Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: Your Life Is Dragging Because Of The Undone Small Things.

Episode Date: October 17, 2022

Life drags from the small undone things.Reluctant to take that promotion.Dealing with anger.Having trouble getting along with my peers my age.Advice to an aspiring professional artist.How to successfully manage multiple projects or businesses.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Jocko Underground Podcast, number 66. Echo Charles, with me. Dave Burke also here. Guest appearance. We just got done recording a podcast, so you figured you might as well stay in the seat. Hang out. Hang out a little bit longer.

Just stay here long enough to get caught in traffic on the way home. That's what you get from moving to Carlsbad. You say you're going to move to San Diego. You move to Carlsbad. I know. Got issues. What I want to do is put myself on report today. Put myself on report.

Because I had something take place that normally doesn't happen to me. Normally I'm pretty good. But the fact that this went on for as long as it did, I have to like reveal and take ownership of the situation. So I don't want to make it too crazy. But here's the deal. So in my in at our gym Victory MMA I have a locker we all the instructors we have lockers I actually have two of them top and bottom so I got like one locker thing They're pretty big lockers are not like a little tiny school locker, but it's where I keep all my jih T-shirts

Knee pads shorts whatever head gear if you need it you know geese So all this stuff my top the top locker is the one I usually use so I have to bend down and like get on my knees you know, super comfort. Sure. Brutal. But there's some items that you're not using all the time. And so I bought from my top locker years ago, I bought a little shelving unit from Home Depot, which is three minutes from here.

It's probably 10 years ago. I bought a little shelving unit for my top locker, maybe eight years ago. Went, build it. All of a sudden it saves so much space, it's great. About three years ago. I bought another shelving unit from my bottom, my bottom locker. And it sat in the bottom locker, the shelving unit unassembled. Just sat in the bottom locker for three years.

And I didn't, didn't follow through and carry out actually building this shelving unit for the bottom locker. Just so everything would be squared away and everything can be organized. Just so, just so everything could be squared away and everything could be organized. which is so nice in life. So for the past three years, I've just had the top one kind of squared away, but not really because there's stuff that need to be moved to the bottom one, but I didn't because it was kind of cluttered already

because I didn't have a shelf in there. And I just dealt with it. And you know, it's probably about a 20-minute job. Right? And I knew that in my head because I've done it before. It's going to take me 20 minutes to build out this bottom shelf for my bottom locker for three. Three years I didn't do it for three I could come in 20 minutes early. Yeah, and you know what it actually would save you about probably one to two minutes every day because you got to kind of jam stuff in there a little bit to get it locked

You know the top locker. I'm only using the top one soon but now I got to like push something back in or something's kind of slips out so it's kind of a pain Yeah, and finally the other day I got done rolling at six o'clock at night and I'm getting ready to go home and my daughter daughter was teaching class and she's like sees me and she's like hey dad can we roll and I go well I'm heading home she's like oh come on I'm heading she was heading back to college soon I said okay what time you done with class she goes 630 so I have a half an hour to kill so I'm like oh I roll in there and I just get to it and I get it done in 18 minutes and these two lockers became 10 times more squared away 10 times maybe 12 times more squared away yeah and every time I've come into the gym since that time which has now been like a month every time I've come in I've had like a sense of

relief and satisfaction I didn't do it though why the thing that's weird is I am not a procrastinator right like I know there's times when I procrastinate it's like oh I got squat day sometimes I'll be like stretch for an extra 15 minutes and I know it's happening and I actually will build that in my schedule a little bit yeah but I'm not I'm not a person that goes oh maybe not now you know I don't really do that and here's something that I did it for three years three years of pathetic procrastination to do a task part of it was because the let's face it a minute a day a minute of inconvenience I just was like that's not that big of a deal yeah yeah and And it's pathetic.

My point in saying this is, what is going on in your life that could take a 15, a 20-minute investment, or maybe it's a one-day investment or maybe it, you know, because sometimes that stuff happens too. You got something at your house. You're like, hey, if I, if I pull down this fence and install a better gate, I can get in and out of it with the groceries and it's going to make my life easier forever. But it's going to take eight hours for me to pull down this old. and put up a new one and you just hold off hold off hold off it reminds me

unfortunately in Iraq like I went to a we we hit a target in Iraq and the place we went into is like you know this family's house and it was just all jacked up and the the the the the shit trench was right next to the sink where they prep food yeah and I was like if I lived here I would start fixing this right now if I moved in there I would immediately start fixing this When we would go and take over like a building to go live in in Iraq, we would immediately start fixing stuff. Like immediately like, oh, we can put, I can put this over here.

