Rarely is there a single moment when you understand discipline, leadership, or detachment; discovering self-identity is more of a gradual process
The actions that you take today will either positively or negatively impact your future; act accordingly 
Combat is much different than garrison; nothing goes as planned in combat, and the authoritarian-types do not perform well in the chaos
Get up when your alarm goes off the morning; don’t overthink it  
Jocko Willink’s workouts can be anywhere from 8 minutes to three hours
Jocko doesn’t eat a big meal until he’s done with doing the physical stuff for the day, which is usually around 6:00 pm or 7:00 pm 
You can create your own energy; high-intensity, anaerobic-blast-type exercises give Jocko the most energy for the rest of the day 
There is a cluster of chemicals in each of us called catecholamines, which consist of dopamine, epinephrine (adrenaline), norepinephrine, and cortisol; these compounds have enough energy to power our brain and body for 50 days 
Stanford’s lab is finding that brief cold exposure prior to physical activity is improving athletic performance, most likely because it wakes the athletes up and creates neural energy for them
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Jocko Willink (@jockowillink) is a retired United States Navy officer who served in the Navy SEALs and is a former member of SEAL Team 3. He is the host of the Jocko Podcast, and author of several books including Extreme Ownership, The Dichotomy of Leadership, and Way of the Warrior Kid. He also runs several companies, including Echelon Front, ORIGIN, and Jocko Fuel. 
In this conversation, Jocko Willink and Dr. Andrew Huberman discuss identity, leadership, movement, nutrition, exercise, deliberate cold exposure, BUDS, mindsets in the military, confidence, generators vs. projectors, motivation, neural vs. caloric energy, Navy SEAL culture, detachment, suicide, family, social media, combat, mental resilience, positive action, sleep, political leadership, and much more
Check out these Podcast Notes from Lex Fridman’s conversation with Dr. Huberman
Host: Andrew Huberman (@hubermanlab)  
Rarely is there a single moment when you realize discipline, leadership, or detachment; discovering self-identity is more of a gradual process
A Hungarian school of psychology believed there were two types of people: generators and projectors
  • From a young age, generators realize that they can impact other people positively or negatively by creating and building things  
  • Projectors prefer to reflect on what they see 
You get a clean slate when you join the military; no one cares if you were the captain of the football team or if you failed your SATs
In the military, performing the tasks that you are assigned should result in you getting more control over your own destiny 
The ultimate compensation for humans is to have more control over their destiny 
Realize that your actions today not only impact what will happen to you in the next hour, day, or week, but it will also impact you over the next five years 
The actions that you take today will either positively impact your future, or negatively impact your future 
Jocko’s life became better the more he focused on doing the things that would positively impact his future 
The book On the Psychology of Military Incompetence by Norman F. Dixon changed the way that Jocko thought about personalities in the military 
The military appears to be a perfectly orderly organization from the outside looking in 
It can be an attractive place for people that are more authoritarian, and also for people that want to be told what to do 
The term “garrison” refers to a non-combat environment
People with the authoritarian mindset do better when in garrison because things are orderly and predictable 
Combat is much different than garrison; nothing goes as planned in combat, and the authoritarian-types do not perform well in the chaos 
The person that thrives in combat has a more open mind 
It’s common for the people that thrive in combat to not perform well in garrison because their weapon is ready for combat, not inspection, for example 
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The stereotypical marine is pretty close to the actual marine
The Marine Corps has an incredibly strong culture 
There stereotypes of each brand of the military exist for a reason, but they are obviously not all true down to the level of the individual    
Jocko Willink recommends the book By Water Beneath The Walls: The Rise of The Navy Seals by Benjamin Milligan, calling it the best book on the history of the Navy Seals 
Decentralized command is one of the strengths of the Navy SEAL teams 
Jocko Willink’s workouts can be anywhere from 8 minutes to three hours
He says he could fill his entire day with physical activity if he didn’t have anything going on 
Wake up early and get a sweat going 
Jocko does it all (lifting heavy, cardio, kettlebells, bodyweight) and shares the he is not really good at any one aspect of physical activity 
If Jocko only has a few minutes to work out in the morning, then he will ramp up the intensity and make every minute count 
Jocko logs his workouts so he can reflect back on what he was doing 
Get up when your alarm goes off the morning; don’t overthink it  
You will get energy from working out and you will feel better 
You have to go “really, really hard” to feel more tired after a workout than when you started it 
Andrew Huberman will sometimes crash in the afternoon after a hard workout if he was over-caffeinated and doesn’t nourish afterwards
  • He may also crash from over-nourishing after an intense workout 
