Unmasking Everyday Sabotage: Lessons From The Simple Sabotage Field Manual |Book Review

Welcome to the Social Community Show. It's our goal to help you learn, grow, and transfer when you're the person you wanna come. Today, it's book review time. I will be reviewing simple sabotage field manual. This is from, the OSS, which

wind up later becoming the CIA. Apparently, this is one

of their field manuals that was declassified and, published. I initially heard about this book on, the Jocko podcast, episode 390, how to sabotage the enemy, but also yourself with JP Danelle. And I was listening to that episode. It was very interesting, the things that were coming out of this book. So I had a I have a little bit different take on it, which is why I wanted to do this because what I heard when I was when they were going through this is, you know, this isn't this book would be an is an opportunity to to evaluate the similarities between the sabotage they're talking about here and what I felt like was, similarities in everyday life and business practices. And then with that, I think this would be a good opportunity to use this manual to help us identify them and remove them from our lives as much as possible. So, the way I think about this book, it's not broken up like this, but how I think about

it is is is section 12. Section 1, the way I

think about this section is, it gives us the opportunity to to look at these different sabotage things. And the way I see this is they're they're talking about sabotaging, and we'll we'll go through it, different things, facilities, train tracks, roads, water supplies, all these different types of things. And when I

was thinking about it, I was like, wow. You know, are we susceptible to this at our own homes? You know, are we susceptible to these things?

You know, it may be a business you run or or if you're a manager or something like that. How easily susceptible are these things just because Not because there's a saboteur amongst you, but because things happen. Maybe we don't think about things. I guess, as a good example here is, my neighbor's house burnt down a couple years ago. I I never thought about having fire extinguishers. I didn't have any in my house. And I was like, you know, I should probably go get some of those. So that's how I thought about this first section.

Like, how many of these things are we plausibly vulnerable to? So I would like to go through that, and with the hope of, you know, we probably won't be immune to these things, but being aware of them gives us a better chance to detach and recognize them. A a kind of a good thought of this is is, the Nobel laureate, Daniel Kahneman. He wrote the book,

Thinking Fast and Slow. I think

it's his most popular book. He has got a a newer one as well. I I the title is, escaping me at the moment. I'll leave them in the show notes if you guys are interested. I think fast Thinking Fastest Soul is probably one of the definitely one of those books. It it's a must read because it goes through all the cognitive biases. And and what he says I'd like to paraphrase here. I couldn't find the exact quote, but I know I remember hearing him talk about this.

He says that he's I still fall

for these cognitive biases even though I've studied them

my whole life. That's about what the sentiment of

what he said. I I said I couldn't find an exact quote. And so, Ilyk, he also talks about different things of, you know, this knowledge may make you justify being right by explaining away the dangers or the warning signs. This is one of those types of cognitive biases where you're like, well, you know, this is happening, and this is the reason why. And and because you explained it away, you don't feel the vulnerability or the you know, or or see the see see the see see the obstacle there. See the, you know, the the, I'm trying to think. Sorry. You know, how how do we sometimes talk to yourself and

just, like, you you you justify all

these things about why you're gonna do this or why you're not gonna work out or whatever. It's like that. Right? We we we justify all these different things. And so with

that, I feel like if you, recognize one

of these things, and then you start to justify it away, I would try and get a third party to look at this, you know, objectively and see if they can help. Like, maybe maybe you're right. That's okay. That's cool.

I would I would like to beg to differ

that you're probably wrong, and it's okay. Dude, finding out that we're wrong is great. You want that information. This is not something we should shy away for. And then that goes into what I think about is is our egos. I think especially here in America, maybe even in Western countries, we don't like to be wrong. We don't like to change our minds. You know, you you you know, there's a a sentiment of all, you flip flop.

Well, good. This is what we want. We want new information, and from that new information, we would like the opportunity to change our mind. If new information presents itself, that is plausible that we are wrong. That is great. Don't shy away from that. K?

Take this time to subvert

your ego, whatever it is you need to do be doing. And then, you know, willing to learn why you believe what you believe. A lot of these things and it's funny. Well, as we when we go through this later on, you'll you'll hear some similarities. And this is what really stood out to me is some of

these things are like standard practice now. So it's

like, did this stuff creep into our society willingly, unwillingly, or maybe they're part of human nature in

a way. So, you know, we always have to examine why we believe what we believe. A lot

of times, we believe what we believe because this is what we were taught and not necessarily malicious or or anything like that. Most times our parents or or whoever's teachers or whatever, they're they were just doing what they were taught or they thought was the best thing based on their information or something like that or whatever. And from time to time, I think you've gotta update your beliefs. You've gotta say, why do I like this thing? Why do I think this? Why do I put my shoe on, you know, left versus right first? It's probably because when you were little, your parents said something like, no. The other one. And so from then on, you put your shoe left foot on all the time. Maybe you know, there's a lot of things that go on in life that we just do habitually because it's just how the way things were, and that's fine. But I think time to time, maybe quarterly, semiannually, or something like that, we should look over our processes, our SOPs, different things, maybe the things you buy in a store and say, why do I believe what I believe? Do I still believe it? Does this still hold true? Shouldn't take a long time.

Maybe the first time or 2 you do go through it and whatever, and update our beliefs, update our processes, update our SOPs, update these things. And so I think what I liked about this made me start thinking about these things, and I want to share with you guys.

The first half, like I said, it talks about ways I think we can not be vulnerable. So let's let's go

through this. I'll I'll, start with the book here. Let me, kinda set the scene a little bit so we understand what's going on here. The simple sell simple sabotage field manual is a World War 2 era document created by the United States Office of Strategic Services, OSS, to provide guidance to resistance groups on how to disrupt enemy operations through corporate means. The manual covers a wide range of sabotage techniques, including spreading false rumors, undermining morale, and causing delays in confusion. It also provides instructions on a how to carry out sabotage. I'm not gonna talk too much about that, because I wanna keep this in a different lens. If you do wanna hear a little bit more about that, Jocko in his podcast, they definitely kinda go over

those a little bit more.

Carousel sabotage operations without getting caught and emphasize the importance of discretion and subtlety. The manual is a valuable historic document that provides insight into the taxes and strategies used by resistance groups during World War 2. As we go through this, I'd like I'd like to argue these still go on to this day. Like I said, what it feels like is happening is these become a little bit normalized, and it definitely made their way to our country. Is it our own doing, or is it is it, you know, we did this to other countries, and then they do it here because they maybe they didn't know or something like that, whatever. Not gonna get into that aspect, not going conspiracy theory on it, not trying to speculate on anything like whatever. That's not how I wanna focus on this. I wanna keep this into how we can improve ourselves, our businesses, the companies we work for, our home life, our family life, and so on and so forth.

This book was published in January, 17th, 1944 as a reference point here. So I believe that was in in the midst of World War 2. The the simple tax shield manual strategic, manual for strategic services provisional is published for the information and guidance to all concerned and would be used as the basic doctrine for strategic services training for this subject matter. And it goes on to explain what that's about. The modern introduction, whoever published this, kinda give a little bit of updated information on on the thing here. I said this is an interesting line. This manual basically is providing instructions on how to corrupt enemy operations through a variety of means. Like I said, I think these have spilled over into our society.

