66: Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink & Leif Babin
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So I don't want to revisit the conversation from drunk tank pink, but I do have to offer something that my wife said, which really helped me clarify what I did a very poor job of explaining regarding the blue light.
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Okay, so we're gonna go back to this now.
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Okay, just real quickly, because she said it way better than I did.
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Okay, she said that color temperature is not color.
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This coming from a professional photographer.
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So I think if I were to, because I edited the episode, I go back and I listened to that and I wanted to take it out because it was a clumsy argument.
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I'm like, I'm just gonna leave it in.
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You know, I said all this stuff.
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I'm just gonna throw it out there.
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And then she listened to it.
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She's like, yeah, that's what you were trying to say.
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So really the issue was not with the fact that color temperature can be used to control us, but just color temperature is not color, so it didn't fit in that section.
00:00:49
Okay.
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Anyways, moving on.
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We've got a couple other things here.
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No action items really to follow up with, although I do have some long-term follow-up with something that I did.
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And I do want to follow up with a couple different things that we need to talk about real quickly.
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Big shout out to everybody who has joined the Bookworm Premium Membership.
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We've got...
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Yeah, we've got quite a few people who have jumped on board and like I said in the previous episode speaking for Joe and myself, you know, we really appreciate the fact that people are willing to put some money behind this thing.
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That really means a lot to us.
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So thank you everybody who has done that.
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Is that correct?
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Yes.
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Super grateful for everybody who signed up for that.
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That's been...
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We've been watching some of those numbers tick up.
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It's like that's...
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It's been amazing to watch.
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So huge thank you to everybody that supported the show.
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I think Mike, you and I kind of started that as...
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Let's see if there's interest in supporting the show this way to try to help us keep the ads off the show.
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And so far you guys are amazing in basically telling us, "Yes, absolutely. Let's do this."
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So thank you.
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Thank you so much.
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Yeah, thank you to everybody who supports the show.
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And then as we mentioned before, there's other ways you can support the show to the links to the books in the book list on the website.
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Those are Amazon affiliate links.
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So those help out.
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And then leaving a rating and review and iTunes also helps out.
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But the other thing that you can do to help out the show, and this isn't a major financial thing, but we do have Bookworm shirts that are available.
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And if you go to the URL, I don't know what it is off the top of my head, so we'll put it in the show notes.
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But the Bookworm shirts that are sold through Cotton Bureau are amazing.
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I'm wearing the Bookworm sweatshirt this time, Joe.
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Sorry, I'm in a dress shirt.
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That's all right. That's all right. I'm covering jewelry.
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I dressed up for Bookworm.
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Well, this is a comfiest sweatshirt I own.
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And we make a couple bucks off of every one of those shirts that is sold.
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So if you want to support the show, you can do that too.
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We'd also love to see you if you want to come to Macstock this summer.
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I will be presenting and I'm going to be talking about achieving your writing goals using Ulysses.
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I helped put together the Learn Ulysses 2.0 course for the Suite Setup.
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Did a lot of the screencast for that.
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And so that seemed like a natural extension to talk about how people might want, might use the tool Ulysses to finally write their book or achieve their writing goals.
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And since the theme is create, that's kind of the direction I'm taking with that.
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I know you're going to be there, Joe.
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Yep.
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Got a couple other people who are going to be there.
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And it's a really fun environment.
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Even if you're not an Uber tech nerd, if you don't consider yourself a nerd at all, you're still going to have a good time.
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There's a lot of stuff that's there that, regardless of your ability level, you will get something out of it.
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My wife is not techy at all, but she really enjoys it.
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She always learns something.
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And then you've got the Max Sparkies and the Steven Hackets, who actually they're going to be doing a live recording of Mac Power users there too.
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So it's going to be a great time.
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It's a small venue, a small group.
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It's growing every year, but it's still pretty small.
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And it's kind of nice because you can spend some time with people and have some quality interactions instead of just being in a huge place with all these people.
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And you feel like you don't really get to know anyone.
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Right.
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Right.
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It's a pretty tight-knit group for the most part, but there's still new people that come every year, which is super fun.
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But yeah, to your point, it's continually growing each year.
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When is the end of July this year?
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I think it's the last weekend in July.
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It's in the...
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Yeah, let me pull up the dates here.
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Yeah, so it's in Woodstock, Illinois, which is always fun.
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I've got a Woodstock, Illinois shirt, which is entertaining to wear.
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The real Woodstock shirt, people are like, "Wait, you're way too young for that."
