Jocko Willink: War, Leadership, and Discipline

Jocko Willink (04:08.240)

survive. And when you realize that you need to work together as a team to, to live, that forms

Jocko Willink (04:17.600)

a very strong bond. And there's nothing like that team outside of the realm of war. I don't know

Jocko Willink (04:25.040)

because I've, there's a lot of things that I haven't experienced in my life, but I think the

Jocko Willink (04:31.040)

pressure and the consequences of war, there could be similar situations in survival scenarios,

Jocko Willink (04:39.840)

in various atrocities where people need to work together in order to survive. And I think you

Jocko Willink (04:46.720)

could probably get something that was similar. There's a very particular nature to the kind of

Jocko Willink (04:53.680)

war that World War II was, especially for the Soviet Union, where it didn't just influence

Jocko Willink (04:58.880)

the lives of people. It created culture, the music, the poetry, the literature. It's in the,

Jocko Willink (05:08.000)

it's in the way people think. It's in the way people see the world. It's in the way they talk

Jocko Willink (05:13.440)

even still to this day. And of course, I was talking about the directly relationship between

Jocko Willink (05:23.520)

two soldiers, but there's something about the depth of human connection that results from the

Jocko Willink (05:31.440)

almost like reverberations of war. Like generations later, you're still close to other humans.

Jocko Willink (05:39.280)

There's a coldness towards other humans like in Russia, but once you open up, it's depth. You

Jocko Willink (05:47.920)

seek depth of connection versus like breadth of a career kind of thinking, how can I make friends

Jocko Willink (05:55.520)

with this? I can move into this direction. What can this person benefit me? Instead, you seek

Jocko Willink (06:00.320)

a depth of human connection and appreciation that brings a lot. And maybe I'm romanticizing war here,

Lex Fridman (06:07.920)

but it feels like that's inextricably connected to World War II for Russians. Does that resonate

Jocko Willink (06:14.720)

at all? So if you look at military training, what they do is they take people in the military

Jocko Willink (06:22.320)

from the civilian world. They bring them into the military and they put them through bootcamp,

Jocko Willink (06:28.000)

which is the stereotypical thing that you see on TV. You're going to get yelled at.

Jocko Willink (06:31.520)

You're going to get screamed at. You're going to get, you're going to get put in the mud and

Jocko Willink (06:35.040)

you're going to be made to do hard things together. And what does that do with those

Jocko Willink (06:42.320)

civilians? Well, it gives them a common background. It gives them a common suffering

Jocko Willink (06:47.360)

that they've been through together and they form some sort of connection, some sort of bond.

Jocko Willink (06:54.800)

Now to make that bond a little bit stronger, after you get done with bootcamp, they send you

Jocko Willink (07:00.240)

to advanced infantry school and you suffer some more together. And when you suffer more together,

Jocko Willink (07:08.160)

now you're in a smaller group too, because now it's infantry. It's not supply people anymore or

Jocko Willink (07:12.960)

logisticians. It's strictly people that are going to fight. They're infantrymen.

Lex Fridman (07:18.720)

So they go through a school together and now they get a little bit tighter, get done with that. And

Jocko Willink (07:24.640)

maybe you go to an airborne division. So you go to airborne school and now you all

Jocko Willink (07:29.040)

overcome this fear of jumping out of an airplane together and you celebrate surviving that.

Jocko Willink (07:33.360)

Then maybe you get done with that. And now you go at an airborne division. Now you're an even tighter

Jocko Willink (07:36.960)

group because you've suffered together. What comes next is special forces training or ranger training.

Lex Fridman (07:42.720)

And what they do is they put you in these situations where you're going to suffer together and you're

Jocko Willink (07:47.600)

going to build these bonds because as I said earlier, you have to rely on each other to survive.

Lex Fridman (07:52.480)

And by the way, not everyone does, not everyone makes it through this training. So you sort of

Jocko Willink (07:55.600)

have these memories of people that didn't make it. You share that connection as well.

Lex Fridman (07:59.440)

And you can keep going down this road until you go into combat with a military unit and

Jocko Willink (08:04.320)

military units that go through combat, have an even tighter bond. And the harder the combat that

Jocko Willink (08:09.600)

they go through, the tighter the bond is going to be. So I think when you talk about what the

Jocko Willink (08:15.040)

Soviet Union went through in World War II, there was a shared suffering to survive. And so the

Jocko Willink (08:25.360)

entire nation has that common thread. And that's probably the thing that you sense or feel when you

Lex Fridman (08:33.280)

refer back to the bond that resonates all the way back to World War II.

Lex Fridman (08:40.160)

So in your podcast and your writing, you talk about some of the most fascinating things I listen

Jocko Willink (08:47.040)

to you talk about in terms of military conflict is tactics and sort of the details of combat.

Lex Fridman (08:58.640)

But allow me to stick on World War II for a second. There's a particular aspect to that war,

Jocko Willink (09:05.120)

I don't know if you can speak to it, where twice the number of civilians died than military personnel.

Lex Fridman (09:11.680)

So the Soviet Union, especially. My grandfather was a machine gunner in Ukraine as the Germans were

Jocko Willink (09:26.320)

marching towards Moscow. There's this important push in 1941 where they were trying to get before

Jocko Willink (09:32.240)

the winter to Moscow. And what Stalin was doing, he was trying to get to Moscow. He was trying to

Jocko Willink (09:38.560)

get to Moscow. And what Stalin was doing is he was basically throwing bodies to slow the attack.

Lex Fridman (09:49.440)

And what that meant is everybody understood that your job was, you have this heavy machine guns,

Jocko Willink (09:56.000)

it's very, it's almost unreasonable to be able to be mobile in any kind of way with them.

Lex Fridman (10:01.120)

So you're thrown at the front and you're just nonstop shooting and 95 plus percent of people

Jocko Willink (10:09.280)

are just dead. All the soldiers are just dead. And then you just go back and back and you're trying

Jocko Willink (10:15.440)

to protect as many civilians as you can throughout this whole process, but you don't. And so you have

Jocko Willink (10:20.720)

millions of civilians that die along the way into this march. Is there something you could say about

Jocko Willink (10:26.160)

this complete, perhaps it's naive of me to say, but a war that lacks tactics, that lacks strategy

Lex Fridman (10:37.760)

and is purely about just no consideration of human life and just throwing bodies and bullets

Jocko Willink (10:50.960)

into a mix together where millions die. And that in particular felt much less like conflict

Lex Fridman (11:01.680)

and much more like torture or suffering. It didn't come off as torture only that interestingly

Jocko Willink (11:12.960)

enough, as you probably know, my grandfather, including everybody else, volunteered. They were

Jocko Willink (11:20.160)

proud to do this. They were proud to march to their death for country, for love of country.

Lex Fridman (11:27.920)

But the question on the civilian side, when more civilians die, the military personnel,

Lex Fridman (11:33.520)

what do you make of that? It's awful. It's awful when a soldier dies. It's awful when a civilian

Jocko Willink (11:42.400)

dies. It's awful when 10 civilians or 10 soldiers. And it's even more awful when millions and millions

Jocko Willink (11:49.920)

of soldiers and civilians die. I think it's safe to say that the Soviet Union was facing an

Jocko Willink (11:57.760)

existential threat to their existence against the Nazis. So to not fight would be to die as well,

Lex Fridman (12:09.200)

maybe die a death a few years later, maybe die a different way. But

Jocko Willink (12:13.520)

the choice was die now, trying or die later on your knees. And I think the choice was pretty clear.

Jocko Willink (12:23.120)

As far as the tactics go, I mean, there is this is attrition warfare. That's what that is. We are

Jocko Willink (12:30.400)

going to keep, you know, you said throwing bodies at the problem. That's attrition warfare. And the

Jocko Willink (12:36.720)

Soviet Union had a lot of bodies, more than the Germans. And when you fight with attrition warfare,

Jocko Willink (12:43.440)

whoever has more men and material will eventually win. It's an awful, it's an awful way. But that's

Lex Fridman (12:51.920)

the that's that's what the strategy was. You often talk about leadership.

Jocko Willink (12:57.840)

Let's put the evils of Hitler aside. The boldness of Hitler in making some of the strategic

Jocko Willink (13:06.240)

decisions he did was considered by many military historians quite brilliant, early in the war,

Jocko Willink (13:13.840)

or insane and brilliant. Stalin, on the other hand, I think university is seen as somebody who is

Jocko Willink (13:21.760)

terrible military strategist, especially early in the war. He did not see all the possible

Jocko Willink (13:29.200)

trajectories that the war could take. Is there something you could say about failure of leadership,

Jocko Willink (13:34.000)

Stalin, also the United Kingdom before Churchill, and also FDR on the United States side, who

Jocko Willink (13:41.760)

basically, was trying to turn a blind eye to everything that was happening over over there,

Lex Fridman (13:49.360)

with a perspective of we just want to make, we want to keep America's interest

Jocko Willink (13:55.760)

as the primary interest and everything else, let other countries work out their problems.

Jocko Willink (14:00.800)

You know, I think one of the things with Hitler was in the beginning of the war,

Jocko Willink (14:03.680)

he listened to his friends, his family, and he listened to his friends. He listened to

Jocko Willink (14:09.280)

his generals. And therefore, they did pretty well with that. I think as the war went on,

Jocko Willink (14:15.280)

he believed that he was smarter than he was, and made decisions that were bad, that cost him dearly.

Jocko Willink (14:26.400)

You know, I mean, case in point, as everyone knows, going and attacking the Soviet Union,

Jocko Willink (14:31.360)

while you're still fighting a war on the other front is not not a good move.

Jocko Willink (14:34.160)

There's an example of yeah, bad leadership, letting your ego get in the way believing that you can do

Jocko Willink (14:38.960)

things that you that are beyond your capabilities. But, you know, as you mentioned in the beginning

Jocko Willink (14:45.360)

with Blitzkrieg, those were really dynamic and bold moves. And they worked. And that what does

Jocko Willink (14:53.680)

that do? That fuels your ego and makes you think that you can win.

Lex Fridman (14:57.920)

Many people consider that war a just war. What do you think makes a just war?

Jocko Willink (15:05.600)

I think you have the Nazis, and the Imperial Japanese trying to impose their will on other

Jocko Willink (15:12.720)

nations and other peoples. And when that happens, I think on a grand scale, people look at that. And

Jocko Willink (15:19.840)

believe it's just to step in and do something about it.

Lex Fridman (15:25.920)

Is there some gray area here?

Jocko Willink (15:28.240)

There's, there's nothing but gray area.

Lex Fridman (15:32.800)

The United States has been involved in a lot of military conflict since then.

Lex Fridman (15:36.960)

How do you draw the line to the gray area? What, what war should we engage in and not?

Jocko Willink (15:44.000)

I know you don't get a lot of questions about that, but I think it's important that you

Jocko Willink (15:48.480)

I know you don't get into politics much. But what the decision to go to war,

Jocko Willink (15:55.040)

you have to look at the situation that you're going into. And you have to make sure that you have

Jocko Willink (16:00.560)

the will to go to war. And the will to go to war means that you are willing to kill people.

Lex Fridman (16:09.120)

And when I say people, I don't just mean enemy, because in war,

Jocko Willink (16:12.480)

civilians are going to die, women and children are going to die. Every a lot of people are

Jocko Willink (16:17.280)

going to die. And so you and you are going to kill them. Doesn't matter what kind of

Jocko Willink (16:21.760)

smart munitions you have. Doesn't matter how disciplined your soldiers are. When you go into

Jocko Willink (16:26.640)

a war, civilians are going to die and you have to understand that. And the other thing that

Jocko Willink (16:32.240)

you have to understand is that your troops are also going to die. And it seems like sometimes

Jocko Willink (16:42.240)

we're a little bit naive about the calculation of what that's going to look like.

Lex Fridman (16:45.360)

And maybe we think, well, not that many civilians and maybe not that many of our our personnel are

Jocko Willink (16:50.800)

going to die. And that's where you get into sticky situations. And, you know, another thing when you

Jocko Willink (16:56.960)

were talking about the Soviet Union versus the Nazis, that's total war. That's what that is. And

Jocko Willink (17:04.480)

we don't engage in that very often. It's total war. It's we will do absolutely anything to win.

Lex Fridman (17:10.160)

And America doesn't fight like that very often. In fact, the last time we fought like that was

Jocko Willink (17:15.520)

World War Two. We it was total war. We will do whatever it takes to up to and including

Jocko Willink (17:22.480)

the atomic bomb to destroy the enemy. So those are the kind of things you need to think about

Lex Fridman (17:29.760)

before you go to war. And I don't think we think about that very often.

Jocko Willink (17:33.280)

I don't think we think about that very often. You know, even the United States, the atomic bomb,

Lex Fridman (17:40.000)

nuclear weapons is an interesting one because there's a lot of

Jocko Willink (17:46.320)

there's a lot of hesitation on that. There's a lot of critics of that decision as it was happening.

Lex Fridman (17:52.880)

So even America, you could imagine other countries like Germany would not be so hesitant

Jocko Willink (17:57.040)

to use nuclear weapons. It's interesting to think about in deciding military strategy to inject

Jocko Willink (18:08.960)

ethics into it, into morality. It's not just about winning the war, but should we do this

Lex Fridman (18:17.040)

and doing the calculation of human life. Usually those decisions are made by leaders,

Lex Fridman (18:23.600)

not by the soldier that's going to be implementing

Jocko Willink (18:30.720)

that decision. Do you put some responsibility, I should even say blame on the leaders

Lex Fridman (18:38.880)

and not doing that kind of calculation here? You could say that about the Vietnam War,

Jocko Willink (18:43.840)

you could say that about even the war that you were involved with in Iraq.

Jocko Willink (18:47.520)

Is there some criticism here that you could apply to leaders for failing not to consider

Jocko Willink (18:52.960)

that the broader moral questions? Yes.

Lex Fridman (19:00.080)

Natural, like all leaders will make these mistakes or should leaders not make these mistakes?

Jocko Willink (19:09.840)

Leaders are going to make mistakes. It's impossible to know what's going to happen in war,

Lex Fridman (19:13.600)

just like it's impossible to know what's going to happen in life.

Jocko Willink (19:15.920)

You make decisions based on the information that you have at the time and you will make mistakes.

