#56–Jocko Willink Part 2 of 2: Sleep, fasting, kids, discipline, ownership, & the impact of war

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  9/11 sent Jocko back to the teams

  Jocko spent 20 years as a Navy SEAL and commanded SEAL Team Three's Task Unit Bruiser in the Battle of Ramadi. On 9/11 he was in college at the University of San Diego, working toward his commission. When the second plane hit, he knew 'we're under attack'. Within a day or two he was begging a senior officer to send him back to a SEAL team. He returned in spring 2003, about six months after the Iraq invasion, and took over a platoon preparing to deploy.

• 02

  Insurgents exploited a weakness: we care about casualties

  Drawing on accounts of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, Jocko says you cannot beat an enemy who doesn't care about losses in a war of attrition. They learn that 'you can kill 200 of us and we'll kill one of you', and eventually the side that values life grows tired.

• 03

  The principles of combat don't change with terrain

  Jocko visited Afghanistan but didn't fight there. Bruiser veterans who later went told him the geometry was the same. In Ramadi, streets were the low ground and buildings the high ground. In Afghanistan, valleys and peaks. Either way you dominate the high ground and get good angles, only over greater distances.

• 04

  ISIS made a strategic error by becoming a conventional army

  With vehicles, flags and uniforms, ISIS fought like an inferior nation-state rather than an insurgency. Jocko estimates around 50,000 of its fighters were killed as Ramadi and Mosul were retaken. Asked where he would take his family in Iraq, he says Ramadi, then Baghdad.

• 05

  Civilians are disconnected from 20 years of war

  Jocko recalls Roger Hayden, a SEAL he looked up to, who came home from Vietnam to no protests and no attention. He argues that today's civilians are similarly separated from the wars. Predicting who the US will fight in 25 years is nearly impossible, but machines will play a growing role.

• 06

  Why people distrust machines more than teenage drivers

  Huge numbers of people die in car accidents, yet one Tesla crash makes the front page. We trust a 16-year-old driver but not an autonomous system. Jocko expects the same tension over machines in warfare.

• 07

  Sleep is short, steady and probably partly genetic

  At home in San Diego Jocko goes to bed around 11 after jiu-jitsu (home by 7:30–8), his biggest meal, time with his kids and some work. His alarm is set for 4:30, and about half the time he wakes on his own between 4 and 4:30 feeling fine. If he goes to bed at 9:30, he wakes at 3:30. His oldest daughter barely slept in high school, while his wife sleeps a lot. He suspects genetics and hasn't tried a long sleep-extension experiment. Attia suggests they discuss it with Matt Walker.

• 08

  Ownership and free will

  Jocko used to believe absolutely in free will. Now he calls himself 'a free-will agnostic', maybe heading for atheist. Sam Harris has told him free will and extreme ownership align. For Jocko, it is simple: if you want to do something, do it, and if you're making excuses, own them, up and down the chain of command.

• 09

  Lessons for kids belong at the kitchen table

  Jocko wrote children's books to put the 'very clear, very simple', timeless lessons kids need to become good humans in one place. His children saw how crushed he was when his best friend died, which he thinks showed them he is human. He hides no mistakes. When he messes up he laughs and says 'I'm an idiot'. He only lets himself get angry at printers, because they have no feelings.