're doing this. So regardless of what the, what you use as sort of your reward, maybe it's watching TV, maybe it's eating. 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 are 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 jaco under

It costs $8.18 a month and if you can't afford to support us We can still support you just email assistance at jocco underground.com and we'll get you taken care of Until then we will see you mobilized underground