Jocko Willink (19:23.920)

If you fail to admit that you made a mistake, that's where I have a more significant problem

Jocko Willink (19:30.480)

than someone that makes a mistake and says, hey, this is the mistake that I made. This is the

Jocko Willink (19:36.080)

intelligence that I thought we were utilizing and it actually is not what I thought it was going to

Jocko Willink (19:42.320)

be. And here's the new direction that we're going in. We don't have enough of that type of ownership

Lex Fridman (19:52.080)

in leadership globally. Just saying I made a mistake

Jocko Willink (1:00:04.040)

some subordinate leadership that has the trust, knowledge, and expertise that you will be able

Jocko Willink (1:00:10.120)

to turn over some of these, some of these details to for two reasons. Number one, so you can let

Jocko Willink (1:00:16.040)

your brain, you know, you can, you can survive a little longer as he put it, but also all the

Jocko Willink (1:00:21.800)

time that you spend as a leader, looking down and into your organization is time that you're

Jocko Willink (1:00:25.800)

not looking up and out. So when you're not looking up and out, you're not seeing what

Jocko Willink (1:00:29.800)

the competitors doing. You're not seeing where the market's going. There's problems that,

Jocko Willink (1:00:33.560)

that, that can come from that. So if right now he's spending too much time looking down and in,

Lex Fridman (1:00:38.200)

and you mentioned, you know, you said, I don't know if I want to do a startup. When you do a

Jocko Willink (1:00:40.840)

startup, you're going to be looking down and in for a while. It's going to take a while. You're

Jocko Willink (1:00:44.200)

going to have to do all this work yourself. You're not going to have the finances to put

Jocko Willink (1:00:47.400)

people manpower behind these things. So that's probably he, maybe he's in that mindset a little

Jocko Willink (1:00:53.640)

bit because he's done so many startups over the years. And so he's in the he's habitually in the

Jocko Willink (1:00:58.840)

weeds. So my advice would be, all right, let's start looking at formulating some subordinate

Jocko Willink (1:01:04.760)

leadership that has the, like I said, the expertise, the trust that you can, you can start

Jocko Willink (1:01:09.000)

to turn over some of these more minute details to them so that you can start looking up and out.

Jocko Willink (1:01:15.560)

Yeah. I think he's done that more successful in some places than others. The SpaceX, a lot of

Jocko Willink (1:01:20.280)

people give the credit to Gwen Shotwell for the CEO, the COO of SpaceX as, as a very successful

Jocko Willink (1:01:31.320)

person that runs shit, but in Tesla, not as much. So I wonder if you can comment on something

Jocko Willink (1:01:38.840)

a lot of people worry about, and this applies to a lot of tech companies, which is a lot of people

Jocko Willink (1:01:46.120)

worry about that if Elon disappears, the, the, the innovative spirit, the company is as we know them

Jocko Willink (1:01:54.040)

today will collapse, will stagnate and will basically fail to do what they've been doing for

Lex Fridman (1:02:00.600)

so many years successfully. Is there some aspect to what makes a good leader that if you disappear,

Jocko Willink (1:02:09.400)

it's still the thing still lives on and not just lives on, but thrives.

Jocko Willink (1:02:14.520)

Yeah. So what we have to do in those situations is we have to establish a strong culture inside

Jocko Willink (1:02:19.240)

that organization. And if you're there's, there's, there's reasons why this happens, right? If I have

Jocko Willink (1:02:26.680)

a big ego and I form a company and I love the fact that everyone looks at me and says, Oh,

Jocko Willink (1:02:32.200)

Jocko made this company and he's the creative force behind this company. And that fuels my ego

Lex Fridman (1:02:36.520)

and it makes me feel good. And you know, I'm working with you, Lex. And every time you come

Jocko Willink (1:02:40.920)

up with an idea, I say, Lex, you need to stay in your box. Yeah. Right. So I'm not creating a culture

Lex Fridman (1:02:47.000)

that rewards that sort of creativity. And eventually when I die, I won't have

Jocko Willink (1:02:54.040)

have educated my team on how to maintain that creative aspect. So again, hopefully inside

Jocko Willink (1:03:02.680)

that organization, he's, he's encouraging and growing that culture where creativity is rewarded,

Jocko Willink (1:03:10.760)

where, where it flourishes, even when he's gone, that's what we have to hope for.

Lex Fridman (1:03:16.520)

He is, but I also seem to notice that there's not many people like him.

Jocko Willink (1:03:21.240)

Um, people become complacent too easily. I've been disappointed by people a little bit.

Jocko Willink (1:03:31.880)

It's like, success makes people soft. With Elon, it seems like success doesn't have any effect.

Jocko Willink (1:03:41.000)

It's like the reverse effect. It doesn't, it's like, what's the, it's always like,

Lex Fridman (1:03:45.480)

what's the next biggest thing, right? He's living that exponential growth,

Jocko Willink (1:03:50.200)

which I think that's the problem that you have to have somebody who's constantly

Lex Fridman (1:03:56.120)

trying to find the 10 X solution, like trying to constantly improve things.

Jocko Willink (1:04:01.240)

And, uh, restlessly that, I mean, that probably has to do with finding the right people,

Jocko Willink (1:04:06.120)

not just creating the culture, but creating a culture with the right set of people.

Jocko Willink (1:04:11.320)

Speaking of which Steve Jobs, there's, uh, two things I want to mention there.

Lex Fridman (1:04:19.240)

One, once again, the harshness, but a very different kind.

Lex Fridman (1:04:22.840)

And the second is team building. So on the harshness, he is much harsher than Elon

Jocko Willink (1:04:32.920)

in a way, in the following way. And I'm having a sense that you will not like this,

Lex Fridman (1:04:38.040)

but I'd like to defend it is he loses his shit quite a bit. He was famously, at least,

Jocko Willink (1:04:44.920)

especially early on being very emotional. He was letting passion dominate the discussion.

Jocko Willink (1:04:51.320)

There'd be a lot of firings. There would be a lot of mean things said to people.

Lex Fridman (1:04:58.280)

I don't know what you make of that. How much as a leader,

Lex Fridman (1:05:01.160)

are you allowed to just lose your shit in your love for the thing you're doing?

Lex Fridman (1:05:07.400)

And how effective is that?

Jocko Willink (1:05:09.560)

As a leader, you shouldn't be doing that very often.

Lex Fridman (1:05:11.480)

So you can look back at me and say, well, Jocko, here's the most profitable company that's ever

Jocko Willink (1:05:16.200)

existed. And so you're wrong. Well, going back to that multiple multitude of characteristics that

Jocko Willink (1:05:24.200)

human beings can have. Well, it's the same thing with businesses. It's the same thing with companies.

Jocko Willink (1:05:30.920)

Steve Jobs was off the charts in some of his traits, his ability to understand design,

Jocko Willink (1:05:38.840)

his ability to understand human interface with computer systems. So, so far off the charts

Jocko Willink (1:05:47.640)

that despite his bad temper, emotional behavior, the company still thrived.

Jocko Willink (1:05:57.880)

That can happen. You can have people that are horrible leaders that develop something

Jocko Willink (1:06:04.920)

that's so universally outstanding that you end up with a company that's successful.

Jocko Willink (1:06:14.280)

The reason, I mean, I get asked that a bunch, people always ask me, because I say, look,

Jocko Willink (1:06:18.360)

you shouldn't be losing your temper as a leader. Well, what about Steve Jobs? He used to yell and

Jocko Willink (1:06:24.440)

scream all the time. Great. When people say that to me, I say, oh, okay. Are you as good at design

Jocko Willink (1:06:30.120)

as Steve Jobs was? Are you as good at marketing as Steve Jobs was? He had a certain amount of skills

Jocko Willink (1:06:38.760)

that were off the charts. And so he was able to be successful despite the fact that he would lose

Jocko Willink (1:06:45.320)

his temper, treat people horribly. That's not good. It's not good. And it would have been even

Jocko Willink (1:06:50.760)

more successful if he wouldn't had those characteristics. Now you might say, well,

Jocko Willink (1:06:55.640)

he, his anger is what pushed things. Well, let me ask you this. What leader wins the leader

Jocko Willink (1:07:05.720)

whose team is afraid, who the team who execute, executes the mission because they're afraid of

Jocko Willink (1:07:12.840)

their leader or executes the task because they're afraid of their leader or the team that loves

Jocko Willink (1:07:18.360)

their leaders so much that they don't want to let them down. They don't want to let them down.

Lex Fridman (1:07:21.560)

Or the team that loves their leaders so much that they don't want to let them down. Which team wins?

Jocko Willink (1:07:28.120)

You're implying a confidence that love is more powerful than fear, but I'm not so sure. This is

Jocko Willink (1:07:34.120)

the Machiavelli question. You're saying ultimately it's always better to lead by inspiration and love

Jocko Willink (1:07:41.240)

than by, by putting the fear into the team. What I'm, what I'm saying is that I've seen

Jocko Willink (1:07:48.920)

countless times is me leading through my authority, leading through my rank,

Jocko Willink (1:07:54.920)

leading through punitive measures is infinitely worse than me and you working together as a team

Jocko Willink (1:08:02.680)

to win. On the second point of Steve Jobs is he has this idea of philosophy of eight players

Jocko Willink (1:08:12.200)

where you have a group, like the power and the productivity of a group of what he called eight

Jocko Willink (1:08:21.160)

players is invaluable. So you want to get a team of people who are the best at what they do.

Lex Fridman (1:08:29.640)

But the most important aspect to him was that a single quote unquote B player on the team destroys

Jocko Willink (1:08:37.320)

the entire productivity of the team. Is there something that it brings true to that? So he was,

Jocko Willink (1:08:42.600)

I guess this could be a temper thing, but vicious about firing and removing the, uh, what he felt

Jocko Willink (1:08:50.600)

was a toxic B player in a team. So eight players feed off of each other, unless there's one B

Lex Fridman (1:08:57.800)

player present. It depends on the nature of the B player. Is the player, is the player a B player?

Jocko Willink (1:09:04.920)

Is the player a B player because he's a little bit lazy? Is he a B player because he doesn't have a

Jocko Willink (1:09:13.640)

good vision? Is he a B player because he's got a big ego and always thinks he's right

Lex Fridman (1:09:21.000)

and now creates conflict in the team. So there's a bunch of different B players.

Jocko Willink (1:09:24.280)

Look, if you're working for me and you're kind of a B player, but guess what? You're a grinder and

Jocko Willink (1:09:29.400)

you get stuff done. I want you on the team. You might not be the smartest person I have,

Lex Fridman (1:09:33.720)

but I know that you're committed to the team and I want you on the team. So you're a B player,

Lex Fridman (1:09:40.920)

but that's okay. Now, if you're Lex with the giant ego, I'd rather have, I'd rather have Lex.

Jocko Willink (1:09:48.520)

That's not quite as smart. Cause I got other people that are smart. I got other people that

Jocko Willink (1:09:52.360)

are smart on the team. Look, you're going to need some smart people on the team, but a team

Jocko Willink (1:09:57.080)

is made up. It's a team. And so you take these different components of a team. And if you have

Jocko Willink (1:10:02.040)

complimentary components, you'll end up with a superior team. Then just basing it on the level

Jocko Willink (1:10:09.880)

of, and what's an A player sometimes in the seal teams, they would get something called the stacked

Jocko Willink (1:10:16.920)

platoon. And what that would be is someone, you know, some senior person in that platoon would

Jocko Willink (1:10:24.600)

manipulate and maneuver to get the quote best guys that he could in that platoon. So, you know,

Jocko Willink (1:10:31.240)

the most experienced guys, the person that had great, great reputations. And sometimes those

Jocko Willink (1:10:36.440)

platoons would be great. Sometimes they would implode because what you end up with is a bunch of

Jocko Willink (1:10:41.880)

A players. And now no one wants to follow anyone else. No one wants to agree with anyone else.

Jocko Willink (1:10:47.480)

Everyone wants to do it my way. Not it's my way, not Lex's way. Lex is stupid. No,

Jocko Willink (1:10:50.760)

you're stupid. We end up with problems. So can one person derail a team? Absolutely.

Lex Fridman (1:10:57.160)

Under good leadership, one person should not derail a team.

Jocko Willink (1:11:04.360)

This could be a tech thing too. There's some multiplying effect of just pure excellence,

Jocko Willink (1:11:10.600)

no matter the personalities. I think for Steve Jobs, he doesn't, the ego doesn't matter. None

Jocko Willink (1:11:19.960)

of that matters. What matters is the quality of the output, the genius of the result.

Lex Fridman (1:11:24.760)

And that somehow multiplies itself. And the egos actually, like one of the problems with egos

Jocko Willink (1:11:31.400)

is like, what does ego usually say? It says, I'm much better than you. When you have people that

Jocko Willink (1:11:36.600)

are really good together, it's very hard for the ego to flourish because you're like constantly

Jocko Willink (1:11:41.640)

being shown that you're not as good and there's a competition. So like, I think to his, his idea was

Jocko Willink (1:11:47.880)

that like, if you get people that are really good at what they do, it turns out that you're not as

Jocko Willink (1:11:53.400)

good at what you do. It turns as opposed to you being complacent and not doing much and thinking

Jocko Willink (1:12:00.520)

you're better than everyone else and your opinion is better, is you almost getting in that competitive

Jocko Willink (1:12:05.000)

race. You know that magic that happens when you're at the end of a marathon and you're just like

Jocko Willink (1:12:10.600)

head to head, like you're just going full steam with a person that is as good as you. There's no

Jocko Willink (1:12:15.800)

place for ego there. Which is great. Which is great. Let's use that example. You and I are racing,

Jocko Willink (1:12:22.520)

the end of the marathon. We're both highly competitive, highly competitive. We have massive

Jocko Willink (1:12:27.960)

egos and we both want to win. We both want to win so bad that we, we give everything we've got.

Jocko Willink (1:12:37.080)

That's totally positive, right? Isn't that totally positive? Now imagine this same thing.

Jocko Willink (1:12:43.720)

We're in a race, we're in a marathon, we're in the last hundred meters. It's you against me

Jocko Willink (1:12:48.600)

and, and our egos are huge and we're pushing to win and you start to pull ahead of me

Lex Fridman (1:12:54.360)

and my ego is so big and I hate losing so much that I somehow accidentally

Lex Fridman (1:13:02.120)

push my knee up against your foot on a backstride and throw you onto your face.

