Jocko Podcast 6: Napoleon Bonaparte, 'The Military Maxims of Napoleon'

• Learn how people react
• Plans should be adaptable according to circumstance
• Before you make a decision, carefully deliberate
• When you retreat, all the losses are on you
• Have humility: ask 'Am I ready?', 'Can I handle this? If not, how can I prepare?'
• Check yourself
• Where applicable, have contingencies
• Avoid attacking a fixed position
• Avoid unprepared debates
• Pick your battles
• Balance your strengths
• Mutual support is important
• Discipline can improve you regardless of what it is being applied to
• Endurance is more important than courage; it comes second
• Be one mind, one commander and one man
• An extraordinary situation requires extraordinary resolution
• Have an ethos of no surrender
• If you execute a plan you know is flawed... you are responsible
• If you fight with the certainty of defeat you alone are culpable
• See things in their true proportion and as they really are
• Simplify the complicated
• Profit from your mistakes; transform them
• Standing by your principles will lead to success
• Let your principles reflect who you are and who you want to be
• Have humility
• The most important piece of information you can possess is where you are
• Have both an open mind and concrete principles
• Let people show you who they are
• Temper and control your aggression
• Maintain detachment to see where your actions may lead
• Your mind is in your control
• Decide you are going to be in control
• Weakness, laziness, sadness, frustration, negativity… they do not get a vote
• Do not let your mind control you
• Get after it