The original introduction states here, the purpose of this paper is to characterize simple sabotage, outline its possible effects, and to prevent and to present suggestions for inciting and and exciting it. And he goes on to say, a second type of simple sabotage requires no destructive tools whatsoever and produces physical damage, if any, by highly by highly indirect means. It is based on universal opportunities to make faulty decisions, to adopt non corporate cooperative attitude, and to induce others to follow suit. I think this sounds very familiar. In 2024, while I'm recording this, in stuff that's definitely going

on in America and what it seems like is also

going on in some other Western European cult, countries, right, where this, you know, opportunity to make faulty decisions, to adopt a noncooperative attitude, and to induce others to follow suit. Bit of a group think kind of thing right here, which is, a bit of a danger. Making a faulty decision may be simply a matter of placing tools in one spot instead of another. Now I remember hearing rumors, in 2020 and the different riots that happened in America where suddenly pallets of bricks showed up. Is this something that's in those lines?

It it could be.

This type of, it goes on to say here later on. This type of activity is sometimes referred to as a human element. It's frequently for accidents, delays, and general obstructions even under normal conditions. The potential saboteur should discover what types of of facility decisions and the operations are normally found in this kind of work, and then should then devices sabotage so as to enlarge that the enlarge the margin of error. So that's something else I I noticed recently as well is, people blocking roads and highways and some of them different, protesting of different things. Well, here we go. Right? This this is directly from the book. You know, operations that, you know, find normal by causing accidents, delays, and general instructions.

Interesting. Right? Here and then here and we go to this the section 3 is the first, section kind of talking about some things. I'll read a little bit from this, which I thought was interesting. Section 3 is possible effects. It goes on to say here, acts of simple sabotage multiplied by thousands of citizen saboteurs can be an effective weapon against the enemy. Slashing tires, draining fuel tanks, starting fires, starting arguments, acting stupidly, short circling electoral systems, arbitraging machine parts like waste materials, manpower, and time. This sounds familiar

in the 2020 era. This sounds very familiar. Right? And then

it goes on to say here, widespread practice of simple sabotage will harness and demoralize enemy administrators and police. Further, success may embody embolden, excuse me, the citizen saboteur, eventually to find colleagues who can assist him in sabotage of greater dimensions. So I'm going along with the crowd. Right? So I started thinking maybe we're on the right side of history here. I'm not here

to debate that. Maybe, maybe not. It's interesting.

Right? Widespread practice of simple top sabotage will harass and demoralize enemy administrators and police. I'd say that sounds familiar. Section 4 here, motivating the saboteur. Simple sabotage is often an act which this citizen performs according to his own initiative and inclination. Goes on to say here, purposeful stupidity is contrary to human nature. He frequently needs pressure, stimulation, or assurances, and information that suggests regarding feasible methods

of simple sabotage. Goes on like

I was saying, this is an element of groupthink. When everybody's doing these things, everybody's,

maybe you think it's an a noble or

a right cause or or a protest. People start beating people up. People start breaking things, vandalizing things. Well, in the group, this seems

like it's okay. Something I think we need to be aware of, and

it's definitely something that that's happening, I think, feels like a lot more nowadays. And that just may be the presentation that's been given to us so that we do feel this way. Of course, the world is a whole lot better place in Western countries in America. These are definitely some of the best places to be living, in modern in modern times with our modern humanism and and things like that. We don't necessarily have, widespread prioritizes, famines. We have clean drinking water and so on and so on. But, you know, it's easy to still fall into this this mode here. So then here it goes into talking more about this Section 1 of this section, personal motives.

I'm not reading all this in this book. I'm skipping through some sections. I just highlighted some passages I thought were interesting I'd like to share. So if you'd like to read this whole book, it's 50 pages, maybe 2 hours to read it. You know? It's a quick book. I'll link that in the show notes for you guys if you're interested in reading the whole book and, really get kinda digging into each of these areas. The ordinary citizen very probably has no immediate personal motive for committing simple sabotage. Interesting.

Instead, he must be made to anticipate indirect personal gain, such as might come with enemy evacuation or destruction of the ruling government. Gain should be stated as specifically as possible for the area addressed. Simple sabotage will hasten the day when commander x and his deputies y and z will be thrown out, when particular the obnoxious decrees and restrictions will be abolished when and so on and so on.

That sounds interesting. That sounds familiar. Right? When you

think you're you're doing this

for a noble cause, are you being set up?

Is this some type of misdirect? Is this some type of thing? This is why I'm saying, I think we should examine things, especially when it maybe goes a little bit of our nature, something we never thought about. It's like, why is this happening? We're we're gonna go do what? We're gonna go throw soup on paintings? Why why would we do that? Well, it's a noble cause. Once we do this, they will listen to us, and we'll stop drilling for oil. That sounds yeah. I could say that. And then when we stop oil, the earth will be great. Everything will be beautiful. You know, not not here to dispute any of these claims.

I'm just throwing out an example of how you could see this and be like, you know what? I see what you're saying. Like, I yeah. Better road would be great. Yeah. It would be great to be free. It'd be great to stop all these things that they talk about, whatever they get you into. Now you're bought in. Now you're part of this group.

Right? Will these things happen? Will this is this really what the change is gonna be? I beg to differ. Probably not. And I wonder who maybe is behind these things. I don't know. It could be a grassroots operation,

or it could be

we are being sabotaged for a greater thing. Not here to debate that. Just throwing out possibilities of things. Here in this section, really talks about the group think here. And part b, since the effect of his own acts is limited, the saboteur may become discouraged unless he feels that he is a member of a large, though unseen group of saboteurs operating against the enemy or the government of his own country and elsewhere.

That's the danger of groupthink. Right? Is you feel like you're doing this.

You're a part of the left, the right, the you know, this religion or that religion, this color or that color, this side of the street, this neighborhood. You know? There becomes a bit of group think there. And the danger of that is you can fall into this mode of, well, this is what our group does. This is what our religion believes. This is what our political party does.

And then when there's a little thing there, you're like, well, I don't really agree with that, but, hey, this is what we do, and

this is when you go on things. That's a problem with groupthink. A lot of these political terms, thank God I don't understand them because what tends to happen is you fall into a group. Right? You fall into, this segment. So when people say left, right, Democrat, Republican, I don't understand those terms, and I don't want to understand them because I do not wanna be subject to grouping. I don't wanna be like, well, you know, I identify with that group. So when my group talks about these things, it's easy to fall into this mode of, well, this is what our group does. It's very very dangerous, and it's it's, it's definitely an easy way to to manipulate people.

And like we're talking here,

sabotage. Section c here. More important than a or b would be to create a situation in which the citizen saboteur requires a sense of responsibility and becomes and begins, excuse me, to educate others in simple sabotage. Now we start recruiting people to recruit people. Right? This sounds sounds familiar. Right? I think we've heard of different things where, government agencies do this. Right? They start piping the ears. Like, can we get these guys to start doing these things? Can we put little pieces in your ear of different things? I think it's the things we've heard about.

Not trying to go down that road necessarily. But what you know, at work gossip. Right?

Good work gossip create a situation in which the citizen's repertoire, let's call it coworkers,

acquires a sense of responsibility and begins to educate others in simple sabotage. Could coworkers, through gossip, create a hostile work environment, could create a situation where maybe just say or not just say, I'm not gonna argue that, but you create you start you start a rumor, you start gossiping about things, maybe a little thing. And the thing about gossip is if you've ever engaged in, which I'm sure all of us have, is the way our our human minds are are wired for negativity because of a survival thing, we it's easy to pile on. It's easy to start going, like, yeah. You know what? These fuckers didn't give me overtime. You know what? How come Billy's getting all this you know what? Actually, yes. We should use Unites. Not saying good or bad about that.

I'm just saying, how can this gossip really become a way to self empower people? Maybe somebody one person has agreements, and they wanna go on a little rampage of self sabotage to make things more the way they want it to be. And then suddenly you fall into that, something to be careful about, something to think about, like I said here earlier. Right? On to be able to detach, recognize, like, woah.

Is this something I actually believe? If it is, that's great. Go do it. Is this something I'm being talked into?