Lex Fridman (1:13:06.840)

So that's what ego, ego is an awesome driver unless you let your ego control you and you let

Jocko Willink (1:13:14.200)

ego drive your decision making process, in which case it turns into an incredible problem. So

Jocko Willink (1:13:20.360)

you might have someone that is excellent. You might have someone that's outstanding. You might

Jocko Willink (1:13:25.960)

have some someone that's tens across the board, but their ego is so big that big that they can't

Jocko Willink (1:13:31.560)

work with other people. They can't accept anyone else's ideas. They can't compromise on something

Jocko Willink (1:13:36.120)

because they think their idea is better all the time and that is going to be problematic

Lex Fridman (1:13:40.120)

and I don't want them on the team. Now as a good leader, guess what I'll do? I'll put them into a

Jocko Willink (1:13:45.480)

situation where I can utilize their best aspects, but not have their ego destroy the team. So I

Jocko Willink (1:13:53.960)

might say, Hey Lex, you know what? I actually want you to take lead on this part of the project over

Jocko Willink (1:13:58.840)

here and since you're so smart and you work so hard, I know you're going to pull ahead of everyone

Jocko Willink (1:14:04.200)

else. So you grind on that. Once you get that result, give it to me and I'm going to disseminate

Jocko Willink (1:14:10.040)

it to the team. So I, I, I isolate you from wrecking yourself and the rest of the team with

Jocko Willink (1:14:17.640)

your giant ego. So then, uh, looking at a completely opposite person was this a fascinating

Jocko Willink (1:14:24.040)

person to me is Sandra Pichai, who's the CEO of Alphabet CEO of Google. I admire the

Jocko Willink (1:14:31.880)

the, uh, in a romantic sense, the madness that is, uh, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk.

Lex Fridman (1:14:40.360)

So to me, the opposite of that is Sandra Pichai, who's, uh, like everybody loves him.

Jocko Willink (1:14:49.080)

And, uh, he's also a great listener. So he always brings people together. And so he went,

Jocko Willink (1:14:54.680)

the, the, the energy of that person in the room is like the basic energy. If I were to summarize it,

Jocko Willink (1:15:00.760)

it's like, I want to hear all the voices in the room. That's the energy he brings. And, uh,

Jocko Willink (1:15:08.440)

it's almost like he doesn't want to impose a final decision. He wants to hear all the voices

Lex Fridman (1:15:14.680)

and somehow always the decision just falls out. I don't know what to say about that.

Lex Fridman (1:15:22.280)

What to say about that style of leadership, but it's always surprising to me how

Jocko Willink (1:15:30.520)

that love brought a lot of people together and still, I mean, some of the greatest things Google

Jocko Willink (1:15:36.040)

has done over the past several years, uh, could be attributed to that continued innovation,

Jocko Willink (1:15:43.640)

bringing out the best out of people. There's of course, bureaucracy, which I could criticize

Jocko Willink (1:15:47.400)

at the end of the day, which always happens with big companies. I would argue actually

Jocko Willink (1:15:51.720)

the dictatorial style of Steve jobs and, you know, Musk helped fight the bureaucracy,

Jocko Willink (1:15:56.040)

which is one criticism I would give of being a listener and being kind is sometimes you can't

Jocko Willink (1:16:01.480)

cut through the as effectively, but he. He's one of the only people I've ever heard of

Jocko Willink (1:16:07.240)

who everybody loves. He's inspirational figure to millions, especially in the, like in India,

Jocko Willink (1:16:13.720)

he's a celebrity in the best kind of way. Is there something you could say about that kind

Jocko Willink (1:16:18.440)

of leadership where you're never the asshole. You're never the dictator. You're always the

Jocko Willink (1:16:24.120)

listener and, um, the compassionate empathetic glue that brings the team together basically

Jocko Willink (1:16:32.520)

would love. Yeah. That's that's great leadership. If you have to choose for Google, uh,

Lex Fridman (1:16:42.680)

for large companies, is there something to be said about what is more effective?

Lex Fridman (1:16:47.640)

The dictator, uh, ruling by love or ruling by fear?

Jocko Willink (1:16:54.760)

First of all, everything's a dichotomy, right? And so to think that all the time, you're always

Jocko Willink (1:17:00.440)

going to be able to just bark orders at people and they're always going to listen to you. And

Jocko Willink (1:17:04.920)

you're always going to get the best result. That would not be smart to think that every single

Jocko Willink (1:17:09.160)

time you're going to come to a 100% consensus amongst the troops. And that decision is going

Jocko Willink (1:17:15.080)

to reveal itself without you nudging it along. That would also be short sighted and naive. So

Lex Fridman (1:17:22.760)

what you, what a good leader does is they, they, they stay balanced. And as much as they can,

Jocko Willink (1:17:27.880)

they listen to what the troops have to say. They take that feedback. Maybe they quietly nudge things

Jocko Willink (1:17:34.360)

and, and I'm sure he does that. I'm sure he does some nudging that maybe no one even picks up on.

Jocko Willink (1:17:40.120)

You know, I like to say the best forms of leadership is leadership with minimum force required.

Lex Fridman (1:17:45.800)

So if I can go into a room as a leader and not say one single thing and the team can come to

Jocko Willink (1:17:51.560)

the right consensus and move in that direction, that's my preferred method. Maybe I have to give

Jocko Willink (1:17:55.880)

them a little bit of a nudge, a 10% nudge in one direction. Okay. That's better than me walking in

Jocko Willink (1:18:00.760)

there and giving them 100% dictatorial direction of exactly what I want to have happen. Now,

Jocko Willink (1:18:08.040)

occasionally, if we have an emergency situation, people are starting to be frazzled and they're

Jocko Willink (1:18:13.320)

not sure which direction to go. Then sometimes as a leader, you have to walk in and say, all right,

Jocko Willink (1:18:17.320)

everyone here's where we're going. And people get on board. Why? Because for many years or months or

Jocko Willink (1:18:24.600)

however long you've trusted them to come up with a plan. And when you trust, when you, as a leader,

Jocko Willink (1:18:30.840)

trust your team to come up with a plan, the team starts to trust you and you get leadership capital.

Lex Fridman (1:18:37.320)

And as you build leadership capital, occasionally you need to cash in some of that leadership

Jocko Willink (1:18:42.120)

capital. You need to spend some of it. And maybe it is, hey, listen, here's the direction we're

Jocko Willink (1:18:46.280)

going right now. We'll debrief it later, but we got to make a move. And the team who trusts you

Lex Fridman (1:18:52.360)

says, Roger that boss, we got it. And all of them actually do this

Jocko Willink (1:18:57.880)

interesting thing. I'd love to hear your opinion on it. Sondra certainly does it to a large degree,

Jocko Willink (1:19:03.160)

which is it's in the process of delegation, trusting a person to do a really difficult thing,

Jocko Willink (1:19:14.360)

like tossing it up and saying like, I trust you can get this job done

Jocko Willink (1:19:24.360)

for some, even if your resume does not support that. I'm actually kind of amazed that human

Jocko Willink (1:19:31.000)

beings when they're given the trust to get the job done, they step up very often. That's kind

Jocko Willink (1:19:36.840)

of an amazing property of human nature. People often ask me issues about leadership. And I always

Jocko Willink (1:19:43.000)

say that one of the best tools for teaching leadership and for teaching a bunch of other

Jocko Willink (1:19:47.400)

lessons is leadership itself. So when it happens all the time, when you elevate someone into a

Jocko Willink (1:19:53.160)

leadership position, they do step up and they do make things happen. So that's not surprising to me.

Lex Fridman (1:20:00.040)

You do have to mitigate risks. So saying, Hey, you know, Lex, I know you're,

Jocko Willink (1:20:05.960)

haven't been in the military before. I know you have very limited weapons experience,

Lex Fridman (1:20:11.240)

but I want you to run a target assault on a real mission in whatever country that would not be

Jocko Willink (1:20:18.360)

good. That would not be a good move on, on my part. Now, if I said, all right, Lex, you know what,

Jocko Willink (1:20:22.520)

I want you to get some leadership experience. I've got a training mission and it's going to

Jocko Willink (1:20:26.840)

be using paintball and I'm going to put you in charge of it. I got no problem doing that.

Jocko Willink (1:20:33.480)

Some of that is judging human character is like, there's potential, there's something in this

Jocko Willink (1:20:39.160)

person that they are, they have enough demons or whatever the hell it requires to have that fuel.

Jocko Willink (1:20:45.640)

They'll figure it out. They'll hate themselves if they don't. And they'll find the right,

Jocko Willink (1:20:51.480)

they'll find the tools that find the path to achieve the, whatever the level of perfection

Jocko Willink (1:20:56.280)

they can. It's been really surprising to me. It's been making me rethink the whole hiring process

Jocko Willink (1:21:02.040)

because I often now I'm thinking and looking, so I'm looking for people, both for the startup,

Lex Fridman (1:21:07.480)

but just for my own life to help. And I almost want to see evidence of excellence,

Lex Fridman (1:21:14.840)

but maybe you want to just based on just judgment of human character without evidence of excellence,

Jocko Willink (1:21:21.560)

have people step up. Like Joe Rogan with Jamie, that's a funny side of it. I didn't understand

Lex Fridman (1:21:28.520)

how little Joe knew about Jamie when he hired him. And Jamie stepped up and now runs one of

Jocko Willink (1:21:34.200)

the most successful podcasts ever. And that's an incredible kind of, and he's one of the best

Jocko Willink (1:21:39.960)

producers in the world now, not to let it get to his head. And by the way, the funny thing about

Jocko Willink (1:21:45.560)

him. And one of the best Googlers in the world. One of the best Googlers. The funny thing about

Jocko Willink (1:21:49.880)

Jamie, this is okay. You might not like this, but what I, what I like, I'm constantly exceptionally

Jocko Willink (1:21:57.880)

self critical to a point of like self hating. Sometimes I deeply appreciate every single moment

Jocko Willink (1:22:04.440)

I'm alive, but everything I've ever done, I feel like a shit. And when I talked to Jamie about

Jocko Willink (1:22:10.200)

everything he's done, he's just in every way he carries himself. He's so self critical. He's so

Jocko Willink (1:22:16.520)

he's so like worried that it's wrong. It's bad. That anxious energy. I love it. Cause that's how

Jocko Willink (1:22:24.200)

you lead to growth and progress. Like you might, like a therapist might say, that's probably not

Jocko Willink (1:22:29.640)

good for your like wellbeing. Fuck it. It's good for the what's good for your wellbeing is to create

Jocko Willink (1:22:36.760)

awesome things. That's ultimately what leads to happiness is to, to create the best thing you can

Jocko Willink (1:22:41.800)

in your life. And so when I see that in somebody like Jamie or anybody I talked to, when you're

Jocko Willink (1:22:47.880)

really self critical, that's a good sign to me. Is that ridiculous? It's not ridiculous at all.

Lex Fridman (1:22:53.240)

And it goes back, you know, you were, you were the way you were phrasing these questions about what

Jocko Willink (1:22:57.480)

makes a good person and what makes a good leader, the way you phrase them kind of eliminated the

Jocko Willink (1:23:05.400)

normal answer that I give the normal answer that I give. You asked me what makes a good leader,

Lex Fridman (1:23:10.600)

what makes a good person is, is being humble. So when you're going to hire someone for your,

Jocko Willink (1:23:19.160)

for your startup or whatever company you're creating, that is a key characteristic to look for

Jocko Willink (1:23:24.440)

is someone that has the humility like, like young Jamie to say, yeah, you know, I, I could have done

Jocko Willink (1:23:30.440)

this better and here's what I can improve. And here's what I need to work on. When you have

Jocko Willink (1:23:34.280)

somebody that thinks they know everything out of the gate, you're, you're already got someone

Jocko Willink (1:23:40.280)

that's going to be hard to deal with. They're going to be hard to coach. They're going to be

Jocko Willink (1:23:42.440)

hard to mentor. When you have somebody that's truly humble, you barely, again, it's minimum

Jocko Willink (1:23:47.160)

force required because when you say to Jamie after a show, how do you think that went,

Jocko Willink (1:23:52.040)

he says, well, you know, I did this wrong and I didn't have this set up in time. And

Jocko Willink (1:23:55.640)

you don't, you don't barely have to do anything because he's got the humility.

Jocko Willink (1:23:58.920)

If you've got someone that's a big ego and you say, Hey, how did that show go? He goes,

Jocko Willink (1:24:03.080)

I went awesome on my end. Now guess what you have to do. Now you have to start applying

Jocko Willink (1:24:08.120)

force as a leader, which is expending leadership capital, which we don't want to do because we

Jocko Willink (1:24:11.960)

always try and conserve our leadership capital as much as we possibly can. And when we have to

Jocko Willink (1:24:16.120)

expend it just to get Jamie to make some improvements, that's bad. So when you go

Jocko Willink (1:24:23.240)

looking for people, look for people that are humble. Now, does this mean you look for people

Jocko Willink (1:24:26.120)

that don't have any confidence? No, that's not what I'm saying. There's a balance to all these

Jocko Willink (1:24:29.480)

things. That's the dichotomy of leadership you, but people tend towards and look, I work with

Jocko Willink (1:24:35.480)

a lot of military troops in the past. Now I work with companies. The reason I talk about

Jocko Willink (1:24:39.880)

humility all the time is because for someone to be, get into a leadership position in the military,

Jocko Willink (1:24:47.240)

they have to have confidence. So the tendency is that their confidence is going to outweigh their

Jocko Willink (1:24:53.640)

humility at some point. Same thing with, with civilian companies. If you get to a point of

Jocko Willink (1:24:59.240)

leadership inside of a company, you have to have confidence to get there. You don't get to a

Jocko Willink (1:25:03.880)

position of leadership inside of a company lacking confidence. So the tendency is for

Jocko Willink (1:25:09.880)

confidence to, to grow a little bit too much. And we have to put that, put that confidence into check.

Jocko Willink (1:25:16.680)

We have to put that ego into check. Really good leaders. They're confident, but they're humble.

Lex Fridman (1:25:21.320)

That's the balance of the dichotomy. Hear that, Jamie, don't get cocky.

Jocko Willink (1:25:25.880)

On occasion. Rarely you talk about discipline. What does a discipline life look like doing what

Lex Fridman (1:25:33.080)

you're supposed to do? What if I want to lay on the couch and eat Cheetos and watch soap operas?

Lex Fridman (1:25:41.800)

That's that's not, that doesn't feel like discipline. Do you think you're supposed to do that?

Jocko Willink (1:25:47.720)

Well, you know, you could argue from a, a sort of a meaning of life perspective that perhaps

Jocko Willink (1:25:53.800)

happiness is the most important. And if it makes me happy, perhaps that's, if it's fulfilling,

Jocko Willink (1:26:02.120)

of course, eating Cheetos and watching soap operas is fulfilling for nobody whatsoever.

Jocko Willink (1:26:06.840)

Next question. But there's something about discipline that's more than that. We have to

Jocko Willink (1:26:11.880)

like the rigor of habit, right? You, you wake up early in the morning, all the time.

Lex Fridman (1:26:20.600)

What is it Jordan Peterson talks about? Make your bed. One place where you probably agree with

Jocko Willink (1:26:25.720)

Jordan. People ask me if I make my bed. I don't. There's a disagreement with Jordan.

