The Gift of Time

All right, Greg, we're going to jump into it today and talk about a big-picture concept: theoretically, philosophically, everything. We're going to give our definitions of what we mean by "the gift of time and distance" for Arcadia Cognition (our proprietary methodology). I want to define what that means because everyone says, "Oh yeah, you got to get time and distance as your friend," or they think of time and distance in a tactical way. But this is a really big concept, and so I want to give our definitions of what we mean by it and how what we do can give that cognitive edge. We haven't really fully taken the time to jump into these and define them specifically on what we mean by them, because these are big concepts, right? This isn't something you're just going to cover in a one-hour podcast or fully understand. It's very complex what we mean by it, but there is a way through that, in a sense. There's a way to understand it, there's a way to utilize and manipulate time and distance to your advantage. There's a lot to get into, but I figure we'd maybe start. I'll throw to you, Greg, to maybe give some "street definitions," and then we can go from there.

Yeah, let's start small, and then we can always get smaller because this is one of those topics. Brian wrote me a couple of notes, just saying, "Hey, this is what I wanted to talk about today." One of the notes Brian wrote is, "Explain the concept of early detection in decisional space," which I highlighted on my notes because I thought it was a great question.

Look, the concept of early detection, no matter what you do for a living, early diagnosis matters. We identify symptoms, artifacts, and evidence in support of reasonable conclusions. The further left of a potential incident that we can identify those symptoms – and what's a symptom? A symptom is the identification of diseases as soon as possible from symptoms, well before it manifests itself in some other way – and that increases and improves your chance of treatment and other outcomes that would reduce mortality. So, why wouldn't what we do be the exact same thing? What we try to do is put together these artifacts and evidence that tend to show that, for example, crime is afoot, or that an argument is beginning, or that this is something this person really doesn't want to talk about. How can we ease the transition into it, because it's an important topic? So, it doesn't matter what in the human realm that you're talking about; communication between humans is inherently simple genetically, hardwired, and primitively, but it's also hard as hell because we've evolved past the type of communications we used to have.

Then the second part of that is "decisional space." There's a whole realm of possibilities with decisional space, but what I like is what Brian meant by it, what I'm reading into it. And that's the range of options, that's the range of choices that are available to a trained decision-maker compared to an untrained decision-maker. Because there's a zone of possibility of not only making a decision, but then implementing the decision. And the time-distance gap that we're talking about is not a legal, or a fiscal, or a technological, or a political gap. We're talking about lives hanging in the balance for saying something or not saying something, for taking cover because you see this constellation of clues coming together, and those cues would tend to show somebody that something was about to happen. So, look, that's streeting it up. That's the simplest definition I can give of early detection in decisional space. So you can imagine how vast the topic is.

So, what you're saying is that time and distance, in general, is about early recognition, and then not just early recognition, but earlier action. It's not just, "Oh, I saw these things starting to coalesce." It's, "No, I saw the pre-event indicators. I saw the symptoms, like you said, and so we're going to create an intervention strategy now." So that we don't have to wait until that chaotic thing is happening. That's really what you mean by time and distance: the early recognition. And time and distance is its own thing within that. Understanding this is what you get, what the cognitive edge is. It's, "Okay, now I'm doing this stuff. I'm recognizing these early symptoms of something, and now I'm intervening or making my decisions based on those and the likelihood of what I think is going to happen." I'm doing that now, rather than waiting for the situation to occur and then getting better at responding to the situation, which is where most things are, and which is not really what we do.

Let's talk about that briefly, Brian. Forty years ago, I was hosting courses called The Edge, like the singer that plays with Bono. But the idea was that the reason we called it The Edge – and then it was institutional, whether it was in Grosse Pointe or Detroit, or at Powder Horn, for example, the courses in Colorado were called The Powder Horn Edge – the idea was that I didn't know then that what we were trying to build was the cognitive edge, because I was still stuck with one foot squarely planted in the tactical edge. I was a police rifle master instructor and edge weapons and impact weapons and all these other things, and then a martial artist. So from shoot, move, and communicate, I was always on the ground, the best at the tactics, Brian. The driving, teaching at Selfridge, the emergency vehicle operation and the pursuit driving, and all that other stuff. So I became this guy that was the best at all those things, but I didn't understand. I wasn't teaching anybody how to fish. I wasn't giving myself that next level. I knew it was there, hence the name The Edge, but I didn't understand that the step up was the next level, which is the cognitive edge.

