Sorry Jocko, Discipline is Overrated
Build Systems That Take Choice Out of the Equation
Many internet thought leaders have built their livelihoods diagnosing why many people feel disillusioned, fat, poor or less successful than they would like to be.
Some of these content creators exonerate their listeners, by placing the blame on external factors such as Capitalism, Wokeness etc. If their audience embrace Karl Marx, Milton Friedman, Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, or AOC and vote for the right politicians, all their problems will be solved.
On the other end of the spectrum, other creators will preach that regardless of which political system you find yourself in, you are the only person to blame if you are unhappy with your life. Within this group, some will focus on wealth creation, health & fitness, productivity, career success/entrepreneurship among other topics but the overarching theme is that you are the master of your fate, you are the captain of your soul.
Between these two groups, I more closely align with the latter. Over the years, I’ve intermittently checked out some of this content. The extent to which this advice is helpful can vary but in any case, these creators generate astonishing viewership numbers, demonstrating they have a sizeable audience who see value in listening.
I came across one of these creators, Jocko Willink, who has made a sizeable fortune preaching that discipline is the key to solving problems. Below the fold, I will be sharing on my thoughts on why I don’t believe discipline really is the key to success.
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If you were to stop reading after this sentence, my position is that relying on discipline will not help most people; they should instead focus on building systems that remove the need for spontaneous selections or mental resolve.
Let me start by saying I have nothing against Jocko Willink. We have little in common but I respect his military service and am happy that he has managed to build himself an impressive empire. This article is purely a reflection on the belief that discipline is the key to success1. The first time I came across Jocko was years ago on the Tim Ferris podcast. This was an old episode, and Jocko had already been able to successfully leverage his appearance to help build out his own audience. I could understand the appeal, Jocko is a former Navy SEAL who served several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has credibility when it comes to accomplishing hard things.
I decided to check out his podcast. One of the first videos I came across was a Q&A with his co-host, Echo Charles. The format of the Q&A went something like this. Charles would read out a viewers question that would go along the lines of “Jocko, I am having a difficult time losing weight, I never seem to be able to stick to a routine, how do you manage to stick to your workout regimen? ” Jocko would then pause thoughtfully and respond “The way to stick to your workout regimen is to stick to your workout regimen.” Then Echo Charles would nod enthusiastically. I watched nearly 30 minutes of his Q&A that went exactly like this. Charles: “How do you not eat junk food?”, Jocko: “The way to not eat junk food, is to not eat junk food!” I was falling off my chair laughing but from his viewership and comment count, his audience appeared to find this advice super helpful2. Don’t believe me? Check out this clip.
To save you some time, we can reduce Jocko’s advice to stay disciplined and take ownership, which are the titles of his books.
What is discipline? Discipline is the practice of making choices against your natural urges to reach your desired outcome. The key element is that discipline is needed to intervene when you don’t want to do something. Would you call a person who eats ice cream bars after every meal disciplined? Unless they hated desert, probably not.
Regardless of domain, when we observe a successful individual there is a natural urge to rationalize their success. We normally explain it by one of these three factors:
Something inherited (wealth or genetics)
Good luck
Superior Discipline
You can replace discipline with consciousness or another adjective if you would like but the point remains, if we can’t explain their success by something they were born with or luck, the natural tendency to explain why they found success where we did not, is because of something innate that they have, but we lack.
I accept the premise that some people are more disciplined than others, but I don’t believe the correlation between discipline and success is as high as people like Jocko would lead us to believe. Given the choice, it is better to be more disciplined than less, but if you regularly find yourself having to rely on your discipline, you will eventually fail. In the context of a car, think of discipline as the safety break; it’s important to have in specific situations, but if you are using it all the time, you are not driving well. Instead, set yourself up so that whether you have good discipline or not, you are regularly making choices that will get you closer to your goal(s).
We face countless decisions every day. What outfit should we wear? What song to listen to? Should we walk or take the bus to work? If we made conscious choices for every decision we faced, our brains would be too exhausted to deal with more complex items. We need to take shortcuts; we do this by making default selections. You set up a routine, you fall into tendencies. Many books on decision making focus on high stake complex decisions, while overlooking smaller daily choices. Most goals involves taking many small actions consistently over extended periods.
Instead of relying on discipline, spend more time upfront figuring out the optimal approach to your goal, then build a routine that makes it very difficult to fail. Take choice and discipline out of the equation. No matter how disciplined you are, there will be days that your cortisol (stress hormone) is elevated. When you have higher levels of cortisol, you decision making abilities and emotion regulation are impaired. If you live on a planet with other humans with elements outside of your control, I can promise you, these higher cortisol days will happen.
This is why more importance should go towards your routine. Make your routine as difficult to break as possible and you will achieve your goal. If you want to lose 10 LBs (4.5 KG) in 10 weeks, you need to have a daily caloric deficit of 500 calories (or 3,500 weekly). You can find this 500 calories by switching your diet or exercising more. Being able to sustain this new diet or exercise regime for 70 consecutive days would require a lot of discipline, this is why most people fail their weight loss goals. To increase your chances, you can hire a personal chef to cook all your meals and follow you around knocking unhealthy food out of your hands. You can have a personal trainer move into your house, wake you up by dumping a bucket of cold water on your head and force you to start your day with a morning run. This is impractical for most.
