This is Later with Lee Matthews The Lee Matthews Podcast More of what You here
weekday afternoons on the Drive. Hazard Lee as a US Air Force fighter pilot
who began his career flying F sixteens. As a flight commander, he and
his pilots went into combat, in fact, in the war in Afghanistan.
He worked his way up to be arguably the top fighter pilot of the US
Air Force, and he teaches readers now how to make clear decisions in everyday
life with Hazard Lee's book The Art of Clear Thinking, Stealth Fighter's Pilot Timeless
Rules for making tough decisions. Hazard, First, I've got to ask you,
have you ever gone muck ten? Not muck ten? Unfortunately, not
that fast. I've been as one point nine and that was enough, I
imagine it was the plane was shaking. I could I put my hand near
the canopy because it kids too of a heat radiating from just the friction on
the jets. So yeah, that was plenty fast in the F sixteen.
I'm making a reference to the Maverick movie where he goes mock ten, and
even then I was like, wait, I don't think you can go mock
ten. I don't think physically you can in the atmosphere anyway. Yeah,
not yet. I mean I was just chatting with a Space Shuttle pilot and
he was talking about rendering the atmosphere at mock twenty. So we have that
humans go that fast, but not in a fighter jet. The art of
clear thinking, this is something I have to exercise as much as I can
because I don't like to talk too much about it. But when I'm on
the air and I'm doing my talk show and I'm running everything and screening calls,
and I got a lot of things going, there's a lot of balls
in the air, and I too have to kind of think like a fighter
pilot. Yeah, I agree, And this is some technique I learned in
Oklahoma, nied Oklahoma, where I went to pilot training. So I really
talk in the book about being able to break down decisions into what I call
the ace helix, So being able to assess the problem. If you're not
able to have a good understanding the problem, you're not going to be able
to consistently make good decisions after that, choosing the right course of action.
Developing those courses of action I talked to through a process called effect space planning
to really increase people in organizations, creativity, and then lastly being able to
execute. So we'll sometimes have a thousand people that have touched the mission before
we're in the air. So spies on the ground, we have, cyber
operators, intelligence operators, tankers taken off from different countries also allow us to
be over the target on time. And so that's a lot of pressure,
especially in today's world where everything is real time. And imagine those put those
screens up that everybody's looking at what you're doing. So you really have to
be mentally resilient and tough, and because if you screw up, you're screwing
up all of their work and that target may never come back again. Hazardly,
a fighter pilot who has written the Art of clear Thinking, a Stealth
fighter Pilot's Timeless Rules for making tough decisions, you bring up something that hits
home for me quite a bit, and that is stress in a situation leads
to a you're thinking is no longer clear if you're too stressed. That's correct.
So one of the things we have is as soon as you put on
your helmet, you lose twenty IQ points and you don't rise to the level
of your expectation, you fall to the level of your preparation. So it's
talking the book about how to really prepare for whatever you're doing, because we've
all experienced experience it. Whatever whatever you feel nervous doing. If you get
in front of a group of people, if you are speaking, if you're
giving you a presentation, I think everybody's experienced losing twenty IQ points. So
I talk through a process to be able to help people manage that stress.
Multitasking is one of those things that I've tried to master and I think it's
benefited me because many of my peers that had the inability to multitask are no
longer in my business anyway. Yeah, it's challenging. So it's pilots.
We call that our cross checks. So we're looking at all these different dials
and gauges and there are multiple things going on, and so it's really about
being able to assess what's the most important thing, what do I need to
focus on? And I talked through some rules of thumb for people to use
that in their everyday life to be able to multitask better, to be able
to have a faster, more pristine cross check Hazardly. The name of the
book is the Art of Clear Thinking, a Stealth fighter Pilot's timeless rules for
making tough decisions and uh, you know. I try to prepare for situations
as much as I can. But the one rule is paramount when the shooting
starts. Everything changes when the shooting starts, Yes, figuratively and literally.
Yeah. Absolutely. Combat is a crazy place and that's why we do so
much training. So when you go into combat, you're ready to go,
but still there's a lot of fog in friction. You need to over prepare
when you're going into combat because it's an environment unlike any other. And Hazardle
is with us, He's lived at team situations. This is always tough for
me. I guess for me, the main thing in a team situation is
what are the expectations of each and on what timetable should they be met?
Correct? So that's one thing we do as fighter pilots is we're planning these
missions sometimes days, months, even years in advance. That's bringing together a
disparate group together. It's all line towards one common goal. So I talk
about it's almost project management in the book, about how to bring these different
groups together and be able to get the peak performance out of them. Hazard
Lead The Art of Clear Thinking, a Stealth Fighter Pilot's Timeless rules for making
tough decisions. When you have finished a combat mission, and let's say it's
a particularly active and hot one, does it take you a long time to
come down off of that one after the shooting is no longer they're no longer
shooting at you. Yeah, it does. It's it's it's challenging because it's
so intense, so busy for me, I'd have to go work out after
flying these missions, and I'd be on the graveyard shift, so I'd be
coming back at five five am in the morning, and so I'd have to
work out really to blow up that's team because yeah, it's impossible it is
to go to sleep right after that, I would think so, I would
think so The Art of Clear Thinking of Stealth Fighter Pilots Timeless rules for making
the tough decisions, and one of the Air Force's top pilots has written at
Hazard Lee, we thank you for sharing your tips with us and for writing
the book. Well, it's a pleasure. Thanks for having me on.
Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews. The Lee Matthews podcast and remember
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