You know, there's a a saying, I think, in the investment world or something like that or maybe in the investment world or something like that or whatever. The flashier the pamphlet, the more shitty the investment is. Because if you if the investment was great, the property was good, you don't need a flashy flashy sales presentation. You don't need a flashy pamphlet because the numbers, the opportunity speaks for itself. Right?

Something I think we should watch out for. Section 2,

encouraging destructiveness. It should be pointed out to the saboteur where the circumstances are suitable that he is acting in self defense against

the enemy or retaliating against

the enemy for other acts of destruction. Are are you being let's let's just shoot the word gaslit into thinking what you're doing, the destruction and mayhem you're causing, is okay, is justifiable.

That's something we need to take a look at

and see what happens.

Like I said, these things become very easy amongst the group. Okay? It's easy to

jump in. You think maybe we think we're not gonna get caught or there's so many people or whatever it is, and you humans tend to do things we wouldn't do by ourselves or in a smaller pack or with closer friends or something like that than we do within a mob or within a protest or something like that. K? I was gonna head to section c here. I just like to point out, this man needs to be stimulated to reorient his thinking in the direction of destruction.

That sounds you know, in in

the morning, do we start to reflect? You know, sometimes you've gone out and maybe we had a few drinks from the guy and you wake in the morning, you're like, oh, I did last night. Right? So we know this. We've gotta reinvigorate you in the morning. We've gotta reinvigorate you at the next rally, whatever it is.

I said, be careful with that. Section d here, they're

talking about freedom stations, which, you know, the like, this is from 1944, probably, you know, written or talk thought about a few years before, maybe evolved from something else. I do not know the origins. But just just just think about this in modern terms. Social media, different YouTubes and Rumble and whatever, text groups and and chats and all these things. Right? So where broadcasts or leaflets may be directed towards specific geographic or operational areas or may be in general scope. So something these are channels that are used to help

maybe indoctrinate you. It could be

a harsh word or something like that or whatever. It may be a little too strong. But, generally, I think that's the direction of that. Let me go to section 3 here of this safety measures. A, the amount of activity carried on by the saboteur will be governed not only by the

number of opportunities he sees, but also by the amount of danger he feels. Interesting. Right? It's like, where's the limit? Seems to be up to individual or whatever. Right? It's interesting how why how they talk about that. Right?

The amount of activity carried on by the saboteur will be governed not only by the number of opportunities. So it's not like there's 3 targets or something like that or whatever. Right?

How long can we get away with this?

something to be to be aware of, I think. Down to the next section here. Using materials which appear to be innocent,

a knife or nail file can be carried normally on your person, either as

a multipurpose instrument for creating damages. They talk about different things, not just pebbles, hair, interesting, salt, nails, you know, and and dozens of other things. Interesting. Right? There so there's different talks, right, about different navy weapons or whatever whatever. What we're talking about here is, like, be resourceful. Something to be careful. So maybe you go to these things and you don't you don't see anything. Right? You don't see, weapons.

You don't see maybe knives or sword are these being concealed? Is there a pile of bricks that conveniently show up on the street? I don't know. Is there a pallet of rocks or something that conveniently placed? You know, in gotta wonder. Right? Do you start, damaging property, damaging vehicles, and then, taking tire irons out of out of the back of car? And now you have a weapon that necessarily you didn't bring there, but you've been taught about, hey. Go do these things. Grab maybe metal trash cans. You know, various things that that can easily become destructive, that are just part of an everyday everyday thing. Right? And go on to section 2 here. This is sorry.

I think no. This is still in in that same thing about safety and measures. Try to commit acts for which large numbers of people could be responsible. Oh, see how that hiding in the shadows, maybe, you know, the largeness of numbers? I'd say nowadays, this is a lot harder, especially because I don't know, probably 90 plus percent of us, carry a cell phone, GPS is on, you don't have a VPN or something to mask it. Even if your phone is off, there are ways of those things. So tracking, cell phone towers, and I'm sure we've heard of different things where people were, pinpointed where their location was because of their cell phone pinging. Maybe you were there. You weren't there for nefarious reasons, but you were in proximity.

You know? So that could give maybe plausible and I then I ability to other people that were the saboteurs or were the, you know, instigators and so on and so forth. Something to think about. Right? Not trying to one thing I I worried about doing this episode is is I think there could be an element of telling you how to get away with these things and telling you how to do them. And I said, I I want this to be more of a way to think about these things and protect yourself against them, and, you know, kinda harden harden yourself from being susceptible to these things. As tough as humans, these are things we do. Section 5 here, tools, targets, and timing. And then we're going to hear, under general conditions, it says here, prior to a military offense during periods which are, in a military sense, sorry, such emphasizes can be given to simple sabotage might well center on industrial production or to lessen the flow of materials and equipment to the enemy. So this is talking about ways of sabotaging, facilities and, manufacturers of that or whatever, where you can find these improvised weapons.

Right? You can find different, maybe loose materials and and and different stuff, and it goes on here. It talk tells you about what to do, you know, prior to an a a military offensive period, during a military offensive period, different ways to attack things, roads, rail railroads, automobiles, trucks. So if you have, a factory or warehouse or, you know, maybe it's yours, maybe it's your business, maybe, you know, some type of this is not you know, could be an innocuous kind of place. If something were to break out in your in your area, how easy would it for be somebody to steal your trucks, cut your power, block off roads and railways? Do you know ways around your neighborhood? If there were to be this this area was blocked off, this road was blocked off, this bridge was blocked off, are there ways around? You know? And maybe something I like to do is I like to just test ways different ways of going places without my GPS. I'd like to kinda learn, how do I go around, how long does it take, where does this street go. So I I do this different times when I'm I'm going home or I'm on a new place. I try to orient myself and find my way. If I keep heading west, do I find the freeway? Do I find a familiar road that I know head south or something like that? I think these are different things you we should do to help fortify ourself.

If in an event there's just a natural disasters or tragedy, there's a fallen tree, can you get around? You know? Is your is your facility how secure is your facility? How susceptible to things is your facility here? And then it goes on to, section 6 here, specific suggestions for simple sabotage. Buildings. It talks about all different types of buildings, and then it talks about different means. Hey. Fires can be started wherever there is an accumulation of flammable materials. Is that something that, your your facility is susceptible to? In fact, is your home susceptible to this? Like I talked about earlier, my neighbor's house had burned down. From my understanding, he I've seen his I've seen his garage before, and even even now that they they've moved back in, there's a lot of stuff in there. And from my understanding, there was ammunition and stuff in there.

There were there were flammable liquids. He did a lot of woodworking stuff. From from what I understand from the neighbors was he was doing some type of woodworking, something sparked and ignited his garage, which because of all the flammable things that were in there and the the mess and the chaos that was in there, his house very, very quickly went out went into a massively raging fire. It was unfortunate, but, boy, was the spectacle to watch because of the different amounts of accelerants that were in his garage. And then at some point, his, the fire got so intense that the gas natural gas water heater that

was in his garage wind up carrying the blaze for

a very long time. It was a very, very hot fire. They went on to, you know, cut the gas and stuff before they could really get that fire extinguished. So that's something, you know not only can you be sabotaged, but these accidents can happen. Are you prepared? What is your fire suppression like? What what is your training like? If, you know, if you if you're a a manager or an owner or something like that, do you guys train? What are your SOPs? What are your, you know, standard operating procedures? How do you handle these things? Are your workers not necessarily, you know, in a maleficent kind of way or in a neglectful way, but sometimes we get in habits of doing things, and we just kinda like you know, we just throw a rag at nothing's ever happened. There's a really cool YouTube video. I'll try to link to it if I can if I can find it again, where they test this what a lot of people felt like was theories where you take oily rags and you put them in a in a trash can, and everybody's like you know, because it doesn't happen very often, people are like, you know, it's not a big deal. You can throw oily rags in there.

