111: Discipline Equals Freedom by Jocko Willink

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1. 00:00:00 -Joe, you posted a picture of a keyboard and it piqued my interest.
2. 00:00:04 -It's a very nice keyboard. I'm a fan.
3. 00:00:06 I would like one that's nicer yet,
4. 00:00:09 but it is pretty good.
5. 00:00:11 For the dollars I put into it, it's pretty solid. I'll say that.
6. 00:00:14 -What did you get?
7. 00:00:16 -Do I dare spell all the details out now?
8. 00:00:18 -Yes.
9. 00:00:20 -The story here is that I am putting in a standing desk at work.
10. 00:00:26 I actually have two desks now.
11. 00:00:28 Maybe three, depending on how you look at it.
12. 00:00:31 I have my desk that's in the office area.
13. 00:00:34 Then we have a video room where we do all of our video production stuff
14. 00:00:37 for our live streams on Sunday mornings and such.
15. 00:00:40 I put a standing desk in that room.
16. 00:00:44 As part of that, I wanted things to where I could dock in multiple places.
17. 00:00:50 One of those docks is here at home,
18. 00:00:52 where I'm at right now if you're watching the live feed.
19. 00:00:54 Hi.
20. 00:00:55 The other is at that desk that I can go sit at.
21. 00:00:58 Then the third is at my new standing desk.
22. 00:01:02 The desk I sit at at work has no external keyboard.
23. 00:01:06 I just use my laptop there, so I don't really dock there.
24. 00:01:10 The standing desk, however,
25. 00:01:12 I intend to spend a decent amount of time there.
26. 00:01:14 I needed a dock, USB hubs, all the stuff,
27. 00:01:18 and decided to put in a mechanical keyboard there.
28. 00:01:24 And church, let me purchase one on their dime.
29. 00:01:29 So I picked up a keychron K8.
30. 00:01:34 So it's the 10 keyless version of their keyboard.
31. 00:01:38 And then I floated my way over to wasdkeyboards.com,
32. 00:01:42 set up a custom printed set of key caps
33. 00:01:46 and replaced all the key caps on said keyboard.
34. 00:01:49 Oh, I should note the switches on this for the mechanical nuts.
35. 00:01:53 Are the Gateron Browns.
36. 00:01:55 Because I have Cherry MX Browns in my DOS keyboard,
37. 00:01:58 which is sitting right in front of me at this moment.
38. 00:02:01 And I really, really, really have been wanting to compare the cherries to the Gaterons.
39. 00:02:06 So that experiment has begun.
40. 00:02:10 So yes, I have a new keychron.
41. 00:02:11 Nice.
42. 00:02:12 I know somebody else who just got a K8, spoiler alert, I guess.
43. 00:02:17 But I'll plug the focus podcast I do at David Sparks
44. 00:02:21 because we nerd it out about a lot of keyboard stuff in the other numbers show there.
45. 00:02:26 So I'm curious since I just had that conversation with David,
46. 00:02:31 like with the key caps, did you get PBT? Are they ABS?
47. 00:02:37 They're ABS.
48. 00:02:38 Okay. Are they double shot?
49. 00:02:41 No.
50. 00:02:42 Okay.
51. 00:02:43 Because obviously this is way down the rabbit hole.
52. 00:02:47 It is very far down the rabbit hole.
53. 00:02:50 Yeah. I do think I'm going to make a prediction right now.
54. 00:02:55 You are going to end up with eventually a new set of PBT key caps in what sort of profile did you get?
55. 00:03:06 This is the Cherry.
56. 00:03:08 Cherry profile?
57. 00:03:09 Okay.
58. 00:03:10 So a non-cherry profile, if I had to guess, I would say either an MDA,
59. 00:03:15 which is what I've got on the Melgeek Big Bone key caps that I've got.
60. 00:03:19 Or the MT3, which is the other one that nerds like us seem to really like.
61. 00:03:26 Yep. It's true.
62. 00:03:28 And you will upgrade your switches.
63. 00:03:32 That's what I got in my hot swapple cage at the beginning too, is the browns.
64. 00:03:36 Yeah.
65. 00:03:37 But I did eventually put in new ones of Holy Pandas from Drop,
66. 00:03:42 which are like an upgraded tactile switch.
67. 00:03:46 I know that's what you like too.
68. 00:03:48 So you will get another tactile switch, but I'm going to say maybe three to six months before you are unsatisfied with the browns.
69. 00:04:03 Sure.
70. 00:04:04 Sure.
71. 00:04:05 I don't know if I'm going to...
72. 00:04:08 Because here's the key, and here's the kicker.
73. 00:04:11 Not everyone realizes that a lot of... And you've probably noticed this too, because you've had both a DOS and a keychron.
74. 00:04:19 Mm-hmm.
75. 00:04:20 People don't realize that the structure of it changes the way the switches operate.
76. 00:04:26 I shouldn't say they operate. It changes the way they feel.
77. 00:04:29 And having the cherry browns on this DOS, as opposed to the Gateron browns on the keychron,
78. 00:04:39 I know a lot of people prefer the cherries over the Gaterons.
79. 00:04:42 That seems to be a fairly common opinion.
80. 00:04:45 But at this moment, that keyboard, the keychron, I'll take over this DOS any day.
81. 00:04:50 Yes, absolutely. Did you get the aluminum frame?
82. 00:04:53 Yes.
83. 00:04:54 Yeah, that's why.
84. 00:04:55 And I think that's why. It's heavier.
85. 00:04:56 Mm-hmm.
86. 00:04:57 So it doesn't ring like this one does.
87. 00:05:00 I do know, knowing the way that I type, like I like that cherry profile on it,
88. 00:05:06 but I'm not against going to like an MT3.
89. 00:05:09 Again, this is like Harley's saying in the chat,
90. 00:05:12 this is a whole 'nother language.
91. 00:05:14 That's true.
92. 00:05:15 I don't know about swapping keycaps though, or PBT,
93. 00:05:20 because like, yes, it's a different material.
94. 00:05:22 Yes, you can go double shot and get them to be nicer and such,
95. 00:05:26 but like I get that the ones I have will shine after a while.
96. 00:05:32 People talk about that.
97. 00:05:33 That's no big deal.
98. 00:05:34 Yeah, it's a fairly cheap set of keycaps that I've put on it in regards to keycaps.
99. 00:05:40 But here's the kicker, and this is why I do that.
100. 00:05:44 Joe types on a Devorac layout, which means that your standard
101. 00:05:50 QWERTY layout keyboard keycaps I cannot use.
102. 00:05:55 So whenever I'm trying to purchase said keycaps,
103. 00:06:00 I always will have to purchase two sometimes three different sets of keycaps
104. 00:06:05 to get one keyboard functional.
105. 00:06:08 That gets pricey.
106. 00:06:10 That is pricey.
107. 00:06:11 That's not just Devorac though.
108. 00:06:13 I mean, that's the keycap group buys work.
109. 00:06:17 You got to buy like the alphas and then like the tenkey lists that I've got.
110. 00:06:22 You've got the alphas and then you've got the modifier keys.
111. 00:06:27 And then because it's a, I use it with a Mac, you can get like separate Mac modifiers,
112. 00:06:33 but not all the modifiers.
113. 00:06:35 So you got to get both of those.
114. 00:06:36 Right.
115. 00:06:37 And then usually there's like a separate set for the function keys.
116. 00:06:41 And it adds up, but it does make a big difference.
117. 00:06:44 And you already told me you like the stability of the aluminum frame.
118. 00:06:47 So if you get PBT keycaps, that will make it feel even more solid.
119. 00:06:52 Can.
120. 00:06:53 Yeah.
121. 00:06:54 Well, you'll try mine and you'll be like, oh, that's nice.
122. 00:06:56 I need to get some.
123. 00:06:57 What I'm actually looking at doing is not, I think before I would swap to PBT or put in
124. 00:07:08 Holy pandas or glorious pandas or, which I think what you have is actually glorious pandas.
125. 00:07:16 There are two different types.
126. 00:07:17 Holy pandas is technically the vintage put together versions.
127. 00:07:22 So if you bought new ones, I think they're technically glorious pandas.
128. 00:07:25 If you buy them from drop, they basically go through the process, repackage them of combining
129. 00:07:30 the two sets together because it's, it's one, I forget the specifics, but it's one set of
130. 00:07:35 stems and one set of something else.
131. 00:07:38 And it's like a.
132. 00:07:39 The key.
133. 00:07:40 Yeah.
134. 00:07:41 Yeah.
135. 00:07:42 Yep.
136. 00:07:43 It is.
137. 00:07:44 It's, which is why it's fairly expensive in the world of switches.
138. 00:07:47 But anyway, what I'm getting at is I've looked at purchasing a PCB, the plate, the whole thing
139. 00:07:55 and just custom building one.
140. 00:07:58 That's what I'm debating doing because for the cost for me, whenever I'm doing all of
141. 00:08:04 this, it's expensive enough that I might as well, I might as well just custom build what
142. 00:08:10 I want.
143. 00:08:11 And you can get one that's significantly heavier, heavier has a brass plate in the back of it
144. 00:08:15 and it just sits super, super nice.
145. 00:08:17 So anyway, keyboards.
146. 00:08:19 I'm very happy for you.
147. 00:08:22 It looks really nice.
148. 00:08:24 I don't think you're done.
149. 00:08:25 That's all.
150. 00:08:26 No, I don't intend to be done.
151. 00:08:28 I just know like the keycap thing, last thing I'll say, I looked at whenever I was looking
152. 00:08:34 at doing this, the drop had the Apple.
153. 00:08:38 What was the 1983?
154. 00:08:40 What was the 1984?
155. 00:08:41 Yep.
156. 00:08:42 The extended 2048.
157. 00:08:43 Yep.
158. 00:08:44 So yeah, so there you go.
159. 00:08:45 They had those available.
160. 00:08:47 I could get everything I wanted in that.
161. 00:08:50 You want to take a crack at what it was going to cost me to do that?
162. 00:08:53 Probably about 80 bucks, 90 bucks.
163. 00:08:55 210.
164. 00:08:57 That's what it was going to cost me to get what I needed.
165. 00:08:59 Wow.
166. 00:09:00 Because I had to buy so many of the subsets in order to get just a standard 10 keyless
167. 00:09:04 setup in Devorac with the, granted I wanted some of the colored function keys and stuff
168. 00:09:10 around it.
169. 00:09:11 Yep.
170. 00:09:12 So I wanted those.
171. 00:09:13 Yeah, I was going to be over $200 time.
172. 00:09:15 I got it all put together.
173. 00:09:16 Oh man.
174. 00:09:17 It's like, I can't justify that one.
175. 00:09:18 All right.
176. 00:09:19 Well, we can move on, but we don't really have any follow up.
177. 00:09:22 So figured we'd nerd out about keyboards for a little while.
178. 00:09:26 Keyboards.
179. 00:09:27 A couple that I mentioned in the last episode that I didn't really have anything specific
180. 00:09:31 I was going to do with.
181. 00:09:32 I was just messing around with the way that I was journaling, but was pretty happy with
182. 00:09:36 the way that it was working.
183. 00:09:38 So I mentioned like using different colored highlights for different journal entries.
184. 00:09:43 I never figured out a way to do this.
185. 00:09:44 I'm not doing this.
186. 00:09:45 What I'm doing is working great.
187. 00:09:47 I'm going to keep doing stuff in Rome.
188. 00:09:48 I'm going to keep using the journal entries and to keep doing the gratitude.
189. 00:09:51 I'm going to keep doing the daily questions.
190. 00:09:53 Yeah.
191. 00:09:54 I've messed with this enough.
192. 00:09:56 I'm just going to lean into what's, what's working.
193. 00:09:58 So sure.
194. 00:09:59 And you did not have any action items.
195. 00:10:01 So I think that means we are ready to talk about today's book, which I'm a little bit
196. 00:10:08 nervous about.
197. 00:10:10 Then equals freedom by Jack O'Willink.
198. 00:10:13 We read Extreme Ownership.
199. 00:10:15 Another Jacko book.
200. 00:10:16 We both really liked it.
201. 00:10:17 I think we both rated it 5.0.
202. 00:10:19 This book is good.
203. 00:10:23 We also read this the week that the government was almost overthrown in the US.
204. 00:10:28 It's true.
205. 00:10:29 So that made it a little bit tricky with all of it because he's the next marine.
206. 00:10:34 There's obviously a lot of military language in this book.
207. 00:10:37 Navy Seal.
208. 00:10:38 Yes, you're right.
209. 00:10:39 Navy Seal.
210. 00:10:40 I'm just pointing that out.
211. 00:10:42 People will point that one out right away.
212. 00:10:44 That's a big difference.
213. 00:10:45 You're right.
214. 00:10:47 And yeah, so I don't know.
215. 00:10:49 Did you have the same sort of reaction when you were going through this?
216. 00:10:53 Like maybe six months ago, this would have been an easier read, but kind of the tone
217. 00:10:58 that he uses throughout.
218. 00:11:00 I don't know.
219. 00:11:02 It kind of left a little bit of a bad taste in my mouth, to be honest.
220. 00:11:06 But I don't think that's his fault.
221. 00:11:07 Really?
222. 00:11:08 I can't say it struck me that way at all.
223. 00:11:10 I have a tendency to compartmentalize quite a bit.
224. 00:11:15 So I shouldn't say quite a bit.
225. 00:11:17 I do that on occasion.
226. 00:11:19 And then in this case, I did.
227. 00:11:21 And I can't say that I had, as I was watching what was going on in the Capitol, it was more
228. 00:11:28 like, my perspective was really people.
229. 00:11:31 Come on.
230. 00:11:32 Yeah.
231. 00:11:33 So reading this, I was very focused on me, not necessarily other people with it.
232. 00:11:40 Yep.
233. 00:11:41 Which is his intent.
234. 00:11:42 Yeah.
235. 00:11:43 So I think that's probably why it didn't really hit me that way.
236. 00:11:47 So it didn't leave a bad taste in my mouth.
237. 00:11:50 I have a lot of, like I've got my notes here.
238. 00:11:55 I don't normally share these, but here you go.
239. 00:11:58 I got my bank of notes.
240. 00:11:59 Maybe I should share these on the club.
241. 00:12:01 I just do it.
242. 00:12:03 I don't know if you can read it or not.
243. 00:12:05 But I have, what is it, number one on this list?
244. 00:12:09 Of course, a military dude will tell me to use discipline.
245. 00:12:12 That was my first note on this book.
246. 00:12:16 Yep.
247. 00:12:17 We'll get into that in a little bit here.
248. 00:12:20 But I will just point out a couple of these chapter titles.
249. 00:12:25 For lack of a better term, basically, every two pages is a chapter.
250. 00:12:28 It's kind of like the Seth Godin, the creative version of discipline by a Navy Seal.
251. 00:12:36 Yeah.
252. 00:12:37 It's that approach to the topic.
253. 00:12:40 It's well done, which we'll get into the specifics here.