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Yeah, I love Woodstock.
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It's the place where they shot the movie Groundhog Day, and they basically owned it and made like a walking tour and everything.
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Right.
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So it's a lot of fun.
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It is the dates are July 27th and 28th.
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And I've got a link, which if you were to use to register today, will get you an additional $10 off of the...
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...earlybird ticket.
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So right now it is $179 for the two-day pass.
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But if you use the code Focused at checkout, you'll save an extra $10.
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And if you purchase a pass after that earlybird pricing is gone, then that code will get you the earlybird pricing of $179.
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So if you want to save a little bit of money, you can use the link in the show notes.
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And you can't do this now, but they did do a Black Friday sale, which is when I got my ticket.
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So...
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True.
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I actually bought mine Black Friday too, and then...
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Oh yeah.
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...for the...
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They just refunded to you.
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So how they did that?
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Got it.
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Yeah.
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Got it.
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Well you have...
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Yes.
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We expect to see everybody at Max Talk.
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Everybody who listens to Bookworm, we'll see you at Max Talk.
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I'll have bookmarks.
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I'll have stickers.
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I'll have pins.
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I'm not sure what else I've got.
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I've got a whole bunch of Bookworm stuff.
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Pins.
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When do you get pins?
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Sticker Mule has these offers where they'll try out a new product, and they'll say, "Hey,
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you can get a bunch of these for a couple of bucks."
00:06:27
Okay.
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And so they had pins, and it was like $10 or something.
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So I got a bunch of pins.
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So pins as in writing pins or...
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Oh pins like you pin on your backpack.
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The little...
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Oh I totally want one.
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...circular button ones.
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Those are great for like lapel pins on a suit coat.
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Yeah.
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Assuming you wear a suit coat, you could do that too.
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I do that regularly, but come on.
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Now you're making me want to wear one to Max-Dock just to prove it to you.
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I'll bring some for you.
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All right.
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Well Mike, you have one long-term action item here that you brought up.
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I do.
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This is from Digital Minimalism, I believe, but I had an action item to figure out my own low
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information diet.
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And I think that I have finally figured out how I'm going to do this.
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Okay.
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I...
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And actually I've done it.
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So I signed up for a service called Feed Bin.
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Feed Bin.
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Go on with a little burger icon.
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It's five bucks a month, but what it is, is it is an RSS feed.
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So kind of like I've had been using Feed Wrangler, and that's 20 bucks a year.
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And then Feed Bin combines that with Instapaper and also gives you the ability to send an email
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from your inbox to an address kind of like Instapaper did and put it into your queue.
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Okay.
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So everything is all in one feed.
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Sure.
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And I'm eliminating basically Instapaper because that Instapaper would be pulled into the feed
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anyways.
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And I'm eliminating Feed Wrangler and between the two of those it's 50 bucks a year.
00:08:09
So I'm spending that 50 bucks a year to get Feed Bin.
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I got the one service and then I can forward emails and newsletters, things like that that
00:08:17
I want to read into there.
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But when I did that I also went through and trimmed all of the sources that I was subscribed
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to in my RSS reader.
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So there were some things that were posting all the time.
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Like I think Mac Rumors was on there, Mac Observer, where it's just too much information
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for me to keep up with.
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I like the stuff that they were sharing, but the really important stuff always surfaces
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somewhere else.
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So I basically cut the number of feeds that I was subscribed to in half when I signed up
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for Feed Bin and had to transfer everything over.
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Now the goal is to just use the reader app on my phone, preferably iPad or Mac because
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it syncs all those different places and go through the news that way and not look at
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Twitter.
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Although Feed Bin I should say can also pull in tweets if you wanted to have like a list
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or something that you wanted to show up as part of your news feed.
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Oh and you can have that come in automatically.
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Yeah, yeah.
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So basically the activity I'm trying to change is going to Twitter to see the news and just
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pulling the things that have the news that I actually want to read into my RSS reader,
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which is driven by Feed Bin and is viewed in the reader app, hopefully in the, probably
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the morning on my iPad is how I really want to implement this, not on my phone.
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Nice.
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This sounds like a pretty slick set, like a really smooth system there.
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Well I'm still making tweaks to it, but it seems to be working so far.
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I am pretty impressed with the email support.
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It does have like a bar on the side which kind of bothers me like the forwarded message.
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I'm not really sure a way to clean that up though without having to run a script which
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I don't know how to do or what, you know, like basically you hit the forward button
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in an email and it's going to show what part of the email is forwarded and then what part
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if you wanted to add anything new, you know, you put that at the top.