Yeah, because that's where, what I say is, people talk about time and distance, but you created the way to actually learn it and use it. It's a great way of saying, "Oh yeah, you got to get some time and distance," but, "Okay, how do you do that?" So, maybe let's start with a street definition of time and distance and what we mean.

You talked about it: time being the early detection in decisional space. You know, we did a whole podcast episode on time and our perception of time and what we mean by it. We can slow things down, and we often, just because of responding to different events and how it affects us, we jam on that skinny pedal on the right instead of pressing the brake a little bit sometimes. And then distance, obviously, can be a physical or mental distance. So, you're talking about the cognitive distance, but it can – whereas before it was most people considered as a very tactical way, like, "Hey, the closer you are to someone, the easier it is for them to kill you, whether they have training or not." So, there's a very literal sense. But then there's that mental distance where you don't want to – that can help prevent impulsive decisions. And that's what you get in with negotiation or conflict scenarios. You know, "Why don't I stay back here, because I have a few more options cognitively, not just tactically, that I can use." So there's this very literal understanding of time and distance, and then there's the metaphorical one. So, how are these two together? Why do time and distance—

You just said something that if anybody's listening to me right now, grab your pen, grab your yellow pad, and write it down: "The closer you are to someone, the easier it is to kill." You're touching on a bunch of topics that we teach in the course. Even an untrained opponent that's inside your physical and personal zone is going to have a much easier time killing you or injuring you because of distance.

Okay, so that's both literal and metaphorical. Why? Because look, who is the most likely suspect that's going to kill somebody in a house? It's going to be your spouse. And if it's not your spouse or significant other, it's going to be somebody that's living in that house, somebody familiar to you. So, it crosses both lines, Brian. It's literal: the physical space, a vantage point, a position of cover or concealment. But it's also metaphorical, and that means emotion-based, or mental-based, or cognition-based. And so, once people understand that that's what we mean, I'll give you a perfect street example. I know you've read it. I don't know how many of our listeners read Greg Mortenson's book back in the day, Three Cups of Tea. Everybody that was flying out was reading it on a plane because everybody's trying to figure out, "Okay, what do I do? Do I learn Pashto? Do I learn Farsi?" The idea was that Mortenson just epitomized networking, building relationships gradually through interactions. And his three cups of tea were those three interactions: moving first from being a stranger, then to a friend, then to part of the family, before you ever make a request and conduct business.

Brian, isn't that what we've done all along? So, I would say, as important as the book Left of Bang is, Three Cups of Tea is an important book too. Because my hostage negotiation, that was quality number one: I need to get you talking. If you're talking, you're not killing. On a traffic stop, I need to get you talking. If you're talking, you're not fleeing or trying to run me down or pulling a gun on me. In a domestic, I can de-escalate the situation if I can get you talking. The idea is talking does a number of things. Again, the literal: it creates a time and distance gap in your brain from action or reaction. And metaphorical: it creates a friendship, which means that now I'm injecting emotions, which slow you down. Emotions will slow you down. That's why there's no crying in baseball. So, the idea is that it's a strategy. If you leave a symptom unchecked, it's going to manifest into something else. So, we're talking about the further left of this potential situation that you're addressing those symptoms and making sense of them, the better chance you're going to have, especially an extremist, of making the right decision at the right time for the right reason.