254. 00:12:42 But some of these chapters are like Draw Fire, The War Path, Destroy Your Mode, Scorched Earth.
255. 00:12:52 So know that going in.
256. 00:12:53 If that's going to bother you, maybe you don't want to pick this one up.
257. 00:12:59 But I do agree with you that I think I'm able to distill the message that he's talking
258. 00:13:04 about and kind of look past some of that stuff.
259. 00:13:07 Sure.
260. 00:13:08 Because what he's got to say is pretty good.
261. 00:13:11 I think it's different than extreme ownership, that's for sure.
262. 00:13:15 It's basically all Jaco.
263. 00:13:17 It's all like his little bits of wisdom.
264. 00:13:23 The book is organized into really four different sections with a fifth.
265. 00:13:27 That's the appendix.
266. 00:13:29 So I put it in the outline, but I don't think we'll really spend a whole lot of time there.
267. 00:13:32 Part one is thoughts.
268. 00:13:33 Part two is actions.
269. 00:13:35 Part three is not labeled part three, but it's fuel feeding the machine.
270. 00:13:41 Part four, Repair and Maintenance, Injury Prevention and Recovery.
271. 00:13:43 And then part five, that's the appendix.
272. 00:13:45 All of the workouts that he recommends.
273. 00:13:47 I want to point out real quick before he gets too far, just off of those titles.
274. 00:13:52 I think he intentionally chose not to go part three, part four.
275. 00:13:58 Because in his mind, he's talking about thoughts that then drive actions.
276. 00:14:04 And then he's got the fuel, Repair and Maintenance and then the appendix.
277. 00:14:07 And I think those last three pieces are like an augmentation to part two.
278. 00:14:12 I agree with you.
279. 00:14:14 However, the format of the book itself, like the section titles, look exactly the same.
280. 00:14:23 There are two page spread with a big title with what's going to be covered next.
281. 00:14:30 And so there isn't a clear classification.
282. 00:14:33 If you're going to do a standard outline, like this one is under this one.
283. 00:14:37 But that's the impression I got to when I was going through it.
284. 00:14:40 So.
285. 00:14:41 Yeah.
286. 00:14:42 How long did it take you to read this?
287. 00:14:43 I'm not going to be wrong at all.
288. 00:14:44 This was a very quick one for me.
289. 00:14:46 I actually went like I actually flipped through the entire book this morning before this, just
290. 00:14:52 as a refresher because it's been, I don't know, a while back now since I finished reading
291. 00:14:56 it.
292. 00:14:57 So I wanted to bring it back in my mind.
293. 00:14:59 And it only took about 20 minutes to flip through it all and have it all recur where it
294. 00:15:04 normally would take me about an hour to do something like that, which is why I don't
295. 00:15:07 normally do it.
296. 00:15:08 Yeah.
297. 00:15:09 So it was it's a very, very quick one.
298. 00:15:11 It's also a very beautiful book.
299. 00:15:14 If you can describe a military book with a bunch of pictures of guys yelling at you.
300. 00:15:19 That's beautiful.
301. 00:15:21 But it is this black and silver.
302. 00:15:24 This is like an embossed cover.
303. 00:15:25 It's kind of like a cloth cover.
304. 00:15:27 And then all of the pages have their full bleed pages and they have the block lettering,
305. 00:15:35 which kind of fits the military aesthetic and then different pictures that they use for
306. 00:15:39 the background.
307. 00:15:40 My favorite one of those is I think it's put down the donut where it's Jaco like standing
308. 00:15:45 there with his arm, like pointing at somebody like is yelling at you.
309. 00:15:52 But it's so it's very visually interesting.
310. 00:15:56 And I feel like it really fits the message that he's trying to get out, which is all
311. 00:16:01 about discipline.
312. 00:16:02 There's some interesting stuff in here because he specifically speaks to some things that
313. 00:16:08 we have heard in the productivity space for many years.
314. 00:16:12 And he's like, no, that's wrong.
315. 00:16:13 And I don't think I believe Jaco, but we'll talk about some of that.
316. 00:16:17 Sure.
317. 00:16:18 So let's jump in here with part one.
318. 00:16:21 We'll break this down and talk about the different parts.
319. 00:16:23 I've jotted down some bullet points under each one of these because again, these chapters
320. 00:16:28 are basically two pages, a lot of times, sometimes three, sometimes one with some text
321. 00:16:35 on the page and it's not even like you would typically read text in a printed book.
322. 00:16:41 It's kind of artistically designed.
323. 00:16:43 You know, he's putting the words different places, making stuff bigger so that it pops
324. 00:16:47 and it's almost like you're reading a visual of a podcast.
325. 00:16:53 Maybe that's where a lot of this stuff came from.
326. 00:16:55 I don't know.
327. 00:16:56 I don't listen to the Jaco podcast.
328. 00:16:57 I know some people do.
329. 00:16:58 I don't either.
330. 00:16:59 Yeah.
331. 00:17:00 But so this first section, if you look at the mine note file for this, this is like three
332. 00:17:04 force of the mine note file.
333. 00:17:06 It's this one section.
334. 00:17:08 So the mine note file is the first branch is orange.
335. 00:17:12 So there's a lot of orange in this one, but I grabbed a couple of things here that kind
336. 00:17:16 of jumped out to me.
337. 00:17:18 And I think there's some topics here that we can kind of dissect.
338. 00:17:22 And we, I really don't have like a specific direction for this.
339. 00:17:26 I kind of want to see where this is going to go.
340. 00:17:28 But obviously the place to start here because the title is discipline equals freedom is
341. 00:17:32 to talk about discipline itself.
342. 00:17:36 He defines it very first chapter, the way of discipline.
343. 00:17:39 He says that the shortcut is a lie.
344. 00:17:41 There is no easy way and that discipline is the root of all good qualities.
345. 00:17:45 You're going to hear that theme over and over as you go through this book.
346. 00:17:48 It doesn't matter what you feel like.
347. 00:17:50 Just shut up and do it.
348. 00:17:52 Ah, on one hand, I don't really like that.
349. 00:17:56 But on the other hand, I feel like maybe that's what I needed.
350. 00:17:59 Like as I'm going through this and he's telling me to get up early and stuff like that, I'm
351. 00:18:01 like, Hey, yeah, you know what?
352. 00:18:02 I should get up early here.
353. 00:18:05 So maybe it's effective.
354. 00:18:06 I don't know.
355. 00:18:07 What was your response to this?
356. 00:18:08 This the thing that kept going through my head was the Nike slogan, just do it.
357. 00:18:12 Yeah.
358. 00:18:13 I had that recurring through my brain the entire time.
359. 00:18:18 I read this.
360. 00:18:20 I have kind of a split opinion on this, partially because and you and I were talking about it
361. 00:18:27 this beforehand.
362. 00:18:28 If yesterday I formally had my ADD diagnosed and in the in the middle of experimenting
363. 00:18:35 on medication with it, which is why today might be interesting.
364. 00:18:39 But flipping through that this morning, being on medication for that, it hit me very differently
365. 00:18:46 than it did when I first read it because when I first read it, I was like, dude, you
366. 00:18:50 don't know my brain.
367. 00:18:51 This doesn't work.
368. 00:18:52 You can't just tell me to just get up and go like just do the thing you got to do.
369. 00:18:56 Like that doesn't work.
370. 00:18:58 So I was very frustrated with him when I did that previous when I went through it the first
371. 00:19:04 time.
372. 00:19:05 And when I flipped through it this morning, I remember thinking, you know, being on medication
373. 00:19:10 at the time was like, maybe that would work.
374. 00:19:13 I don't know.
375. 00:19:15 So I'm not real sure my opinion on this at the moment because I it yes, that changes things.
376. 00:19:21 But I know that when I have people say, just don't do it.
377. 00:19:27 Yes, I get that that can work for some people.
378. 00:19:32 And at the same time he talks about excuses.
379. 00:19:35 Like there's always something you bring up.
380. 00:19:38 It's like, well, no, it's not going to work that way because of X, Y and Z.
381. 00:19:41 Like the donut just looks good.
382. 00:19:43 It's like, no, don't eat it.
383. 00:19:45 Grow up.
384. 00:19:46 Like that's essentially his message.
385. 00:19:49 So if you need a kick in the pants and you need a book to just motivate you, like this
386. 00:19:55 is it.
387. 00:19:56 Like, this is just especially this first section, like motivate, motivate, motivate.
388. 00:20:00 That's what this is.
389. 00:20:01 What do you think about the value of that approach for where we're at right now?
390. 00:20:07 I mean, there's a lot of crazy stuff happening.
391. 00:20:09 We're still in the COVID times.
392. 00:20:13 And I know when that all started, it was a shock to a lot of people, a lot of people,
393. 00:20:19 even if you were working from home, you got to figure things out because now everybody's
394. 00:20:22 at home with you all the time.
395. 00:20:24 And I remember doing a webinar with Sean Blonk when that started back to basics because
396. 00:20:31 everything that you knew was overnight wrong.
397. 00:20:36 And I remember Sean sharing during that that he felt that even though he had all this stuff
398. 00:20:42 dialed in and his day to day didn't really change, that he was 75% effective from where
399. 00:20:50 he was prior.
400. 00:20:52 And I feel like when that happened, a lot of people just needed some permission not to
401. 00:20:57 be productive.
402. 00:20:59 Jocko obviously would completely disagree with that.
403. 00:21:02 Correct.
404. 00:21:03 Yeah.
405. 00:21:04 He would tell you that's a complete fail.
406. 00:21:05 Yep.
407. 00:21:06 So what do you think is the right approach here?
408. 00:21:08 Is it, you know what, just take it easy and eventually things will figure themselves out?
409. 00:21:13 Is it, no, you just got to shut up and do it like Jocko's saying, is it something in
410. 00:21:17 the middle?
411. 00:21:18 It's a good question.
412. 00:21:19 My sense is it's somewhere in the middle, but I think if you were to, this is the issue.
413. 00:21:25 When you tell people you can go into the middle or if you tell people it's okay to be unproductive
414. 00:21:32 in this period, you're giving them an excuse to not do things.
415. 00:21:36 He talks to that specifically.
416. 00:21:37 He's like, the problem with once is that it's never just once.
417. 00:21:41 Correct.
418. 00:21:42 Slippery slope.
419. 00:21:43 So that's the issue that comes up here.
420. 00:21:47 So you give people permission whenever you say you can do something in the middle.
421. 00:21:51 You don't have to go to the extreme of what Jocko is going to.
422. 00:21:56 I don't think that's bad for everybody, but I think this is where the value of the book
423. 00:22:02 comes in too, because you have him telling you, get off the couch, get up at four in the
424. 00:22:09 morning, do your massive workout in the morning, learn Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and keep
425. 00:22:17 going whether you want to or not.
426. 00:22:19 I feel fine.
427. 00:22:20 Like that's another thing.
428. 00:22:22 So I get his perspective as far as what I would do.
429. 00:22:30 This is not something I would write, not something I would necessarily promote this
430. 00:22:35 level of get stuff done, but at the same time, I'm very grateful for having read this too,
431. 00:22:43 because it is exactly what we're talking about.
432. 00:22:47 It is very motivating.
433. 00:22:48 It makes you want to go do stuff.
434. 00:22:50 Yeah.
435. 00:22:51 It doesn't really matter what it is.
436. 00:22:52 The one thing, like one of the things that I struggled with this, and he does address
437. 00:22:56 it in some places here and there, but the vast majority of this motivation and the discipline
438. 00:23:02 that he's talking about involves physical actions.
439. 00:23:05 It's not necessarily thinking work.
440. 00:23:10 It's physical work that he talks about almost all.
441. 00:23:13 Even the pictures that are the backdrop for the words on the page that you were talking
442. 00:23:17 about, they are all 100% involving a gym in some form.
443. 00:23:24 Yep.
444. 00:23:25 Did you catch that?
445. 00:23:26 There are times when he's yelling, but if you pay attention in the background, he's
446. 00:23:29 at a gym when that all happens.
447. 00:23:32 So all of the photos here are from a gym.
448. 00:23:35 So I kind of get, the part of this that kind of frustrated me was that this is geared almost
449. 00:23:42 exclusively toward exercise.
450. 00:23:45 He doesn't say that, but the tone is that.
451. 00:23:50 It definitely is that.
452. 00:23:51 You're right.
453. 00:23:52 I think his approach is that if you take care of the body, if you push yourself physically
454. 00:24:00 to become strong and you discipline yourself to eat the right things, then that is going
455. 00:24:06 to affect all the other areas.
456. 00:24:08 He does talk about how the mind is affected by the body, but it's not a huge emphasis.
457. 00:24:12 You're right.
458. 00:24:13 It's easy to lose the forest through the trees.
459. 00:24:19 The thing I'm struggling with, Funky Mosquito talks about this in the chat.
460. 00:24:24 Mentiones that they like Marshall Goldsmith's daily questions because you can have a poor
461. 00:24:28 day without it being so binary.
462. 00:24:30 There's actually a chapter in here called the binary code.
463. 00:24:33 Yes, I was going to bring that up.
464. 00:24:35 And he says there isn't anything in between.
465. 00:24:38 It's just yes or no.
466. 00:24:40 And I have that same thought of like, this feels very different than a lot of the stuff
467. 00:24:47 that we have read.
468. 00:24:49 And part of me wants to just tell Jaco, hey, lighten up buddy, don't you know where we
469. 00:24:54 find ourselves right now?
470. 00:24:56 But then every time I had that thought, I'm like, you know what?
471. 00:25:00 I think he's right.
472. 00:25:03 As much as I don't like it.
473. 00:25:06 I think he's right.
474. 00:25:07 I think he's very in your face, very direct and confrontational in his message.
475. 00:25:15 But I don't think he's wrong in a lot of what he says.
476. 00:25:20 Yeah, yeah.
477. 00:25:22 And when he says stuff like willpower isn't real, you just do it and then the willpower
478. 00:25:29 comes.
479. 00:25:31 We read the willpower instinct.
480. 00:25:33 We've heard forever that willpower is a finite resource and you got to conserve it.
481. 00:25:38 And this is why Steve Jobs wore the same thing every day.
482. 00:25:41 Yada yada yada.
483. 00:25:42 I'm like, yep.
484. 00:25:44 I've been in that place where I know he's right.
485. 00:25:47 Like, if I just do the thing, whether I feel like it or not, it becomes easier to just
486. 00:25:52 continue to do the thing.
487. 00:25:55 So part of this, I'm reading it and I'm hearing him and I want to argue with him, but it's
488. 00:26:00 a book.
489. 00:26:01 I can't really argue with him.
490. 00:26:02 It's not going to do anything.
491. 00:26:03 And then part of me is like, you know what?
492. 00:26:05 If you were to argue against this, you're really just hurting yourself anyways.
493. 00:26:07 So just shut up like he says and do the thing.
494. 00:26:11 Right.
495. 00:26:12 Right.
496. 00:26:13 I think you maybe have to come at this from a different angle too.
