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One of the things you do, which you're super famous for, is this idea of waking up early. Now, I'm not someone that wakes up early. I know you have no alarm clock and you're usually up by 11, well, so no meetings before 11. Okay, got it. So I stay up quite late, yep. What's the best case you could give me for changing that, and do I need to change that? Because what I do is, you know, I flew into LA and I'm jetlagged. I'm flying back in a couple of days, and I'm going to be jetlagged when I land as well. So what I'm trying to do is just protect my sleep at all costs, because I've come to learn that it's really the foundation of my performance. So if I'm unslept and I show up at work, the chance that I'm not going to show up correctly in a variety of ways, emotionally, creatively, whatever, is high, and that for me is the greatest risk. Yeah. So in the last year or two of my life I've just said, okay, prioritize sleep, because then everything else seems to follow. But when I heard that you wake up sometimes at, or pretty much all the time, and I've seen you on social media upload your alarm clock day after day after day, I go, maybe I should rethink.
No, I think if you've got a system that's working well for you, I wouldn't change anything. If you feel like you're performing well, you're physically healthy, and you're getting all the work done that you need to do, and you're naturally more of a late-night, late-morning type person, I'd run with it. If you were telling me, "Yeah, sometimes I get up, sometimes I don't, sometimes I work late, sometimes I don't, I don't work out every day, and sometimes I feel groggy," if you were telling me that kind of thing, I'd say, okay, pick a time and start waking up at that time every day. It doesn't have to be 8 o'clock. It could be 7 o'clock, it doesn't matter, it could be 11 o'clock. But try to go to bed around the same time and try to wake up around the same time, and that's going to be a great foundation for everything that you're doing. I would also say, when you wake up in the morning, do some kind of exercise, because I think that is very helpful in getting your day started correctly.
What are your non-negotiables in your life in terms of habits, routines, and disciplines? I wake up early and I work out every day. Those are kind of my minimum requirements in life. I train Jiu-Jitsu. I don't get to train Jiu-Jitsu every single day, but if I can train Jiu-Jitsu, I'm going to train Jiu-Jitsu. I'm going to work out every day. If I can surf, I'm going to surf. I obviously have to work every day. I work every day doing something. I've got a bunch of different companies, I've got to write books, podcasts, so I work every day.
Are you ever undisciplined? Oh yeah. Chocolate chip cookies. Yeah, they're a discipline lapse for me. So I'm not a cyborg. When people look at someone like you, who has done all the things you've done, you've been a SEAL, you've written all these books and started these companies, and the drink I'm drinking now is one of your products, which is what's that in front of you? It's an energy drink called GO. Delicious, by the way. Oh, thank you. I think my mouth has been connected to my brain during this interview, so I think it's working. I understand there are misconceptions people have of me, because they assume it's kind of like the halo effect: they assume because someone has done something well, they do all things well. But there are so many things that I think would really liberate people and make them inspired if they could see how deficient I was in so many things in my life, because they just assume that if you've done one thing well, you have a good podcast, you must be the perfect picture.
What are the big misconceptions generally, moving away from this idea of imperfection, but just generally about Jocko? Because you realize you've become a bit of a character, right? Navy SEAL comes with an identity package. Yeah. I think the biggest misconception, and it's not just me, it's really the military in general, is the misconception of an authoritarian, even dictatorial, style of leadership. Even when we were having this conversation, I said I'm going to let my subordinates plan, and you had a stunned look on your face like, what are you talking about, why would you let your subordinates plan? So there's an idea and a misconception that the leader is going to stand up and bark all the orders. That's one misconception. Another one is that I look like a Neanderthal, so people think I'm going to scream and yell at everybody, and I never yell at anybody. My business partner, Leif Babin, who worked with me in my task unit at SEAL Team 3 and deployed to Ramadi with me, and we've now written a couple of books together and have a business together, was my direct subordinate in Ramadi and during a workup, and I never yelled at him. He likes to point out that I gave him plenty of reasons to yell at him, but I never yelled, because what good is that? And by the way, if I have to yell at somebody, what does that say? It means if I have to yell at you to get my point across as a leader, I've made about forty-seven other mistakes. My goal is that I don't even have to say anything. That's my goal as a leader: I don't have to say a word, and you already know what to do and you make it happen, and I look at you, give you a thumbs up, and say, good job. That's my goal.
So I think the biggest misconception is the idea of someone in the military, or myself, being an authoritarian leader who is very close-minded. I got asked a question the other day about, if China attacked Taiwan and you were taking troops in there, what would you be focused on? I said I'd be focused on keeping an open mind, because if you have a closed mind about what the mission is, how it's going to happen, what your troops are going to do, or what the enemy is going to do, you're going to get caught off guard. You have to have an open mind. You have to be accepting of the information you're receiving, and accepting of the other ideas that other people have. If you have a closed mind, you're going to fall apart. That's kind of counterintuitive in some ways, because people often think they've been made the leader because they have loads of the correct ideas. So as people often climb in life, they go, well, I've been right so much that they've put me here as CEO, so now I need to defend my righteousness at all costs, even when I'm not sure, because that's a weakness.
Yeah, and you quoted Steve Jobs earlier. I think it's actually from your book, which was: "I don't hire people so I can tell them what to do. I hire good people so they can tell me what to do." So yes, in a leadership position you should be listening more than you're talking.
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