I can, I can build a little thing. I can build a desk. I built desks for myself, built beds from, everyone did this. You just immediately start improving stuff. So here I was for three years not improving my situation. And it reminded me that that's common. It can be very common. And it reminded me not to let it happen again.

So I wanted to put myself on report in order to free up the brains and lives of everyone. Yeah. Well, that's real. I mean, I was about to say, hey, don't be too hard on yourself. But I'm not going to say that because, hey, do what you did. You sound like you solved your little problem there. But it's like I figured it out. I figured what, as you could probably imagine that happens to me all the time.

It's very common for me. One was like, you know how like in your kitchen you have cupboards, right? Yeah. Somewhere up top, some are down low. Usually down low. Well, in my case, there's like pots and stuff down there, right? So I had this one where kind of what he called the hinge was like off. Like the screw like came out of the thing.

Not fully. Just, you know how there's two hinges is one top. It was on the top. So you could open it a little bit, but if you open it all away, like the door will like fall all the way off. And you kind of know that, right? But all you got to do is open it and just sort of hold it there. You know what I'm saying? As you grab the pots and stuff, you close it.

You're good to go. But it's kind of a pain in the ass to hold it. But once you're done, this is why. This is why the same thing with you. Bray, you're not thinking about that all day? Yeah. I grab pots one time a day. Maybe.

You see what I'm saying? Just like you, whatever. And you go roll. You don't think about that thing. So you're like, whatever. That's a good point. Even though every single encounter with it, it's like that little pain in the ass, that little pain in the ass.

And it's a spectrum. Certain things play a bigger role in your day for sure. But that's what I was feeling. I was like, whatever. And then I literally forget it. But then one day I was just like, man, for a while, I don't even know why I did it. But I was like, all right. And I went and grabbed another screw, took out the old one, made another hole.

Three minutes. Yeah, literally like three minutes. And just like you, every time I go to get the pots out, I'm like, ooh, this is so luxurious. You see what I'm saying? I don't know if it saved me time necessarily, but effort. I'll tell you mental energy. But it's like we have this mental like momentum. That's why.

Because we're like, hey, if I'm going to grab some pots or you're going to go roll jujitsu, You're thinking about training. You're not thinking about putting together a shelf, shelving unit. And then you get done rolling and I get in there and I'm like, well, I'm going to go. Time to go home. Get home, get food, start working, whatever. Exactly right. You don't want to stop that momentum and then put together an IKEA shelving unit.

It's not time for that right now. Some other time. But the thing is it never works like that. You never wake up and be like, you know what, today I'm going to put together that shelving. You know, the thing that inconvenienced you for like one minute. Yeah. So it's like, you got to kind of like how you said, you got to consciously check yourself. Yeah.

Understanding and appreciating the improvement in your life is important. It's important. Here's some. I thought of three while you're explaining three that I. Three what? Other scenarios. Oh, gosh. This is like a lifestyle for you.

Yes, sir. Dave, do you even have one scenario? Are you just on it? No, I'm thinking more generically on what I'm willing to procrastinate about and what I'm not. And I guess partially to come to your defense a little bit, if there's something that needs to get done that impacts like the life of my wife specifically. And to a large degree to my kids, and I try to balance out a little bit, that stuff just gets done. It just gets done. And I don't do it because I like think I'm a great husband or a great dad, but I have this sense of like,

I got to get that thing done. If it's something that solely benefits me and I can't really draw the connection, I will sit on things. Just suck it up. As super random as it sounds, I have a towel bar in the bathroom of the office that I use that has been off the hook of the wall. And the towel just sits on my counter, the bathroom counter. My daughter came in like four days ago. The towel bar had pulled off from the hinge of the wall and she came into my office. I was working.

I wasn't like with a client, but I was working. And she's like, hey, this thing broke. And I'm like, I went downstairs, got the screwdriver, got the drill, got the new anchors. And like, you know, 17 minutes later, whatever, five minutes later, my thing is still just sitting on my kitchen or my bathroom counter. I don't know what I'm going to do it, even though I should. Yeah. So I rationalize it by going, oh, it doesn't help anybody else.

I'm not going to do it. So you could rationalize your words like, ah, it's just for me, it's not really putting me out much, right? But it's kind of like, what if every time, like, I saw you, not when we're talking. but when we weren't talking I'd like jab you in your rib or something and it's like hey like whatever it doesn't eat but if the day I stopped jabbing you're gonna feel a lot better I'll tell you that right now percent it's true throwing things away a lot of people procrastinate because you know maybe you got to cut it up you got to break it down

it's a you know it's a five-minute job to throw this thing away but once you throw it away it'll be gone then you can park what kind of things are you hoarding by the way stuff in the garage with which brings me to number two So like a lot of times, you know, you put, you buy something or something old. But while I'm, while I'm up here, just, just put myself on report. 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.

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