497. 00:26:16 So there are a lot of people who are considered quote unquote successful to find that however
498. 00:26:24 you like, whether that's spending time with family every day or releasing content every
499. 00:26:31 30 seconds or, you know, whatever successful is, you can find people who have done that
500. 00:26:40 or who have been in those shoes.
501. 00:26:43 And then you can pay attention to what they do day to day and how they think.
502. 00:26:48 Like generally you can learn how they think about things.
503. 00:26:51 If you find the people who are doing the thing you want to do, determine what their
504. 00:26:55 mindsets are, their mental models teaser to something you can start to adopt those.
505. 00:27:04 If you consider that and think about what Jaco is doing here, think about the lifestyle
506. 00:27:08 and the things that he does.
507. 00:27:10 So he's a motivator as mosquito is saying in the chat, I think he has a supplements
508. 00:27:16 business.
509. 00:27:17 So that might be involved here as well.
510. 00:27:19 So he actually doesn't talk about supplements in the book though.
511. 00:27:22 He talks about the diet that he recommends, the caveman diet, which we'll get to.
512. 00:27:28 Yep.
513. 00:27:29 So look at Jaco's life and the things that he does or in this case, take a look at the
514. 00:27:35 life of Navy seals after they've left military world.
515. 00:27:43 And once they've left, once they have come back to civilian life, what are the things
516. 00:27:49 that they generally do?
517. 00:27:50 And if those things are things that you aspire to, the motivation and the way that Jaco thinks
518. 00:27:56 is exactly what you need.
519. 00:27:59 You see what I'm saying?
520. 00:28:00 Like if that's the lifestyle that you want to pursue, I'm trying to remember I ran across
521. 00:28:04 this on the Ugmunk site, Jeff Sheldon, because he's, Jeff Sheldon's actually coming to analog
522. 00:28:10 Joe here in February, which will be nice.
523. 00:28:13 So he's going to talk us through his analog card system.
524. 00:28:16 Anyway, I was looking through their site and he has that classic story of the Chinese
525. 00:28:22 fisherman that had had caught tuna and was coming back and he'd only caught so much for
526. 00:28:27 his family for the day because he wanted to go home and spend time with his kids, sleep
527. 00:28:33 late, sip on wine all afternoon.
528. 00:28:36 These are the things that he wanted to do.
529. 00:28:38 But the businessman says, you could go catch a whole bunch, you could earn a lot of money,
530. 00:28:43 he goes back and forth with this fisherman and says, essentially, well, if I do all that
531. 00:28:46 and I make all this money, then what?
532. 00:28:48 It's like, well, once you've spent all your extra time earning all this money, once you're
533. 00:28:52 done with that, you can sleep in late and you can spend your afternoon sipping wine and
534. 00:28:56 go home to the kids at night.
535. 00:28:57 It's like, well, that's what I'm doing now.
536. 00:29:02 So it's that mindset too.
537. 00:29:04 So depending on which side of the spectrum you want to sit on, I think you have to decide
538. 00:29:10 if you want to dive in deep with what Jaco is saying here or if you want to back off
539. 00:29:16 from that a bit.
540. 00:29:17 If you want to go to bed early and sleep late and not be up at 4.30am and take a picture
541. 00:29:22 of your watch like Jaco does every day.
542. 00:29:24 If you want to, I'm not kidding, check out his Instagram.
543. 00:29:28 So if you want to do that, go for it.
544. 00:29:32 I think that's a bit extreme for me.
545. 00:29:35 I don't think I'm going to go down that road, but I can see why some people do because again,
546. 00:29:39 that lifestyle is one that I think a lot of people would aspire to.
547. 00:29:44 I think maybe there is a version of this though that is general enough to say this is the
548. 00:29:54 way.
549. 00:29:56 Maybe it's not getting up at 4.30, but maybe it is going to bed earlier getting up earlier
550. 00:30:01 than you currently are.
551. 00:30:03 I do think there's a lot of stuff in here that rings of truth to me.
552. 00:30:08 Like on page 39 he talks about how the people who are successful decide they are going to
553. 00:30:12 be successful.
554. 00:30:13 Now he's very goal driven.
555. 00:30:16 I'm not a huge fan of goals in the traditional sense of the word, but really what he's talking
556. 00:30:23 about here is a vision and values that you are working towards.
557. 00:30:28 And that I agree with.
558. 00:30:29 If you have a strong vision for what you want your life to look like, then show up every
559. 00:30:35 day, have a bias towards action, which is essentially what he's saying.
560. 00:30:39 That seems like great advice to me, to be honest.
561. 00:30:41 And some of the stuff he said I think brings a different way of looking at it that I hadn't
562. 00:30:45 really thought of it that way before.
563. 00:30:47 He talks about focus, he talks about motivation, but the way that he talks about it is a little
564. 00:30:55 bit different.
565. 00:30:56 There was a chapter in here called Not Feeling It.
566. 00:31:01 And this is again the bias towards action idea.
567. 00:31:04 And he says, "Do it anyway, even if you're just going through the motions, that's kind
568. 00:31:09 of like James Clear atomic habits.
569. 00:31:11 Don't miss a day.
570. 00:31:12 The bad workouts are the important ones."
571. 00:31:14 And then he talks about procrastination.
572. 00:31:20 And this I thought was kind of brilliant.
573. 00:31:22 This is one of my big aha moments from this book.
574. 00:31:25 He says, "Precrastinate on taking a break."
575. 00:31:27 I never really thought of it that way.
576. 00:31:30 Usually when I think of procrastination, it's like, "Well, I have this article to write
577. 00:31:32 because I have this deadline that's due and I drag in my feet because I'm not feeling
578. 00:31:37 it."
579. 00:31:38 And he's saying, "Well, flip that on its head basically and when you're not feeling
580. 00:31:42 it and you want to take that break, procrastinate on taking the break.
581. 00:31:44 Develop that bias towards action so that it's so strong that it compels you to just do it
582. 00:31:49 anyways.
583. 00:31:51 And then if you procrastinate on taking the break and say, "Well, I'll do this first
584. 00:31:54 and then I'll take the break if I want to.
585. 00:31:55 I'll take the break tomorrow.
586. 00:31:56 You know, tomorrow you're not going to feel like it.
587. 00:31:58 Tomorrow you're going to want to show up and do the thing because that's consistent with
588. 00:32:02 your character and who you are."
589. 00:32:04 I mean, this reminds me a lot of habits.
590. 00:32:08 I think it's FML Alexander that the quote that people don't decide their future is they
591. 00:32:12 decide their habits.
592. 00:32:13 Their habits determine their future is there's some version of that.
593. 00:32:17 You don't rise to the level of your goals.
594. 00:32:19 You fall to the level of your systems.
595. 00:32:21 I mean, I don't think he's wrong.
596. 00:32:25 I just am struggling with like, "How do I apply this?"
597. 00:32:28 Because as we'll talk about in the next couple of sections, like some of the specifics here,
598. 00:32:31 you know, "I'm not a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu guy."
599. 00:32:35 No, I'm not either.
600. 00:32:37 But I don't know, I do think there is a lot in this thoughts part which if you were to
601. 00:32:46 read just one section of this book, this would be the one to focus on because there's things
602. 00:32:51 that you will, especially if you're familiar with a lot of the stuff that we read for Bookworm,
603. 00:32:55 this is going to say some of those concepts in different ways and it's going to cause
604. 00:32:58 you to kind of get a more complete picture of some things.
605. 00:33:02 I feel like the focus section is another one that I really like.
606. 00:33:05 This is focus comes easy in combat because the battle's right in front of you.
607. 00:33:09 I agree with that.
608. 00:33:11 That makes so much sense.
609. 00:33:13 If a fight is brought to you, like you're going to confront it, you're going to do the
610. 00:33:16 right thing in that specific situation.
611. 00:33:20 So as it pertains to the things that you say you want to do, then maybe you do need to
612. 00:33:25 have his attitude of the war path and every day, like you show up to ready to fight, you
613. 00:33:31 know, but not, I don't know.
614. 00:33:34 Like that's the part that kind of made this hard to digest for me is like, I don't view
615. 00:33:40 showing up and doing my morning routine as fighting the enemy.
616. 00:33:44 Yeah.
617. 00:33:45 But maybe that's just because I've done it long enough that it's easier for me to do
618. 00:33:50 that.
619. 00:33:51 You know, I'm working on an update to the best habit tracking app pick for the sweet setup.
620. 00:33:56 I think I shared on Twitter a screenshot.
621. 00:33:58 I've got a whole page full of habit trackers.
622. 00:34:00 Oh, that's easy bullet journal.
623. 00:34:02 That didn't work for me.
624. 00:34:06 I'm back on, back on streaks, which I never turned off the automations that I have there
625. 00:34:10 for like Bible reading and prayer, because I use apps for those things.
626. 00:34:13 And so when I went back into streaks to test things, my streak is at like 467 days in a
627. 00:34:19 row.
628. 00:34:20 Nice.
629. 00:34:21 So nice.
630. 00:34:22 I've developed some of this stuff and I have some momentum already.
631. 00:34:25 I'm trying to disconnect from that though and put myself back in the shoes as somebody
632. 00:34:29 who's come into this for the first time, like how would they respond to Joel Sargent,
633. 00:34:34 Jaco, Yellen Adam, Screaming Adam?
634. 00:34:36 I don't know.
635. 00:34:38 But that doesn't mean I think that he's off base with any of this stuff in this first
636. 00:34:42 section anyways.
637. 00:34:44 The comment he makes about when you're in battle, the task is right in front of you,
638. 00:34:48 so it's easy to focus.
639. 00:34:51 There's, there's a, I've been realizing this lately.
640. 00:34:54 So I grew up on a farm.
641. 00:34:57 And it occurred to me like when I worked on the farm, I never had an issue deciding what
642. 00:35:03 to do and what came next.
643. 00:35:06 It was very plain.
644. 00:35:08 And I think that's partially because the length of time it takes to do each task, harvest a
645. 00:35:13 field that could take anywhere from three hours to three days to do that one task.
646. 00:35:21 Now of course you've got some maintenance and, you know, starting up operating, unloading.
647. 00:35:26 You've got all those little tiny things, but it's a whole process that just repeats.
648. 00:35:31 So harvest that field is a very long task.
649. 00:35:37 Send that email is a very short task and you could have a hundred of those in one day.
650. 00:35:42 But I'm like, when you're on a farm, like you may have one task and you're going to
651. 00:35:45 do that one task all day long.
652. 00:35:48 But when we work on computers and the type of thing that we do, like you can do so many
653. 00:35:52 things because they're so short.
654. 00:35:55 And I wonder if that's partially what makes some of these things difficult to focus on.
655. 00:36:01 But I don't think he dove into it deep enough on that part.
656. 00:36:05 Like that aspect of it, of how do you translate focus from a battlefield to a corporate desk?
657. 00:36:14 That translation doesn't happen.
658. 00:36:15 You have to try to make those connections in your brain on your own.
659. 00:36:19 So I wish he would have made that connection.
660. 00:36:21 That's why I was saying earlier.
661. 00:36:23 This talks a lot about physical actions.
662. 00:36:26 Like when you're on a battlefield, it's all physical.
663. 00:36:28 Yes, you're making some decisions, but those are small pieces of what's going on.
664. 00:36:34 A lot of what's going on is physical.
665. 00:36:38 So I really wanted that translation.
666. 00:36:39 It just wasn't there.
667. 00:36:41 You're right.
668. 00:36:42 It's not there.
669. 00:36:43 I think I'm a little bit different though.
670. 00:36:45 Like I don't want Jaco telling me how to apply battle principles to the knowledge you were.
671. 00:36:51 That's very fair.
672. 00:36:53 I'll listen to Seth Godin for that sort of stuff.
673. 00:36:57 Yes.
674. 00:36:58 Here's how you handle this corporate meeting.
675. 00:36:59 Make sure you bring your Jiu Jitsu black belt and make sure you get your handgun ready
676. 00:37:03 and be set.
677. 00:37:05 That's how this is going to go.
678. 00:37:07 I remember when we read Extreme Ownership, because that book there is the story from
679. 00:37:13 Combat and then the Leadership Principle, which Leadership again is a big thing here.
680. 00:37:19 There's actually a chapter here in this first section called Leadership Vacuum.
681. 00:37:24 And basically it talks about how or what happens when no one rises up to lead.
682. 00:37:31 That's a leadership vacuum and he says that can happen in your own head as well when you
683. 00:37:34 don't make a decision.
684. 00:37:35 So this is kind of like personal leadership here.
685. 00:37:40 Right.
686. 00:37:41 But and then the last part of the chapters in Extreme Ownership is the application to
687. 00:37:45 business.
688. 00:37:46 I remember reading some of those business stories and I was like, this doesn't seem as strong
689. 00:37:52 as the other parts of the book.
690. 00:37:55 And I get why they did it.
691. 00:37:57 That's what the business they were trying to build once they they came back and were
692. 00:38:02 no longer in the Navy Seals.
693. 00:38:06 So I think that that does work for a lot of people, but there isn't a direct translation
694. 00:38:12 between those.
695. 00:38:13 So like they probably work very successfully with some types of business people, but not
696. 00:38:19 all types of business people, if that makes sense.
697. 00:38:23 So you get a less, less complete application of it and a different, as soon as you change
698. 00:38:31 the arena.
699. 00:38:33 So I'm personally okay with him sticking to like the physical exercise, personal leadership
700. 00:38:40 side of this, not speaking to the desk jockeys or the knowledge workers.
701. 00:38:47 But I can see how to original point, if you are in one of those categories, you do read
702. 00:38:54 just this book in isolation and you're like, well, what do I do with this?
703. 00:38:59 And to be honest, I don't really know exactly what I'm going to do with this.
704. 00:39:03 I've got a couple of action items, which we'll get to, but I don't think they are knowledge
705. 00:39:08 work related.
706. 00:39:10 Yeah.
707. 00:39:11 So that's true.
708. 00:39:13 Because I think you're absolutely right.
709. 00:39:14 There are some things that I would want.
710. 00:39:18 Jocko's advice on, I'd take his advice on diet and exercise any day of the week, but showing
711. 00:39:26 me how to manage my code projects.
712. 00:39:29 Yeah.
713. 00:39:30 Maybe.
714. 00:39:31 I mean, he needs to do some talking, like a lot of talking to get me to the point where
715. 00:39:36 I feel like I would trust his opinion on how that works.
716. 00:39:40 And maybe that's because I don't want to listen to him on this.
717. 00:39:46 That's the other side of that coin is maybe I'm saying we don't, or both of us maybe,
718. 00:39:52 we don't want to listen to him in that knowledge work arena because he's right and we don't
719. 00:39:56 want to admit it.
720. 00:39:57 Yeah.
721. 00:39:58 No, that's true.
722. 00:40:00 So on that topic, I think there's something in the middle.
723. 00:40:04 So you mentioned the farm example and how like you can have a task where you're working
724. 00:40:08 all day.
725. 00:40:09 And then as soon as you get that task done, it is instantly clear what the next thing
726. 00:40:15 is for you to do.