Jocko Willink (1:26:32.360)

There we go.

Jocko Willink (1:26:32.840)

I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't.

Jocko Willink (1:26:39.720)

There's a disagreement with Jordan. There we go. You know, when I was younger, before I was married,

Jocko Willink (1:26:46.360)

I didn't make my bed because I had one sleeping bag on it and I would get out of the sleeping bag.

Jocko Willink (1:26:53.000)

There was nothing to make. Yeah. Now I'm married and I can't make my bed because my wife's in my

Jocko Willink (1:26:59.160)

bed. So I don't make my bed. Okay. So what in your life, maybe we can talk about the one that's most

Jocko Willink (1:27:07.960)

publicly facing, which is you wake up at four o clock or around four o clock in the morning.

Jocko Willink (1:27:14.280)

You post on social media a picture of your watch. It being early, just to remind people that

Lex Fridman (1:27:25.160)

you are a man of your word. What's that about? What's the philosophy of the four o clock?

Lex Fridman (1:27:32.600)

What role does that play in a disciplined life for you?

Jocko Willink (1:27:35.240)

Okay. From that perspective, what role it plays is getting a jump on the day.

Lex Fridman (1:27:40.920)

And when you wake up early and you get a jump on the day and you've got your workout done,

Lex Fridman (1:27:45.800)

and you've got a little bit of little bit of work done by the time normal people are getting up,

Jocko Willink (1:27:53.640)

that's a win. That's a psychological win. And it's not just a psychological win. It's an actual win.

Jocko Willink (1:27:58.600)

It's an actual win. So that feels great. It doesn't feel great. Maybe when your alarm clock goes off,

Lex Fridman (1:28:04.600)

but by eight o clock in the morning and you've already accomplished some of the major tasks

Jocko Willink (1:28:10.680)

that you have, some of the most painful tasks that you have for the day,

Lex Fridman (1:28:14.760)

you're off to a great start and it's going to feel great.

Jocko Willink (1:28:19.240)

Let's break this down then. What does then the rest of the day look like? What is the perfect,

Lex Fridman (1:28:26.920)

productive, disciplined day in the life of Jaco Willink look like?

Jocko Willink (1:28:31.960)

Wake up, workout.

Lex Fridman (1:28:34.040)

Wake up when?

Jocko Willink (1:28:35.560)

4, 4.30.

Lex Fridman (1:28:36.840)

Workout when?

Jocko Willink (1:28:38.760)

5, 5 to 6 or 7.

Lex Fridman (1:28:42.520)

No eating?

Jocko Willink (1:28:43.560)

No.

Lex Fridman (1:28:44.360)

And then what does the workout look like?

Jocko Willink (1:28:46.600)

Depends on the day.

Jocko Willink (1:28:48.760)

What's the perfect? We're talking about body weight, lifting, cardio, heavy bag, jiu jitsu.

Jocko Willink (1:28:58.120)

Okay. Yeah. When I say workout, I mean no jiu jitsu. So jiu jitsu comes later in the day.

Lex Fridman (1:29:06.200)

So this is just you alone?

Jocko Willink (1:29:07.640)

This is me alone working out. Yep. And I'm going to be doing a wide variety of things.

Jocko Willink (1:29:13.720)

This is the thing that has the pictures of the aftermath with some sweat at the end. So the goal

Jocko Willink (1:29:20.280)

is to do whatever the hell results in some sweat. And that takes an hour.

Jocko Willink (1:29:24.120)

Sometimes it takes 12 minutes. Sometimes it takes three hours, depending on what kind of mood I'm in.

Jocko Willink (1:29:33.240)

You got some demons to work through or is this just work? So you got the David Goggins who clearly

Jocko Willink (1:29:43.000)

has demons screaming inside of his head that he's trying to work through. Are you just getting the

Jocko Willink (1:29:47.880)

work done out of the discipline? Or is this, I think Joe is a little bit with David Goggins is like,

Jocko Willink (1:29:54.840)

there's some ego, there's some bullshit that you're trying to get out through some of the exercise.

Jocko Willink (1:29:58.680)

That's a good way to kind of humble you is just doing that exercise.

Lex Fridman (1:30:01.880)

Well, exercise is certainly humbling.

Jocko Willink (1:30:06.280)

I mean, it's, but it's physical conditioning, right? It's preparing your body so that you can

Lex Fridman (1:30:11.960)

handle whatever it is you're going to do. Perfect.

Lex Fridman (1:30:14.760)

What does, what do you do after? Let's talk about food. Hopefully surf. If the waves are good,

Jocko Willink (1:30:22.200)

surf for how good are the waves? Let's say they're good. This is a perfect day. It's a perfect,

Jocko Willink (1:30:29.000)

perfect waves. Why do you surf? It's fun. Okay. This is fun. Okay. Man, man and nature.

Jocko Willink (1:30:38.600)

It was just like, what surfing is the ultimate is the power of the, the infinite power of the ocean

Jocko Willink (1:30:48.600)

versus a little silly looking man on a board.

Jocko Willink (1:30:53.800)

You could say it's the infinite power of the ocean versus a silly looking man on a board,

Jocko Willink (1:30:57.880)

or you could say it's fun because it's Russian and romance. Okay. This is for fun

Lex Fridman (1:31:03.560)

in the morning. Beautiful. And this is, you're still having eaten.

Jocko Willink (1:31:06.920)

No. Okay. So when do you eat? I'll usually start grazing around 11 oclock

Lex Fridman (1:31:13.960)

and grazing. What's the, what's the diet that's the, is there a perfect diet or do you graze?

Jocko Willink (1:31:19.640)

I'll have, I'll eat some nuts, you know, something like that. I usually start grazing. Maybe I'll

Jocko Willink (1:31:24.600)

have a little piece of meat or something like that. Does work enter any of this? I'm sure you

Jocko Willink (1:31:29.880)

have a lot of people that want your attention. Yeah. Yeah. No work is work is about to happen.

Jocko Willink (1:31:35.480)

Cause you know, even if I, if I woke up at four, worked out from five to six surf from six to eight,

Jocko Willink (1:31:42.760)

now I'm starting to work writing, recording, reading, talking to clients.

Jocko Willink (1:31:51.240)

Is there parts of the day where you try to find moments to think deeply, to read deeply,

Lex Fridman (1:31:59.400)

to sort of really focus? Cause this world wants, it's full of distractions, right?

Jocko Willink (1:32:04.200)

Right. Even talking to, uh, like even work stuff, the emails and all those kinds of things that can,

Lex Fridman (1:32:10.200)

they can scatter your mind. Is there times you seek to have that focus?

Jocko Willink (1:32:14.680)

Well, I read a lot of books. And so usually when I read, I'll be reading for a chunk of time,

Jocko Willink (1:32:20.760)

maybe an hour at a time, maybe a little bit longer. And I might do that twice a day. So

Jocko Willink (1:32:27.880)

I don't know if that counts as what you're describing, but then same thing with writing.

Jocko Willink (1:32:32.520)

When I, when I'm writing something, I mean, I just, that's what I do. I write usually usually

Jocko Willink (1:32:37.720)

write for about an hour. I can get about a thousand words an hour out of me. So that's,

Lex Fridman (1:32:43.560)

that's sort of what I do. What does the rest of the day look like?

Jocko Willink (1:32:48.200)

Just a lot of work, but one is the jujitsu. I want to find out about the jujitsu.

Lex Fridman (1:32:52.200)

So round, round four, 30 or five oclock at night and train. Yep. And, uh, how hard you still, how,

Lex Fridman (1:33:02.920)

how are you doing body wise? He still is the old man. Does the old man still got it or,

Lex Fridman (1:33:09.880)

or are you talking to me?

Jocko Willink (1:33:15.080)

It'd be good for viewership and ratings. If I die before the end of the podcast. So

Lex Fridman (1:33:19.080)

so I, I, I still train with the same guys and I'll train, you know, so I've been very lucky

Jocko Willink (1:33:25.960)

when it comes to getting injured and stuff like that. So haven't, I've had some injuries,

Lex Fridman (1:33:30.120)

but they're, they're healed. And so, yeah, I train and, uh, food wise, you mentioned grazing

Jocko Willink (1:33:36.360)

us some, uh, of some nuts, a very light kind of things. Is there a main meal here at night at

Jocko Willink (1:33:41.720)

night? Yep. High, uh, in protein or is it anything? Yeah. I'll have like a steak and salad. I'll

Jocko Willink (1:33:48.440)

usually have for dessert. I have like a protein shake. So is there a thing where at the end of

Jocko Willink (1:33:57.080)

the, uh, at the end of the day, you will like, you have like a summarize sword and you meditate on,

Jocko Willink (1:34:02.760)

uh, uh, death and, um, all those kinds of, is, is there some weird ritual you partake in? No.

Jocko Willink (1:34:10.120)

You just go to bed when I get done with the end of the day, I might read a little bit more.

Jocko Willink (1:34:13.640)

Read more. Yeah. Because reading makes me tired usually. Um, so I'll read a little bit more.

Lex Fridman (1:34:23.080)

Is there a key to you that you can speak to that makes for a productive day?

Jocko Willink (1:34:28.360)

Just the way you approach it mentally. Yeah. Write down what you're supposed to do,

Jocko Willink (1:34:32.360)

wake up early and start doing it and then get it done. Yeah. I know it's a miraculous trick.

Lex Fridman (1:34:39.080)

Can I ask you about Jiu Jitsu? By all means.

Lex Fridman (1:34:45.320)

What have you learned from being a practitioner? You're a black belt.

Lex Fridman (1:34:49.560)

What have you learned from this journey, uh, of, um, being a martial artist?

Jocko Willink (1:34:57.960)

Jiu Jitsu for me was the connective tissue that started to join my mind together with

Jocko Willink (1:35:05.960)

all the F different aspects of my life. And so Jiu Jitsu for me was, was really important.

Lex Fridman (1:35:12.120)

And I don't think I would be doing anything that I'm doing right now if it wasn't for Jiu Jitsu.

Lex Fridman (1:35:16.440)

So there's various aspects of my life that were in existence, but I didn't understand how they

Jocko Willink (1:35:23.480)

were connected until I started training Jiu Jitsu. The primary things are interacting with other

Jocko Willink (1:35:28.600)

human beings and combat tactics and strategy and Jiu Jitsu. And all those things are connected.

Jocko Willink (1:35:37.480)

They all follow the same guiding principles. And I wouldn't have recognized those guiding principles

Jocko Willink (1:35:42.920)

if I didn't do Jiu Jitsu. Can you elaborate? Cause you've trained for many, many years.

Jocko Willink (1:35:49.880)

What, um, is it the hardship? Is it the humbling nature of just being tapped all over,

Jocko Willink (1:35:55.480)

you know, nonstop, or I don't actually don't know how many times more times than you. Okay.

Lex Fridman (1:36:02.680)

So good. Is it just the hardship of physical training, like the honesty of the mat in the

Jocko Willink (1:36:08.120)

sense that like, you know, what works and what doesn't work, which, which aspects were the most,

Jocko Willink (1:36:13.640)

uh, impactful for you? All aspects. So yes, from a humility perspective, when you realize you think

Jocko Willink (1:36:20.840)

when you think, you know what you're doing, when you think you have certain skills

Lex Fridman (1:36:23.720)

and you realize that there's always somebody better than you. And you realize that, Hey,

Jocko Willink (1:36:26.840)

maybe I don't have all the answers all the time. And you bring that to a leadership perspective

Lex Fridman (1:36:31.800)

and you walk into your platoon and you realize that maybe you don't have all the answers all

Jocko Willink (1:36:35.480)

the time. And maybe you should listen to what other people have to say. You bring that to a

Jocko Willink (1:36:39.400)

combat situation and you realize that you think if you sit there and think that you're smarter than

Jocko Willink (1:36:44.120)

the enemy, you're going to be complacent. You're going to make mistakes. So there's one aspect out

Jocko Willink (1:36:50.120)

of the gate, as far as, you know, if I, if I'm going to try and get your arm, do I attack your

Jocko Willink (1:36:59.160)

arm? Maybe not directly, unless I'm a white belt. Exactly. What do I do? I attack your neck. And

Jocko Willink (1:37:06.600)

when you reach up to defend your neck, that's when I get your arm. Well, if I'm out on the

Lex Fridman (1:37:11.320)

battlefield and there's an enemy position, should I attack frontal assault into that position?

Jocko Willink (1:37:16.520)

No, no, I shouldn't. I should put down some covering fire and I should maneuver around to

Jocko Willink (1:37:19.960)

the flank. It's the same thing. If I'm dealing with you and you're my boss and you've got a giant ego

Lex Fridman (1:37:26.120)

and you've come up with a plan and I don't like your plan, should I walk up to you and say, hey,

Jocko Willink (1:37:29.640)

Lex, your plan isn't good? No. Or should I say, Hey, Lex, can I ask you some questions about how

Jocko Willink (1:37:35.880)

you want us to execute this? Cause I want to make sure I understand your vision.

Lex Fridman (1:37:42.440)

So all these things are connected. Yes.

Lex Fridman (1:37:44.040)

And I wouldn't have realized that we could sit here and do this forever. We could, we could,

Jocko Willink (1:37:48.200)

I could tell you these comparisons forever, but this, all this connective tissue, bringing all

Jocko Willink (1:37:54.920)

these things together, I wouldn't have seen it without, I don't think I would have seen it without

Jocko Willink (1:37:58.840)

jujitsu. So jujitsu to me had, it had a incredible life impact on me. Not look the physical part. Yes,

Jocko Willink (1:38:09.640)

absolutely. Does it, does it keep you humble when you know that there's 145 pound individual that

Jocko Willink (1:38:18.440)

can tap you out when you're 220 pound, 25 year old guy. And there's 135 or 140 pound, you know,

Jocko Willink (1:38:28.040)

46 year old guy that can make you tap out. That's humbling. And, and what do you do with that? Do

Jocko Willink (1:38:35.320)

you run away from it or do you continue to pursue it? Same thing with life. Same thing with anything.

Lex Fridman (1:38:40.680)

So jujitsu is an incredibly powerful, not just physical aspect, but it's, it's a way to understand.

Jocko Willink (1:38:48.440)

It's a way of thinking. You've also competed. Is there something you can speak to the value of

Jocko Willink (1:38:54.440)

competition? Obviously you've been through combat, actual military combat is many, many, many, many

Jocko Willink (1:39:03.160)

orders of magnitude, more high stakes than competition in a, in a silly sport like jujitsu.