Yeah, and it gives you—we're talking about this idea of the cognitive edge, what we mean by that. That's why we do it. Some of the exercises we even do in class, we call, "Let's go to the cognitive gym." Because the idea is, all the workouts and range time and mat time that you do, it doesn't matter if that person is a step ahead of me. If I'm in your space and I can do the street magician and fool you, then it doesn't matter how strong you are, or how good of a fighter, or your survival skills; it literally doesn't matter. That all gets negated. It's almost like it has to—well, it has to start here, right? Fraud is a cognitive attack, because I fool you on the phone, or with a credit card, or with that empty gas can, Brian. And the idea is, it doesn't matter how physically strong you are or how resilient you are, because I can still steal from you. And that's the great equalizer, isn't it? Because cognition won't let that happen. Cognition will say, "Wait a minute, something's wrong here. This doesn't feel or smell or taste right." You get what I mean? So, we're using the Huberman (Lab) framework. We're using that big 360 now, whereas before, you're going, "Okay, I can outshoot you, I can outfight you, and I've got all these defensive tactics." Well, it's wonderful, but what happens when the person can outthink me? What happens when the person's faster mentally than I am?

Yeah, and the other reason I like these terms, "time and distance" and "the cognitive edge," is if that's my goal. Like you gave the example of the hostage negotiator or the domestic situation. "Hey, if you're talking, you're not shooting. If you're talking, you're not doing." So, you're building time and distance. You're now actually taking control of the narrative, or I should say, you're influencing it for the purpose of, "Hey, first thing I need to do is get some time and distance. How can I do that right now?"

What I mean by that is that everyone's looking for a solution to a problem, or a way to do things, or a way to respond to this. It's like, "Hang on, but before you even get to that point, what have you done going into a situation saying, 'How do I get some time and distance?'" Because here's why this matters. We were having a discussion about this, and I heard some other folks having it about orientation, perception, and how you see things. People talk about reading the environment and seeing these cues and perceptions. But your mindset, your goal of what you're doing, shapes all of your perceptions. So, if I go in saying, "All right, I think this is going to happen," or "I want this to happen," or "This is going to be a chase," or "This person's going to run," or "This person's going to shoot," that's now going to shape everything that you do. But if I walk in and go, "All right, I want to go into this situation and get some time and distance," I get to create some time and distance. Now I've oriented myself. I've shaped my perception to come up with that solution. Or that's my goal in mind. Meaning, if I'm going into a situation with that goal in mind, to create some time and distance, that will then allow me that cognitive flexibility to come up with different solutions in this situation. But if I'm going in saying, "I have to go do this," well, then I'm going to go do that, and I'm only going to look for things that confirm what I need to get that done. Does that make sense?

So, to create the time and distance and gain the cognitive edge, it really is—before everyone talks about the perception of the elements in your environment—well, before that, there's an unconscious world happening in your brain that governs everything that you do, that we need to start with. And that's what starts with "the gift of time and distance," the cognitive gift, that's why it's called a gift.

The idea is, let's "white belt" that for just a minute, because you just laid out a great fundamental argument. So, let's ask this very basic question: Which is most calorie conscious? Is it more calorie conscious to avoid going into that room or getting out of that room once I'm in a situation? Is it better to avoid entering into that contract or that situation, or being in it and having to fight your way back out of it? People are saying, "Well, you're mincing words." We had a great guy, Adam Par from the Par-Activity Podcast, if anybody's looking it up, from across the pond. He sent us some photos, Brian, of the most recent place that he was doing a job that he does, and it was a dangerous environment. The idea was, "Look, you saw from a distance that these things started to coalesce, and that meant that the danger quotient increased." So, are you going to go ahead and grab that flashlight and climb down into that well and get deeper to the source of that, when all of the indices that you're seeing, all of the artifacts and evidence, are telling you, "Danger! Warning, Will Robinson!"

So, what happens is, again, it's the same argument with the lights and sirens. We decide that we're going to get to the situation, because when we're at Ground Zero, we're going to be making better decisions and influence the narrative. But is that the right place to stand? Should I penetrate before I've made certain decisions? The utmost level of situation awareness is being well outside and understanding, "Hey, something is going on here, and I, just being vicariously near it, am involved in it in some way." And the interaction of the things in that situation may prove to be good and beneficial and wonderful if I decide to go that direction, or they could be the end of me. So, that's what I mean when I say, "Imagine engineering tape, police tape, and the chalk outline on the ground before you walk into a place." I mean that you should constantly be thinking, "Is this one of those situations that has the propensity, has the tendency to spin out of my control?"