727. 00:40:17 And it is not again, not a five minute task.
728. 00:40:21 But for a lot of us, that's what we do is we break things down into the smallest possible
729. 00:40:27 steps and then we have all this technology, which makes stuff super, super efficient.
730. 00:40:34 But we don't show up and do the work anyway.
731. 00:40:36 So, right.
732. 00:40:38 We are the limiting factor, which again, I don't want him to tell me how to plan my
733. 00:40:43 projects and use Omni focus, but he doesn't have to.
734. 00:40:47 He's already told me like you got to have that bias towards action.
735. 00:40:50 That's the next bullet.
736. 00:40:51 I jotted down.
737. 00:40:52 There's a couple different chapters here that deal with just begin, show up every day.
738. 00:40:57 Make sure that you take action.
739. 00:40:59 They're all basically saying that same thing.
740. 00:41:02 You got to show up consistently.
741. 00:41:03 You got to do it all the time.
742. 00:41:05 And that is not hard to translate for a knowledge worker.
743. 00:41:08 Those articles that you have to write or whatever you have to do, just stop dragging your feet
744. 00:41:12 sit down on your keyboard and write the dumb thing.
745. 00:41:15 And I don't know when I say that to myself.
746. 00:41:19 I'm like, yeah, you already know what to do.
747. 00:41:21 Just do it.
748. 00:41:23 Which is his point, really?
749. 00:41:25 Yep.
750. 00:41:26 Even though he's not a knowledge worker, he doesn't need to know all those details.
751. 00:41:30 He just needs to get my butt in the chair, my hands on the keys and get me moving, which
752. 00:41:35 that party's really good at.
753. 00:41:37 Which I think is the value of the book, honestly.
754. 00:41:40 Yeah.
755. 00:41:41 So this first chapter, this first section though, this theme comes up a bunch of different
756. 00:41:46 times.
757. 00:41:47 He says it a bunch of different ways.
758. 00:41:49 I don't think he's wrong for doing that though.
759. 00:41:53 Whatever it is that finally makes you take action, that's exactly what you need.
760. 00:41:57 So in the begin chapter, he talks about don't reason with weakness.
761. 00:42:01 Just get up and go.
762. 00:42:02 And towards the end, he's got one action you.
763. 00:42:05 He says, thoughts are not enough.
764. 00:42:06 You must take action.
765. 00:42:08 The one thing stopping you is you.
766. 00:42:11 He's right.
767. 00:42:12 Guilty.
768. 00:42:13 What do you do with that though?
769. 00:42:15 When someone's like, the only reason you're not getting that done is because you're not
770. 00:42:18 doing it.
771. 00:42:19 Okay.
772. 00:42:20 Well, you're not wrong.
773. 00:42:22 That's the hard part.
774. 00:42:23 Yeah.
775. 00:42:24 Because no one likes to hear that stuff, but the minute you become okay with the fact that
776. 00:42:30 you are the one holding you back, you now have the power and the ability to change it
777. 00:42:34 too.
778. 00:42:35 As long as you view the fact that you're being held back by somebody else, external circumstances,
779. 00:42:40 then you're just kind of stuck.
780. 00:42:42 Yes.
781. 00:42:43 Yeah.
782. 00:42:44 The moment you have to take personal responsibility for it, you can act on it and change it.
783. 00:42:49 Yep.
784. 00:42:50 And notice there's in this thoughts section, I felt as though this section could easily
785. 00:42:57 be titled mindset, but I don't think he wanted to use that term.
786. 00:43:03 Yeah.
787. 00:43:04 Because of the book mindset.
788. 00:43:06 But a lot of that I had growth mindset in the back of my head.
789. 00:43:10 Yep.
790. 00:43:11 Very frequently as I was going through this.
791. 00:43:13 Did you have that connection as you read it?
792. 00:43:15 Totally.
793. 00:43:16 He doesn't use the term growth mindset at all, but there's a couple of sections specifically
794. 00:43:20 where he talks about questioning everything and constantly be learning.
795. 00:43:24 And that's immediately what I thought of as growth mindset.
796. 00:43:27 Sure.
797. 00:43:28 Sure.
798. 00:43:29 Yeah.
799. 00:43:30 I mean, it's a very prevalent theme, just not called out.
800. 00:43:34 I don't know that it needs to be though.
801. 00:43:36 And that, I don't think it needs to be, but that is a good distinction that a lot of this
802. 00:43:42 is really just trying to shift your perspective.
803. 00:43:46 And some of that stuff is really good.
804. 00:43:49 One of the, one of my favorite chapters from this whole book is the section actually titled
805. 00:43:54 good.
806. 00:43:55 Do you remember this one?
807. 00:43:56 Titled good.
808. 00:43:57 No, not off the top of my head.
809. 00:43:59 It's basically his response whenever anything goes wrong.
810. 00:44:05 And so people will come to him and they'll say, you know, this happened, that happened,
811. 00:44:11 the other thing and the projected response for a leader in that position is like, well,
812. 00:44:18 if I go tell my leader this bad news, then they're going to get upset.
813. 00:44:22 Like, why don't you fix it?
814. 00:44:23 Whatever his response was always one word.
815. 00:44:25 It's good.
816. 00:44:27 And the takeaway from that is that now you know what doesn't work.
817. 00:44:32 So now you can try something else.
818. 00:44:34 And he's got a big, long list of examples where like this thing happened.
819. 00:44:40 Good.
820. 00:44:41 Now you have the ability to try something else.
821. 00:44:43 You didn't get the promotion.
822. 00:44:45 Good.
823. 00:44:46 You have the ability to develop your skills further until you do.
824. 00:44:49 And I, I like that whole section.
825. 00:44:53 And I, that was one of the things that really stood out to me.
826. 00:44:56 And I feel like that section alone, that is probably enough of a reason to read the entire
827. 00:45:03 book.
828. 00:45:04 Sure.
829. 00:45:06 But it's, it's really, really, it's, it's really, really good.
830. 00:45:11 And it really jives with the personal responsibility stuff we were just talking about.
831. 00:45:14 In another form of this is like the darkness.
832. 00:45:17 Because this talks about how storms are going to rise.
833. 00:45:20 Don't let them consume you as long as you keep fighting, then you win.
834. 00:45:24 The only real defeat is if you surrender, if you give into your circumstances.
835. 00:45:30 And again, like he's talking about this from a physical exercise point.
836. 00:45:33 So he's, you're giving in if you don't get up at 430 and do Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in his
837. 00:45:37 mind.
838. 00:45:38 But for me, you know, if I'm not getting up at 6 AM and writing, that's my version of
839. 00:45:43 that.
840. 00:45:44 Sure.
841. 00:45:45 I think, you know, this whole good thing is interesting.
842. 00:45:50 Because essentially what he's saying is that when you have bad things happen or you perceived
843. 00:45:55 bad things, when you have perceived bad things happen or things that happen that you don't
844. 00:46:00 want, that is good because now you know your mission.
845. 00:46:06 It's like defining what your next project or task is.
846. 00:46:11 That's at least that was my takeaway with it.
847. 00:46:13 That seems to be what he's getting at there.
848. 00:46:15 So yes, it didn't recall this section when you brought it up.
849. 00:46:19 But I did once you started talking about it.
850. 00:46:21 Sure.
851. 00:46:22 But that's my perspective.
852. 00:46:23 I think whenever you see something like that, our tendency is to either go down the path
853. 00:46:29 of woe is me and wallow when you could turn it on his head.
854. 00:46:35 You know, that's similar to shoot.
855. 00:46:37 I'm drawing a blank on it.
856. 00:46:39 The Ryan Holiday book we did early on.
857. 00:46:41 Obstacles the way.
858. 00:46:42 Obstacles the way.
859. 00:46:43 There you go.
860. 00:46:44 That's kind of the mindset.
861. 00:46:46 Yeah.
862. 00:46:47 There's when you see that you have something to overcome, you now have your mission.
863. 00:46:51 True.
864. 00:46:52 Yeah.
865. 00:46:53 So the thought that is coupled with that is the fact that your perspective determines
866. 00:47:02 whether you act and what you say determines your perspective.
867. 00:47:07 So the other thing I had jotted down for this section is I feel fine, which this is the
868. 00:47:13 story behind this.
869. 00:47:14 Not every chapter has this, but this one did.
870. 00:47:17 When you were in training and someone, something happened and they asked you, how do you feel?
871. 00:47:25 The only correct response was I feel fine.
872. 00:47:31 And there are a couple of reasons for that.
873. 00:47:34 Number one, that even if you had gotten knocked unconscious, you're going to say that and
874. 00:47:41 then you're going to believe it and it's going to affect how you act and how you think and
875. 00:47:46 how you see, but also the enunciation for I feel fine having to say all those F sounds
876. 00:47:52 in a row, that was a little bit tricky to do if you didn't have control of all of your
877. 00:47:57 faculties.
878. 00:47:58 So just the fact that you're saying that phrase shows that you are in control of yourself.
879. 00:48:04 And then you say this and even if you don't feel fine, the moment that you say it, you
880. 00:48:08 start to believe it and it causes you to keep going, which he didn't get into the specifics
881. 00:48:14 of this, but I've read enough other books about Navy Seal training and all the stuff
882. 00:48:19 that they go through to know that there are a lot of times when you don't feel fine.
883. 00:48:25 Correct.
884. 00:48:26 Just internalize it and it never comes out.
885. 00:48:30 Yes.
886. 00:48:31 And that was interesting to me that the only thing that came out of your mouth, the only
887. 00:48:35 thing allowed to come out of your mouth, essentially, is I feel fine.
888. 00:48:39 And it's kind of like a positive confession.
889. 00:48:41 And I do believe there's a lot of value in a positive confession.
890. 00:48:45 I don't like to say negative things specifically over my family.
891. 00:48:55 I think this is a really powerful concept that he's not talking about here, but it's
892. 00:48:58 kind of related to this is if you're going to continue to call your kids little monsters
893. 00:49:05 or little monkeys or whatever, like that's what they're going to act like.
894. 00:49:10 But if you say positive things over them, then they will internalize and they will believe
895. 00:49:17 that.
896. 00:49:19 And essentially you are painting a picture of what their future looks like, even though
897. 00:49:23 you don't realize it sometimes.
898. 00:49:25 So very important not to respond emotionally when you are in the parenting context there,
899. 00:49:31 but absolutely applies in the personal context as well.
900. 00:49:35 What are you saying about yourself?
901. 00:49:36 Do you believe that you aren't good enough?
902. 00:49:40 You aren't smart enough, you're not creative enough?
903. 00:49:43 Well, fine.
904. 00:49:44 You're not.
905. 00:49:45 Great.
906. 00:49:46 So.
907. 00:49:47 Right.
908. 00:49:48 Yeah, this is one of those which comes first.
909. 00:49:50 Do you feel fine and then therefore you say I feel fine or do you say I feel fine and
910. 00:49:56 thus you feel fine?
911. 00:49:57 I can tell you which one I believe will lead to a higher quality of life.
912. 00:50:02 Yes, absolutely.
913. 00:50:03 So I think I'm not one that's going to, I don't think either of us are one that promotes
914. 00:50:08 the whole positive thinking almost cult.
915. 00:50:13 That's, you know, if I believe it, it will happen.
916. 00:50:15 Like that's a whole nother.
917. 00:50:17 That's another level of what we're talking about here.
918. 00:50:20 So I think that this is more of a very small minor emotion stance, I think is what we're
919. 00:50:28 getting at, which I definitely do hold to because if I'm telling myself that I'm feeling
920. 00:50:35 terrible today, guess what?
921. 00:50:36 I feel terrible today.
922. 00:50:37 Yeah.
923. 00:50:38 If I wake up and I'm thinking about how productive I'm going to be today, I'm usually significantly
924. 00:50:45 more productive that day.
925. 00:50:47 On a minute level, that does seem to be a thing that happens.
926. 00:50:52 And I think this is playing into that.
927. 00:50:53 When you tell someone, I feel fine after something major just happened, you're setting yourself
928. 00:51:01 up to actually feel fine.
929. 00:51:04 I think there is a cycle here.
930. 00:51:06 And so it's hard to say one causes the other, but I do think they impact each other.
931. 00:51:13 And you got to pick some point to interject some intentionality inside this cycle.
932. 00:51:19 You know, the thoughts that you think, they're going to determine the words that you say,
933. 00:51:28 and that's going to determine the things that you do.
934. 00:51:33 And I do believe that that is like a flywheel, which left unchecked, just living by default,
935. 00:51:40 is going to be pretty negative.
936. 00:51:43 I also really believe that words have power.
937. 00:51:48 And so words are a great place.
938. 00:51:50 I argue for you to stick your hand in that fan and get it to stop and then say, no, we're
939. 00:51:55 going to go the other way now.
940. 00:51:57 Sure.
941. 00:51:58 I do think that the words that your perspective shift makes it easier to act right.
942. 00:52:08 Now, a lot of what he's saying could also be interpreted the other way, like, doesn't
943. 00:52:13 matter what you feel like you just show up and do the thing and that's going to impact
944. 00:52:17 your thoughts and your actions.
945. 00:52:20 And I think that's true too.
946. 00:52:21 But if I had to pick one as a place to start, it would be get a handle on your thoughts
947. 00:52:26 and get a handle on your words.
948. 00:52:28 Very valid.
949. 00:52:29 All right.
950. 00:52:30 There's lots of other stuff in here, but I think that's good enough for part one.
951. 00:52:33 Let's go to part two, which is significantly shorter.
952. 00:52:36 This is actions and there are lots of different chapters in here, pretty much all related
953. 00:52:46 to physical stuff.
954. 00:52:49 There's a couple here related to things that we've talked about before.
955. 00:52:54 And so I wanted to touch on these.
956. 00:52:56 The first one is stress.
957. 00:52:57 He talks about good and bad stress.
958. 00:53:00 He talks about what happens when you feel stressed.
959. 00:53:03 Cortisol levels go high.
960. 00:53:05 Your immune system can become repressed if it's there for a long time.
961. 00:53:10 You got to be careful not to stress your body and mind too much because of that, but also
962. 00:53:15 you need stress in order to get better in order to grow.
963. 00:53:19 I think this is absolutely true.
964. 00:53:22 I am curious though, because this is a short little chapter.
965. 00:53:25 Do you have any insights?
966. 00:53:26 The distinctions there between good and bad stress?
967. 00:53:30 Not specifically.
968. 00:53:33 People think of good and bad stress pretty commonly.
969. 00:53:37 I don't know that he has anything groundbreaking here, at least not to me.
970. 00:53:42 That I read.
971. 00:53:43 I mean, there are definitely things in life I've dealt with in the last 18, 24 months
972. 00:53:49 that I would term as both good and bad stress, but even the bad stressors I've learned a
973. 00:53:57 lot from.
974. 00:53:59 If I look at the results of said stress after having gone through them, I think you could
975. 00:54:04 potentially redefine some previously known bad stressors as good stressors.
976. 00:54:12 But that's learning from failures most likely in the vast majority of scenarios.