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It does a great job of rendering the forwarded email, but like I said, it does kind of shift
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everything over to the right and then it's got the little bar on the left.
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Yeah.
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And if I could get rid of that, that would be ideal, but I can live with it if it has
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to be.
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You use mail mate, right?
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I do.
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I think there's a setting for indenting quotes on forwards and replies.
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Hmm.
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All right.
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You just created another action item for me.
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There you go.
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I'm pretty sure there's a setting something like that that does the indentation for quoting
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replies or forwards or it's something along those lines.
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There is a ridiculous number of options in mail mate which I looked at initially and
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haven't touched for like two years.
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Yeah.
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Because there's just too many to think about.
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Yeah, there's a lot there for sure.
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Well, that sounds interesting, Mike.
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I hope it treats you well.
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It's working so far.
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All right.
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Should we talk about today's book?
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Yeah, this will be a fun one.
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All right.
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So today's book is extreme ownership.
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The subtitle is how US Navy SEALs lead and win and it's written by Jocko Willink and
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Lafe Babin.
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I believe I'm pronouncing that.
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I think it's leaf Babin, I think.
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Hmm.
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Okay.
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I knew someone who spelled their name that way and it was Lafe.
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Lafe?
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Okay.
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Maybe it is.
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I guess that's just what I default to.
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I'm going to call them Willink and Babin.
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I'm just going to call them Jocko.
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There you go.
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It's a fun name.
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But anyways, this is a book which has done pretty well in the revised version I've got
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says number one New York Times bestseller and it was expanded and it's got a couple
00:12:02
different sections that the original one didn't which makes it longer.
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I think we mentioned the last podcast.
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It's like 300 something pages.
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Yeah.
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It's definitely not a short read but it's an entertaining read and it's got an interesting
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format.
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It's basically broken down into the three sections as you do.
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Yep.
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But then each chapter in those sections has a story at the beginning from their deployment
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in Iraq and then a short section in the middle about the principle itself.
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And then the last part is a story about one of their consultations because they have a
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leadership training company and they work with a lot of companies and organizations to
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develop leadership in the people that in their teams.
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So they share a story from their consulting that illustrates the principle as well.
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So you get a lot of different ways that you could be applying it which I think helps you
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realize what's the word I'm looking for.
00:13:04
Basically when you take something and you apply it to your own situation I guess that
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would be generalizing something.
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So you're able to generalize the concepts because they give you the different arenas
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that they could be exhibited in.
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Yeah.
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And I also note that they, I didn't catch if they actually took turns but they put their
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specific name on the chapters that they wrote.
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That's true.
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Which was very interesting to me.
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A lot of times when you see co-authored books like this you don't always know who wrote
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what section.
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Yeah.
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And they tend to work on it together.
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This is not like that.
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They have like, they've got Jocko's name on the front of the chapter where of the one
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that he wrote.
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And I don't remember if they took turns back and forth on that.
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I didn't catch that part but they did at least take the time to put the author of that section
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on the chapter title page.
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Which I thought was very interesting.
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You don't normally see that.
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But it did help with the flow and the format of the whole thing.
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Which the other thing I didn't notice was I sometimes had to go back and flip to the
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front of the chapter to figure out which one I was reading.
00:14:12
Yeah.
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Because they have such a, like it's very similar in how they write.
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So it's not like you have a scenario where this chapter is different from that one and
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this one's written better than that one.
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I really didn't run across that at all.
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So kudos to them on working through to get that all done.
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But it was interesting to see, like to your point, the format of let's take a scenario
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that goes from the worst fights in Iraq and how do those translate into business scenarios.
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So it was very fascinating from that view.
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And it's interesting because I feel like with Bookworm, what we do is we read these
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books and maybe it's not a book that was written for people in our situation.
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But our goal every time is to get something from it and take the principle and apply it
00:15:06
to our own life.
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And so that's kind of what they did with the structure that they use in this book.
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It kind of facilitates that.
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And so even if you are not enamored with the military culture, which obviously there is
00:15:21
a lot of discussion of that, you can still get a lot out of this book, although that
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definitely comes through.
00:15:28
And back to your point about who wrote what chapters you're right.
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I noticed the names when I read through them, but I didn't end up actually going back to
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see who wrote a specific chapter as I was going through it.
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It was important though, sometimes because like there was one chapter which we'll get
00:15:45
into, "Lafe/Leaf" was talking.
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And he was relaying a story of an order that he had gotten from his higher up, which happened
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to be Jocko.