Jocko Willink (1:39:10.840)

Nevertheless, it still has some of the echoes of the same challenges. Is there something you can

Jocko Willink (1:39:18.520)

speak to the value of competition for you? Yep. Competition will reveal weaknesses in your game

Jocko Willink (1:39:24.520)

that you can then go back and train to rectify. So that, that's a big part of it.

Lex Fridman (1:39:31.400)

So that that's very useful to serve. Yeah. As a testing ground, of course, training can be that

Jocko Willink (1:39:38.040)

testing ground as well or, or that feedback. Yeah. But as you and I both know, if you and

Jocko Willink (1:39:44.840)

I train together all the time, you'll know my game. I'll know your game. And even if we have

Jocko Willink (1:39:48.760)

five other people, we all kind of understand each other's games and you're not doing something to me

Jocko Willink (1:39:53.080)

that I don't expect. So when I go and compete, I'm good. You're good. You know, this random person

Jocko Willink (1:39:58.440)

has a game that I've never seen before. I'm, and I may or may not know how to deal with that game.

Jocko Willink (1:40:03.480)

If I know how to deal with it, great. I get the victory. Maybe I don't learn as much. If I don't

Jocko Willink (1:40:08.360)

know how to deal with their game, I get the loss and I get the win of learning what some

Jocko Willink (1:40:15.000)

weakness in my game is. So you mentioned offline that your friends and you work with Dean Lister

Lex Fridman (1:40:21.960)

and Dean Lister is one of the people that inspired John Donoher, who I've very much been,

Lex Fridman (1:40:29.960)

I've gotten a chance to talk to quite a bit recently.

Jocko Willink (1:40:34.600)

I don't know what you think about this. This is not a therapy session, but

Jocko Willink (1:40:39.720)

or maybe it is turning into one. He's a fascinating person, John Donoher, in terms of

Jocko Willink (1:40:49.160)

creating almost a science of Jiu Jitsu to a level that I haven't seen before, which is

Jocko Willink (1:40:57.320)

systems thinking about, like you can think about military combat as tactics in a particular

Jocko Willink (1:41:03.400)

situation, but then you zoom out and you want to create entire systems of tactics in all situations,

Lex Fridman (1:41:09.560)

right? He's very kind of wants to keep zooming out and creating giant systems.

Jocko Willink (1:41:14.120)

And, which I appreciate that, even though the task is probably impossible to do completely,

Lex Fridman (1:41:22.040)

but there is something that's in terms of competition that

Jocko Willink (1:41:29.560)

he kindled a fire in me that I want to get back out there. He has a particular thing that did it,

Jocko Willink (1:41:36.920)

which is very different from my personal journey in Jiu Jitsu, which was to a degree that people

Jocko Willink (1:41:45.320)

I worked with cared about competition, it was always about winning or doing well,

Jocko Willink (1:41:53.160)

all those kinds of things. For John, it's about winning, like winning is not even a thing that's

Jocko Willink (1:42:01.400)

important. What's most important is winning by submission or dominance, right? And not just the

Jocko Willink (1:42:12.520)

end, it's the entire time competing such that the only thing that matters is that kind of victory.

Lex Fridman (1:42:19.960)

And that's a very different level of competition that's actually liberating in a certain kind of

Jocko Willink (1:42:23.880)

sense. I remember so much of my competition was about fear of not taking risks. You get up on

Jocko Willink (1:42:34.600)

points or you hold a strong position, you kind of advance and you get more points. Maybe you chase

Jocko Willink (1:42:39.240)

the submission, but there's always a fear of risk. And for him, you embrace the risk. You should not

Jocko Willink (1:42:46.920)

be competing out of fear. Live and die by the sword versus stay in safety. I don't know if there's

Jocko Willink (1:42:54.120)

something to be said here. Well, you said it's novel to you, it's not novel to me. My entire

Jocko Willink (1:43:02.200)

journey in Jiu Jitsu was only about submission. And as you mentioned, Dean Lister is my coach and my

Jocko Willink (1:43:10.920)

main training partner for 20 something years. And if you ever watch Dean train or fight, that's what

Jocko Willink (1:43:18.040)

he's trying to do is submit as everyone. That's what he's always done. That's what he always will

Jocko Willink (1:43:23.880)

do. He, you know, he has the highest, I think he has impact. I know he has the highest submission

Jocko Willink (1:43:30.280)

victories in ADCC. He, that's what he does. So this is, in fact, as Jiu Jitsu got bigger and

Jocko Willink (1:43:38.520)

bigger, in fact, as Jiu Jitsu got more popular and we started seeing people competing to win by

Jocko Willink (1:43:47.640)

points, that was what was novel to me in the beginning. Now it's the standard. So it's not

Jocko Willink (1:43:53.640)

novel to me. I love the fact that John Donoher and all of his troops go out and they try and

Jocko Willink (1:44:00.760)

submit people. I think it's awesome. And I think that's what Jiu Jitsu is.

Jocko Willink (1:44:03.560)

All right. Let's ask for some advice for white belts. There's a lot of white belts who listen to this.

Lex Fridman (1:44:09.000)

What advice would you give? You've been in Jiu Jitsu for many years. In terms of

Jocko Willink (1:44:15.240)

a successful journey through Jiu Jitsu, what advice would you give them? People just starting out.

Jocko Willink (1:44:20.520)

Just keep training, keep your ego in check. Don't freak out. Try and use the techniques

Jocko Willink (1:44:24.280)

that you learn and all this stuff. So I'm like saying it, you know, notice how I'm saying it.

Jocko Willink (1:44:27.960)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:44:28.280)

Hey, tap out, keep your ego in check.

Jocko Willink (1:44:31.240)

It's common sense.

Lex Fridman (1:44:31.720)

But the thing is everyone says this all the time and white belts still start off by going

Jocko Willink (1:44:35.320)

completely nuts for at least, you know, three to six months of, I'm not going to let this guy tap

Jocko Willink (1:44:40.520)

me out. And they're going to, and I'm going to tap this guy out, not by using technique,

Lex Fridman (1:44:44.360)

but by just using strength. And it's just, it's just inhibiting your learning. So as much as you

Jocko Willink (1:44:50.200)

can, I know, I know you got to get it out of your system. I know you don't want to tap. And I know

Jocko Willink (1:44:53.480)

you want to tap somebody, but as soon as you get, get that off your chest, then try and, try and

Jocko Willink (1:45:01.720)

relax and try and learn the techniques. It's perhaps counterintuitive. It never was to me,

Lex Fridman (1:45:07.080)

but it's counterintuitive that to, to start on the journey of really sort of mastering Jiu Jitsu or

Jocko Willink (1:45:13.320)

whatever, or improving is you have to relax. And that seems to be a very counterintuitive lesson.

Jocko Willink (1:45:19.480)

I learned that early on with, that was thanks to the Russian system. I played piano and like music,

Jocko Willink (1:45:26.200)

basically, actually this is true for basically any sport that includes the human body is like

Jocko Willink (1:45:31.560)

relaxing is the way you, you start learning stuff. You have to learn, you have to literally,

Lex Fridman (1:45:36.760)

and most people don't seem to understand this is like, you have to learn what it means for the

Jocko Willink (1:45:41.560)

human body to relax. Like, I guess you have to have enough knowledge of all the muscles involved

Jocko Willink (1:45:48.520)

to know what it means to relax those muscles. So for piano, you have to understand what it means

Jocko Willink (1:45:53.080)

to relax your wrists and your fingers in order to learn how to move them. Like if there's tenseness

Jocko Willink (1:46:00.120)

in the fingers, you're not going to like, you have to learn how to try hard while relaxed.

Jocko Willink (1:46:08.120)

The, I guess the beginner, if you don't internalize this lesson, will try hard by

Jocko Willink (1:46:14.120)

tensing up hard and like trying hard, tensing up more as opposed to relaxing more. And that lesson

Jocko Willink (1:46:21.800)

cannot be conveyed through words, I guess. I've had the great fortune of having dictatorial

Jocko Willink (1:46:28.280)

teachers as they do in Russia for piano and so on, where you get like hit if you don't learn

Jocko Willink (1:46:34.600)

to relax, which is a counterintuitive notion, but it works.

Jocko Willink (1:46:37.880)

Yeah. This brings me to one of my favorite pieces of coaching advice that I will tell

Jocko Willink (1:46:42.520)

white belts while they're struggling on the mat. I'll tell them to relax harder.

Lex Fridman (1:46:47.800)

Okay. That's beautiful. For somebody who studied war, who participated in war,

Lex Fridman (1:46:58.040)

what do you think is the best martial arts for, let's call it self defense,

Jocko Willink (1:47:04.920)

let's call it self defense for hand to hand combat outside the constraints of sport.

Lex Fridman (1:47:13.320)

So it's not one answer. The answer to me is jujitsu, boxing, wrestling, Muay Thai,

Jocko Willink (1:47:24.200)

judo, Sambo, and on down the list. I definitely start with jujitsu. The reason I start with

Jocko Willink (1:47:30.440)

jujitsu is because in a self defense situation, if you are a big monster human and you want to

Jocko Willink (1:47:38.200)

fight me and you square off with me, guess what I'm going to do? Run away. Cause I don't want,

Jocko Willink (1:47:45.960)

I don't want to get involved. Even if I see skinny little Lex out on the street and you

Jocko Willink (1:47:52.200)

start yelling at me and saying, you want to fight me? I don't want to fight you. I don't,

Jocko Willink (1:47:55.320)

it doesn't matter. I don't care if I can beat you or not. What if you stab me? What if you

Jocko Willink (1:47:59.480)

sue me after I get done throwing you onto the concrete? There's a million bad things that can

Jocko Willink (1:48:04.040)

happen and almost nothing good. So for self defense, my first self defense is my feet to

Jocko Willink (1:48:10.920)

get away from you. And if you square off to punch me, I can run away from you. If you square off to

Jocko Willink (1:48:17.560)

kick me, I can run away from you. If you push me, I can run away from you. So great. I don't need

Jocko Willink (1:48:23.400)

to know how to box to run away from you where this all changes is when you grab me. And now

Jocko Willink (1:48:31.320)

I don't have the option to run away anymore. Now I actually have to know how to get away from your

Jocko Willink (1:48:37.000)

grip. And that's where jujitsu comes into play. So, especially if you get me on the ground,

Jocko Willink (1:48:43.160)

if you, if you grab me and get me on the ground, now I need to know how to get you off of me and

Jocko Willink (1:48:49.080)

get up and get away from you so I can run away. So that's why I say start with jujitsu. And, and

Jocko Willink (1:48:55.640)

from there, boxing, wrestling, judo, Sambo, Muay Thai. Yeah. There's a, there's certain in the

Jocko Willink (1:49:04.040)

standing position. I mean, I'm a judo person as well. And, uh, the judo is very limited in their

Jocko Willink (1:49:09.880)

understanding of the full grappling spectrum, even though they do all the things on the ground as

Jocko Willink (1:49:15.800)

well. But, uh, it's so focused on the feet, but nevertheless, it's important to understand

Jocko Willink (1:49:22.600)

the thing that judo has as a sport and it's good to practice that, uh, jujitsu doesn't

Jocko Willink (1:49:30.680)

is, um, not just the, the skill of grappling on the feet, but the skill of explosive aggression

Jocko Willink (1:49:39.640)

that, uh, sometimes jujitsu is more about in terms of tactics is more about patience. It

Jocko Willink (1:49:46.840)

depends how you practice it, but because so much is, uh, about control and, uh, technique

Jocko Willink (1:49:53.160)

that, uh, sometimes you don't get to practice like aggression, explosive aggression. And judo

Jocko Willink (1:49:58.840)

is so much about, uh, aggression implemented in such a way that the demonstration of power is

Jocko Willink (1:50:05.800)

effortless, right? That's the beauty of jujitsu. Yeah. And same thing with wrestling. Wrestling

Jocko Willink (1:50:10.360)

also has a high level of intensity and aggression as well. Yes. Yeah. So that's where, that's where

Jocko Willink (1:50:15.080)

I agree. Judo and wrestling. Absolutely. Awesome. Get some and striking boxing Muay Thai. Yeah. You

Jocko Willink (1:50:24.280)

know, like the, you should train all these things. Are there books and movies in your life long ago

Jocko Willink (1:50:31.560)

or recently that had a big impact on you? Uh, yeah, the main one is about face, which is sitting

Jocko Willink (1:50:38.360)

right here. There you go. This is written by Colonel David Hackworth. That's the

Jocko Willink (1:50:45.640)

book that really had a massive impact on me from a leadership perspective. And I ended up,

Jocko Willink (1:50:51.400)

I talked about it enough that it started kind of coming back and started selling well and

Jocko Willink (1:50:55.720)

they contacted me and I wrote a forward for it. So that book had a huge impact on me and I still,

Jocko Willink (1:51:03.160)

when I read it, I still get lessons out of it just about every time. This is the Vietnam war.

Lex Fridman (1:51:09.000)

And Korea. And Korea. And he got in towards the end of, right at the end of world war II. So he

Jocko Willink (1:51:16.200)

was kind of raised by the, the soldiers that fought in world war II and then he went to Korea

Lex Fridman (1:51:22.200)

and then he went to Vietnam. An exceptional warrior, a soldier soldier. If you can give

Jocko Willink (1:51:27.640)

a little inkling what made him a soldier soldier. So I, he died in 2005 so I never got to meet him.

Lex Fridman (1:51:41.400)

And I, I had a guy on my podcast who worked for him in Vietnam, a guy named general James

Jocko Willink (1:51:50.520)

Mukiyama. And luckily his son had reached out to me and said, I think you're talking about my dad

Jocko Willink (1:51:59.000)

cause I read some passage in there that, that Jim Mukiyama was young cap young captain Jim Mukiyama,

Jocko Willink (1:52:04.840)

company commander in Vietnam. He said, I think you're talking about my dad. Would you want to

Jocko Willink (1:52:10.520)

talk to him? And I said, absolutely. Well, here's the thing that I didn't really understand. And

Jocko Willink (1:52:14.280)

you read one quote, but there's all these quotes in that book that talk about how great Hackworth

Jocko Willink (1:52:19.400)

was and what an incredible leader he was and how he was the best combat leader anyone had ever seen.

Lex Fridman (1:52:24.760)

And all these just really complimentary things that are said by a bunch of different people.

Lex Fridman (1:52:29.400)

And when you read the book, you're reading this guy's account of what he went through.

Lex Fridman (1:52:35.960)

But I never really knew if that was all true or did he just cherry pick his friends,

Jocko Willink (1:52:43.240)

quotes about him and cherry pick the stories that he wanted to tell.