977. 00:54:16 When I read this section, I instantly thought of the conversation we had about hustle.
978. 00:54:23 Oh, sure.
979. 00:54:24 Because I think hustle is a version of good stress that can very easily become bad stressor,
980. 00:54:32 overly done stress.
981. 00:54:34 Now you're on the verge of burnout.
982. 00:54:36 Again, he's not giving you jocko.
983. 00:54:39 It isn't any specific distinctions here between these two.
984. 00:54:43 But just the realization that not all stress is bad.
985. 00:54:46 I think is a big takeaway here.
986. 00:54:50 The fact that you are feeling stressed doesn't mean that you should be looking for a way
987. 00:54:55 out of your current situation.
988. 00:54:59 Now lots of nuance there, which we're not qualified to talk about.
989. 00:55:05 No, not even close.
990. 00:55:07 But I think that you can kind of figure this out for yourself.
991. 00:55:11 If you do need some professional help, then absolutely go and get it.
992. 00:55:17 But I think the general takeaway for most people is to at least recognize that not all
993. 00:55:24 stress is bad and start to ask yourself these questions about like, well, where do I draw
994. 00:55:30 this line?
995. 00:55:31 What is the difference between this is something that is going to prod me to become a better
996. 00:55:38 version of myself than I would have in my default lazy state.
997. 00:55:44 And now it's getting unhealthy and it's chronic and it's affecting a bunch of other things
998. 00:55:51 negatively.
999. 00:55:53 Maybe that's the thing is I'm talking through this that you got to be looking at is what
1000. 00:55:56 sort of effect that stress is producing in other things.
1001. 00:56:00 It can be hard because it can be cumulative.
1002. 00:56:04 But what is the cause and what is the effect of the processes and the systems that you
1003. 00:56:09 have in your own life?
1004. 00:56:11 One of the things I would add to that though is if you do have bad stressors, yes, you can
1005. 00:56:17 go down the path of trying to remove them.
1006. 00:56:21 That's a definite thing you could do.
1007. 00:56:23 At the same time, you can sometimes make the choice to not remove them intentionally.
1008. 00:56:28 Do you hear what I'm saying?
1009. 00:56:30 Like if I try to remove bad ones, yes, I can get the bad one out of my life.
1010. 00:56:37 But at the same time, if I keep a bad stressor, I'm very likely to learn some pretty valuable
1011. 00:56:42 things from it.
1012. 00:56:44 I've had a number of things that I would love to remove, some of which I can, some of which
1013. 00:56:51 I can't, that I would consider bad stressors in the realm of life.
1014. 00:56:58 And I've specifically chosen not to remove them in the last probably 18 months again.
1015. 00:57:06 So I can't say that those are all things you should be trying to extract.
1016. 00:57:14 Sometimes you need to lean into them, even though you don't like them.
1017. 00:57:17 Exactly, which gets us back to his core message.
1018. 00:57:21 Yes, yes.
1019. 00:57:23 Yeah, I don't really know what else to say to anybody who's still struggling with where
1020. 00:57:29 that line is.
1021. 00:57:30 You kind of have to find it for yourself.
1022. 00:57:34 But I think the big thing for me as I read this is just to consider kind of what are
1023. 00:57:41 the inputs that are producing the stress and then what are the outputs?
1024. 00:57:46 What's the fruit from that?
1025. 00:57:49 I think it's fairly easy to see where, like if you were working one on one with Chaco,
1026. 00:57:57 he's going to get in your face, he's going to make you get up at 430, he's going to
1027. 00:58:01 drag you to the gym, force you to do the workouts.
1028. 00:58:04 And you could look at that and none of that is going to be comfortable, none of that is
1029. 00:58:08 going to be pleasant.
1030. 00:58:10 But you do it for a couple of weeks and you're going to start to see some results from it,
1031. 00:58:15 right?
1032. 00:58:16 At that point, it's a lot easier to continue to show up every day because you're like,
1033. 00:58:20 "Oh, yeah, I guess this is working."
1034. 00:58:23 Sometimes there's not an instant anyways response or connection from the input to the output.
1035. 00:58:31 Sometimes it's a little bit delayed, which is why so many people have trouble with stuff
1036. 00:58:36 like habits and New Year's resolutions and stuff like that.
1037. 00:58:40 But I think if you have that perspective and you're constantly looking for those connections,
1038. 00:58:44 you'll be able to find them for sure, which kind of leads us to the next one, which is
1039. 00:58:49 the whole idea of sleeping, getting up early.
1040. 00:58:51 I'm not getting up at 430.
1041. 00:58:53 What about you?
1042. 00:58:56 I used to be a 5am guy for a long time.
1043. 00:59:00 Yeah.
1044. 00:59:01 Yup.
1045. 00:59:02 Years.
1046. 00:59:03 I was a 5am person.
1047. 00:59:04 There's even a blog post on my site about why get up at 5am.
1048. 00:59:11 I forget what it's titled, but it involves 5am and getting up early.
1049. 00:59:15 Why get up early?
1050. 00:59:16 Something like that.
1051. 00:59:18 I talk about being a 5am person.
1052. 00:59:22 When I did that, I will say this.
1053. 00:59:24 I accomplished a lot during that time and valued it very highly, not realizing that the
1054. 00:59:32 migraine issue I was dealing with at the time was very directly connected to that.
1055. 00:59:37 Okay.
1056. 00:59:39 I was getting migraines once or twice a month at the time.
1057. 00:59:45 When I stopped trying to get up at 5am and I cut sugar and stuff out of my diet, migraines
1058. 00:59:52 almost completely disappeared.
1059. 00:59:54 I've had very few in the last two years since I've made that shift.
1060. 01:00:01 Reading this, I know I can get up at 5am.
1061. 01:00:05 I know I can do that and I know I can do it regularly.
1062. 01:00:09 But I know I'm going to pay for it.
1063. 01:00:11 Well, I'm curious because you mentioned two things that you did at the same time which
1064. 01:00:16 eliminated the migraines.
1065. 01:00:18 So because he talks about the sugar stuff too, he mentions what is he?
1066. 01:00:23 He's got a chapter called sugar-coated lies or something like that.
1067. 01:00:27 He's very, very anti-sugar.
1068. 01:00:29 He views food simply as fuel for doing what you need to do.
1069. 01:00:33 Do you think if you decoupled those that you would still have the migraines?
1070. 01:00:36 I think that if I were to, like what I've learned through some of the habit tracking
1071. 01:00:43 and things I track in my notebook, I've learned that if I have bad sleep, that is a much bigger
1072. 01:00:49 trigger for my migraines than sugar.
1073. 01:00:51 Okay.
1074. 01:00:52 It's not granted.
1075. 01:00:53 If I've had a lot of sugar and then I sleep poorly, almost guaranteed I'm going to have
1076. 01:00:56 a migraine the next day.
1077. 01:00:58 So that does happen.
1078. 01:01:00 But I think that for me, I can introduce the sugar slightly and it's okay.
1079. 01:01:06 But if I have two or three nights of bad sleep and then try to eat a piece of pie, that next
1080. 01:01:14 day is going to be a fun one.
1081. 01:01:16 Sure.
1082. 01:01:17 Well, you just answered my question because you've made a stronger connection to the lack
1083. 01:01:20 of sleep than you have to the sugar.
1084. 01:01:22 Correct.
1085. 01:01:23 Yeah.
1086. 01:01:24 But when I first removed, when I was first able to get away from the migraines, I had
1087. 01:01:28 removed both at the same time.
1088. 01:01:30 Sure.
1089. 01:01:31 Gotcha.
1090. 01:01:32 And that's the step I would advise anybody who is thinking about making these changes
1091. 01:01:35 to do is to do one thing ahead of time and figure out what are the things that are triggering
1092. 01:01:43 the pain in your own life.
1093. 01:01:45 Yep.
1094. 01:01:46 And it's so true.
1095. 01:01:48 Having read this though, are you going to get up early?
1096. 01:01:52 Earlier.
1097. 01:01:53 Let me share a little bit of context here.
1098. 01:01:57 I have trouble with this section and I had a couple of these together, the getting up
1099. 01:02:02 early and the sleep because he talks about how well the way to get up early is simple.
1100. 01:02:05 Just go to bed earlier.
1101. 01:02:06 Yes.
1102. 01:02:07 And then he even talks about how much sleep you really need.
1103. 01:02:10 And that part I disagree with.
1104. 01:02:12 And I am in a unique situation here because I have been diagnosed with epilepsy.
1105. 01:02:20 One of the things that can trigger a seizure is a lack of sleep.
1106. 01:02:23 I have not had a seizure in 20 years now.
1107. 01:02:29 I'm going to keep it that way.
1108. 01:02:31 Sure.
1109. 01:02:33 And the way that I do that is I make sure that I get at least eight hours of sleep per night.
1110. 01:02:38 I don't always get eight hours of sleep, but I do everything I can to set myself up for
1111. 01:02:42 success.
1112. 01:02:43 And if I don't get enough sleep, then I am going to take a nap the next day or I'm going
1113. 01:02:48 to go to bed early and I'm going to get more sleep because I'm not going to accumulate
1114. 01:02:52 any of that sleep that his whole tone is like you need seven hours tops and just push through
1115. 01:02:58 it.
1116. 01:02:59 The sleepiness will leave.
1117. 01:03:00 And I'm like, no, the sleepiness will not leave because there's something else that may
1118. 01:03:03 happen.
1119. 01:03:05 So I am not going to take his advice on how much sleep I need.
1120. 01:03:10 And that kind of changes all of the specifics about when to go to bed and when to get up.
1121. 01:03:16 That being said, like awful otter is mentioning in the chat.
1122. 01:03:21 There is something to be said about having time to do things before other people are
1123. 01:03:27 up.
1124. 01:03:29 And with all of the stuff that we've gone through over the last year, my bedtime and
1125. 01:03:35 my wake up time has slowly been creeping the creeping later.
1126. 01:03:42 Part of that is five kids at home.
1127. 01:03:45 Yes.
1128. 01:03:46 And finally get everybody in bed and you're just like, okay, now we can finally have some
1129. 01:03:51 time to ourselves and you don't want that to end.
1130. 01:03:54 Yes.
1131. 01:03:56 Next thing you know, it's 10 p.m., 10 30, sometimes 11.
1132. 01:03:59 Exactly.
1133. 01:04:00 Oh, but I can get so much stuff done.
1134. 01:04:01 The kids are all down.
1135. 01:04:02 Yep.
1136. 01:04:03 And then they're up before you doing stuff for you in the morning.
1137. 01:04:06 Now that being said, the beginning of this year, I fasted a little bit.
1138. 01:04:12 I gave up coffee, which no caffeine, obviously easier to go to bed earlier, found myself
1139. 01:04:19 getting up earlier as a result.
1140. 01:04:21 So I feel like I've kind of been working on a reset regarding my bedtime, wake up time
1141. 01:04:28 anyways.
1142. 01:04:29 And I do want to start getting up a little bit earlier.
1143. 01:04:32 I'm thinking probably the optimal time for me is 6 a.m.
1144. 01:04:36 Maybe if I can swing it 5 30, but I can't go to bed before the kids go to bed.
1145. 01:04:44 So that's kind of like my hard boundary on the end of my day.
1146. 01:04:50 Right.
1147. 01:04:51 And we have actually since everything got shut down, we did recalibrate even like the
1148. 01:04:56 kids bedtimes and they do go to bed earlier than they used to.
1149. 01:05:00 So kind of the whole family is working in this direction.
1150. 01:05:03 But even so, I don't know, I've got a teenager now.
1151. 01:05:08 I can't tell him to go to bed before 9 o'clock.
1152. 01:05:12 Right.
1153. 01:05:13 It's just, you know, I got to give him a little bit of freedom there too.
1154. 01:05:18 So I don't know exactly what I'm going to commit to.
1155. 01:05:21 I don't know exactly where this is going to land, but this is one of my action items,
1156. 01:05:24 is to start getting up earlier.
1157. 01:05:27 Sure.
1158. 01:05:28 I have kind of rethought the morning routine and how I enter my workday.
1159. 01:05:34 And actually for the last week or two now, I have been getting up a little bit earlier,
1160. 01:05:39 going through the morning routine and then just like clicking right in because I know
1161. 01:05:42 exactly what I'm going to be working on in the morning.
1162. 01:05:45 Getting an hour, sometimes two hours worth of work done and then going back upstairs
1163. 01:05:50 and seeing that everybody is awake.
1164. 01:05:52 Yeah.
1165. 01:05:53 That is pretty great.
1166. 01:05:54 I've debated setting an alarm.
1167. 01:05:57 I don't think I would set an alarm.
1168. 01:05:58 I would be more focused on getting to bed on time because I don't use an alarm.
1169. 01:06:02 I'm one of those, you know, people who are able to do that.
1170. 01:06:05 I know not everyone can.
1171. 01:06:06 I think you're the same for the most part, but I have debated trying to make sure I'm
1172. 01:06:12 out of bed at 6 15 or so right now, like because, you know, I'm not getting to sleep
1173. 01:06:20 till 10 or a little later.
1174. 01:06:22 I've been sleeping till 6 30 pretty regularly.
1175. 01:06:26 My kids get up at 7.
1176. 01:06:28 So by the time I get up, get through a shower and get myself dressed there up.
1177. 01:06:33 Yeah.
1178. 01:06:34 And that gets tough.
1179. 01:06:36 Like there really isn't much of a morning routine outside of breakfast.
1180. 01:06:40 Right.
1181. 01:06:42 And then it's off to work.
1182. 01:06:43 So there's not much there.
1183. 01:06:45 There is time to, you know, make sure I've got my bullet journal ready, but I do that
1184. 01:06:50 with my kids at the breakfast table.
1185. 01:06:54 So like there's some of that that happens, but I've been debating trying to get up a little
1186. 01:06:59 earlier, but I don't think I would be setting an alarm.
1187. 01:07:01 I would be setting a bedtime, like getting to bed sooner if I can.
1188. 01:07:06 Sure.
1189. 01:07:07 That's tricky.
1190. 01:07:08 That's tough.
1191. 01:07:09 I have been using the, there's a haptic wake now for the alarm on Apple Watch.
1192. 01:07:15 Oh, yeah, I have that.
1193. 01:07:16 Which I think is kind of a happy medium between the wake up window and an audible alarm.
1194. 01:07:27 Yeah.
1195. 01:07:28 Because I'm not going to feel it right away when I'm really in a deep state of sleep,
1196. 01:07:34 but also it's not going to wake everybody else up.
1197. 01:07:39 You know, it seems to be working and I think I'm probably going to continue to use that.
1198. 01:07:46 Sure.
1199. 01:07:47 I'm also going to try, I think, to get a workout in the morning.
1200. 01:07:51 So one, the other thing, you know, he's talking about in this section, he talks about the
1201. 01:07:55 home gym and the workouts and stuff like this.
1202. 01:07:57 So he mentions doing a workout right at the beginning.