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And that was important to the story that he was telling, was that chain of command and
00:16:04
their positions relating to each other.
00:16:07
So it was important that you knew that "Leaf" was talking at that point instead of Jocko.
00:16:12
But it is different because most of the books that we read, like you said, they have co-authors.
00:16:17
It's just beginning to end sounds like one voice, one person.
00:16:22
And so it's even hard, like in the CMS that we have for releasing Bookworm, we have the
00:16:27
name of the book, and then we have the author's name.
00:16:30
We can't put more than one author's name.
00:16:32
And most of the time I'm just like, "Ah, whatever.
00:16:35
This other guy don't even know what he contributed because the first guys that weren't telling
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all the stories anyway."
00:16:42
But you can't do that with this book.
00:16:43
Yeah, no, it's fascinating though.
00:16:46
So let's jump into part one.
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We're not going to run through every single chapter in the whole book.
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We've got some of them that we've selected that are the ones we'd rather spend some
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more time on.
00:16:58
But yeah, it's split out into three different parts.
00:17:01
Part one is winning the war within.
00:17:05
Obviously they're telling stories about combat scenarios.
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Neither Mike or I have military backgrounds.
00:17:13
Nope.
00:17:14
So keep that in mind.
00:17:16
But winning the war within everything has a military analogy to it.
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And the first chapter within part one is extreme ownership where they go through the
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process of explaining what the mindset of extreme ownership is.
00:17:32
Yeah.
00:17:33
And just to, I guess, set the tone for what to expect from this book, I'll just mention
00:17:38
real briefly the story that they shared at the beginning.
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So I'm probably going to do a very poor job of summarizing this.
00:17:49
But basically when they were in Iraq, they had to coordinate between the Navy SEALs.
00:17:54
So that's the people who are writing this book.
00:17:57
And then they were working and conducting missions with the army and then also the Marines.
00:18:04
And they had all of these different communication networks for the different branches of the
00:18:10
military.
00:18:11
And they had to make sure that they were able to communicate together to achieve the mission
00:18:17
that they were, the outcome of the mission.
00:18:21
And the beginning of this story, the beginning of this book starts with a story, I forget
00:18:27
who specifically it was.
00:18:28
It's one of the authors.
00:18:30
They were in a situation where there was friendly fire and blue on blue is what they
00:18:36
called it.
00:18:37
And they came back to camp and they were debriefing.
00:18:41
And this is like a huge no, no, this never happens.
00:18:44
You know?
00:18:45
He's kind of like, well, what should I do?
00:18:48
Should I figure out what went wrong and blame that person?
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And really what they did is they stood up in front of all of the higher ups who had flown
00:18:55
in for this particular meeting.
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And he's like, it's my fault.
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And I think this was Jocko, if I remember right?
00:19:02
Yeah, it was Jocko.
00:19:03
Okay.
00:19:04
So he basically said that that saved his military career because they basically viewed
00:19:09
his taking ownership of the situation as it wasn't going to happen again.
00:19:14
And he was going to make the adjustments that were necessary.
00:19:17
He wasn't going to throw somebody else under the bus.
00:19:19
And that's the kind of leader that they wanted.
00:19:22
But this really is a powerful idea for me.
00:19:27
Now I guess a little bit of context here, this extreme ownership idea is really the idea
00:19:34
that everything is your fault.
00:19:35
So if you aren't happy with your situation, you don't blame somebody else for creating
00:19:42
it for you.
00:19:43
But you don't blame the ownership of it and you fix it yourself.
00:19:47
I was talking to somebody who had read this book and actually mentioned it to me not too
00:19:51
long ago.
00:19:52
And they said that they actually have a new book out, which I believe is called the
00:19:58
dichotomy of leadership.
00:19:59
It's also the name of the last chapter.
00:20:01
But it kind of tempers this whole idea of extreme ownership because people were taking
00:20:05
this too far with their teams and they weren't letting other people take extreme ownership.
00:20:09
Right.
00:20:10
So we'll talk about that in a little bit here, but really the idea at the very beginning
00:20:15
with this whole extreme ownership chapter is kind of the idea of personal responsibility
00:20:22
that everything that happens to you is your fault, which if you hear it through one lens
00:20:30
seems completely unfair.
00:20:32
But when you hear it through another perspective is actually very freeing and empowering because
00:20:40
it means that, yeah, maybe bad stuff happened, but it doesn't have to keep happening.
00:20:46
You have the ability to impact the outcome based on the things that you do now.