“I find that eating slows me down.” – Jocko Willink 
“The main reason I got into the habit of waking up early and working out is because if you do it before anyone else is awake, then they can’t bother you and you can get stuff done.” – Jocko Willink 
Jocko does not like to do physically active things with food in his stomach 
Jocko Willink doesn’t eat a big meal until he’s done with doing the physical stuff for the day, which is usually around 6:00 pm or 7:00 pm 
The ideal meal schedule is the one that allows you to sleep well at night – whatever that means for you – and that allows you to be active and focused when you need to be   
Jocko doesn’t eat before meeting with clients, doing a podcast, or when he used to go on combat missions  
You get a certain level of mental clarity when you haven’t eaten a bunch of food 
“I don’t want to have food in my stomach when I’ve got to perform or execute anything.” – Jocko Willink 
People over-index on the importance of caloric energy and under-index on the importance of energy from cortisol or neural energy
There is a cluster of chemicals in each of us called catecholamines, which consist of dopamine, epinephrine (adrenaline), norepinephrine, and cortisol; these compounds have enough energy to power our brain and body for 50 days 
When we take in caloric energy, it takes neural energy to digest it and put it into storage 
Like Jocko, Andrew Huberman does not eat before he trains; he prefers to hydrate and caffeinate 
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High-intensity anaerobic-blast type exercises give Jocko the most energy for the rest of the day
  • Sprints on the air bike or rower, or swinging a kettlebell hard
Jocko Willink has a cold tub at his house and he gets in every day for five minutes after he trains 
Football players and cross country runners at Stanford have been experimenting with doing cold exposure before they train because of the massive long-lasting increase in dopamine and adrenaline that it causes 
Stanford’s lab is finding that brief cold exposure prior to physical activity is improving athletic performance, most likely because it wakes the athletes up and creates neural energy for them
Cold exposure for 30-60 seconds is like a 4-shot of espresso without all the jitters 
Dopamine can increase 2.5x after cold exposure and can last for several hours
If you’re training really hard, getting in the cold after exercise may blunt some hypertrophy 
“I am a big fan of deliberate cold exposure mostly for the neural effects.” – Andrew Huberman      
There is a theory in biology that when we win, we somehow get more energy to win more through the release of dopamine 
Testosterone in both men and women is a close cousin of the dopamine system; the patterns of their release are actually from the same general areas in the brain
The selection process of the SEAL teams is going to weed out a bunch of people that can’t recover quickly from something bad
You are not going to “win” in BUDS training; the training officers will find out what you are not good at, they will exploit it, and you will lose 
It is common for people to quit BUDS because they are not used to losing 
There is a massive attrition rate at BUDS for giga-chad studs and division one athletes
When you are a leader of an organization, you are basically in charge of a mob when it comes to their morale 
As a leader, you cannot get caught up with the mob 
Mentally detach yourself from the mob so that you don’t get caught up in their emotions and their morale
If you get caught up in their emotions and their morale, you can’t correct it   
Bring the mob back to centerline when things are either too good or too bad 
An important job of the leader is to counter whatever the mob mentality is at the time 
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Andrew Huberman believes that much of the energy referenced in Eastern medicine has to do with the catecholamines (dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, and cortisol) 
Andrew believes that the reward systems in the brain amplify when you’re working and training with people that you love
Overconfidence can lead to poor performance 
A leader must emotionally detach from the situation so she can properly assess the situation 
Generators know how to tap into their reward systems and they love doing so, whereas the process may be more foreign to projectors  
Projectors can also tap into these systems, but they generally prefer to be observers in the world and to partner with generators 
Be the person that modulates the confidence and ego of those you care about, including yourself
  • Modulate it instead of turning it all the way up or all the way down
Provide balance for people so they don’t get out of control
Those that experience a “downfall” tend to have been surrounded by others that never countered their emotions
Andrew first interfaced with Jocko’s message when Jocko was a guest on the Tim Ferriss show and the Joe Rogan Experience in 2014 
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Having a strong sense of self allows you to function in different contexts without losing who you are 
After seeing the number of people destroy themselves with alcohol, Jocko does not think people should drink
  • He understands why they do, but that is separate from whether or not they should at all 
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Jocko Willink does not rely on motivation because it is an emotion that comes and goes 
Discipline drives Jocko’s daily actions, not motivation 
The depth of emotion that we feel when we lose someone has everything to do with our love for them
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