1203. 01:08:02 He mentions doing multiple workouts throughout the day, which at first when I read that, I'm
1204. 01:08:06 like, "Who's got time for that?"
1205. 01:08:07 And then I'm like, "Right.
1206. 01:08:08 Right.
1207. 01:08:09 Maybe I could make that work."
1208. 01:08:10 Nice.
1209. 01:08:11 Nice.
1210. 01:08:12 Because you can't see in the video, but right behind me here is a weight bench and I've
1211. 01:08:18 got adjustable dumbbells literally in my office because there's nowhere else for them to go.
1212. 01:08:24 And one of the big things that came out of the last year, I made a point to get outside
1213. 01:08:36 every day and that meant that I was running or biking every single day and a lot of days
1214. 01:08:46 actually doing both.
1215. 01:08:49 I loved the experience of that and I want to keep that going.
1216. 01:08:56 Obviously it's not great outside right now.
1217. 01:08:59 So I still run outside a couple of times a week.
1218. 01:09:02 I'm not biking outside in the snow.
1219. 01:09:03 I don't have one of those fat tire bikes.
1220. 01:09:05 Ah, nice.
1221. 01:09:06 But I did look at my fitness totals for the year.
1222. 01:09:14 And in 2020, I had 558 miles from running workouts.
1223. 01:09:22 Cycling I had 1,230.
1224. 01:09:25 Compare that to 2019.
1225. 01:09:27 I had 500 running miles for workouts and that was when I was training for a half marathon.
1226. 01:09:33 I didn't actually get to do a half marathon last year.
1227. 01:09:37 And cycling I had 216.
1228. 01:09:40 So I shattered this and I've established this habit essentially already.
1229. 01:09:46 And so if the stuff is in my house, why wouldn't I be able to keep this going?
1230. 01:09:52 Sure.
1231. 01:09:53 Which then he gets into like the home gym and the stuff that you need.
1232. 01:09:57 I have a lot of this stuff already.
1233. 01:10:01 One thing I think I will be looking at is getting an exercise bike or a rowing machine.
1234. 01:10:07 He has stuff in the recommended order of what you should get.
1235. 01:10:11 Starting with just a pull-up bar.
1236. 01:10:14 So I have most of the beginning stuff already.
1237. 01:10:16 Just like the free weights and the bench and all that stuff.
1238. 01:10:19 But the rowing machine or something that I could do that's not running outside.
1239. 01:10:24 I don't have a treadmill.
1240. 01:10:26 Something I could do inside in the winter that's kind of like a whole body.
1241. 01:10:29 And I don't have any research.
1242. 01:10:35 But I guess my action item is to look into this stuff.
1243. 01:10:37 I don't know if I'm going to actually end up getting one of these machines or not.
1244. 01:10:40 I have no idea how much they cost.
1245. 01:10:43 But he's got me motivated to try it anyways.
1246. 01:10:46 Sure.
1247. 01:10:47 When I went through this section on home gym stuff like the thing that stuck out in my
1248. 01:10:50 mind is the, if you're familiar with Nerd Fitness, nerdfitness.com.
1249. 01:10:55 Do you know this?
1250. 01:10:56 I've heard of it.
1251. 01:10:57 I should definitely check them out if you don't.
1252. 01:10:58 So nerdfitness.com has a like a body weight home workout system that you can do.
1253. 01:11:07 I have a barbell downstairs and some free weights and such.
1254. 01:11:11 So like I have some of that here.
1255. 01:11:14 I've done that beginner workout a number of times.
1256. 01:11:19 The problem is the best time for me to do that is in the morning.
1257. 01:11:22 And like I was talking about earlier, I'm usually waking up too late to do any of that.
1258. 01:11:27 So that's part of why I would like to get up a little earlier so that I have time for
1259. 01:11:31 that.
1260. 01:11:32 But I mean, I don't see the need for like a rowing machine or something like that.
1261. 01:11:36 That's not something that I would use or a friend of the show.
1262. 01:11:40 Josh has a really nice one, but to each their own.
1263. 01:11:45 So there's a lot of things that you could do in this camp, but I find that just doing
1264. 01:11:51 a free weight or a mostly body weight workout does fine for me.
1265. 01:11:58 But I'm not huge into fitness and trying to do it to build a body image and stuff like
1266. 01:12:06 that is not my intention at all.
1267. 01:12:07 It's just mostly to keep me moving.
1268. 01:12:09 So I don't know.
1269. 01:12:11 I'll try to do that more often.
1270. 01:12:13 Maybe that's an action item.
1271. 01:12:14 I don't have anything actually written down here.
1272. 01:12:16 I probably should be writing these.
1273. 01:12:17 But you know, if I'm going to do something like that's probably it.
1274. 01:12:20 I'm going to be trying to make sure I'm getting up early enough to do a workout and try to
1275. 01:12:24 do that daily as an attempt to help my overall health for sure.
1276. 01:12:31 You better have an action item after reading a Jack O'Willink book.
1277. 01:12:33 I know, right?
1278. 01:12:34 I definitely need to be writing these down for sure.
1279. 01:12:36 Yeah.
1280. 01:12:37 So maybe we should talk about some of the thoughts around specifically our exercise routines.
1281. 01:12:43 You kind of shared yours.
1282. 01:12:44 You're going to use the nerd fitness style stuff.
1283. 01:12:47 I've got some, I mentioned the freeways here in my office with the bench.
1284. 01:12:54 And because I tend to time block specifically for exercise, that means that that stuff actually
1285. 01:13:03 has kind of gotten neglected a little bit.
1286. 01:13:05 I still do it just not as consistently as I was before.
1287. 01:13:09 I've kind of gone the other way and done a lot more cardio, the exercise or the running
1288. 01:13:15 and the biking.
1289. 01:13:17 And so what I'm thinking is that stuff, usually I time block later in the day.
1290. 01:13:22 My favorite time to go for a run is about 10, 30, 11 a.m. because I've put in some solid
1291. 01:13:29 usually writing time before then.
1292. 01:13:32 And I can push myself physically, come back and have lunch at that point, after I run.
1293. 01:13:40 Usually it's like four or five miles.
1294. 01:13:42 And I think that I could definitely add some of the strength training stuff that I have
1295. 01:13:48 not done as consistently at the beginning of my day if I started getting up a little bit
1296. 01:13:55 earlier.
1297. 01:13:56 And that would probably help get me moving and provide some focus benefits when I sit
1298. 01:14:00 down to actually write.
1299. 01:14:02 So I think I'm going to try to incorporate some of that stuff into my morning routine.
1300. 01:14:08 Makes sense.
1301. 01:14:10 And Otter's got me looking at these Concept 2 Roars now.
1302. 01:14:17 Don't do it.
1303. 01:14:19 But I do think that this is worth considering because he does make the point that the best,
1304. 01:14:25 like where should you start when it comes to exercise?
1305. 01:14:28 He's like, just do anything.
1306. 01:14:30 So he's got a bunch of stuff that he recommends and like the martial arts and the order that
1307. 01:14:34 you should do them, but I kind of feel like that's sort of optional.
1308. 01:14:40 Am I wrong in thinking that?
1309. 01:14:42 I think he wants you to just do something.
1310. 01:14:45 Yeah.
1311. 01:14:46 He wants you to...
1312. 01:14:48 See this is the section where he wants you to do exercise.
1313. 01:14:54 He wants you to build martial arts into this in some form and recommends Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
1314. 01:15:01 as a beginning point and then working your way towards Muay Thai.
1315. 01:15:05 So there's...
1316. 01:15:06 I don't know why I know this stuff.
1317. 01:15:09 Like how to pronounce it and stuff.
1318. 01:15:10 So anyway, I think there's a lot of potential in what he's saying and I'm not telling him
1319. 01:15:18 he's wrong.
1320. 01:15:20 But again, like the lifestyle that we were talking about earlier, that concept of if
1321. 01:15:24 you want to look and live the way that US Navy SEALs look and live when they come back
1322. 01:15:32 to civilian life, if you want to be like that, you need to do this, I would say.
1323. 01:15:38 It would be very hard for me to find someone who doesn't need to do that.
1324. 01:15:42 If that's what you want.
1325. 01:15:43 I don't have an interest in building my body and developing those skills.
1326. 01:15:49 So that's not something I'm going to pursue.
1327. 01:15:53 If you told me that you wanted to find a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class or group locally, I would applaud
1328. 01:16:03 you, Mike.
1329. 01:16:04 But no, I'm not taking the time.
1330. 01:16:08 That's a lot of time to devote, I feel, to something that I don't think I'm going to
1331. 01:16:14 gain much value out of personally.
1332. 01:16:16 Now I could be completely wrong because there's something about it I don't see, but that's
1333. 01:16:20 not something I'm going to pursue.
1334. 01:16:22 I'm not committing to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, though I see a path forward for that because
1335. 01:16:28 one of my sons is interested in it already.
1336. 01:16:30 So...
1337. 01:16:31 Oh, fine.
1338. 01:16:32 We'll see.
1339. 01:16:33 Let's go to the next section, which is Fuel Feeding the Machine.
1340. 01:16:36 I'm not sure I have a whole lot to say here.
1341. 01:16:40 This can be easily summarized, I think.
1342. 01:16:42 He talks about how your body is constantly trying to maintain balance.
1343. 01:16:47 One of the ways that it does that is by creating glucose or blood sugar when you eat a lot
1344. 01:16:58 of carbohydrates, so his basic advice is cut out that stuff and then your body will start
1345. 01:17:03 burning fat for energy instead of storing it.
1346. 01:17:07 I can't argue with that.
1347. 01:17:10 However, his Paleo caveman diet does not necessarily appeal to me.
1348. 01:17:15 I will say if I had read this prior to doing brainwash, I probably would have tried at
1349. 01:17:22 least some of this, but I'm pretty happy with how I've dialed things in.
1350. 01:17:28 I have a salad every day now, which is a big deal for me.
1351. 01:17:32 Wow.
1352. 01:17:33 I'm impressed.
1353. 01:17:34 Yeah.
1354. 01:17:35 So I'm happy with the changes that I made and I don't feel like I need to disrupt this
1355. 01:17:39 at the moment.
1356. 01:17:40 I think having read brainwash, this diet as far as the technicals go is almost identical
1357. 01:17:50 to what the pearl mutters recommend in brainwash.
1358. 01:17:56 The kicker here is that Jaco distills it much further and makes it easier to understand.
1359. 01:18:01 Yeah, he's got a list of, "This is what you can't eat.
1360. 01:18:03 This is what you can't eat."
1361. 01:18:05 Correct.
1362. 01:18:06 They're broad categories and such, namely, don't eat anything processed and stay away
1363. 01:18:12 from greens.
1364. 01:18:13 That's really his perspective on it.
1365. 01:18:16 And potatoes.
1366. 01:18:17 Yep.
1367. 01:18:18 But the thing, the only one with my diet, the only thing that's really different from
1368. 01:18:23 what he recommends is I do have greens.
1369. 01:18:26 Granted it's almost always whole greens.
1370. 01:18:29 They're not refined or stripped of any nutrients in any form, so I'm pretty particular about
1371. 01:18:35 that.
1372. 01:18:36 But outside of that, like you're saying, it's a pretty straightforward.
1373. 01:18:41 He wants you to eat wild stuff, essentially.
1374. 01:18:45 Whole products and wild stuff.
1375. 01:18:47 Yeah.
1376. 01:18:48 He does mention fungi, so mushrooms.
1377. 01:18:51 I'm sure that made you happy.
1378. 01:18:53 Yep.
1379. 01:18:54 Very happy.
1380. 01:18:55 Bring on the--
1381. 01:18:56 Roots.
1382. 01:18:57 Yeah.
1383. 01:18:58 Yes.
1384. 01:18:59 My talking team.
1385. 01:19:01 I think the big takeaway for me is just try to stick to your diet and don't eat the junk.
1386. 01:19:08 He would say it this way.
1387. 01:19:10 Stay 100% clean.
1388. 01:19:11 Don't make any exceptions.
1389. 01:19:13 Put down that donut.
1390. 01:19:14 He really doesn't like donuts.
1391. 01:19:17 He really does like donuts.
1392. 01:19:18 He just doesn't want you to eat them.
1393. 01:19:21 Very true.
1394. 01:19:22 Very true.
1395. 01:19:23 So yeah, I think whatever diet you're going to land on, just make sure that you're viewing
1396. 01:19:29 it as a way to keep you going.
1397. 01:19:32 It's not a source of happiness, so to speak, which I think maybe is where I get off with
1398. 01:19:39 the-- some of this stuff is like, you don't need the pizza and the stuff like that just
1399. 01:19:45 in order to change your mood.
1400. 01:19:47 Actually that stuff has a negative effect to it, which is really what he's focused on
1401. 01:19:50 in all of this stuff.
1402. 01:19:51 So viewing food as simply fuel and not an experience, so to speak, which is easier to
1403. 01:19:59 do when you eat a meal at home.
1404. 01:20:01 True.
1405. 01:20:02 True that.
1406. 01:20:03 He also talks about fasting, which I mentioned.
1407. 01:20:06 This is something that I just did and I plan on doing more frequently.
1408. 01:20:12 He says it very directly in typical Jocko style.
1409. 01:20:16 He says, "You don't have to eat."
1410. 01:20:20 And there's lots of benefits that come from fasting, like recalibrating your hunger demand,
1411. 01:20:27 and it helps you exercise your will, which is tied obviously to the big idea of discipline.
1412. 01:20:34 So simply that in terms of an exercise for developing that, I think is valuable, but
1413. 01:20:40 I think that there's a bunch of other benefits that he didn't even really speak to with this.
1414. 01:20:44 So reminder for me to practice this more regularly and something I want to work into my routine,
1415. 01:20:52 although I haven't figured out quite how often I want to do that yet.
1416. 01:20:56 Mosquito has a point that I want to bring up because this is, I have this written down
1417. 01:21:00 as a point that I want to bring up too.
1418. 01:21:02 In that, now that we're at the end of this section, fuel feeding the machine, we're addicted
1419. 01:21:07 to sugar.
1420. 01:21:08 Here's the diet you should have, you should fast.
1421. 01:21:11 The problem I have is that this is purely a food is a tool to be used and not an experience
1422. 01:21:20 to enjoy.
1423. 01:21:22 If I were to take the mindset that food is merely fuel, I believe my wife would throw
1424. 01:21:30 a fit.
1425. 01:21:33 My wife does 99% of the cooking in our household.
1426. 01:21:38 She is huge into cast iron, cooking things the way that they taste best, old world cooking
1427. 01:21:47 styles.
1428. 01:21:48 These are all things that she has a tendency to do and a lot of that emphasis is based
1429. 01:21:53 on enjoying the experience of what you're eating together.
1430. 01:21:58 That's a big deal to her.
1431. 01:22:00 If I were to just say, nope, I got to get this eaten because I got to get back to work
1432. 01:22:04 and I've got things to do and I've got a mission to destroy and I need to take on the world,
1433. 01:22:10 I don't think she would be very happy with me.