And at some point, those oil rights just spontaneously combust.

So is that something that maybe needs to be

tightened up at your at your place of business or at your home? Something you would work in your garage or something. You might not work in your garage, and and we get a little nasty as soon as nothing's ever happened. Right? So that's something I think we can be aware of. Like I said, these are the things I thought about when Jocko was going through his book on the book. And these are the things that our vulnerabilities in normal life are normal business. On to section b here, water and miscellaneous.

You can ruin a warehouse stock by letting

the automatic sprinkler system work. Is there a provision you have for that? How's your insurance? Things that these are accidents that can happen. These are things that could could naturally happen, you know, maybe operating a forklift or something like that or whatever, and the forklift driver and the object on the pallet or whatever gets a little too high and knocks the sprinkler head off. Now you got a serious problem. What are the contingencies you have in place with that kind of stuff? Right? And he was gonna talk about all all kinds of different things, you know, different basements, how clean is your factory, the toilets and stuff like that. Toilet paper, hair, you know, putting obstacles down these different things to, you know, back of the plumbing and all kind of different things like that or whatever. And then, you know, in industrial production manufacturing, you know, what are your tools? Are are you letting your workers let your tools get dull? Are you are you leaving, you know, blades and instruments and stuff maybe a little bit too warm? Maybe there's a little wonky. Like, yeah, that's kinda good enough.

You know? Maybe you've been a little a little cheap, where maybe safety is

a little bit maybe feels more cost prohibitive, you know, or, you know, maybe you feel like you're

saving a little bit of money. But, I mean, in the long run, when an accident does happen, maybe it outweighs the shorter term savings for the longer term, you know, savings. Different something we we need to think. And it's also here, oil and lubrication systems are not only vulnerable to easy sabotage, but are critical in every machine with moving parts. Are we properly maintaining things? Are we properly maintaining our vehicles? Are we properly maintaining our our tools at home? Are we properly maintaining our things at work? And it's easy. I I I worked in some of these different situations where you're you're busy. The things are going. You've you you got a lot of orders.

Maybe you're you're back on things. And scheduled maintenance is, like, you know, we'll we'll get that through later. And then boom, kinda catch up with failure. Well, that's definitely a lot more costly than it would have been to shut down for a little bit and carry on our scheduled maintenance. Cooling systems is a big one, right, especially in your vehicle. You know, may maybe you let your your vehicle overheat

a little bit one time. You know? You you're you're probably okay. You know?

But and I'm talking the 2nd and the 3rd time. And I know sometimes it's hard when you're trying to save cost too, but, like, dang. I I I don't have the money to figure this out. And that's something that we gotta work through because the cost of not taking care of these things is more high and catastrophic than taking care of them in the interim. Right? It goes on here. Section d talk about gasoline and oil fuel tanks and fueling engines are, are usually accessible and easy to open. This is

something you have maybe in your home or in your work where your

your diesel tank, maybe your propane, maybe your natural gas tank is easy to access, maybe not as secure as it it definitely could be, from thieving, from sabotage, something I think, you know, we should think about. You got a cast panic, gasoline in your garage or something like that

or whatever. How well does the maintenance on

on that container? How old is that container? How secure is that container? Different things like that, I think and

to think about these are things can easily be overlooked and become catastrophic failures. And then it goes

to talk about, electric motors, which is I think is interesting. Nowadays, there's

a lot of more of

a push for these, electric cars, electric, appliances, electric tools, and things like that or whatever. They they talk about how they're not necessarily easy to sabotage, which I think is interesting because I think they are. Right? If if power goes down, different things or whatever, charging cords become frayed or or or things along those lines, I would you know, something we make sure to maintain these things and make sure they're, kept to working order, where maybe it feels like the electric item doesn't need as much maintenance as the typical gasoline or diesel powered alternative or something like that or whatever. Make sure we're keeping up on that. Make sure we have, maybe your batteries are charged at all times. Maybe you have contingencies. Maybe you have a backup generator or something like that or whatever to charge these items that we used to have gasoline or diesel alternatives too. Something to think

about there or whatever. And then here, different things to think about turbines, boilers. It goes on

a new section here. Production for metals, iron and steel. These things can be easily used to to create things, to, you know, wield different weapons easily easily transform, you know, a simple object into more of a deli object or something to smash cars, something to smash windows or something like that, whatever. Make sure if you have a yard or something like that, whatever, whether it's your work yard or your your home yards or something like that, whatever, these things aren't just laying outside where it's easy for somebody to walk by, grab a 2 by 2, a 2 by 4, or something like that from your yard, smash your window or something like that. Right? These are things, you know, hop hopping a fence. And then, boom, now you've got these things. They use your own steel to break into your things. Something we we need to make sure are are locked up and secured and something that's something to think about.

Production for mining and mineral extraction. They talk about, you know, sabotaging coal. They talk about sabotaging the machinery, messing with the blacksmiths. Like I said, it goes back to these things. Are these things secure? Are these things that somebody can easy come around and just fuck around with? And the next

thing you know, you're you're not able to work.

You're not able to produce. Your production is down. Right? Different agriculture, sabotaging the machinery. Crops and livestock probably will be destroyed only in areas where there are large food surpluses

or where the enemy regime is known to be requesting food. That's interesting. Right? Only sabotage food where there's a surplus. So it's the illusion of a famine, the illusion of food insecurity?

And then do we get in a situation where people go and panic buy?

Because it's an illusion of this prop

was destroyed, this factory, processing plant or something that goes down, there's, you know, maybe the illusion of a a a rampant disease that's caused, you know, the killing off of or the death of of a large group of animals. With that being said, though, is what what is your food and water storage like? What type of emergency things do you have? Do you have, a clean source of of water stored in a safe manner? Do you have a few days, maybe to a few weeks of food ins you know, non spoilable foods in stock and storage? I know these things can definitely become cost prohibitive for some people. I like to stock up on things when they go on sale.

I'd say, you know, some soon it goes on sale,

you know, I I'm I'm able to eat water and eat 2 cans. Maybe I'll buy 3 or 4. And I think that's an easy way and an affordable way to, you know, grab an extra thing or 2 here. And then eventually, you've got a good amount of things. You know? Take a look at these these stocks. Make sure we're constantly rotating them. Make sure you're going through these different things, whatever. And don't waste, you know, money.

Don't waste, these items because you you pile them up and then they're expired, you know, 3 years ago. And you're like, shit. Like, you know, maybe you can eat some of these things. That's something you maybe should look into. Like, what's the actual viability of this canned or or dried item? You know, maybe it's printed on there, like, 2 years, but you know that that's a very conservative estimate, and it can go out maybe 4 years. Or maybe you know of a way to crack it open and and and know if it's actually good or bad to eat. Something, you know, to be prepared for. Not just, you know, if there was an actual disaster to happen, not if, you know, not you know, if there was if there was to be a war or some type of martial law or some type of pandemic again or whatever,

you know, how prepared are you? Have you thought about these things?

Talks about ways of sabotaging the the railroads, and it talks about here about the passengers in particular, which I thought was interesting to make train travel as inconvenient as possible. Now we can establish this beyond just trains. I think they they might talk about later. But like we talked about earlier, do you have contingencies if your vehicle was gonna if your main mode of transportation was no longer available? Can you get around that? Have you just thought about it? You know, we've talked about a lot on this show where we don't default to our expectations. We default to our level of training. So I think even at the base level, if you've thought about this and you've gone through this scenario, I think there's at least a little bit of an element of you've thought about it. I think you've you're not in the moment when, like, oh, I never thought about this. I don't know what to do.