I can give you an example of that in the geographical realm. Anybody that's been to class—and if you haven't, you need to do a training—a long time ago, before anybody else was doing this kind of stuff that I knew of, because I was the only player that was running it for regions. I would say, "Okay, do me a favor. We're going to conduct training, training only. Make sure that you do that because people will do stuff like shooting in a school and then all of a sudden say, 'Oh, it was just training,' and then wonder how that spun wildly out of control." So the idea was, "Okay, it doesn't matter what shift it is, we're going to have a robbery at this location, whether it's a 7-Eleven or a bank, dependent on the shift, all that other stuff. What we want you to do is realistically figure out, from the time the person leaves, a bunch of things are going to be happening."

So, I got a team at the scene, I got a team in the parking lot, I got a team at dispatch, and I got a team on the road. And you've got to do all these things, Brian, it's got to be a study. The idea was, "Okay, once that person's left and you're going to dial 911, the clock starts. So, how long does it take for you to call 911, and with an average dispatcher taking the average amount of information, get that information out to the road?" And remember, this was before Enhanced 911 and all these other things. "Okay, now in that amount of time, how far did the person get on foot? That means, where would their car likely be parked? Or is somebody waiting for them? Or is the car idling? Or did they have to hop a fence? Or did they have to recon?" So that means there's a witness somewhere that knew that that person was tying up a dog. All these things are possible. Now, that's close to the scene.

Then the idea is, "Okay, if this person doesn't want to get caught, they're not going to floor it and spin the tires and drive past the speed limit. So, going the speed limit through that subdivision or on that side street, about how far could they get?" Now, when the officer receives the information, writes it on their log sheet, and starts heading for the scene. Brian, what I would do is I would map that out, and I would show people that they're racing to the scene of that robbery, passing the person that did the robbery, because the person is already gone, and they're already outside of that ring. So, I was making hundreds of felony arrests on these type of capers, and people were going, "How are you doing that?" Because what I was able to do is profile it geographically and figure about where that person would have gotten. And guess what? If they were on a bike, it would be different. If they were on foot, it would be different. And guess what, Brian? Those type of geographical profiles, built with all the other heuristics that we do in the other domains, help you plan in your mind. And guess what? The more you do it, the better you get. The first felon, it was a little rough. By the fifth felon, it got a lot easier. And after a while, I'm teaching the courses.

So, that's what you have to understand. If anybody could track my logic along that one example of how to build that out, that's a rock in the pond, Brian. That's one perfect example where you can build an entire course around that and understand that all humans are likely to respond to external stressors the same way. The second part of that, time and distance, means that it's logical, and so now we're finding bad guys, if that's what we're going for.

Okay, so, the process you just described is in real time. This is what you mean by the cognitive edge, going, "Okay, if this is occurring, and I know these things, then likely this, and then I can make my decisions." It's odd to me, so maybe help me understand: anyone can technically do that, meaning it's cognitively possible. We're able to do that as human beings. However, it's almost seemingly counterintuitive because we're also very, very reactive, emotional creatures, just inherently. So, we're constantly responding to things or behind the curve. Why is it difficult for humans, in general, at scale? It's kind of a general question. Why is it so difficult for us to do that? Why do we get roped in every time and keep just following along whatever the trend is, whatever things are going, or, you know what I'm saying? Why can't we sit here and do that?

Because there's no crying in baseball. Because our emotions get the best of us. Because our electrochemical neurotransmitters are pumping into our brain that "we're the best, we need to get to the scene, we'll be making those decisions," when in reality, the gift of time and distance is understanding all of time and distance. We all know Theory of Relativity, speed, and space and time, so we can figure out where objects are. But we also understand Heisenberg, and we can either pick one exactly or pick the other exactly. Folks, look those up; I'm not going to take time on a call explaining those here.