00:20:53
And that's very much in line with a lot of stuff that we've talked about on this podcast,
00:20:58
but they take it to a whole nother level here.
00:21:01
I think I would maybe, maybe tweak that into just a slight degree and say it's not necessarily
00:21:08
your fault, but it is your responsibility to do something with it.
00:21:14
Because fault, at least to me, is more of what I did directly led to the result.
00:21:23
And that may not be the case in this scenario.
00:21:27
And in a lot of the stories that they tell, it's not that way.
00:21:31
But I do think that you have a strong responsibility to step up and take ownership of the situation
00:21:38
and just take it from the stance of the actions that I have performed may not have directly
00:21:46
led to the result that I'm dealing with, the consequences of what I'm looking at.
00:21:51
But they may have had an indirect result.
00:21:55
This may be an indirect result of what I've done.
00:21:58
I don't know if that's the same or if it's different, but it feels very different to me.
00:22:01
Yeah, I get what you're saying.
00:22:03
And I think you are right that there is a difference there that maybe what happened to
00:22:11
you really wasn't anything of your doing.
00:22:15
But I guess when I say calling everything your fault, really what that does is it sets
00:22:22
you up for what you are able to do about it going forward.
00:22:27
That's really where the ownership piece comes in.
00:22:30
It's not looking back and projecting blame on what broke.
00:22:34
And that's kind of the thing that they tell in the story too.
00:22:38
He could have gone back and identified different points where the people underneath him had
00:22:43
messed up.
00:22:45
And those things did contribute to the fact that they had friendly fire.
00:22:50
But he basically wasn't willing to go there.
00:22:53
And when asked like, why did this happen?
00:22:56
He just took the blame even though he didn't have to and say it's my fault.
00:23:01
So I guess that's the thing I want to call out for people doing this is going through
00:23:07
this book with us is that you maybe don't have to assume responsibility for the things
00:23:15
that have happened.
00:23:16
But if you do, it gives you more options going forward.
00:23:22
Is that a fair way to say it?
00:23:23
Yep.
00:23:24
No, I think you're spot on there.
00:23:27
Again, you have to be the one that's willing to perform actions to rectify the situation.
00:23:35
Yep.
00:23:36
Like that's ultimately what they're calling for.
00:23:39
And that's the mindset that the rest of the book is based on.
00:23:42
So chapter one, extreme ownership.
00:23:45
Every other chapter, every other part of the rest of the book builds on that foundation
00:23:50
and kind of gives different scenarios where it comes about in what it looks like in given
00:23:56
scenarios, which leads us right into chapter two.
00:24:02
And I think we're going to skip three and four to get into part two.
00:24:06
But the second chapter is no bad teams, only bad leaders.
00:24:13
And the story that he told here, I think was just really interesting.
00:24:18
Yeah.
00:24:19
Because they basically conducted an experiment on their own seals and training.
00:24:27
And they had two, well, they had four teams.
00:24:32
I don't understand what the training systems were, but I do know that they were broken
00:24:38
apart into four teams.
00:24:40
They each had a boat and they had an entire series, like a course and obstacles and stuff
00:24:46
they had to go through in order to get to a finish line.
00:24:48
So there's a start line, there's a finish line.
00:24:51
All four teams are in competition to get from one to the other.
00:24:54
Yeah.
00:24:55
And if I could add a little bit of context here, I go for it.
00:24:57
This is part of what they call Hell Week.
00:25:00
Yes.
00:25:01
And so the main objective of Hell Week is to get as many people to quit as possible.
00:25:06
Yes.
00:25:07
So the training that they're having to do is literally designed to wear them out.
00:25:12
It's not designed to teach them a specific skill necessarily.
00:25:16
Correct.
00:25:17
So you have to understand the lens through which the people who are being asked to do
00:25:21
these things are getting these instructions.
00:25:24
Yep.
00:25:25
And then one of the things they have to do is they have to basically take this boat as
00:25:28
a team and carry it all over the place.
00:25:30
It's just crazy.
00:25:31
So it's like ridiculous stuff that you probably wouldn't do in combat, but you just have to
00:25:37
do it because you're higher up told you you needed to do it and you have to do it like
00:25:40
seven days in a row with getting no sleep.
00:25:42
Yes.
00:25:43
Which sounds horrible to me.
00:25:46
But 72 hours.
00:25:47
But yeah.
00:25:48
Yeah.
00:25:49
It's crazy.
