Imagine, for a moment, that you are a Navy SEAL operating on a mission on the other side of the world.
The team you’re leading is tasked with scouting the upper levels of an abandoned building to destroy the building. That way it would not serve as a tactical point for enemies on future missions. As you go on top of the rooftop to set up IED charges, you realize something is off. Suddenly one of your team members is shot and badly injured. You find that enemies are scouted on surrounding buildings with secure vantage points. You’re on an exposed rooftop with IED charges ready to blow. And on top of that you have an injured soldier in immediate need of attention and help.
What do you do?
This is nearly the exact same situation Jocko Willink found himself in with his team one day in The Battle of Ramadi. And he made a simple reminder to himself that all Navy SEALS make in a moment like this: “Relax, look around, make a call.”
He realized the first priority was to secure the team from incoming fire. Then it became about helping the wounded soldier. They went through their tasks one by one, handling them singularly. This is the principle that Jocko Willink calls “Prioritize and Execute” in his book Extreme Ownership.
The question is, what can we learn from how Navy SEALS operate under highly stressful situations?
The Present Is It
When burdened with multiple tasks, we can often feel overwhelmed on meeting our objectives. The pressure builds up in such a way that we can even freeze and make only marginal improvements in any one direction.
Navy SEALs can often suffer under similar contexts, but the stakes are ever-higher. Lives are on the line. Order to lead and communicate effectively, the organization has learned the immediate task of anyone in such a situation is to prioritize one task. And only one task. Then execute on it.
Clearly, there can only ever be one task. Just as there is only one present moment ever. This is something Eckhart Tolle elaborates in his book The Power of Now. The future and past in simply constructions we make in our mind. The only thing that ever actually exists is the present moment. Therefore, the Now is the only time an action really matters.
More often than not, we let our anxiety of the future burden our actions in the present. We ask ourselves how we can get through the week. Meet our deadlines. Perform at our best. In the process of worrying about all of this, we block ourselves from doing anything at this moment with the utmost focus. We let a non-existent reality interfere with the one that actually exists now. Almost creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
This isn’t something Navy SEALs can afford. And if they can find a way to get in the right mindset in situations like that, so can we. It’s about realizing that we can really only do one task at a time, so why think about more than that. Find whatever is at the most important task and focus on it as if it’s the only thing you need to do.
Prioritize and Execute only on what matters: the Now.