But the idea is, Brian, if we think in those terms, I'll give you a perfect example. Show up at a scene, and the scene is absolutely chaotic, and I'm on the ground, and there's fires burning, and gunshots were just fired, and people are screaming, and there's people down with injuries. And there's one lone guy sitting on the cement steps of the house with his hands on his knees and his head down between his lap. Everybody else is running and screaming. Guess who your suspect is? That guy's not a witness; that guy's just done all of these horrible things. So I would look at that and go, "How is this guy holding it together?" Well, this guy's in charge of what's going on. This guy's at the center of what's going on, and everybody else is spinning wildly out of control. So, if you understand entropy and the entropic principle, and you understand Newton's Laws of Motion, it's more likely that that person is physically responsible for what's happened around here. So guess what? I've got to give that person time and distance, and that's the person that's got my full attention now. And I'm starting to say, "Let me see some hands, down on the ground," all those other things. Why? Because I'm processing the artifacts and the evidence faster than the other people responding on the scene. So that's the gift of time, and I understand the more distance I have from this situation, the more likely it is that I'll make a better decision. Because when we rush to a decision, we're taking on a whole bunch of things that we don't want to take on. For example, when we're in a real-world case, I make a fast decision, then all of a sudden I'm not understanding that that fast decision isn't the best decision. And what I'm doing is I'm actually reacting, sort of like a knee-jerk reaction, to the evidence that I'm seeing. And now we're playing what you and I called, Brian, in the cognitive gym, pinball. Boom, boom, boom! I'm getting bounced around the scene. Well, that's not the way it happens.

If you illustrate that in practical terms, I am much more related to police work and military work than I am, for example, being a teacher in a school. Although we've taught at academic places, that's a different thing for me. So, we're on the way to a shooting at the Pastime Bar at Ninth and Van Dyke, and all of a sudden, the people that are on the street outside are much more interesting to me than the people fleeing from the bar. And I catch the guy with the gun outside, and all the other cops are going, "Man, you're just a shit magnet!" No, I'm not. Time and distance. Where would that person be? What would I be doing? Am I going to ditch the gun? Am I going to hold onto that gun for long enough that I get clear of the incident location to make sure there's not other perpetrators before I throw it onto a business roof? Brian, it's out-thinking a cunning enemy, and that's what takes it from the tactical to the cognitive, because now what I'm doing is I'm saying, "These things matter more than those things." And that's a hard thing to do without structure, without an architecture.

That's absolutely right. Without an architecture, without a structure, it can be difficult because then I don't—it goes back to what I was saying about how those perceptions shape our outcomes and how we orient, and what we find significant. In the moment, people are going to say, "Well, that's kind of hard to do," or "You can't really do that because you are responding to things as they unfold." But there are knowns and there are unknowns, and there are things you can project. We do this all the time as humans. We stock up during the winter; we're hardwired for some of this stuff. But, like you said, this is where our training and response to everything is just that: it's so focused on, "This thing is occurring; here's how we respond to that." But you're almost like you're saying, "Okay, this thing is occurring, but I'm getting the information, even if it's in front of me, even if I'm seeing something. I'm sort of picking up on the past in a sense." That thing has already occurred. That ball is already in motion. So if I'm chasing the last spot I was at, I'm never going to catch it, because I'm just going after the last spot. It's an echo (or past incident).

Exactly.

So, how, in those times, do you then orient yourself in that way? Like you just gave the example: you show up, you got the guy—this is what it was, he was the one with the gun, he wasn't focused on the thing that was happening right here. So, how can I take that and then use what I have as a human being, already born with, biologically wired for, which we are—for success and pattern recognition and all these things? How can I do that in understanding that time and distance? Because that seems difficult to then say, "All right, what's likely to occur next?" But if I don't do that, then I'm always going, "Here's how I respond." But I'm responding in the past. I'm responding to a past incident, to an echo, to a ghost of what was.

You're exactly right. Let me give you an example 110 years apart. In 1914, Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated. Gavrilo Princip was the one that did it with a bunch of other people, but he didn't do it at the initial time when they were flinging lead and throwing grenades. As a matter of fact, they killed part of the personal security detachment and injured other parts. So, what does Franz Ferdinand want to do? He wants to take his wife and go check on them at the local hospital. So, who's fleeing through the backyards? Gavrilo Princip is fleeing through the backyards and ends up crossing the street on the way to the hospital, completely by happenstance, and sees Franz Ferdinand and his wife in their limo—now sans security, because the security's all been injured at this other ambush location. So, Gavrilo says, "You know what? Here's a chance in a lifetime," and goes and kills Franz Ferdinand and his wife. You're saying that was complete happenstance? I'm saying it was inevitable. Why? Because Franz Ferdinand and his driver and his wife just escaped an ambush, and they were still in that danger zone. And so, what did they do? They said, "Well, we're going to go to the hospital and check on these people," not saying, "We need to go to a covered and concealed position. We need to get a new security detachment. We need to do these things." So, you have policy and procedure, you have TTPs; those are all great things, but in the moment, that short-fuse decision I made killed me.