00:25:50
So the story goes that, and I'm going to blank on which team it was, but let's say it
00:25:55
was team four was winning repeatedly.
00:26:00
And the thing is that if you win, you basically get a little bit of a respite while the other
00:26:05
teams have to do like extra work, like extra physical training of some sort, extra PT.
00:26:15
And team four is winning repeatedly.
00:26:17
So they're getting the breaks.
00:26:18
They're in high spirits.
00:26:19
They're high five and et cetera, et cetera.
00:26:23
Team two is always in dead last, you know, which is terrible because if you get last,
00:26:29
you get extra and then you're tired and then you got to go right into the next race, which
00:26:36
then they lose, which means they're doing extra exercises, which then makes them tired,
00:26:40
which means in the next, you get the idea.
00:26:41
Yeah.
00:26:42
It compounds.
00:26:43
At one point, the officer in charge of the whole scenario takes the platoon leader, the
00:26:52
guy who was in charge of each individual boats and switches them.
00:26:56
So now the leader from team four that was winning all the time is now the leader of
00:27:00
team two, which was losing all the time.
00:27:03
And the loser from team two is now the leader on the winning team of team four, which the
00:27:08
leader from team two now feels like he's won the lottery because he gets to go to a team
00:27:14
that's just dominating the leader from team four probably feels like he's out of luck.
00:27:20
But the interesting thing is that on the next race, team two, one.
00:27:25
So the team that was losing repeatedly now won the race and proceeded to then win most
00:27:33
races with team four being right behind them.
00:27:37
So the lesson there is that it's not a bad team.
00:27:41
Team two was not a bad team.
00:27:43
They just had a bad leader in that scenario.
00:27:46
And there's all kinds of extra details ago with that of what made him a bad leader versus
00:27:51
team four's leader and all those little pieces.
00:27:54
But that was the general concept is that the team won if they had a good leader ahead of
00:27:59
them.
00:28:00
Yeah, exactly.
00:28:01
And I want to go back because what really struck me from that story was the command coming
00:28:08
from the leader for the boat leader crews to the leaders of the boat crews to switch.
00:28:15
Because remember, every instruction that they are getting is basically to ride their nerves
00:28:20
and to get them to say, I'm not putting up with this anymore.
00:28:23
Right.
00:28:24
Okay.
00:28:25
So the team that is dead last on every single race, he's got to be thinking he's doing this
00:28:36
just to annoy me.
00:28:37
Right.
00:28:38
Because you know, he's not offering any other explanation for it, which would be my response
00:28:45
to something like that is, well, I want to know why.
00:28:47
Yep.
00:28:48
But in that position, and this is a good question.
00:28:51
I don't know why, but in that position, and this is where I think the military culture
00:28:58
stuff, even though I don't have any experience, really fascinates me because there are situations
00:29:04
like that where you're not going to get an explanation.
00:29:07
And maybe it's not fair, but there's nothing you can do about it except go forward.
00:29:12
And that's exactly what this guy did is he was a good leader and really the lesson from
00:29:17
this whole chapter, you kind of alluded to it, is that there are no bad teams, only bad
00:29:24
leaders as I was talking to my wife who's going through this too, because I love this
00:29:28
book when I read it and was telling her some of the stuff that I was learning.
00:29:32
She and I were talking about the other day and I said, there's no bad, bad kids, only
00:29:35
bad parents.
00:29:36
It's the same principle.
00:29:37
And that's where the ownership piece comes in because good leaders, they talk about in
00:29:44
this section, don't make excuses, they figure out a way to get it done.
00:29:48
So the guy who came from the losing boat crew, he did win the lottery in an essence because
00:29:56
he wasn't a very good leader.
00:29:58
He couldn't inspire his current team to achieve excellence.
00:30:01
But when he got put on a team, which was already excellent, he was able to maintain it, but
00:30:08
he wasn't able to get the people around him to go to that level.
00:30:11
That's really the challenge for me as I read this book.
00:30:16
There's not a whole lot of action items that I have from this, but there's so much actionable
00:30:20
stuff from this in terms, not in the traditional sense of an action item, but things that challenge
00:30:26
me to develop my skills as a leader.
00:30:28
It's not the kind of thing where you can say, okay, I went and I did this and now I've
00:30:31
can check the box and this is done.
00:30:34
But this really helps paint a picture of what an effective leader is.
00:30:37
And the fact in this chapter is also where they say, there are only two types of leaders.
00:30:41
That effective and ineffective.
00:30:45
So I want to be an effective leader.