Another option would be to stop taking the bus and instead walk. Depending on your weight, you burn between 50-100 calories for every kilometer walked. If the only thing that you changed about your routine was that you walked an extra 5-10KM per day, you will have created this 500 calorie deficit. Don’t renew your bus pass for these 10 weeks (or give it to a friend) to eliminate the possibility of cheating. You still need to get to your office, the fear of losing your job and being unable to pay rent and grocery bills is an excellent motivational technique. Burn the boats, leaving yourself with only one way forward and suddenly you will have created a system that will make it difficult not to achieve your goal, that does not rely on discipline3.
Walking would represent a small departure from your standard routine but over time, if you managed to stick with it for a few weeks, it would become the new default. It would not require any conscious effort or tax your brain capacity but you will have put yourself on a path to achieve your goal. How hard do you think about brushing your teeth in the morning or grabbing a towel when you step out of the shower? You are so accustomed to doing these things, that it no longer really becomes a choice.
We make enough choices, that we are faced with decision fatigue. This is why Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs and other prominent executives would wear the same outfit every day. Many successful people create routines that they swear by. Whether this is a workout routine, work schedule, night time routine etc. I don’t believe that all of these successful people would have managed to achieve this level of success on discipline alone. At some point they understood that systems matter more and this is how they create the conditions for success.
I am about to drop a hot take on you: The average person is average. Jocko, David Goggins and these other discipline gurus have demonstrated incredible resolve. It is not a coincidence that both men were Navy Seals, where participants undergo vigorous physical and mental training. By comparison waking up at 4 AM or working out each day is child’s play compared to what they have been through. The average person has probably not had to endure anything remotely as difficult as this. Therefore Jocko or Goggins telling them to be more disciplined instead of setting up a fail proof system would be similar to telling an illiterate person to read better.
The fact of the matter is, most people lack discipline. Blame modern life for being too convenient, at least in this part of the world. Jocko and Goggins can easily tap into their previous training but most people are not built that way. We have lost our fight or flight instincts, it has been replaced by doom scrolling on Instagram/ Tiktok or eating donuts to cope with boredom or existential angst.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.” G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain
This is why I found Jocko’s podcast Q&A so amusing. A disciplined person telling others to get after it might make sense to them, but it is impractical advice for an audience that struggles with discipline. Why else would they be listening to Jocko? Disciplined people are busy with their disciplined people stuff, cold plunges, 72 hour silent retreats, surviving off the excrement of branches from the wilderness etc.
For those who don’t spend their time this way, instead of listening to Jocko, Goggins or others, spend more time planning, iterating and adjusting a system that will put you on a path to achieve your goals. With a good system, your discipline is largely taken out of the equation. You can also build an system that relies on external support. Commit to a goal in public so if you fail, people will know. I promised my Subscribers 52 consecutive weeks of Substack posts, now if I miss one, I am sure I will have a few people asking me what happened? Similarly, if you want to try to quit coffee or alcohol, it’s difficult to do it if your friends or partner are constantly drinking around you, maybe do it together or at least ask them to help you stick to your goal. Put as many barriers to breaking your goal that you can. Here is a final thought experiment:
If you had to fast for 3 days on nothing but water, what will increase your chances of success? Doing discipline training or removing all the food from your house and keeping yourself distracted for 3 days? Unless you are Jocko or a bit of psycho, you probably wont succeed if for 3 days you just stare at your fridge filled with food, with nothing to distract you4. Better yet, recruit a friend to do it with you, if competition fuels you. What if you success meant they would pay you $1M dollars and failure meant they owe you $1M dollars? Something tells me you would stick it out.
The reason why people fail is not from a lack discipline, but rather they have decided the stakes are not worth it. If something is really important, people will make the necessary changes to increase their likelihood of success. It might come at a cost and be uncomfortable, but most goals are really a reflection of your ability to achieve mastery over yourself than the obstacle at hand. Instead of white knuckling and torturing yourself by testing your resolve, map out the terrain and make it very hard to fail, then I am confident that you will achieve your goals.
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In fairness to Jocko, he likely has, at least indirectly, shared some of my same arguments.
He does normally provide a little bit more commentary than that but still, I listened to him start his response to at least half of his questions in that manner and it was over for me.
Just keep your caloric intake and the rest of your exercise regiment unchanged.
I can admit, I am one of these psycho’s. My wife added an additional element of difficulty during one of these challenges by cooking herself a nice pasta dinner, as I was 70 hours into a 4 day fast. I was still successful but now I do these fasts when she’s out of town.
If you deep dive Jocko’s leadership books he leans into taking personal responsibility and being accountable to one’s actions. It’s probably considered a very American philosophical approach to self improvement. He also draws greatly from military leadership and training doctrine that encourages self accountability, discipline, and team work. He published a book called “The Code, Evaluation, Protocals” But I never checked it out, just heard him talk a boy it on his Pod.
1) Jocko was a Navy SEAL not a Marine
2) Jocko does have a a lot of content on building “protocals” or “standard operating procedures” that are similar to your systems approach.