Lex Fridman (1:52:46.920)

And so it was very interesting for me when I met Mukiyama, General Mukiyama, who he became a general

Jocko Willink (1:52:51.640)

eventually when I met him and we were talking about his life. And I was very curious and I was

Jocko Willink (1:52:57.080)

a little bit nervous going into this interview because I was thinking maybe my hero, my mentor,

Jocko Willink (1:53:02.040)

this guy that I've never met before, maybe he's just an arrogant jerk that talked, talked himself

Jocko Willink (1:53:08.040)

up in this book. So I'm sitting down with, with General Mukiyama and I finally got to the part

Jocko Willink (1:53:14.200)

where he's meeting Hackworth for the first time. And I said, did, you know, did you know who

Jocko Willink (1:53:23.720)

Hackworth was when he showed up? So he was Mukiyama, Muk, Muk, they call him Muk. Muk was the,

Jocko Willink (1:53:29.240)

was the, like the adjutant to the, to the general that, that was going to, that, that Hackworth

Jocko Willink (1:53:36.520)

was going to be working for. So when Hackworth comes into the office, the first person he meets

Jocko Willink (1:53:40.040)

is this guy, this guy, Captain Mukiyama. And so Hackworth walks in and I said, when Hackworth

Jocko Willink (1:53:46.040)

walked in, did you know who he was? And Mukiyama says, everybody knew who he was, Mr. Infantry.

Lex Fridman (1:53:54.920)

And so he ended up explaining that everything that is written in there about Hackworth,

Lex Fridman (1:54:01.160)

they, they just loved him. They adored him. Up the chain of command,

Jocko Willink (1:54:07.880)

it turned out a little bit different. And, you know, the title of the book is about face. And

Jocko Willink (1:54:11.320)

if you're familiar, familiar with military drill about faces, when you turn around 180 degrees,

Lex Fridman (1:54:17.000)

and at the end of the Vietnam war, towards the end of the Vietnam war, he was so disgusted with

Jocko Willink (1:54:23.960)

the way that the war was being fought. He was so disgusted with the decisions that were being made

Jocko Willink (1:54:28.520)

by the leadership that he did an interview. He was the first Colonel, first senior officer to

Jocko Willink (1:54:34.280)

do an interview that spoke out against the war that was happening. And this is while he's in

Jocko Willink (1:54:39.800)

Vietnam, by the way. So he got drummed out of the army, and he was forced to retire. And that was

Jocko Willink (1:54:46.440)

that. So there's an element of rebelliousness to him. And, you know, when you talk to me about,

Jocko Willink (1:54:53.800)

are there times when the leaders making the leadership, this absolute senior leadership,

Jocko Willink (1:54:59.640)

the civilian leadership is doing the wrong things? Yes. And there's times when people speak out

Jocko Willink (1:55:04.520)

against it. And there's an argument for and against that, too, even even with Hackworth.

Jocko Willink (1:55:09.000)

You know, did he when you get when you quit your job, or you do something that gets you fired,

Jocko Willink (1:55:13.560)

which is what he did, you immediately give up all your influence over what's happening. So they get

Jocko Willink (1:55:20.280)

another, they get another battalion commander to take his place, they get another colonel to step

Jocko Willink (1:55:23.960)

in and take his place. That's what they do. And now he can't help anymore. And he's like,

Lex Fridman (1:55:27.960)

and now he can't help anymore. He can't help his troops. But at that point in the war,

Jocko Willink (1:55:33.400)

he loved his men so much that he was sickened with the situation on the ground. And he,

Lex Fridman (1:55:44.760)

and he spoke out about it. So that book had a huge impact on me. And like I said, I still,

Jocko Willink (1:55:51.480)

I still read it all the time. I reread it all the time. And I always take lessons from it.

Lex Fridman (1:55:56.440)

But let me ask you about love. This is not usually associated with Jaco. But what role does love

Lex Fridman (1:56:03.160)

in terms of friendship, in terms of family play in a successful life? And life in general?

Lex Fridman (1:56:10.760)

Again, this is putting other people above yourself.

Lex Fridman (1:56:14.280)

Do you see that as love? That's ultimately the implementation of love?

Lex Fridman (1:56:18.120)

I would say yes.

Jocko Willink (1:56:19.160)

Jaco, I've been a huge fan of yours. You're somebody who inspires me to get up early,

Jocko Willink (1:56:25.320)

to get shit done, to be disciplined about my life, and to be the best leader I can be.

Jocko Willink (1:56:31.240)

It's really, truly an honor. And thank you for wasting all your too valuable time with me. I

Lex Fridman (1:56:37.800)

don't know what you were thinking, but thank you for doing it.

Jocko Willink (1:56:40.440)

Well, thanks for having me on. I can guarantee I'm not as cool as you just made me sound.

Jocko Willink (1:56:44.920)

I'm just out here, like I said, trying to help people out. And I think you're helping a lot of

Jocko Willink (1:56:49.560)

people out with your podcast. So thanks for having me up here to share some of my experiences.

Lex Fridman (1:56:54.920)

And hopefully I'll see you on the mat one day.

Jocko Willink (1:56:57.000)

For sure. Looking forward to it. Could be sooner than you think.

Lex Fridman (1:57:00.760)

Sounds like a threat. I love it.

Jocko Willink (1:57:03.720)

Thanks for listening to this conversation with Jaco Willink. And thank you to Linode, Indeed,

Jocko Willink (1:57:09.160)

SimpliSafe, and Ground News. Check them out in the description to support this podcast. And now,

Jocko Willink (1:57:15.800)

let me leave you with some words from Jaco Willink.

Lex Fridman (1:57:19.240)

There are no bad teams, only bad leaders.

Jocko Willink (1:57:22.440)

There are no bad teams, only bad leaders. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.

Lex Fridman (20:00.480)

that resulted in a loss at scale of human life, being able to say that.

Jocko Willink (20:05.280)

Being able to say that. And when you don't say that, you end up with a more loss of human life.

Lex Fridman (20:13.840)

Can I ask you about the loss of human life? How does killing a human being change you?

Lex Fridman (20:23.840)

What does it mean to kill a human being? What does it feel like to kill a human being?

Jocko Willink (20:27.920)

Well, I mean, I guess you'd have to look at what circumstances a person's in when this is taking

Jocko Willink (20:32.480)

place. If you've got someone that's in a, a fit of rage that goes and kills somebody,

Jocko Willink (20:40.080)

you know, they're going to come out of it and think, wow, I've just really messed up.

Jocko Willink (20:44.880)

If you've got a, someone that is a sociopath, right? They're not going to feel anything.

Lex Fridman (20:53.120)

And that person deserved to die. And that's why they died. If you've got a soldier who feels like

Jocko Willink (21:00.240)

they're trying to protect their friends, they'll move through that. If you've got a soldier that's

Jocko Willink (21:09.120)

doing it because they want some kind of personal glory, they'll probably not feel good about it

Jocko Willink (21:15.840)

later. So I think it depends on the situation. I think it depends on the psychology of the

Lex Fridman (21:20.960)

individual that's going through it. He said, move through that.

Jocko Willink (21:28.960)

Is there some calculation here that a soldier, when they kill another soldier,

Lex Fridman (21:37.120)

a realization that is just another human being,

Lex Fridman (21:39.920)

I mean, is there some heavy burden to that aspect that it's ultimately just human on human?

Jocko Willink (21:51.280)

I think it depends a lot on the scenario. I know that when I was in Iraq fighting,

Jocko Willink (21:56.400)

we, we talk a lot about the dehumanization of the enemy and it's something that the

Jocko Willink (22:02.800)

governments will do. I mean, governments will do that to each other. I mean, the Japanese dehumanized

Jocko Willink (22:09.280)

the Americans and the Americans dehumanized the Japanese and the Americans dehumanized the Nazis

Lex Fridman (22:15.680)

and the Nazis dehumanized the Americans so that to remove as much of that human on human killing

Jocko Willink (22:22.560)

aspect that you're talking about. And what I would say is that the Japanese

Jocko Willink (22:27.280)

human killing aspect that you're talking about. And what I, what I've said is that

Jocko Willink (22:35.200)

in, when we were in Iraq, we didn't have to dehumanize the enemy because the,

Jocko Willink (22:40.240)

the enemy dehumanized themselves through their actions, through their behaviors.

Jocko Willink (22:45.840)

When, when we know that they are torturing and raping and murdering the local populace,

Jocko Willink (22:52.480)

they've been dehumanized. And so as far as looking at them and thinking, oh, this is a,

Jocko Willink (22:57.920)

you know, a human, another human that's, that's on the level of, you know, my, my uncle or my brother,

Lex Fridman (23:07.840)

I didn't, I didn't think of them out that way. I thought of them as,

Jocko Willink (23:11.040)

as murdering, raping, evil, subhumans.

Jocko Willink (23:21.120)

Yeah. Rock is different and America's position is different. You're right. That America has not

Jocko Willink (23:25.200)

been involved in a war where it's quite like two humans fighting, like teenage boys fighting

Lex Fridman (23:33.120)

against each other. And you've got to remember that America

Jocko Willink (23:36.400)

has not been involved in a war where it's quite like two humans fighting, like teenage boys fighting

Jocko Willink (23:42.000)

against each other. And you've got to remember, I mean, we're, we're seeing these Iraqi kids

Jocko Willink (23:48.720)

that are living under this sadistic, sadistic terror, the Iraqi women that are being raped

Lex Fridman (23:58.240)

and so on the one side we become the, the Iraqi populace is very humanized to us because we're

Jocko Willink (24:06.480)

talking to them. We've got interpreters, we understand we're seeing them day after day,

Jocko Willink (24:11.200)

the same individuals. And so we form a bond with the local populace and yet we see what the

Jocko Willink (24:19.120)

insurgents are doing. And so it's again, not difficult to dehumanize people that behave in

Jocko Willink (24:26.000)

that manner. Yeah. I suppose I'm, I worry about the dehumanization at a much larger scale when

Jocko Willink (24:34.560)

it's not the kind of case that you're talking about. Even now, hopefully I'm not fear mongering,

Lex Fridman (24:43.760)

but there's a sense in which there's the drums of war slowly starting to build with China.

Jocko Willink (24:50.480)

There, in the best case, it would be a cold war of, there's a dehumanization aspect that's

Jocko Willink (25:01.200)

happening with China currently, which is they're the other and they're after stealing all of your

Jocko Willink (25:07.600)

data. There's a cybersecurity, it starts with cybersecurity and it worries me because it

Jocko Willink (25:14.160)

creates the other out of a very large population that may ultimately lead to conflict.

Jocko Willink (25:25.600)

In the worst case, hot conflict that would no longer be the situation you are in in Iraq

Lex Fridman (25:31.840)

and more similar to the Soviet Union conflict with Germany that it's kids and then they're

Jocko Willink (25:41.840)

dehumanized to where you're at scale slaughtering them or at least hurting their quality of life

Jocko Willink (25:50.080)

in a way that's maybe, you know, suffering has many forms. It doesn't have to be through just

Jocko Willink (25:55.920)

a hot war. It could be through starvation, through camps, all those kinds of things.

Lex Fridman (26:02.480)

And I worry about that. We kind of tend to think that these wars are behind us

Lex Fridman (26:07.280)

and I'm not always so sure that's the case. And at least in the way that, it ultimately starts

Jocko Willink (26:14.480)

with hate and it, again, hopefully I'm not being too dramatic, but I see that there's a kind of

Jocko Willink (26:22.640)

brewing of, it starts with dehumanization that turns to hate of the other. You see that with

Jocko Willink (26:29.520)

China, you see it a little bit with Russia and you have an early podcast with between the

Jocko Willink (26:36.240)

where you break down the tactics of the Chechen war versus Russia. It's fascinating. But that's

Jocko Willink (26:42.160)

the kind of conflicts I'm referring to. And I don't know. There's a, I know you're a bit of

Jocko Willink (26:50.800)

a musician. I love, I love Dire Straits song called Brothers in Arms. I don't know if you

Jocko Willink (26:56.640)

know that one. And there's a line in it. I think they play it quite often at military funerals,

Jocko Willink (27:04.400)

which I just recently learned, but it's this powerful song that has a line, we're fools to

Jocko Willink (27:09.280)

make war on our brothers in arms. Do you think there's some sense in which at the leadership

Jocko Willink (27:16.720)

level, but just as human beings, we're perhaps foolish and engaging in military conflict

Lex Fridman (27:25.360)

as much as we have, or as fool, a very inappropriate word here.

Jocko Willink (27:33.200)

Well, I think that using the term brothers in arms means the people that are on my side,

Jocko Willink (27:38.800)

right? So it doesn't make sense to start wars with people that are on your side. So that's,

Jocko Willink (27:46.080)

that might just be the way the lyrics are written so that it fit the song or whatever.

Jocko Willink (27:50.240)

I think broadly what you're asking me is, is war foolish? Yeah. And I would say the answer is yes.

Lex Fridman (27:57.680)

And if you can avoid it, you absolutely should. But if there is a bear or a wolf that is trying

Jocko Willink (28:08.240)

to get into your house, is it foolish to shoot that bear or shoot that wolf? I think that's

Jocko Willink (28:15.760)

the answer. Is it foolish to shoot that bear or shoot that wolf? I think the answer is pretty

Jocko Willink (28:22.480)

obvious. So when you're threatened or your family are threatened or your way of life is threatened,

Jocko Willink (28:29.040)

then you have to do something to try and defend your family, your way of life. It should be the

Jocko Willink (28:36.640)

last resort. You had a conversation with Jordan Peterson where he asked you a question

Jocko Willink (28:49.520)

in terms of war being the last resort, whether you would like your kids to grow up in peace

Jocko Willink (28:55.760)

in a time of no war. You said yes, but, and so happens Jordan didn't let you finish. Can you,

Lex Fridman (29:06.480)

can you elaborate what follows the but? Well, you, you and I have been talking about the fact that

Jocko Willink (29:12.720)

struggle brings people together and, and brings out the best and, and the worst, brings out the

Jocko Willink (29:18.560)

worst in people. War brings out the worst in people. It also brings out the best in people.

Lex Fridman (29:22.240)

So would you want your kid to go and enter in a wrestling tournament where

Jocko Willink (29:32.960)

you paid all the other kids off and your kid won? Or you enter them in a jujitsu tournament where

Jocko Willink (29:43.040)

they're a purple belt and you know that everyone that they're going to fight against is a white

Jocko Willink (29:47.600)

belt. And so they get the, they get the big W, they get the win, but they don't really get tested

Lex Fridman (29:53.520)

and they don't really struggle. And if you don't struggle, you don't grow. So that's the, but

Jocko Willink (30:00.080)

right. Um, the, the absolute best times of my life were in combat and the worst times of my life were

Jocko Willink (30:13.920)

in combat. And so even though I wouldn't want any of my children to suffer through the worst of times

Jocko Willink (30:21.600)

at the same time, the but is I would want them to have the opportunity to feel that bond that

Jocko Willink (30:28.160)

you're referring to earlier and to see human beings that are willing to sacrifice their

Jocko Willink (30:35.120)

lives for their friends. You mentioned the worst. What are some of the worst aspects of

Lex Fridman (30:42.400)

when you were in Iraq? Well, what are the things that, um, the hardest on you having my guys killed?