Not as good as actually going through a drill, actually going through a procedure, or actually practicing these things. I know I've talked about before of, taking, like, one day a month and just eating beans and rice and knowing it's not

a big deal. You can easily survive on that for

a a decent amount of time. Sleeping on the floor, you know, camping outside and stuff like that or whatever. You know, I I think, Seneca, Epictetus maybe talks about, you know, taking this time to do these things and then letting yourself know, like, what was I afraid of? What was I scared of? Being being a little hungry, eating harsh food, sleeping on the floor, camping, no electricity. And then you realize it's not a big deal. So that when this thing does actually happen, you've already practiced. Right? You've already done these things. It goes on to talk about, you know, switching signs for things, something to be aware of when you're driving along or traveling somewhere and, like, wait a minute. This isn't how it used to be.

That sign isn't going there. The stop sign is going on or whatever. Right? And then talks about, like I said earlier, or lubrication, make sure your cooling systems goes on and talk about these different things again. Make sure your brakes and stuff are are are well to go. Like I said, I know sometimes cost can be a problem where some of these things, maintenance goes on a little too long much longer than it really should have. Maybe, we can pick up a little bit of a skill. YouTube is an amazing resource to learn some of these things and take your time to go through changing your brake pads. Something you know, if cost is a problem where you're like, you know what? I think I should just get this done, you know.

And I'm gonna go on YouTube, and I'm gonna spend I'll take my time. You know? Sometimes, you know, tools could get a little expensive to do some of these things. Maybe you have a neighbor, a friend, or something like that that you can borrow a couple of wrenches and stuff from that you need, for the time being as you as you embark on this new thing. Something to think about. You know, making sure, like I said, your modes of transportation are are in good working order, thinking about all these different things, your how's your tires? What's gonna be your tires? Those those can be very expensive. Maybe you change 2 at a time. I don't, you know, I don't know what's right for you or your budget, but something to think about. You know? Maybe you could find alternative ways of I believe they have, like, secondhand tires now that are, like, in good shape.

But for whatever reason, maybe they're off of a car. I'm not sure how they obtain these. Where they're in good shape, then you can get a really good discount on it. So I know a friend that had had bought, one of those before, and it looked like it was to me, it looked like a pretty good tire. I don't know how how that was acquired. You know? Water. Water is a a a big thing that really trips a lot of people up. I don't know if you remember a few years back in, Texas here in America, there was ice storm, something along those lines, and the power grid went down or was about to go down.

And people realized that I don't have any water. You know? And that's something I thought about. So I was, well, you know, I don't have any water really good amount of water either. And I went out, and I I I stockpiled what I thought was a a decent amount of water for a few days' worth of usage, for drinking, cooking, and things along those lines. Different communications. Like, have you thought about if your cell phone doesn't work on your cell phone, how does it matter? What are other alternative means of communication? Is there maybe a central meeting point your family has discussed in advance? Nowadays, there's reports of, like, fake AI people pretending to be family members. Have you guys discussed a thing if if you get a call from your son, daughter, grandma, grandpa, whatever? Like, is there some families are known, their password. You know? They ask interesting questions.

They they and, typically, from my understanding, these guys just hang up and

they're like, well, these guys are prepared. Something to think about. And here, this is

an interesting one. It's telling these saboteurs to call the military police officers and make anonymous false reports of fires, areas, and bombs.

That's a tough one. Right?

Because then it's those those things are kinda hard to ignore. So you've got to the precautions. It's like, well, we don't know if these guys are fucking around or not, so we can't take the chance that they are. Something to be aware of. You know, it talks about telegraph, which I thought was funny as this shows how old this is. Translation lines, you know, mail being being careful of what, are in motion pictures is what they call it back then. So movies, TV shows, and athletics, you know, different, you know, whatever it is where you get videos from. You know? Be careful about that.

Maybe not to

be cynical, but having a little, you know, speculation and maybe, you know, our human tendency is to default to truth. We talked about that in the episode we did on the book of Malcolm Gladwell. I believe it was 85 where our human default is the default to truth because that's how we survived. Right? When Billy told you, hey. There's water southeast. You're like, oh, thanks, bro. Appreciate it. You're not like, really, though? Is there man, no.

Because in a small village, in a small community, in a small tribe, you were that guy. You were gone. So we've evolved to default the truth. So maybe we've also talked about that, trust but verify is something you do until you can trust the source. Be careful what you hear on the on the radio, especially during times of emergency. Most people turn to our radio. They have the ability to broadcast even though there's power outages. What's your electrical power situation like? Have you thought about that? What type of conditions do you have here? And that

end ends section 1. I hope there

were some ideas and maybe some vulnerabilities, you saw in these things or maybe things you can shore up, so and so, you know, on and

on like that. Now we go into what I call section 2. This is where

through through the sabotage lens that they use, I think there's an opportunity to spot inefficiencies in processes, labor, staff, procedures, and so on. There's an opportunity to become antifragile, if you're not familiar with that term. There's a book by that name from Nassim Taleb. He also wrote, Black Swan and things like that. I think it's a great book. What kind of the the the point of being antifragile is when something's antifragile, it's not rigid because rigid things don't evolve. They don't become better with stress. They just break Versa and, you know, we don't I think

we all understand we're fragile. Something is easily broken. But antifragile is the concept of these things become stronger, you know, in in

in the in the realm of stress. Right? So, like like, you know, us humans, there's a a concept called, you know, armisis where these little tiny, stressors, ice bath, saunas, some people argue, vegetables and stuff like that with these things. They're little small, tiny toxic doses. Why not making us stronger? That's the concept of ant you know, antifragile, kind of along the lines of what doesn't kill you makes you stronger in a way. That's a great book. I tend tend to read it every reread it every few years just to remind myself of some of these principles and concepts. Let's go into this. It starts up at section 11, which is where I kinda make the mark for, section 2.

So general interferences, organizations, and production. Organization conferences insist on doing everything through channels. Never permit shortcuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions. That's interesting. Right? Not that shortcuts are necessarily good because they can lead to laziness and oversight. But have we evaluated the process? Is this an old outdated process that maybe was serving us when initially, you know, thought of when your business was new, when you didn't have made the tools tools and software, maybe you couldn't, you were bootstrapping things and, you know, things were a little a little tight. And you're like, well, we're gonna just use Excel. But now you've advanced to something else, but you're still doing things the old way.

You know? How how can we streamline things a little bit, you know, so that we're not slowing things. We're not bottling, knocking things. I and a good example is I went into this, pretty popular store. I I I think a clothing store. I think they typically cater more to women, but they do also sell men's clothes. They're pretty popular popular brand. And so, decently inexpensive clothes. And I thought it was interesting.

The line was so long, but I didn't feel like the store was crowded. And it just it just took so long to check out. We finally get to check out, and the lady scans the the tag on the on the pants, and she starts typing in the computer. And I was like, it it was not connected. There's an error. And then what I was saying, what what what are you doing? So I gotta put in the color and the size and the style. I was like I mean, I don't know a whole lot about this, but I was like, I thought that's what scanning

it had the capability of doing. She's like, well, this is how we've always done it.

And I was like, oh, I think what happened is that's how they used to do it a long time ago when the store first opened. When the store the brand first the company's was first developed, and then they needed to do those things for inventory tracking and so on and so forth. And that procedure never was reevaluated, and it's how they do it till this day. I think there's a better way to do it. I'm sure there is a better way to do it, but they never went back to evaluate this, which leads to these long delays. Right? This store could be very much more efficient, very much more I I'm sure it could be more, you know, cost savings and stuff like that versus what this to mean was looks very cost prohibitive. Right? You're paying these employees a lot more labor and a lot more time. You're slowing down the things.