1434. 01:22:15 So I think that there is something to be said about not spending two hours at a table.
1435. 01:22:22 I think maybe that would be a more appropriate perspective on it, but I like the food that
1436. 01:22:29 my wife makes so I'm not going to just treat it like it's a tool.
1437. 01:22:33 I think that's fine.
1438. 01:22:35 I don't think that's in contrast to what he's saying.
1439. 01:22:40 That's interesting.
1440. 01:22:41 I make that connection because the junk for me typically happens when I haven't thought
1441. 01:22:48 about what I'm going to do for a specific meal.
1442. 01:22:52 So I'm like, oh, well, I'll just order a burrito or something.
1443. 01:22:57 Or the stuff that happens in between meals, which is again, not at all the same thing
1444. 01:23:03 that you're talking about where we're going to sit down together at this time and we're
1445. 01:23:06 going to share a meal together.
1446. 01:23:09 I agree there's something additional to that experience beyond the nutritional value of
1447. 01:23:16 the food and feeding the machine.
1448. 01:23:18 But I think the approach of you don't need the extra stuff whenever you have the tiniest
1449. 01:23:26 little craving, that is the big takeaway here for me.
1450. 01:23:32 And I agree with that 100%.
1451. 01:23:35 For me, it usually is like if I've had a long day after dinner, kids have gone to bed, like
1452. 01:23:42 that's the point where I'm just find myself in the kitchen from a drink through the pantry
1453. 01:23:47 looking for something to eat.
1454. 01:23:49 So speaking directly to me is like that nine o'clock snack that you have, like you don't
1455. 01:23:54 need that.
1456. 01:23:55 And it's never anything like potato chips or ice cream.
1457. 01:24:00 Usually it's like stuff that's on his list.
1458. 01:24:02 We've got a big thing of peanuts.
1459. 01:24:04 I'll grab some peanuts, but I just find myself not even thinking about it sometimes, just
1460. 01:24:09 standing in the pantry looking at stuff.
1461. 01:24:13 What can I grab off the shelf and eat right now?
1462. 01:24:16 That's what I'm looking for.
1463. 01:24:17 So now when I open that pantry, I'm going to see Jaco's face.
1464. 01:24:20 It's like back away.
1465. 01:24:23 You don't need to eat.
1466. 01:24:24 That is amazing.
1467. 01:24:26 So that's fuel.
1468. 01:24:28 The last one here is repairing maintenance well before the workouts.
1469. 01:24:33 After maintenance, injury prevention and recovery.
1470. 01:24:36 Shortest section in the book.
1471. 01:24:38 There's two chapters here.
1472. 01:24:41 One on stretching.
1473. 01:24:43 I'm curious.
1474. 01:24:44 What did you think about this chapter?
1475. 01:24:46 I've heard a lot of things about stretching.
1476. 01:24:48 Doesn't matter.
1477. 01:24:49 I don't know if that's true or not.
1478. 01:24:51 I've seen some studies that show if you could stretch, if you stretch before you work out
1479. 01:24:57 versus not stretching before you work out makes no difference.
1480. 01:24:59 Like I've seen some studies around that, which is interesting to me.
1481. 01:25:03 But I think in the perspective I had on it with that background is that while stretching
1482. 01:25:09 does help you get blood flow going and get your metabolism or not metabolism, but your
1483. 01:25:15 heart rate up a bit, they don't really talk about that aspect of it.
1484. 01:25:19 In the studies that I'm referring to, they generally are talking about muscle tearing
1485. 01:25:23 and such in that process.
1486. 01:25:25 So I don't think it's a good thing to skip your stretching routine before you do a workout.
1487. 01:25:31 But I can't say there was anything in his particular explanation of this that I would
1488. 01:25:38 say is, "Yes, absolutely.
1489. 01:25:39 Oh, that's life changing."
1490. 01:25:40 Like, "Oh, well, stretch."
1491. 01:25:42 So that was my perspective.
1492. 01:25:45 All right.
1493. 01:25:46 So he did not convince you to start stretching, it sounds like.
1494. 01:25:49 Not for stretching, sake, no.
1495. 01:25:52 Okay.
1496. 01:25:53 Well...
1497. 01:25:54 Did it you?
1498. 01:25:55 I've been doing this for years, to be honest, because I have dealt with sciatic nerve pain.
1499. 01:26:01 Okay.
1500. 01:26:02 And I went to the physical therapist for the stuff with my knee.
1501. 01:26:09 They gave me some stretches which help not only with the ligaments, because it was my
1502. 01:26:18 tendon had slipped off of my kneecap and on the side of my leg, which is why I had to
1503. 01:26:22 go to the physical therapist in the first place.
1504. 01:26:24 But I've got a whole custom routine that I do for back and legs, core stretches essentially
1505. 01:26:34 every single morning, which has alleviated the sciatic pain altogether.
1506. 01:26:38 Sure.
1507. 01:26:39 So this is absolutely life changing for me.
1508. 01:26:42 Sure.
1509. 01:26:43 Because every once in a while, I'll wake up with that sciatic pain and it's just burning
1510. 01:26:49 down both of my legs behind my knees.
1511. 01:26:52 And it's just dull, but also intense pain to the point where I can't sleep at night.
1512. 01:27:00 And I'm uncomfortable basically no matter what I do.
1513. 01:27:05 And so I never want to experience that again, and stretching has greatly reduced that for
1514. 01:27:10 me.
1515. 01:27:11 So maybe I should introduce this.
1516. 01:27:12 I don't know.
1517. 01:27:13 I should maybe look at...
1518. 01:27:15 I have some logs from when I was doing yoga daily.
1519. 01:27:19 I don't know that I ever connected differences in mood, stress, and such whenever I was in
1520. 01:27:26 the middle of that.
1521. 01:27:27 I have to go look.
1522. 01:27:28 I don't know.
1523. 01:27:29 Yeah, I think...
1524. 01:27:30 Now I'm curious.
1525. 01:27:31 I think everybody is going to have their own version of what are the stretches that provide
1526. 01:27:36 the most benefit.
1527. 01:27:39 But I could totally see a scenario where everyone has something that they could do that would
1528. 01:27:44 improve their life.
1529. 01:27:46 Not just prevent injury.
1530. 01:27:49 But alleviate pain, which obviously is tied to a whole bunch of other stuff.
1531. 01:27:55 I don't know anything about what you were talking about with stretching prior to working
1532. 01:27:59 out and things like that.
1533. 01:28:00 I've just always done that.
1534. 01:28:02 Yeah.
1535. 01:28:03 Usually before I go for a run and then after I go for a run.
1536. 01:28:05 Correct.
1537. 01:28:06 That's what I do.
1538. 01:28:07 I do know that the days that I don't stretch when I come back, I feel it the next day.
1539. 01:28:14 Sure.
1540. 01:28:15 I almost never...actually I do never go for a run and never exercise without stretching
1541. 01:28:22 first.
1542. 01:28:23 So I can't speak to...
1543. 01:28:25 It just seems weird.
1544. 01:28:26 It feels weird too.
1545. 01:28:27 It does.
1546. 01:28:28 I don't think I would feel real great about going out for a long run without stretching
1547. 01:28:33 first.
1548. 01:28:36 And then the other thing here with dealing with injuries and illness, he makes the point
1549. 01:28:40 that you are going to get injured.
1550. 01:28:42 You are going to get sick.
1551. 01:28:44 And the advice here I think is spot on that when that happens, do what you can.
1552. 01:28:51 And if you can't do something specifically because you are injured, if you hurt your
1553. 01:28:54 leg, you're not going to go for a run.
1554. 01:28:56 Find something else that you can do.
1555. 01:28:58 I kind of had to do this when I did hurt my knee when I was running.
1556. 01:29:02 I couldn't run for a long time, but I could use the exercise bike at the gym.
1557. 01:29:07 So I did that instead.
1558. 01:29:09 And then they told me through physical therapy that that's actually really good because it
1559. 01:29:14 builds up the muscles and keeps your tendon where it's supposed to be.
1560. 01:29:17 It's either build up those muscles and hope the tendon goes back or have surgery.
1561. 01:29:20 And I'm like, "No, I don't want to have surgery."
1562. 01:29:22 Okay, I'll do whatever you say.
1563. 01:29:25 Whatever you say, I'll do it.
1564. 01:29:27 So I like that.
1565. 01:29:29 And I think that's an approach I can take with other areas of my life where if you can't
1566. 01:29:35 do something, doesn't mean you can't do anything.
1567. 01:29:39 So look for the alternatives.
1568. 01:29:41 In other words, keep doing actions.
1569. 01:29:44 Don't stop.
1570. 01:29:45 Exactly.
1571. 01:29:47 Just maybe not the actions Jocko would recommend because the last section here is the appendix.
1572. 01:29:51 That's all the workouts.
1573. 01:29:52 I have no interest in doing any of these.
1574. 01:29:55 I've kind of dialed in specifically the workouts that make a difference for me.
1575. 01:30:01 And like I said, I've gone through physical therapy.
1576. 01:30:03 So I know that there are certain things that I do need to incorporate into my routine like
1577. 01:30:07 regular biking or cycling.
1578. 01:30:11 And I'm not going to drop all of that and do Brazilian Jiu Jitsu instead.
1579. 01:30:19 But I think if you're into that sort of thing, I don't know nothing about CrossFit.
1580. 01:30:24 But this seems to me like this would be very similar, the types of things that you would
1581. 01:30:29 be doing.
1582. 01:30:30 If you don't have access to a CrossFit gym and you're looking for something you can do
1583. 01:30:32 from home, the stuff that he recommends at the end because it's broken down into like
1584. 01:30:37 beginner, intermediate, advanced, that probably is a great place to start.
1585. 01:30:41 But I'm not going to.
1586. 01:30:43 Right.
1587. 01:30:44 Right.
1588. 01:30:45 Yeah, I would agree with that.
1589. 01:30:46 I had a chance to pre-COVID ran sound at a CrossFit gym for it was like an anniversary
1590. 01:30:54 celebration that they did for the CrossFit gym itself.
1591. 01:30:58 So every year they would do some big celebration.
1592. 01:31:01 And the band was asked to come in and play music.
1593. 01:31:05 So I went and ran sound for it.
1594. 01:31:06 So I got to talk to a lot of the people who go to the gym and did not know until that
1595. 01:31:12 night that one of the band members was a member of the gym and participated in CrossFit.
1596. 01:31:17 Didn't know that.
1597. 01:31:18 So it was very fun to learn that too.
1598. 01:31:20 But a lot of the activities that I learned about from folks who were at that event seemed
1599. 01:31:27 to correlate very strongly with what Jocko recommends here.
1600. 01:31:32 I know that just from seeing a lot of the pictures that are on every single page of
1601. 01:31:38 the entire book in the background, it seems like there's a lot of the same equipment that
1602. 01:31:43 I remember seeing at that CrossFit facility.
1603. 01:31:46 So I think he's a fan of CrossFit would be my guess.
1604. 01:31:49 Probably.
1605. 01:31:50 Yeah.
1606. 01:31:51 All right.
1607. 01:31:52 That's everything.
1608. 01:31:53 Anything else you want to add?
1609. 01:31:55 This is exactly what you would expect from a Navy SEAL when it comes to motivation.
1610. 01:32:00 That is true.
1611. 01:32:01 That is exactly what I would expect.
1612. 01:32:04 Do the thing.
1613. 01:32:05 Don't say it's too hard.
1614. 01:32:07 No excuses.
1615. 01:32:08 Get your tail to work.
1616. 01:32:09 Like that is exactly what you get with this book.
1617. 01:32:12 And I don't think I was disappointed at all on this.
1618. 01:32:18 This is a case where I think I got exactly what I expected.
1619. 01:32:21 I will say the form factor of it was very different from what I expected.
1620. 01:32:25 But it's definitely a motivation book through and through a little bit of application, but
1621. 01:32:30 mostly a motivation book.
1622. 01:32:31 Yeah.
1623. 01:32:32 I have no military experience, but it occurs to me that maybe the reason that they take
1624. 01:32:41 that approach is because they have proven it over and over and over and over and over
1625. 01:32:47 again.
1626. 01:32:48 Sure.
1627. 01:32:49 Like from the moment that you arrive in basic training, they're forcing you to do things
1628. 01:32:53 that you didn't really think you could do.
1629. 01:32:57 And I don't know.
1630. 01:32:59 Maybe I need some of that.
1631. 01:33:00 Sure.
1632. 01:33:01 Yeah.
1633. 01:33:02 Maybe not.
1634. 01:33:03 I don't know.
1635. 01:33:05 I think there's no harm in pushing yourself to see what you're capable of.
1636. 01:33:14 Even for someone like me who like with the sleep section, you know, I have medical reasons
1637. 01:33:20 why I'm not going to do certain things in a specific way.
1638. 01:33:23 But even with that, I think a lot of the stuff that would hold me back from doing what he's
1639. 01:33:30 telling me to do is just kind of preference stuff.
1640. 01:33:33 And at that point, you know, if I really want to reach my full potential, then I should
1641. 01:33:39 give it a shot.
1642. 01:33:40 And yeah.
1643. 01:33:43 So I guess getting into style and rating, I like this book in the format.
1644. 01:33:49 I had a little bit of trouble as I mentioned with some of the military language just because
1645. 01:33:54 of what happened recently in the US.
1646. 01:33:57 Yeah.
1647. 01:33:58 But I was able to go through it and distill the principles.
1648. 01:34:04 But I can see that being off putting for some other people.
1649. 01:34:06 So just know what you're getting into if you're going to pick this one up.
1650. 01:34:10 Recognize who Jackal Willink is and what his tone is going to be.
1651. 01:34:14 If you got a problem with that, then stay away.
1652. 01:34:17 Skip it.
1653. 01:34:18 But I think that a lot of the stuff that he talks about, especially in the thoughts section,
1654. 01:34:25 if you were to package just that part into a book, I feel like it would be worth it.
1655. 01:34:31 The actions are, I thought the action section was pretty good too.
1656. 01:34:35 When you got to the fuel and the repair and maintenance, that was definitely the weakest
1657. 01:34:39 part in my opinion.
1658. 01:34:41 But you're right.
1659. 01:34:42 Those two parts, those are basically the main sections of the book.
1660. 01:34:47 That's really what he wants to focus on is the mindsets and then the actions that come
1661. 01:34:52 from those mindsets.
1662. 01:34:54 He does a really great job.
1663. 01:34:55 I feel like no matter what your situation is of inspiring you to take action, whatever
1664. 01:35:01 that looks like for you.
1665. 01:35:03 Obviously, there's a physical exercise tone to a lot of this.
1666. 01:35:09 But I was we talked about at the beginning, I feel like there's a lot of direct application
1667. 01:35:13 here for knowledge workers that he doesn't need to speak directly to that part in order
1668. 01:35:18 for you to get it.
1669. 01:35:21 Very easy read because of the way that it's put together.
1670. 01:35:25 It's a pretty thick book.