00:30:46
I want to be the leader of the boat crew who buoys everybody around him, even if I got
00:30:51
put on the losing team, they're not going to be losers for long, but I can inspire people
00:30:56
to go higher, to become better.
00:31:00
I'd like to think that in a small way, that's kind of what Bookworm does as people listen
00:31:04
to this is that you're able to transcend your situation.
00:31:09
That's kind of one of the reasons I really got into podcast before I got into the online
00:31:15
productivity world was I wanted to be around people who were passionate about this stuff,
00:31:20
Apple technology, productivity.
00:31:22
I wanted to learn better ways of doing things.
00:31:25
I wanted to become more effective.
00:31:27
I wanted to become a better leader.
00:31:29
I didn't have a group where I lived that was like, hey, yeah, let's study leadership
00:31:33
together.
00:31:35
But through the magic of technology, you can change your group just by changing the voices
00:31:40
that you allow to speak in your life.
00:31:43
Great.
00:31:44
So I think this is an interesting and humbling chapter if you are a leader.
00:31:49
Like, okay, if the team's not performing well, guess whose fault that is?
00:31:54
That's going to end up being me.
00:31:57
Maybe not my fault, but my responsibility.
00:31:59
See, even I use the wrong term sometime.
00:32:02
So that's a piece that I think is very interesting.
00:32:06
So two other chapters in this first part.
00:32:08
Yeah, let me just combine a point from number three, because there was a story in here that
00:32:14
really impacted me.
00:32:16
And the story was basically that the, I forget the name, but the people who were deciding
00:32:24
what missions were to be run had sent on this order.
00:32:27
So it had gone to Jocko, Jocko had brought it to Lafe and Lafe was supposed to bring
00:32:32
it to his people.
00:32:34
And on the surface, the order seemed kind of ridiculous.
00:32:39
And in fact, the Navy SEALs were upset because it looked like it put them in danger by doing
00:32:45
these things.
00:32:47
And so Lafe's mad, he's talking to Jocko and Jocko basically pushes back and he's like,
00:32:52
well, do you think they will want you to die?
00:32:54
They will know.
00:32:56
Yeah.
00:32:57
So he basically taught Lafe that it's his responsibility when you don't understand the
00:33:03
why behind something to dig and figure it out.
00:33:08
You have to get to the point though, as an effective leader where you believe in the mission,
00:33:12
because if you don't believe it, then you're not going to take the risks that are required
00:33:16
to overcome the inevitable challenges that are going to be necessary to win.
00:33:21
And I think that kind of goes along with the previous chapter of being an effective leader.
00:33:26
You cannot be an effective leader if you are questioning your authority above you in trying
00:33:32
to get the people below you to do that thing.
00:33:35
And that's something that I've struggled with and kind of what I'm realizing from going through
00:33:39
this chapter.
00:33:40
Let me just use like a church context as an example.
00:33:44
You know, my pastor's got a vision for where he wants our church to go.
00:33:47
And there's elders and there's people underneath that and there's the whole chain of command,
00:33:52
you know?
00:33:53
And if he says, we got to do this.
00:33:55
It'd be great if I had the full explanation as to why we should be doing that.
00:34:00
But there are times when I just have to trust that he knows what he's doing.
00:34:05
Yeah.
00:34:06
And I got to understand that before I communicate it to the people below me, because they're
00:34:10
watching me and they're looking at my reaction.
00:34:14
And if I'm excited about this thing, because I believe in it, they will be too.
00:34:18
But if I present it as like, well, guys, I don't know why we're doing this, but you just
00:34:22
got to do it.
00:34:23
You know, what do you think?
00:34:24
The result's going to be it's going to fail.
00:34:26
Yeah.
00:34:27
No, I think that's very true.
00:34:29
And I see that in like even my own business.
00:34:32
Like if the guys that do work for me, if they don't buy into everything we're doing,
00:34:39
then I have not done my job.
00:34:42
So yes, I'm with you.
00:34:45
What's the other one here?
00:34:47
Check the ego is chapter four.
00:34:49
And if I were to summarize this chapter, it would basically be that ego clouds and disrupts
00:34:57
everything.
00:34:58
The planning process, the ability to take good advice, the ability to accept constructive
00:35:03
criticism.
00:35:04
So if you really want to be effective, you've got to be able to check your ego.
00:35:09
In fact, the Navy SEALs have a goal, they say, to be confident, but not cocky.
00:35:12
Don't get complacent.
00:35:13
It's like I'm going to put it.
00:35:15
So yes, believe.