Are you how many customers are you losing? The standing line, but, you know, for this $12 close, I'm out of here. I've been here for 25 minutes already. You know? And the line doesn't move. Are you are you losing business that way? Also in your house too. You know? Like I I gotta tell my kids, like, you know, they're like, oh, I think we can do this this way better. I'm like, okay. Let's learn how to do it, for lack of a better term,

my way first. And then once you know how

to do it this way, you are more than welcome to find inefficiencies in how I learn how to do it or how I've discovered how to do it. So I think that's maybe the the step we should do. Once you're proficient at doing it the old way or the way it's done now, are there too many steps? Are there too many things? You know, Tim Ferris talks about, if I do this one thing, does does it make all these other things irrelevant or not need to be done? Is that something you could do? And that could be construed as a shortcut, which I would argue is a good thing, something we wanna we wanna do. Right? Number 3 here. When possible, we refer all matters to committees. That sounds familiar. Right? For further study and consideration well, that's what American government seems to like do a lot of. Attempt to make the committees as large as possible, never less than 5.

That sounds

like corporate America. That sounds like I worked for the military, and I was in the, reserve national guard. That sounds like standard operating procedures. I'm not joking. We had meetings to talk about the meetings we were gonna have.

Oh, boy. Is this happening our company? Is this happening in

you know, if you're a manager or a supervisor or something like that, I mean, is this something you could have influence over? Is this something you could gain influence over, your boss or something and and try to make these better? But, boy, this is just a killing like, I think a a phenomenon, during COVID 19 that has emerged is constantly being on these, like, Zoom meetings. Even though nothing's really happening, there you know, the whole everybody's just on this, like, open video call. People are on these constantly on Slack and stuff like that. Everybody's talking on chatter. Well, this is what Cal Newport likes to call, you know, that that busy hive mind, this, pseudo productivity. Right? Feels like a lot's going on. There's all these things happening, all these things happening. But nothing's actually happening because there's too much distraction.

There's too many things going on. There's too much inbound, and you don't have the opportunity to get real work done. Something I think we should evaluate. Bringing up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible. Is there somebody in your organization that's like this? Maybe it's not the they're there as a saboteur, but these acts are sabotage ish, if that's a word or whatever. I think we get the sentiment.

We need to eliminate these type of people. Let them go on

to other things. I think it may feel hard and it may feel strange, but I think in

the long run, it's better

for both parties, to just part ways. You you gotta go do something better. We've gotta have something different and better. Haggling over precise words of communication, minutes, or resolutions. Boy, do I feel like in 2024 and 2023 as this become a very big problem? Where does this leak in from? Is somebody fucking with us? Sometimes it does feel like that. Right? That's a big time sa a big waste. I think if this is happening in your organization, I would I would look into either nipping it in the butt or, like I said, getting rid of that person or those people.

They're just they're just causing, I I think, in

the long run, a toxic type of environment where it hard it's hard to be productive. It's hard to attract talent, and it's hard to be efficient and productive and and things along those lines. And then it says here, 6, refer back to matters discussed upon at the meeting and attempt to reopen the question of the advisability of that decision. Somebody's not getting their way, and they keep bringing this up and over and over and over. So, you know, it makes time, sucks, and waste of time.

7, advocate caution. Be reasonable and argue your fellow and urge

your excuse me, urge your fellow conferencers to be reasonable and to avoid haste, which might result in embarrassment or difficulties later on. Is that something you see where people are overly cautious and continuously delaying a decision or project, whatever it is? Maybe time to remove them or set up some type of procedure or SOP where we we shut this down. We move on. And then it talks about here, what they're referring to is influencing managers and supervisors. I would think about this if you are a manager and supervisor, something maybe to think about and be cautious

of. Demand written orders.

You know, may maybe that's justified. You know, I'm not here to tell you tell you that or not, but have we revisited it? Is it justifiable? Is there something maybe, simplified a little bit better? Maybe there's a checklist or something that you can do instead of having people constantly having to write out these different things. Misunderstood orders. Ask endless questions or engage in long correspondence about such orders, crumbling over them when you can. Are you doing this to your, excuse me, your employees? You know, are are there constant back and forth emails where now I feel like as the as employee, I've gotta constantly be checking my inbox, and I gotta constantly be on my Slack. Like, what are you gonna say now? Have we resolved this? And just and then now I'm not getting my work done because I'm too focused on my inbox. I'm too focused on what's happening. So I'm gonna have this long, drawn out conversation.

Boy, do I get sometimes to get thrown out on this podcast. That's something I'm definitely working on. Don't order new materials until your current stocks have been virtually exhausted so that the slightest delay in filling your orders will mean a shutdown. I know Toyota has, popularized the concept of, you know, like, last minute, you know, material ordering manufacturers, stuff like that, whatever. Are you cutting that too close? Is budget constraints a problem? You're like, we need our receivables so we can order. Maybe you need to get some type of line line of credit or something like that. Maybe you need to, do something to to make that process smoother so you're not experiencing these backlogs and delays. Something to think about if you haven't evaluated it in a while.

In in making work assignments, always sign up the unimportant jobs first. I'm sorry. Always sign out unimportant jobs first. See that the important jobs are assigned to inefficient workers of poor machines. I know there is a concept that people subscribe to that says, put your your best person on your toughest problem.

I think there's a different school

of thought, which I like is put your best worker on your most profitable thing because they're gonna be their work's gonna go a lot farther. It's gonna be more beneficial to the business. Some something you might wanna consider. Insist on perfect work and relatively unimportant products. Jocko speaks about this, using up

your leadership capital. Right? Are we overly concerned about dress codes, hair, or something like that that when a an important thing comes up

oh, here we go again. It's like some dumb to say. Right? And I'm not saying to understand their slack, but maybe there's room for a little bit less of the maybe micromanaging field or something like that to that. Something to consider. When training new workers, give incompetent or misleading instructions. And this is a this could be a huge huge capital intensive problem in organizations. Your training materials are out of date or your the trainer is inefficient, things like that along those lines. Make sure we're revisiting these things and keeping them up to date and getting a very competent person on this.

This can be,

like I said, very cost effect cost arch costs.

We did a podcast a while back, and when I say in 2021 with with somebody that's, business was talking about these hiring. He he had said that every time a worker quits, it costs the company on average about $100,000 in lost productivity and days along those lines. That's a that's a pretty hefty sum, I think, for any business. So making sure the training and the trainer and stuff like that is not causing these delays, these retraining situations. And sometimes that's that's something you gotta do, and that's okay. But you don't want these workers quitting something that because the job becomes complicated, hard, or micromanaging or something that whatever makes sense going on. So it's here to lower morale, and with it, production, be pleasant to to inefficient workers, give them undeserved promotions, discriminate against efficient workers, complain unjustly about their work. Something to be careful about.

Right? Multiple paper paperwork in in plausible ways Start duplicate files. Is that something that's maybe a a holdover from the days of carbon copies, the days of paper? You know, are is it would it be better if a lot of things are done electronically? You have a a backup, offset backup, some type of redundant system where you don't need, somebody I I the last place

I worked at, it the owner wanted not only

he he didn't trust the computer, so he wanted everything printed out and, like, they're listen. I we got this backed up. We got this in the cloud. We've got this here. Like, we don't need all these redundant things. The cost becomes prohibitive. Procedures become prohibitive. Something to think about.