Lex Fridman (30:56.240)

Is there, uh, absurd cruelty to it? Was it due to mistakes or natural consequences of, of fighting?

Jocko Willink (31:07.040)

Is there any difference? Is that at the end is just losing? Those are brothers in arms.

Jocko Willink (31:13.280)

There's a million different ways to get killed in the war and you can go out on an operation and you

Jocko Willink (31:17.680)

can do everything wrong and you can survive and you can go out in an operation and do everything

Jocko Willink (31:23.680)

perfect and you can get killed. Is there some aspect which makes it worse when there is mistakes

Jocko Willink (31:30.400)

made? Well, yeah, if there's mistakes made, then you're going to sit there and beat yourself up

Jocko Willink (31:36.800)

eternally for mistakes that were made. But to you, the things that hurt is just losing,

Lex Fridman (31:44.400)

losing people close to you. Yes. Are you yourself afraid of death? No.

Jocko Willink (31:52.080)

Are you yourself afraid of death? No. Do you think about it? Does it make sense to you that this

Jocko Willink (32:00.960)

thing ends? Like do you, uh, the Stoics contemplated death. It gives flavor to life.

Jocko Willink (32:09.040)

It makes you appreciate, there's something about finiteness of life that makes it, that makes it

Jocko Willink (32:14.640)

this, uh, Jocko Discipline Go drink, sour apple that I'm enjoying is delicious. Makes it taste

Lex Fridman (32:23.920)

better because I'm going to die one day. And I think about that a lot. Do you think about it?

Jocko Willink (32:32.880)

Other than I know that it's going to end. I mean, but I don't think about it on a daily basis. I

Jocko Willink (32:39.040)

think about the fact I think about, I know that I'm lucky to be here. I know that many people

Lex Fridman (32:45.840)

sacrificed to give me this opportunity to be here. So, but I don't dwell on it.

Lex Fridman (32:56.720)

What about when you were in combat? Nothing. There's, there's tactics,

Jocko Willink (33:01.280)

there's strategy, there's the mission. And then your mortality is not part of the calculation.

Jocko Willink (33:10.080)

I think you get to a point where you accept the fact that you can die. Like I, I, you know,

Jocko Willink (33:16.320)

like I said, you can do everything right. You roll out the gate, you hit an ID, a triple stack

Jocko Willink (33:20.800)

subsurface ID and you're dead. You're done. And there's nothing that's going to stop that. It's

Jocko Willink (33:25.200)

going to happen. And I think if you're scared of that or you're thinking about that, it's going to

Jocko Willink (33:30.480)

inhibit your ability to do your job properly. And I think it's also going to drive you crazy.

Jocko Willink (33:36.400)

The thing that I thought about more was that happening to my guys. And that's the gut wrenching

Jocko Willink (33:42.640)

terror that you feel when, when operations happen. Can I ask you about love of country? It's, it

Jocko Willink (33:52.400)

continues to just how much I've studied Stalin recently in the past few years. It continues to

Jocko Willink (34:01.680)

surprise me, not surprise me. It's just tragic in some kind of way. I'm not sure exactly if I could

Jocko Willink (34:09.680)

put words to it, but how many people and still do, but at the time were willing, loved Stalin

Lex Fridman (34:16.720)

and were willing to die for country for the love of country. And I too, maybe because I was born

Jocko Willink (34:25.200)

there and now I am a red blooded American. I love nationalism is a bad word, but I love the love of

Jocko Willink (34:36.560)

country. It gives, it somehow gives a meaning like a brotherhood, like we're in this together.

Jocko Willink (34:43.920)

I love that's why I love the Olympics. That's just the, the unity of it. It takes a step out of the

Jocko Willink (34:56.560)

selfish pursuits of any one particular ant and looks at us as a big ant colony and it's inspiring.

Jocko Willink (35:04.000)

It's it's exciting, but at the same time, it seems to get us to do horrible things.

Jocko Willink (35:11.200)

If, if manipulated by charismatic leaders, what do you make of this love of country? Is it a,

Lex Fridman (35:20.480)

is it a bad thing? Is it a thing that gets in the way or is it a good thing?

Jocko Willink (35:26.160)

Well, I think like anything else, if it's balanced correctly,

Lex Fridman (35:30.560)

it's great. And if it goes to some extreme level, then it becomes a negative.

Lex Fridman (35:35.440)

And I think it, I think it's probably sourced in some sort of animalistic tribalism that we all

Jocko Willink (35:43.200)

have to be part of a tribe. And this is a real big tribe that you get to be a part of. And all

Jocko Willink (35:49.440)

you have to do is kind of show up. And so when someone says, Hey, we're going to play hockey

Lex Fridman (35:54.400)

against the Russians, well, we're going to cheer for the American boys.

Lex Fridman (36:00.720)

So my, my area of work is artificial intelligence. It'd be interesting to ask your thoughts about

Jocko Willink (36:08.720)

something, which is autonomous weapon systems. US has now officially released the report saying

Jocko Willink (36:17.600)

that they're open to, not open, they're engaging in, in adding more and more autonomy and artificial

Jocko Willink (36:25.520)

intelligence into its weapon systems because China is doing it. So there's, these are the first steps

Jocko Willink (36:31.040)

in something that AI folks worry about, which is a race, an AI race in the space of autonomous

Jocko Willink (36:41.120)

weapons that can run away too quickly. Is that something, I don't know if in general,

Jocko Willink (36:48.240)

if you have thoughts about weapon systems that make autonomous decisions

Jocko Willink (36:53.360)

at the small scale of just targeting where to shoot and at the largest scale of military strategy

Jocko Willink (37:00.320)

of just being given a mission of destroy this particular target, this particular, say terrorist

Jocko Willink (37:07.600)

human being, and then figure out what is the right bombing campaign on your own to accomplish

Jocko Willink (37:13.760)

this task that minimizes civilian death. And then just loading that in and letting the AI system

Lex Fridman (37:20.400)

automatically decide that. What are your general thoughts about it? Do you, do you worry about it?

Jocko Willink (37:27.280)

Because there's the positive effects that in the best version of that world, you kill fewer

Jocko Willink (37:34.640)

civilians, you kill, hurt fewer of your own human beings. But at the negative side of that,

Jocko Willink (37:43.440)

you might lose the thing we kind of talked about, which is the basic humanity, even in the individual

Jocko Willink (37:51.360)

soldier of what is right and what is wrong and not making huge mistakes that hurt thousands

Jocko Willink (37:58.800)

or millions of people. I guess what you're asking me is if they could make a machine that could

Jocko Willink (38:04.560)

do more surgical attacks on enemy individuals, would I be for it? Yes, I would be for it.

Jocko Willink (38:14.160)

The problem is if you've ever used machines of any kind, their initial design may not be,

Jocko Willink (38:23.280)

there's unintended consequences. There's ways in the machine actually behaves that you realize

Jocko Willink (38:32.160)

there's bugs in this thing. So do we not put protocols in place to prevent something from

Jocko Willink (38:38.640)

going too far outside the boundaries of what we wanted to execute? You do. But the question is,

Jocko Willink (38:45.440)

this is the first time in human history you can create things, machines, toaster, microwave oven,

Jocko Willink (38:53.200)

that's smarter than you in this particular task. I mean, it's not yet there. What you're learning a

Jocko Willink (39:00.320)

lot with military strategies, humans are actually really damn smart. It's very hard to improve on a

Jocko Willink (39:06.640)

human. And so most actual drones that are unmanned are still piloted by humans. It's very difficult

Jocko Willink (39:13.680)

to do every aspect of war. But it's not out of the realm of possibility that machines will start

Jocko Willink (39:25.680)

doing those things better in certain things, certain more precise targeting of the enemy.

Jocko Willink (39:35.360)

The question is, so what happens when you start to rely on the machine to do some of the task

Jocko Willink (39:42.080)

is you get lazy. You forget what it is like to do that task or more importantly, you lose the

Jocko Willink (39:51.280)

knowledge of the intricacies of that task and you forget the ways it can go wrong. So the protocols

Jocko Willink (39:57.520)

may not be sufficient to constrain the power of the ways that things go wrong, especially when

Jocko Willink (40:05.800)

things are moving really quickly, especially when the ethics of the two sides aren't perfectly

Jocko Willink (40:12.800)

aligned. When people are some certain sides, like on the Chinese side, may be more willing to take

Jocko Willink (40:19.520)

risks for dangerous consequences than others. So what happened on the bioweapon side

Jocko Willink (40:27.520)

is internationally, maybe you can speak to this more, but my sense, what I was told,

Jocko Willink (40:32.400)

there is a sense globally that bioweapons are not going to be used. They're unethical. There's a

Jocko Willink (40:40.240)

sense like we're not going to engage in this. And with AI currently, China and US said, green light,

Lex Fridman (40:49.560)

all go ahead. It's totally ethical. If it can decrease the loss of human life, why not?

Lex Fridman (40:59.160)

And my worry is that it's much easier to design weapons that are effective than design weapons

Jocko Willink (41:12.840)

who have the depth of ethics and morals that humans do, which I think we don't as human

Jocko Willink (41:21.120)

beings don't acknowledge enough that even like the cold calculated killing of others,

Jocko Willink (41:26.400)

like precise, effective execution of a mission still has ethics in it. At every level, you know

Jocko Willink (41:35.280)

what's right and what's wrong. And I don't know if you take that away, you're not going to make

Lex Fridman (41:40.520)

huge mistakes that you regret. Is that something you don't worry about?

Jocko Willink (41:48.480)

I don't really worry about it. But as you design something, like I said, you put protocols in place

Lex Fridman (41:56.120)

and from what I am hearing you say, or trying to hear you say, there's be a point where our

Jocko Willink (42:01.640)

protocols wouldn't be sufficient to stop the machine from doing something that was unethical.

Jocko Willink (42:10.040)

I'm kind of worried that this is something you don't worry about. Because a lot of people I

Jocko Willink (42:20.560)

respect don't worry about it. And I don't know what to do about that. A lot of generals don't

Jocko Willink (42:25.880)

worry about it. A lot of people who know much more about war, like you than me, don't worry about it.

Lex Fridman (42:32.840)

And that worries me.

Jocko Willink (42:34.120)

Well, that's because you have a vision into the shortfalls of AI. And I don't. I don't have a

Jocko Willink (42:42.480)

vision of the shortfalls of AI. I don't know enough about it. As far as I'm concerned, you put

Jocko Willink (42:47.640)

a on off switch somewhere, you put a kill switch on a system. And if it starts going awry, you hit

Jocko Willink (42:55.720)

the kill switch, and that's it. So if you know, when you look at me and say, well, there's no

Jocko Willink (43:00.920)

possible way to put a kill switch, that would be 100% effective. And here's, you draw those concerns

Jocko Willink (43:05.640)

to me. And we could talk through it and say, okay, well, here's where we should draw the line.

Jocko Willink (43:10.800)

Yeah.

Jocko Willink (43:11.240)

I mean, it's like, again, for the Soviet Union, Chernobyl meltdown, there was always the ability,

Jocko Willink (43:18.840)

I believe, to have a kill switch. The problem is, the more power you give to the machine,

Jocko Willink (43:24.720)

the more opportunity you give to the human supervising that machine to make a mistake

Lex Fridman (43:34.560)

and not shut off the switch at the right time. So yes, the solution, I mean, you're putting the

Jocko Willink (43:41.120)

responsibility still in the human hands. And I think that's the correct place to put it. There

Jocko Willink (43:44.840)

should be good protocols, good leadership, good execution, competency all around. Your

Jocko Willink (43:50.320)

protocols should consider the basic failures of human nature, the human factor of how things go

Jocko Willink (43:55.800)

wrong. So there should be multiple people supervising the system, all those things. But

Jocko Willink (43:59.880)

I am just very skeptical of greater and greater power in the machine that can create war, that

Jocko Willink (44:07.640)

cannot lead to death. Yeah. And that's why, like I said, and like you just said, you have protocols

Jocko Willink (44:14.200)

in place that are a kill switch. And if you think about the amount of nuclear weapons that we've had

Jocko Willink (44:19.520)

on planet Earth for the past however many years, and there's been no rogue element that said,

Jocko Willink (44:29.120)

you know what, I'm going to shoot this thing. There's been no protocol that took place where

Jocko Willink (44:33.160)

all of a sudden we said, oh no. I mean, there's been escalations, but the protocols worked,

Jocko Willink (44:40.800)

have worked so far. Now, that's a scary thing to think about, that we rely on these protocols to

Jocko Willink (44:47.480)

stop some rogue element out there from launching a missile that could kill millions of people and

Jocko Willink (44:54.080)

trigger a global war. So yeah, the protocols should be strict. Okay. Can I ask a Jack O Wonka

Jocko Willink (45:04.280)

ridiculous question? If human civilization goes extinct, what would be the reason? You mentioned

Jocko Willink (45:11.200)

nuclear war. Do you worry about this? The reason I bring that up, a lot of people in the

Jocko Willink (45:17.400)

AI community worry about artificial general intelligence. So super intelligent AI systems

Jocko Willink (45:23.240)

creating a lot of damage. Autonomous weapon systems is one possibility. A lot of folks

Jocko Willink (45:28.600)

recently, especially with this pandemic, if you want to be terrified, listen, somebody I talked

Jocko Willink (45:34.960)

to recently, Sam Harris, he did a four hour podcast on how bioengineering of viruses is likely

Jocko Willink (45:43.120)

to destroy human civilization. I recommend that highly if you were too optimistic about the

Jocko Willink (45:48.880)

future of the human species. So apparently in the space of bioengineering is becoming easier and

Jocko Willink (45:55.080)

easier and easier to engineer viruses, engineer pathogens. This is the world's most depressing

Jocko Willink (46:06.880)

question. Is there something in particular you worry about? Like that we should be thinking as

Jocko Willink (46:13.600)

a human species about? Yeah, I'm sorry to disappoint you again with my lack of worry for all these

Jocko Willink (46:21.640)

problems, but I don't worry too much about it. You know what? We've made it through a bunch of

Jocko Willink (46:30.840)

wickets so far as a species and we'll make it through some more or we won't. And if we don't

Jocko Willink (46:37.320)

make it through some of these wickets and someone decides that what they're going to do over the

Jocko Willink (46:41.760)

weekend is create some crazy virus that spreads and kills everybody. Yeah. You know what? I'm

Jocko Willink (46:49.400)

usually extremely optimistic about this stuff. I am now I'm with you except we won't. Well,

Jocko Willink (46:57.360)

there's always a chance we won't, but I have a sense that human, first of all, I believe that

Jocko Willink (47:03.960)

most people have much more capacity for good than evil. All of us are capable of evil, I believe,

Lex Fridman (47:08.960)

but most people are much more capable of doing good and want to do good. And I also believe in

Jocko Willink (47:17.200)

the resiliency of the human species that we're an innovative bunch and we can respond to tragedy,

Jocko Willink (47:22.960)

especially we respond more to tragedy as the scale of tragedy grows and our response is much

Jocko Willink (47:28.720)

better. So that's why I'm not worried about it, bro. What makes a great man? Let's start at the

Lex Fridman (47:39.960)

individual. What makes a great man? What makes a great woman? What makes a great human being?