1671. 01:35:26 It is 200-something pages, but some of the pages have like what, 50 words on them at
1672. 01:35:32 the most?
1673. 01:35:35 It's a work of art, basically.
1674. 01:35:38 It's not just a bunch of words that you read like you would think of for a typical book.
1675. 01:35:44 I am glad to have gone through this.
1676. 01:35:47 I am not sure how transformational this is going to be.
1677. 01:35:51 I also don't think you can rate this on the same level with some of the other stuff that
1678. 01:35:56 we've read.
1679. 01:35:57 I don't think it's on the same level in terms of like completely changing your perspective
1680. 01:36:03 as something like extreme ownership even.
1681. 01:36:06 So I'm going to rate this at 4.0.
1682. 01:36:10 I do think that just about anybody can go through this and get something out of it.
1683. 01:36:15 I do think there's a lot of good stuff in here.
1684. 01:36:17 I feel like he challenges a lot of the norms that maybe you've just believed a certain
1685. 01:36:24 thing for a long time.
1686. 01:36:25 He's kind of intentionally trying to destroy your thought processes around certain things
1687. 01:36:32 and get you to try something a little bit different.
1688. 01:36:36 I feel like he's very successful with that.
1689. 01:36:39 I got done with the book and did not feel bad like I was being yelled at for a long time.
1690. 01:36:46 I felt inspired to start getting up earlier going to bed earlier, changing some of my habits
1691. 01:36:54 and things like that.
1692. 01:36:56 A mission accomplished in my opinion with this book.
1693. 01:36:59 But recognize that's what you're getting.
1694. 01:37:02 If you're not looking for something that is motivational to get you to just show up and
1695. 01:37:06 do the things that you know you need to do, if you really have no idea where to even start,
1696. 01:37:11 maybe this isn't the best book for you.
1697. 01:37:12 Maybe something like atomic habits or tiny habits or something like that would be a little
1698. 01:37:19 bit better.
1699. 01:37:20 But I thought it was great for where we are and recognizing the bank of knowledge that
1700. 01:37:26 we already have from the books that we've gone through.
1701. 01:37:27 I feel like this is a good compliment to a lot of that stuff.
1702. 01:37:30 But not your traditional bookworm book.
1703. 01:37:33 I think that's a good thing though in this scenario.
1704. 01:37:35 Yeah, I think that's very valid.
1705. 01:37:37 This is something that I'm very grateful for having read.
1706. 01:37:42 I can't say that this is one that I would tell people to read in isolation from other
1707. 01:37:49 books like what you were saying.
1708. 01:37:51 It's a really good one if you have a bank or I would also say if you have listened to
1709. 01:37:59 a bunch of bookworm episodes and then you read this, I think it would be helpful.
1710. 01:38:04 Because I don't know that having actually read the books but at least understanding a
1711. 01:38:09 lot of the principles that we cover here on bookworm on the podcast, then picking this
1712. 01:38:15 up is a good move, I would say.
1713. 01:38:18 I think you nailed the rating at 4.0.
1714. 01:38:21 I will join you there.
1715. 01:38:24 So we have a double four.
1716. 01:38:25 But I think this is one that for me, I'm grateful for him destroying some of the, one
1717. 01:38:34 of the things was, "Where did it go?
1718. 01:38:38 Don't do what makes you happy.
1719. 01:38:40 Do what makes you better."
1720. 01:38:42 That was one of his quotes in the book.
1721. 01:38:44 It's like, "I'm with you on that because you can kind of redefine what better means.
1722. 01:38:49 But so many people tell you, find what makes you happy and do that every day."
1723. 01:38:52 That's what they tell you.
1724. 01:38:53 That's just a load.
1725. 01:38:57 It's just not what you should be doing day to day.
1726. 01:39:01 If you do what makes you happy, usually if you just focus on that, it's very narcissistic
1727. 01:39:06 and you end up hurting other people.
1728. 01:39:08 If you really, really get into that, that's not what you should be doing.
1729. 01:39:13 So don't focus on making yourself better and the people around you better.
1730. 01:39:18 And if you do that, that's what you should be focusing on every day.
1731. 01:39:21 That's I think some of the undertone in this book and it's some of what he's trying to
1732. 01:39:26 break down some of the excuses and the walls that we put up to prevent ourselves from doing
1733. 01:39:31 that because trying to make yourself better is not an easy task and it's not one that's
1734. 01:39:36 easily endeavored.
1735. 01:39:38 So it's one that I think he does a good job motivating you to take on.
1736. 01:39:42 So I think it's a great motivation book, which is exactly what he wrote it to be, I believe.
1737. 01:39:47 I'm one of the things that's a little weird to me is he calls it a field manual.
1738. 01:39:51 Yeah.
1739. 01:39:52 And when I saw that, in my head, I thought I was getting a motivational book and then
1740. 01:39:57 I saw a field manual on the front of it and my head, I was thinking, okay, well, now I'm
1741. 01:40:01 I going to have like action items every day for things to do?
1742. 01:40:05 Like in my, an actual manual of things you need to do, but that wasn't it until at least
1743. 01:40:10 the very end.
1744. 01:40:11 You're getting into crosshood.
1745. 01:40:12 It is.
1746. 01:40:13 Yeah, absolutely.
1747. 01:40:14 Yeah.
1748. 01:40:15 If you want to take his exercise routine and follow his sleep and, and all of the schedules
1749. 01:40:20 he puts in place, yeah, absolutely.
1750. 01:40:22 It's a manual, but he doesn't really call that a thing you have to do.
1751. 01:40:26 These are just suggestions.
1752. 01:40:27 It's not an actual bank of tasks to take on.
1753. 01:40:30 So again, it's a motivation book and that's exactly what you get.
1754. 01:40:33 If you are having a hard time getting yourself to do things, procrastinating and such like
1755. 01:40:40 he'll completely debunk almost every excuse you can come up with.
1756. 01:40:44 So it's great for that.
1757. 01:40:46 I'll say that.
1758. 01:40:47 So yes, I'll put it at 4.0.
1759. 01:40:49 So in terms of motivation, then do you have any action items from this?
1760. 01:40:54 I do.
1761. 01:40:55 I have one.
1762. 01:40:56 I'm going to, I'm going to try to my best to do the morning workout.
1763. 01:41:00 I don't know if that means getting myself to bed earlier, cutting my sleep slightly shorter
1764. 01:41:05 than normal.
1765. 01:41:06 I want to try to get to where I'm doing that daily.
1766. 01:41:09 So I don't know what that is going to mean, but that is the task that I'm going to take
1767. 01:41:13 on.
1768. 01:41:14 Cool.
1769. 01:41:15 Yeah.
1770. 01:41:16 I think I mentioned it in the episode, but I'm going to try to get a strength workout
1771. 01:41:20 in kind of as part of my morning routine.
1772. 01:41:23 I've got this stuff right here.
1773. 01:41:24 It doesn't have to take long.
1774. 01:41:25 It would be like 15, 20 minutes to be honest if I would just settle down and do it.
1775. 01:41:28 I just haven't really found the time to do that as part of my regular routine.
1776. 01:41:33 And I think that makes a lot of sense to do it there.
1777. 01:41:35 I'm also going to try to get up a little bit earlier.
1778. 01:41:38 I will report back on what time that ends up being.
1779. 01:41:41 But it's not going to be 4.30.
1780. 01:41:43 I'll tell you that right now.
1781. 01:41:46 I think a picture you're watching is what you're supposed to do.
1782. 01:41:48 Not happening.
1783. 01:41:49 Not happening.
1784. 01:41:50 I am also going to put some thought into the way I wrote it is completing my home gym.
1785. 01:41:58 It's not going to be complete though.
1786. 01:42:00 I'm going to figure out what else, if anything, I need.
1787. 01:42:04 I'm going to start with looking at the rowing machines.
1788. 01:42:06 Maybe I will get scared away by the price very quickly.
1789. 01:42:09 I do not know.
1790. 01:42:10 But sure.
1791. 01:42:11 I haven't been to the gym gym in almost 9 months.
1792. 01:42:17 And to be honest, I don't really have a desire to go back.
1793. 01:42:20 Before everything got shut down, I was there 6 days a week.
1794. 01:42:25 I'm still working out 6-7 days a week, but recognize that I don't need to get in the
1795. 01:42:29 car and go there.
1796. 01:42:30 So kind of why would I?
1797. 01:42:33 But I need to think through what are the things I really want to be able to do at home.
1798. 01:42:38 And then do I have the equipment in order to do that?
1799. 01:42:41 I feel like I'm pretty close, but I need to spend some time thinking about that.
1800. 01:42:44 Sure.
1801. 01:42:45 Cool.
1802. 01:42:46 Cool.
1803. 01:42:47 All right.
1804. 01:42:48 So let's put this field manual on the shelf.
1805. 01:42:51 What's next, Joe?
1806. 01:42:52 The next one up is the organized writer by Anthony Johnston.
1807. 01:42:56 And I found out this did come out in November of last year.
1808. 01:42:59 So this is a fairly new one.
1809. 01:43:00 And my head it was a new or an older one, but it's not.
1810. 01:43:05 So I'm kind of excited about diving into this because I think it's one that will be
1811. 01:43:10 helpful for both you and I since we tend to do a decent amount of writing and I'm like
1812. 01:43:15 getting into more of it.
1813. 01:43:16 So I think it'll be a good one to cover.
1814. 01:43:18 It's like how to put together the tasks, actions and such as a writer.
1815. 01:43:23 So I think that'll be kind of an interesting topic for us to cover.
1816. 01:43:26 So yes, that one's next.
1817. 01:43:28 Cool.
1818. 01:43:29 And then I'm excited to read that one.
1819. 01:43:31 After that, we are going to cover a recommendation from many, many moons ago because it is now
1820. 01:43:38 in stock again and that is the great mental models, volume one by, I don't know the author.
1821. 01:43:47 Shane Parrish.
1822. 01:43:48 Shane Parrish.
1823. 01:43:49 Okay.
1824. 01:43:50 It's sponsored by automatic, the WordPress company.
1825. 01:43:52 It's a really pretty book and it talks about a lot of the concepts that we talk about a
1826. 01:43:57 lot.
1827. 01:43:59 But I think this will be interesting.
1828. 01:44:01 So this will be a great conversation.
1829. 01:44:03 I think there's going to be a lot of stuff that we can talk about from this one and how
1830. 01:44:07 we're going to apply this.
1831. 01:44:09 I'm excited about that one.
1832. 01:44:10 I followed Shane Parrish.
1833. 01:44:11 He writes the blog at Farnham Street.
1834. 01:44:13 Yes, Farnham Street.
1835. 01:44:15 That's it.
1836. 01:44:16 Yep.
1837. 01:44:17 Yeah.
1838. 01:44:18 So he's, I followed him for a long, long, long, long time.
1839. 01:44:21 Super bright guy.
1840. 01:44:22 So I'm excited about going through that one.
1841. 01:44:24 That'll be fun.
1842. 01:44:25 And if you like that book, I mean, there's three or four different volumes, I believe
1843. 01:44:29 now.
1844. 01:44:30 So they're, they look cool.
1845. 01:44:33 Sure.
1846. 01:44:34 Got any gap books?
1847. 01:44:35 No.
1848. 01:44:36 All right.
1849. 01:44:37 Well, I do, I do have one.
1850. 01:44:39 I ordered this a while ago.
1851. 01:44:41 It came not too long ago.
1852. 01:44:42 Michael Hyatt has one of those little books out called No Fail Habits.
1853. 01:44:47 So about the same size as like No Fail Meetings, stuff like that.
1854. 01:44:54 Habits is a thing that I am, I'm studying a lot at the moment.
1855. 01:44:58 True.
1856. 01:44:59 But yeah, for the last three years.
1857. 01:45:02 Totally.
1858. 01:45:03 Well, I mentioned I'm working on an update to the best habit tracker app for the suite
1859. 01:45:08 setup.
1860. 01:45:09 I'm actually going to be doing a webinar, not too far in the future on habits.
1861. 01:45:12 So I'm just kind of like relooking at everything, trying to see what else is, is new since the
1862. 01:45:19 last time I looked at this stuff.
1863. 01:45:21 And I don't know, beginning of the year, this is the time to think about habits, right?
1864. 01:45:25 Make adjustments to the, the systems in your life.
1865. 01:45:28 So that's kind of what I'm, what I'm doing.
1866. 01:45:30 Cool.
1867. 01:45:31 All right.
1868. 01:45:32 Thank you everybody for hanging out with us today.
1869. 01:45:36 Thank you specifically to our premium club members, the people who not just show up and
1870. 01:45:43 listen or attend the live recordings, but actually put some money towards maintaining
1871. 01:45:50 the show.
1872. 01:45:51 That really means a lot to both Joe and myself.
1873. 01:45:54 If you want to become a premium club member, it's five bucks a month.
1874. 01:45:57 There's a yearly option as well.
1875. 01:45:59 And you get a couple of perks.
1876. 01:46:02 One of the things that I added recently is the, the book notes that I take.
1877. 01:46:07 I've mentioned it even in this episode.
1878. 01:46:09 I create these MindNote files.
1879. 01:46:11 Those are in a separate section in the bookworm club where you can download those, but I'm
1880. 01:46:14 also starting to put all of those inside of a public room graph.
1881. 01:46:18 And there's a link that you can get to that.
1882. 01:46:20 So everything is connected.
1883. 01:46:22 It's got all the quotes and things like that because I recognize that a lot of people were
1884. 01:46:26 using my mind maps as like a starting point for the books.
1885. 01:46:30 So I think this might be a cool idea to allow like the community to build this out together.
1886. 01:46:37 And the hope is that this turns into like a more complete collection of notes, kind of
1887. 01:46:41 like a wiki of everything that has been done in, in bookworm.
1888. 01:46:45 I shared it with Joe.
1889. 01:46:46 You don't need to have Rome in order to view it.
1890. 01:46:49 It's a website you put in the URL and you can click between the different things.
1891. 01:46:52 And I'm pretty, I'm pretty, I'm pretty happy with how that has, has turned out.
1892. 01:46:57 So if you want to get access to that, that's another perk.
1893. 01:47:00 You've got a wallpaper you can download.
1894. 01:47:02 Joe's got a couple of gap book episodes.
1895. 01:47:05 And really you do have our undying gratitude.
1896. 01:47:07 You know, if you're willing to chip in a couple of bucks a month to help support the show,
1897. 01:47:11 that really does mean a lot to us.
1898. 01:47:12 So thank you to everybody who has done that.
1899. 01:47:15 Absolutely.
1900. 01:47:16 And if you want to, I just want to point this out quickly.
1901. 01:47:19 If you want to see the live video recording, working on getting those up on our YouTube
1902. 01:47:25 channel as well.
1903. 01:47:26 So you can do that as well in the future.
1904. 01:47:29 So yes, if you are following along with us, if you're one of those who's willing to read
1905. 01:47:34 the books in two weeks before we release, check out the organized writer by Anthony Johnston.
1906. 01:47:42 We'll cover that in a couple of weeks and we will see you then.