Right? What is your, you know, your tech stack look like? You know

what they call it. Right? You're creating extra work

for no reason. Multiply the procedures and cleaning and clearances involved in issuing instructions, paychecks, and so on. See that 3 people have to approve everything where one would do. Is this something that's happened to them? Right? You know? I think a common thing that

I think about is you've got the accountant

or controller or whatever does the payroll, and then it's gotta go off to their boss, and then they gotta go off to a CFO. Can you develop trust in systems and things where one person would do instead of 2 or 3? Something to consider. I know I I've seen that, numerous times. This section here goes into office workers and talks about all these different things. Making mistakes and prolonging correspondence and and different things to that. Let's make sure we're tightening that up. I think it goes back to training is what I what I think about when I see that. Employees working slowly.

I know I've always have, you know, heard the things, you know, I, you know, I get paid by the hour. I mean, if it's not employees, we wanna keep around. That's their their attitude where I'm gonna slow roll this, and I'm gonna make sure I'm, you know, I'm I'm just doing I'm gonna do this. It'll take me all day. When I when I grew up, there was a a joke. You know? The the county workers, though, they go city and county. Right? When I was in the military, we had there was a joke of, you know, you want some milk with you need with that cook you know, you want some cookies with that milk. You know, you're milking the job.

You know? You so because that's something that's happening. Let's look into that. Let's let's see what we can do about that. Maybe we gotta we gotta get rid of people. Maybe we gotta retrain some people. I mean, we need procedures

like we talked about. Right? Contrive as many inter interruptions to your work as you can. This goes back to what

I was talking about earlier. Right? How many meetings are we having? Video calls over and over and over. How how much is these different things? These things significantly slow down productivity. There's several studies where it says task switching. So say you're let's say you're you're coding something or whatever, and then you've gotta have your email on because that's this is craziness that's going on to your work. So then it's like, oh, I ping. Fucking email comes in here.

Oh, so that stopped. Now I've got

a contact switch to this. This dumb shit. Okay? And it they said it takes at least 21 minutes to just get back to where you were. Now imagine that going on all day long. Let's eliminate that. There's a great book. I think I'll talk about it on a later episode. Cal Newport, Deep Work talks a bit about this, but a word without email really, I think, goes deep into that.

I think something you should you should pick up those principles and implement them into your work. These cognitive switching these cognitive switching tasks are huge time slots and huge, huge drains on productivity and profitability and things along those lines. Forget tools so that they will have

to go back and forth for them.

You know, something, you know, is your layout of your facility, your home garage, such that you have to continue to travel long distances for tools. Can we figure out a different flow of things? Can we figure out a different orientation of these things? Maybe you're worried about the downtime to reorganize a shop. I think you'll make that up in in your gain

of productivity. Something to consider.

You know? I'd say go down. A lot of times, just go down and talk to the front level workers. Say, hey. You know, how's things going? You know, what do you think could be better about this thing here? And really listen, and I can jab your mouth into it. Don't listen to them and and consider, like, you know, this is great. Every time I knew I gotta go with that specialty wrench, we have to have it locked up over there. Takes me 10 minutes to go over there. Cheryl's gotta go get it.

I gotta sign it out. I gotta grab it. Now we're at 20 minutes. I gotta come back. It's another 10 minute walk back to my station. I use it for 14 seconds, and then I have to bring it back. That's something we could get rid of. That's something we could change.

That huge productivity cost. Right? Even if you understand the language, pretend not to understand instructions in a foreign tongue. This this something that's happening

at work where, one of

one of your one of your workers pretends like they don't understand English, and you damn well know they do. Maybe it's time to part ways. I don't know. That could be very disruptive. Right? Pretending instructions are hard to understand and ask to have them repeated more than once. Playing dumb? Is this something that's happening? Maybe you're like, okay. Listen, man. We've gone through this.

We've trained you over and over again. I think you're just fucking milking the clock. Time to go.

Something to consider. Do you work poorly and blame it on bad tools, machinery, or equipment, then complain that

these things are preventing you from doing your job right.

Sometimes people are just whatever. Right? And these are illegitimate complaints.

make sure that that's true

or not true. Right? Like, do do just, you know, do our saw blades go you

know, we we think they last 6 weeks, but really they're lasting 4a half. And, you know, John keeps complaining. Like, dude, come come, you know, a month, month and a half. These things these things suck. It's and you're like, oh, they last 6 weeks. The manufacturer said they got 10,000 cycle light. You're full of shit. Maybe they really don't.

May maybe there's something going on that's causing them to to wear out prematurely, something they investigate. Maybe there's actual factfulness in that, and you can clean this up, increase productivity, increase employee satisfaction. Something to think about. Also, if somebody's complaining like that, maybe they're toxic. Kinda get rid of them. You know, don't hesitate to fire fire people. You know? You don't have to be an asshole about it. You just gotta be polite and respectful about it and get it done, I think sooner than later.

These things become toxic. They they create an environment where the good workers don't wanna be around. They feel like maybe, you know, these different things don't promote that. Don't allow it to continue to happen Get that in

the butt before it starts. Never pass on your skill and experience

to a new or less skillful worker. Do you have senior fellows in your in your company organization? Are you one of these? That's like, I am not teaching these guys to take my job. That that's a horrible mindset. We need to train a. We need to train the next generation. We need to train these next things, especially skill labor and stuff like that, these different trades. You you can't be in a scarcity mindset of these guys and take my job. Guess what? You've got 30 years of experience.

You throw your 30 years onto him, now this guy, that's his floor. Your experience is is is, you know, John's floor. Man, how great of a helper and apprentice is that gonna be? Does this give an opportunity if you want for you to move up now because you have a replacement. Maybe you have a hard time going on vacation because nobody can fulfill your productivity because you are reluctant to train up the next generation. Something to consider. Something to consider if you see this in in your workers too. Maybe it's time. This guy's gotta retire.

Talk with him. Say, hey. Listen, man. We, you know, we value your experience and your expertise. We'd like you on high productivity, high profitability tasks. So we need you to to train up the next generations so that they can take over, and you guys can grow together. You can grow on. You can retire.

Whatever it is that needs to go on. Have conversations with people. Make sure these things aren't going on. Nip them in the butt when possible here. And then the final section here in this book, to to really end it off here, is, general devices for lowering morale and creating confusion. Morale is huge in the workplace. I think we all recognize this. Whether you know, from from your standpoint of how you feel about going to work, how you feel it is at work, and how others act and behave at work.

Morale is a huge thing.

I think it's one of the I feel like it's one

of the easiest things to really bump up the work satisfaction, productivity, profitability, and those things, whatever. Here's a way to sabotage that. Give lengthy and incomprehensible explanations when questioned. That can get very frustrating. Right?

The counter to that, though, is

make sure you're not

just enabling people not

to think about things. Like, I I don't need to think about this problem. I'm just gonna email you. I don't have to think about it. Make sure you're you're encouraging and fostering that knowledge and the growth, but make sure you're keeping things short and concise. I have a thing, where I think about if I can't explain it to a 5th grader or a 10 year old or whatever, I understand it, and I know what it means, but it's more of an intuitive kinda thing or a learned thing. And because I can't explain it, I don't know it well enough. And I need I take the time to get better at explaining it, to get better about understanding it.

I'll look at the definition of it and be like, you know, maybe I'm using this wrong. Like, what is exactly does that mean? I understand how it feels and how to use it. I've heard it. I've read it. You know? So if you constantly are kinda like, well, you know, you take the thing, and I I mean, you go, like and you put it in the thing that and you you torque it down, and it's like, you know you know, I I know how to do it, but, you know, I mean, I should take I want to write out the steps. A lot of times writing will clarify your thinking. Right? Create a checklist. Go down and like, oh, I see what's going on.

I understand now. And then when you have, you know, hey, John. How did you do that? Oh, here. I made a checklist, dude. Go through this. If you

have any questions, let me know. Right? Boom. Acting stupid. That's funny. They they wrote that. Act stupid.

