QuikReview: Extreme Ownership – Jocko Willink

So over the course of approximately eight hours in the car I listened to the abovementioned book by life coach and motivational speaker, Jocko Willink, who also happens to have been the founder of the Navy-SEAL-to-podcast-host pipeline. I don’t know if there’s anything groundbreaking in this book, but I came across it at a very good time and it was very useful to me over the past couple of weeks, as I deal with the mental fallout of new job duties that include a massively increased workload and commute time but not increased pay.

Anyhow, the book lists a bunch of aphorisms or principles which, applicable to the high-paced, high-stakes, adrenaline-charged and constantly-changing, chaotic, life-or-death atmosphere of corporate boardrooms, can also be generalized to, well, combat.

While many word can do trick, so can few. The lessons of this book do break down into some convenient aphorisms:

– Own it: the only person responsible for anything that happens to you is you. Acknowledge it. Use it.
– What do you tolerate? How high–or how low–are your standards?
– Believe and commit. If you aren’t a true believer, you can’t commit; if you can’t commit, you can’t lead with conviction. (If you don’t believe, keep gaslighting yourself until you do.)
– Check your ego–if there’s a problem, own it–and keep focused on solutions, not people, or people with problems.
– Cooperate: ask for help and offer help.
– One problem at a time. Prioritize. Take a breath–observe–act.
– Don’t exceed your span of control.
– Plan things out ahead of time. Plans should be robust but flexible. Planning processes should be standardized. Planning units, language, and procedures should be standardized. (Plans should also be in writing.)
– Lead down the chain of command: make sure everyone understands their job and has what they need. Lead up the chain of command: make sure the higher ups know what you are doing and support you. (Note: leading up the chain needs to be done…carefully.)
– Decide to act. Deciding to act boldly is a proactive decision. Deciding to act cautiously is a proactive decision. Hesitating or procrastinating are not proactive decisions.
– Discipline is freedom. By setting your goals and sticking to them, you set yourself up for success (and free time. But not, apparently, more sleep. Sleep doesn’t appear to be one of the things that Navy SEALS and motivational speakers seem to think highly of. Odd.)
– Leaders maintain the ideal distance and perspective, not getting too close to or too far away from their subordinates.

Rated: the floggings will continue until morale increases.

Overheard….or spoken: iS tHaT

“Is that blood?”

“You’ve been roasting me like I’m fried chicken.”
“Well, you are a redneck, so it’s appropriate…”

“–unless they want the blood of a virgin or a firstborn child, I don’t know what else–“
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…I hope I’m not going to get sacrificed.”

The Alexandria Quartet – PreReview

So fans of Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber will know that it took inspiration from Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet, secifically, the ever-evolving truth behind Corwin’s auto accident, constantly revised as it’s retold through different viewpoints. The Chronicles of Amber also pays tonal homage to the quartet, taking on some of its elegiac atmosphere, contemplative, moody-philosophical ruminations, and flowing, elaborate vocabulary. The Alexandria Quartet is four books–Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, and Clea–which tell (mostly) the same series of events from the viewpoints of different characters. It’s been quite a few years, but I decided to dust off my kindle copy and re-read it.

What I remember: It’s set in the 1940s in Alexandria. Justine is mostly about Justine, who is not actually a femme fatale, just way too BPD to function like a normal human being, and acutely aware of it. The narrator is having an affair with her, although he also has warm feelings of friendship towards her husband, Nessim, and also has an established relationship with his own girlfriend, the dancer/prostitute/her-narrative-function-is-to-soon-be-dead Melissa. The narrator believes that Justine has genuinely fallen in love with him. Stuff happens. He ends up leaving town (because of the war?) to raise Nessim and Melissa’s child and ruminate. Balthazar drops by the narrator’s quiet island retreat to chat about (read: ruminate endlessly some more) old times and reveals to the narrator that Justine was not in fact genuinely in love with him, but did have a grand genuine passion for some other guy (I’m going off of memory, mind you) who barely even registers in the first book. Mountolive, meanwhile, reveals that while the original narrator was busy ruminating (you will notice that I use that word a lot, and it’s because I couldn’t figure out how to work omphaloskepsis into a sentence) about love affairs and the associated barely-disguised mental illness, there was actually a hell of a lot of political intrigue going on and Nessim and Justine were right smack dab in the middle of it, incidentally, Justine does love Nessim but only when they’re working together on a project (like attempting to smuggle arms to protoIsrael) together; and Nessim’s brother draws too much attention and (I think?) has to be assassinated, but he gets to make a really badass last stand that I kind of remember to this day. At least, I hope he did and I think I do. Clea is set after everything else goes down (post WWII completes, I think?), wraps everything up, and the original narrator gets to have a happy ending with…Clea? Maybe? (Justine has had a stroke and is no longer a beautiful femme fatale, but she and Nessim were working on another intrigue and it’s the late 1940s in the Middle East, so, happy ending there, too, yay.)

Anyway.

The Chronicles of Amber (1-5) are great books, is what I’m getting at.

solutions

“I had my reasons,” Zara said tautly. She hadn’t moved, hadn’t changed expression, hadn’t made eye contact with anything other than the far wall. It didn’t shift, even when Alpha walked deliberately around in front of her and squatted on her heels to bring herself in line with that wide, unblinking stare.

Alpha inspected her for a long moment, head tilting, eyes direct. “We know what your reasons were. You wanted something to destroy you if you ever failed, ever slipped up. You wanted to make sure that any mistake you made would be the only one you ever made, because death is better than failure. Look at you now. Look at you now!“

And all three of the clones were facing her, looking down in judgement at the woman who had created them. Only Alpha spoke, but the cold words and the hot contempt flowed from them all: “Now someone else has to solve your problem. Everything you’ve tried to build is worthless now. You’ve compromised your mission, your reputation, your body, your honor. Sarryn’s destroyed you already. What’s left isn’t worth killing.”