Lex Fridman (47:44.560)

Somebody that puts others above themselves. What makes a great leader of humans?

Jocko Willink (47:52.360)

Same thing.

Lex Fridman (47:53.800)

But that sentence does a lot of work. When you're a leader, there's a lot of egos. There's a lot

Jocko Willink (48:01.560)

of tension. There's the human factor. There's people who are timid. There's people who are

Jocko Willink (48:07.560)

assholes. There's people who are incredibly competent, but self obsessed. I don't know.

Jocko Willink (48:14.720)

There's complexities of human nature. How do you get all those people to be the best version of

Lex Fridman (48:22.200)

themselves and to lift up everyone else around them?

Jocko Willink (48:25.080)

Okay. So now that, that question is a little bit different now. So now it's getting into a more

Jocko Willink (48:31.240)

specific question, but at the same time, a more broad question of what elements does it take to

Jocko Willink (48:36.120)

make a good leader? So you're right that different people have different personalities, different

Jocko Willink (48:41.720)

tendencies, different levels of ego. And the, the way that I try and explain this is like a

Jocko Willink (48:51.360)

video game. And I'm not even a video game player, but I've seen this before where video game

Jocko Willink (48:55.720)

characters have various skills, various strengths and weaknesses. So maybe they're strong, but

Jocko Willink (49:02.920)

they're dumb, or maybe they're strong and smart, but they're slow. They just give them these,

Jocko Willink (49:07.240)

these ratings. And so that's where human beings are. And that's the way leaders are. And you can

Jocko Willink (49:11.800)

have different leaders with different characteristics. And depending on how all those

Jocko Willink (49:17.480)

characteristics match up, you can have somebody that is very introverted, but they're a, but,

Lex Fridman (49:25.640)

but they're still a very good leader because when they do communicate, they do it in a clear,

Jocko Willink (49:31.640)

simple manner that everyone understands. So even though they're a little bit introverted,

Jocko Willink (49:34.840)

people still respect them and listen to them because they communicate in a clear way.

Jocko Willink (49:39.640)

You could have somebody that's extremely charismatic, extremely charismatic and everyone

Jocko Willink (49:47.480)

looks to them, but they're slow in making decisions. And so now we've got someone that

Jocko Willink (49:53.640)

can't really make decisions when decisions need to get made. So even though they're

Jocko Willink (49:57.240)

charismatic, they're still not a good leader. So depending on the human being that we're talking

Jocko Willink (50:03.160)

about, and you just mentioned earlier that human beings are, you know, more complex than anything

Lex Fridman (50:07.800)

and do a better job at just about everything than a robot. So that's the same thing with

Jocko Willink (50:12.840)

leadership. You've got all these different characteristics and you, you match them or mix

Jocko Willink (50:16.040)

them together. And depending on where the ratings come out, depending on how that thing does in the

Jocko Willink (50:23.240)

end, can we almost like as a case study, look at a few people in the tech area that I'm familiar

Jocko Willink (50:29.000)

with that I know well, we can, the only caveat being that I may have no familiarization with

Jocko Willink (50:35.400)

them whatsoever. You may have to brief me on them. Yeah. So I'll do my best to brief. I'll do my best

Jocko Willink (50:40.520)

to reduce human beings into simple descriptions. And then you can give me insights of why the hell

Jocko Willink (50:46.360)

they're such effective leaders based on my description, not based on your actual deep

Jocko Willink (50:50.920)

knowledge of the human beings. So that caveat of my inability to speak both the English language

Lex Fridman (50:58.120)

and describe humans well. Let's talk about first, Elon Musk. So he's known as being quite

Jocko Willink (51:07.000)

harsh in the sense of, first of all, a very high bar of excellence.

Lex Fridman (51:13.800)

And also willing to what he calls that kind of first principles thinking of asking the,

Lex Fridman (51:20.840)

the questions that hurt, which is why the hell are we doing it this way?

Lex Fridman (51:26.600)

Why can't it be done a lot, but not just better, but a lot better. So, so let's,

Jocko Willink (51:33.160)

I don't want to hear his whole character. I'll go one at one section at a time. So we've got a guy

Jocko Willink (51:36.520)

that's harsh and, and asking the really hard questions. How can that be good? Or why is that

Jocko Willink (51:44.440)

good? Well, first of all, it can be horrible. And there's leaders out there that are harsh and

Jocko Willink (51:49.320)

they're hated and no one likes them and no one wants to work for them and they never do anything.

Lex Fridman (51:52.360)

So what is it that Elon Musk does that makes, gives him the ability to be harsh? So I was, I was

Jocko Willink (52:01.160)

hearing a description of me when I would give feedback to young seals that had made mistakes

Jocko Willink (52:10.360)

during training operations. And the description was that I, same thing, like this harsh blunt force

Jocko Willink (52:18.440)

trauma and just totally direct sledgehammer of truth that I would hit guys with. But it's

Jocko Willink (52:29.000)

interesting because I always talk about, you know, building relationships and making sure you're not

Jocko Willink (52:32.760)

offending someone. Yeah. So how do these things match up? Well, I can tell you how they match up

Jocko Willink (52:38.600)

when I was being harsh, the guys that I was being harsh with knew without one shred of doubt that

Jocko Willink (52:46.280)

I cared about them more than anything else. And that the reason I was giving them this feedback

Jocko Willink (52:50.120)

is because I wanted them to be able to lead their troops. I wanted them to be able to go

Jocko Willink (52:53.960)

accomplish their mission. And I wanted them to be able to bring their guys home from war.

Lex Fridman (52:59.400)

So I wasn't being harsh because it elevated my ego. I wasn't being harsh because I wanted to

Jocko Willink (53:04.360)

denigrate them. I was being, actually being harsh because I wanted them to accomplish the mission.

Jocko Willink (53:08.760)

Because I wanted them to accomplish the mission. So if that's where Elon comes from,

Jocko Willink (53:15.240)

hey, listen, we got to make this happen. This is for the good of the world to do this.

Lex Fridman (53:20.760)

And people know that then it works. I'll bring this point back up with another guy,

Jocko Willink (53:26.680)

Steve Jobs, but let me stay on Elon for a second. The other thing he does, which is interesting,

Jocko Willink (53:34.600)

I see the value of this. It'd be great to hear you speak about it. He's unlike many of the other

Jocko Willink (53:41.080)

CEOs, very rich billionaires, involved in leading a lot of people. He puts a lot of time into making

Jocko Willink (53:52.120)

sure he's on the factory floor. He famously sleeps on the, sort of like in the middle of things.

Lex Fridman (53:58.920)

And he puts a lot of effort. He's also very good at it is being a low level engineer. So like,

Jocko Willink (54:05.800)

whatever the task is, he wants to understand the details and he'll talk to the lowest level person

Jocko Willink (54:11.960)

in terms of like, somebody who's like working literally on putting parts together. He wants to

Jocko Willink (54:19.640)

understand what the problem is, what the challenge is. If there's an emergency, he wants to understand

Jocko Willink (54:24.680)

the actual details of the problem, not like delegating it to a manager, but like,

Jocko Willink (54:29.880)

because a lot of CEOs, a lot of managers will talk about sort of the power and the importance

Jocko Willink (54:35.560)

of delegation. Here, he wants to know if there's a big problem, he wants to know the exact detail.

Jocko Willink (54:41.080)

He wants to know the exact problem. He wants to, at the fundamental level, understand how to solve

Jocko Willink (54:46.040)

that problem. Whether it has to do with materials, whether it has to do with the actual manufacturing,

Jocko Willink (54:51.080)

the mechanical engineering aspect, like we're talking about engineering. This is a guy who

Jocko Willink (54:56.840)

wears a suit as a CEO, tweets about Dogecoin, but like an actual job, he's low level engineering.

Lex Fridman (55:05.720)

And that to me was always inspiring to see somebody who knows what the fuck they're doing.

Lex Fridman (55:12.680)

That's what it, like he gains the respect of engineers at the lowest level.

Jocko Willink (55:18.040)

I don't know if that's scalable, but that's always been inspiring to me. And I wonder how many people

Jocko Willink (55:22.760)

it's inspiring to. Maybe you could speak to the value of doing that, of no matter how high your

Jocko Willink (55:28.280)

level of leader is, to be able to do the low level shit. Yeah. And that's a common trait that good

Jocko Willink (55:35.320)

leaders have. And maybe he doesn't necessarily know how to do everything, a good leader,

Lex Fridman (55:40.840)

but they go down there and talk to the frontline troops and say, Hey, what is the issue that you're

Jocko Willink (55:45.400)

dealing with? Or, you know, how can I support you? How can I give you help? And one key point that

Jocko Willink (55:50.680)

you said is, he said, when there's a problem, he gets in there. So there's things happening

Jocko Willink (55:55.800)

at his companies that they're working. And so he doesn't have to die. I'm not saying he never does,

Lex Fridman (56:01.560)

but he doesn't have to spend as much time working on or looking at some subsystem that's functioning

Jocko Willink (56:08.440)

well. He's got a good leader in there that's handling it. And he checks in with that leader.

Lex Fridman (56:12.280)

And the leader says, yeah, it's working perfectly. He says, great. When there's a problem, that's

Jocko Willink (56:17.560)

when he might have to get down there and dig into some details so that he fully understands it. So

Jocko Willink (56:21.640)

that he, when he digs down in the details, and this is important, he's coming from an altitude

Jocko Willink (56:28.120)

where he has a better, bigger perspective, not necessarily better, but a bigger perspective.

Lex Fridman (56:33.560)

So if you sit there and work on a problem, whatever, for eight hours and you're staring

Jocko Willink (56:39.240)

at, you know, if you were planning a mission and you were planning it for eight hours,

Jocko Willink (56:43.560)

you're staring at the maps and the charts and you're figuring out where all the troops are

Jocko Willink (56:47.080)

going to be located. And I come in after eight hours and I look at your plan from a distant

Jocko Willink (56:53.320)

perspective, there's a good chance I'll be able to see holes in your plan that you couldn't see

Jocko Willink (56:57.960)

because your perspective was too close. So that's good for me to be able to come in from a higher

Jocko Willink (57:04.120)

perspective and have a look at it. But also there's times where I need to get down there and

Jocko Willink (57:10.280)

actually look, you know, if you're looking at a problem and you say, look, I can't figure out

Jocko Willink (57:13.960)

boss, I can't figure out how to get to this target. And I'm looking at it from a distance and

Jocko Willink (57:17.880)

I don't see, I might need to start digging in and looking and saying, Oh, here's a route that we

Jocko Willink (57:22.840)

can take that actually makes sense. Let's try that. So I think it's a good example of someone

Jocko Willink (57:29.240)

going up and down in altitude to look at problems, understanding what's happening with the frontline

Jocko Willink (57:33.400)

troops. And at the same time, being able to go back to the strategic level. And I can, it's

Jocko Willink (57:39.400)

probably this way. The reason that he's successful is because he doesn't get stuck down there.

Jocko Willink (57:44.840)

Yeah. Because if he felt the need to micromanage each and every part on a Tesla,

Jocko Willink (57:50.680)

it wouldn't be, it would be very unlikely that he would have the capacity to do that.

Jocko Willink (57:55.160)

It wouldn't be, it would be very unlikely that he would have the capacity to do all that.

Jocko Willink (58:00.600)

Now he can hand over some broad chip design and say, Hey, this is what the function needs to be.

Lex Fridman (58:06.200)

And he gives it to Lex and Lex goes there with your team and you figured out and you make it

Jocko Willink (58:09.080)

happen. If he had to actually do that all himself, most likely not possible. So that's what leaders

Jocko Willink (58:15.640)

should be doing. They should go elevate and, and, and then get down in the weeds when they have to,

Lex Fridman (58:20.920)

and then go back up. The sad thing, this is the part that makes me not want to do a startup

Jocko Willink (58:28.760)

is basically his whole life is dealing with emergencies. Just like you said, he's not

Jocko Willink (58:35.480)

dealing, this is not shooting the shit about details of engineering. It's dealing with like,

Jocko Willink (58:42.440)

in this, in the case of the company, life and death, like something that can just completely

Jocko Willink (58:48.280)

damage the production line, right? So he's constantly dealing with emergencies, putting out

Jocko Willink (58:52.440)

fires. And I don't know if there's something to be said about that psychology of that, of how,

Jocko Willink (58:59.160)

like he, he's spoken himself that he's worried whether his mind can hold up much longer.

Lex Fridman (59:04.600)

So hopefully in the near future, he will start to form more decentralized command where he has some

Jocko Willink (59:10.680)

subordinate leadership that he fully trusts. And most important that he has properly trained

Lex Fridman (59:16.360)

so that they can handle these day to day fires at least 80% of them. So only 20% of the time,

Jocko Willink (59:23.080)

does he actually need to go in and solve a problem. If he's not doing that right now,

Jocko Willink (59:28.360)

then that's going to end up being a problem anytime. So I work with companies all the time.

Lex Fridman (59:32.760)

And that's, what's interesting about this is I go and work with a CEO or with a,

Jocko Willink (59:37.000)

with a C suite of a company. It takes a little while to figure out what's going on. I'm kind of

Jocko Willink (59:41.400)

going off of the things that you're telling me almost anecdotally, right? Yes. But let's

Jocko Willink (59:46.280)

say that what you and also, I don't know how familiar you actually are with the inner workings

Jocko Willink (59:52.040)

of his companies, but if we were to assume that what you're saying is accurate, then my advice

Jocko Willink (59:59.240)

would be, Hey, listen, you need to start putting a little bit more time and effort into training up

Jocko Willink: War, Leadership, and Discipline

乔科·威林克谈战争、领导力与纪律