I I've I've I've seen it. I have been around it. These guys gotta go. They gotta go

with you know, talk to them. You know, let them know what's up. Maybe they're having

a hard time. Maybe they're family life. Maybe something I don't know. Talk to them. Give them the benefit of

the doubt. Coach them. Mentor them. If not, alright.

We can't have these things. Right? You gotta also think about everybody else. Your family needs to be taken care of. Everything ancillary from that, these your workers and everybody there's a lot of people that depend on you or depend on your business or depend on your service, your product. Think about those people. We gotta let you guys go. We gotta get them down here. Be as irritable and quarrelsome as possible without getting yourself into trouble.

You know, it's tough sometimes when we bring our problems and our perspective

to work, these things happen. You you know, be empathetic to somebody

like that. Maybe it's you know, get them on the side of it. Hey. You know, Billy, what's going on lately, man? Is everything alright? Like, you know, is your, you know, your family okay? Is your health okay? You know, what's going on? I noticed you, you know, you've been not the same. You've been, you know, in plan and you you've been short tampered with customers and employees. You know, be empathetic, you know, to these things. See what's going on. Try and get to the bottom of the problem.

And, instead of these things persist, gotta go. Right?

And then misunderstand all sorts of regulations. Something to be careful of.

Right? If you've got a worker, a secretary,

whatever, your accountant, your CPA, or whatever, that's constantly, no. No. No. Yeah. We we get that bow written off, and you're like, oh, okay. And then you're like and then she's like, well, actually, I've read that wrong, and, no, you're you're in a hole for

a 120,000. You're like, you

know what? Oh, you just you you did the same thing with the with the last sale. I I I bought that car. You're like, oh, yeah. No. That qualifies. And it

was underweight. Now I'm, you know, gotta be careful now. These things happen. Right? Sometimes people act like they know things, and they wanna feel like, they

they have answers to your questions. It's okay to say no. It's okay. I don't know. No. It's it's worse off when you pretend like you know the answer and you don't. So that's happening to you, from you.

Let's evaluate that. Let's make sure these things stop happening. Alright? Boom. An interesting thing throughout all these things we talked about here is make sure you're

not doing them to yourself. Obviously, this book is about a saboteur sabotaging. Don't do self sabotage. Don't do these things to yourself. K? That is something I didn't really pick up from this, but when I was researching this, preparing for this episode, it's a fantastic article by somebody else. Same lines. They heard this on the Jocko podcast. They had a completely different take on it.

And I was like, yo. That's wow. I love it. I'm a link that article and think and they go into self sabotage. Thought that was very interesting. I do not recall that from the Jocko episode. The way I thought about it was in the sense of more more lines of business. And, like I said, you know, section 1, section 2, like we talked about, fortifying your home and facilities and your equipment and tools and so on.

And then business sense, like we talked about in the last section, this kinda short section, but I think there's some very valuable things in there that I I see as common things when I when I consult with people from my working days, especially in the military. It feel like the larger the organization, a lot of these things creep in a lot of meetings for meetings. You know, 18 people gotta see this stuff. We gotta cc 47 people on email. Can we can we eliminate

those things? Like I said, self sabotage. Think about that that aspect of it as well.

There's a interesting quote I wanna hear, talk about it real quick. A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent is frequent repetition because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian instructions and marketers have always known this fact. You hear somebody saying the same thing, typically three times.

There's that that's a lie. They're trying to convince

you something that's happening. These are the types of sabotage we're we see nowadays as these things evolve. Like I said,

this is from 1944. These things have evolved. K? Let me give you an example here. I'm not sure if you guys are

aware of this. Tom Brady is, running for governor. Tom Brady felt like after, you know, his time in NFL, he's made a lot of relationships. He's he's really made a name for himself. He's gonna run for governor. And as governor, he feels

like he can really make a difference with, you know, his his kinda time in

the NFL, being a leader, being a multi Super Bowl champion, and all that stuff. He's gonna run for governor, and and and he thinks he's gonna do a great job of it. That is a completely false statement. And some of you are gonna go like, yeah. But is it, though? And you're

gonna Google it. So that's what you have to be covering.

You got, I think the easiest way to see this is is politicians, government type officials, I feel like, is easy thing to say. They can they'll keep repeating the same thing over and over again. So you believe it. It sounds truthful. Right? There's also that kinda adage of, you know, 2 truths and a lie. That's how you kinda disguise a lie, and then you keep repeating it over and over again. I think, I felt like a lot of this went down during COVID and and and those times of that or whatever. Be careful of this.

When you see these people saying the same thing over and over and over again, that is how you get these things in your brain, and you start to believe them. Like like we talked about on top of the show, question your beliefs. Right? Why do you believe what you believe?

Be careful of that.

And then another Daniel Kahneman quote here I wanna talk about here. We think each of us that we're much more rational than we are. And we think that we make our decisions because we have good reasons to make them, even when it's the other way around. We believe in the reasons because they're already because we've already made the decisions. We believe in the reasons because we've already made the decisions. That is something we have to be careful of. In his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, he coined these phrases, system 1 and system 2. System 1 is a quick reflexive thing that you just your brain is just like, we got this.

We got this. We got this. And it just goes to switch it out. System 2 is is the think more thinking part of your brain, more analytical, more reasoning, and stuff like that, whatever. That system is cognitively, holorically intensive. Your brain doesn't wanna do that. It wants to just go. It wants to save energy, wants to save calories.

It knows today's limit. We know every day we burn 3,000. We're gonna just do these things. We don't want to exhaust anything more than that. So your system too takes time to get online. You've gotta give it the opportunity to do that. From the research I've read, the smarter you are, the higher your IQ is, the higher edu level of education is, the more susceptible you are to this. The more you can talk yourself into these things, the more you can you can talk around this, the more you can justify why it is, like we talked about top of

the episode. This knowledge may

make you justify being right by explaining away the dangers warning signs. Right? So what he's talking about, we believe the reasons because we've already made a decision. It's a funny thing that they say, don't confuse me with the facts because we've already made up our mind. Right? We have to be cautious of that. Coming from Danny Kahneman earlier, like we talked about, even though you know for you know these things, they're still easy to fall for. They're cognitive biases for a reason.

These are things we're very susceptible to. Taking opportunity to step back, detach,

get a 3rd party if you need. I think this helps. I'll link to the Saboteur article, about self sabotage. Feels great. I'll link to the podcast episode that this came from for me. If you're interested in the book, I'll link to the book. It's a short little book. There's I think it's a Kindle version, PDF, and things.

I love you know, short 5th 50 page book. Super easy to read if you're interested in in getting through all the information. And then I'll link to Thinking Fast and Slow and is a is a other latest book. And this week's challenge, like you to detach from your life and work. Where is sabotage creeping in? E maybe even self sabotage, which arguably could be the most dangerous of all. By detaching, we can evaluate more objectively where sabotage can occur or

it's is occurring and correct it. Let's avoid things hitting a critical mask, making it harder to return.

If you've hit a critical mask, it's alright. Let's immediately start implementing changes to roll back the sabotage and get on a better path. Let's work on that. It's gonna be hard. Let me tell you. And that's the thing. We got to embrace hard things. Get comfortable being uncomfortable.

I talked about this a bunch on the show. Let's roll. And closing here, don't let sabotage creep into your life organization, and don't be the victim of self sabotage. If you found any value from this episode, share it with 2 other people. You can connect with us if you're interested on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube. So you can jump on your favorite podcast app. Make sure you subscribe if you like. If not, for past episodes and links to everything we talk about, you can head over to socialchameleon.show.

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