00:35:17
Check the ego part two.
00:35:20
So this takes us from part one, which is winning the war within to part two, laws of
00:35:26
combat, which is very interesting as well.
00:35:30
The first chapter in this section, I think we're going to spend time on number eight,
00:35:33
but number five is cover and move.
00:35:37
And if I had to summarize this from a business context, it would be to move into a new area
00:35:45
or advance a product, stabilize it so that you can build off of that, get it stable,
00:35:53
and then move on to the next, as opposed to continuing to go after three, four, five,
00:36:00
ten different things all at one time, build one, stabilize it, move on to the next.
00:36:06
Like that was the general concept I got from that chapter.
00:36:09
Yeah.
00:36:10
Well, I guess cover and move.
00:36:12
There's a couple of ways this could be applied.
00:36:16
And the story that they told really kind of illustrated that.
00:36:20
So they had a sniper team and actually back up just a little bit.
00:36:25
A lot of the missions that they ran in this, the city, I forget the name of the city that
00:36:29
they were.
00:36:30
I think it's Ramadi, Ramadi, R-A-M-A-D-I.
00:36:34
I'll take your pronunciation of it.
00:36:38
But the missions that they were running or executing, this is like the worst city there.
00:36:45
And what they would do is they would just like charge into the middle of the city, take
00:36:49
a stronghold and then say, "We're here, do something about it."
00:36:55
So they did that with one of their sniper teams.
00:36:58
And then once they had accomplished their objective and they were going to go back to
00:37:04
base, they were left with the option of, "Do we leave in the middle of the day when it's
00:37:11
pretty dangerous or do we wait until evening when the enemies had time to lay a trap for
00:37:19
us?"
00:37:20
And they implemented cover and move and decided to leave in the middle of the day, which is
00:37:25
basically kind of what it sounds like.
00:37:27
You've got a whole bunch of people who are watching all the different angles and then
00:37:31
you work together to make sure that you're moving in the right direction and they eventually
00:37:35
all get back to base.
00:37:36
And they get back to base and they're celebrating that they made it, implementing cover and
00:37:39
move, but they left the other sniper team out there.
00:37:43
So the lesson from this is not just like cover and move within your own team, but how does
00:37:50
your team or your department, if you were going to apply this in a business sense, it's
00:37:54
got to be able to work together with all of the other teams or departments in order to
00:37:59
achieve a singular purpose.
00:38:02
And often, small teams get so focused on their immediate tasks that they forget what other
00:38:07
people are doing.
00:38:09
And that's challenging.
00:38:11
I mean, it's a lot more work to figure out how all of the teams around you are doing
00:38:15
things that might impact you and how you're helping them.
00:38:19
But if you are looking at it from an organizational perspective where you can see the big picture,
00:38:27
you can see how important this is.
00:38:29
Right.
00:38:30
Yeah.
00:38:31
And I would also note like sometimes this works business to business too.
00:38:34
Yeah.
00:38:35
Sometimes businesses can cover each other and move their way through a scenario as well.
00:38:38
So yeah, it works on a lot of levels.
00:38:41
Yep.
00:38:42
There's no us versus them.
00:38:44
Yep.
00:38:45
Uh, chapter six is simple.
00:38:47
It's pretty simple.
00:38:49
I should probably mention that this is where my action item comes from.
00:38:53
So maybe I should have bolded this one.
00:38:54
Um, there's really a whole lot to talk about here though.
00:38:59
The basic idea is you get in that one word title, just keep things as simple as you can.
00:39:05
And the story that they tell from this chapter, they were working with some Iraqi soldiers
00:39:10
who were on their side and they were creating this big plan and they're looking at it and
00:39:14
they're like, that is way too complex.
00:39:15
You should just do this really little basic simple thing.
00:39:18
You know, when he, when he changed the plan on them, you could tell that they were kind
00:39:20
of disappointed, but then they went out there and it's like 20 seconds later and they
00:39:23
were in a firefight for their, trying to save their lives.
00:39:26
So after that point, they kind of got it.
00:39:30
But this is, this is something that I think I could do a better job in not, uh, just generally
00:39:36
simplifying my systems and my habits because you can have all these complex intricate plans
00:39:44
for how you're going to do things.
00:39:47
But one of the things that they mentioned in this chapter, which really hit me was the
00:39:52
enemy gets a vote.
00:39:55
So the enemy is going to do something to disrupt your plan and you can define who your own
00:40:00
enemy is, but you ever, if you've ever tried to plan out your entire day from beginning