Let's go to 2024, and let's go to Luigi Mangione. He's hanging around in a hotel, and he's obviously not a member of that hotel or belonging in that hotel. And you've got Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Healthcare, walking through the lobby. Now, think about United Healthcare and think about all the threats that they've had and everything else. One, he doesn't have security. Two, he's not situationally aware. Three, he's not "six-checking." And this guy walks up and blasts away at him. Again, you're going, "Wow, those things are—" Look, again, I will tell you, it's inevitable. You give enough time and you have a limited amount of space, certain things are going to likely occur. So, Franz Ferdinand called his own death by not looking at that ambush as artifacts and evidence to support that it was an ongoing thing to try to take his life. Brian Thompson contributed to his own death by being in a low level of situation awareness in a hotel lobby and never anticipating that one of these days, coming out of my car or the parking garage, somebody might accost me.

And so, that's hard to take, Brian, because what we do is we go, "Well, wait a minute, you're saying that's a personality thing," or "That's this and that." No, it's an emotional thing. We all think that it's not going to happen to us. And part of the reason that the gift of time and distance is out there is, it can—there was a cop that died last night, or the night before rather, shot by a 14-year-old kid. There's another cop that's in intensive care. Why? Because we underestimate a 14-year-old. We didn't give ourselves the gift of time and distance. I'm not going to call that caper, because I wasn't there, Brian, but what I'm saying is, it's emblematic of the symptoms of how one of those cases goes, right? We reach in and grab the purse because we don't expect the driver to drive away. We're patting somebody down and we say, "Hey, gun partner," and we're expecting our partner to be able to figure that out in nanoseconds and take cover and come to my aid. Brian, that's where training has to come in, because the gift of time and distance isn't as easy as we're making it sound. It's a damn hard thing to do, and it takes rehearsal, it takes practice.

Yes, and so this is where I come in with what I've said before: human behavior is in some ways more simple than people realize, and then also way more complex than we're willing to grasp sometimes, at the same time. And so, this goes into that. We talked about a number of times when people go, "Well, anything could happen." It's like, "No, no, no, it cannot." There's a finite number of things that can occur throughout your day, and only so many of them are likely, and some are unlikely. And so, when you get into understanding the time and distance and what you're talking about, this cognitive edge, that's why we have HBPR (Human Behavior Pattern Recognition). That's our methodology of doing it. And that's why we have SPAR (Sense, Make, Problem-Solve, Adapt, Resilience) and how to use that, because that provides a framework.

But I'm always just curious by it. It's like, we still fall into that track even when people go, "Oh yeah, I get it. Yeah, of course, we want to have time and distance. Yeah, we want—" But the application of it, the actual process of doing it, is rarely done. So, why, when anyone could look at just topically some of the things that we discuss and that we show, and go, "Oh yeah, no, I totally get that. Yeah, that makes sense." But then we don't go out and apply those concepts. We don't do that. I'm not talking about someone going to a training course; I'm just saying, "Oh yeah, well, that—" And that goes into it. How do I do that then? How can I develop this cognitive edge through some mental rehearsal or practice throughout my day? How did you become good at it, in a sense, of noticing things and then attributing value to it, but then taking that and applying that to situations in a completely different context or a completely different domain? Because that's where it seems to get difficult for people, which is why we use these generalizations. And that's why we say time and distance. "Okay, well, look, time and distance you can use in any situation." That's the point of doing it. But then how do I do that on a daily basis? How can I sit here and say, you know what I'm saying? How do I come up with a strategy to get better at this on my own?

I can only prompt people to training by giving them examples of what training can give them, because doing the process would take a series of these podcasts, and we've been doing it for three years now, and we're no closer to solving it for everybody, because it is a complex problem. It's a lifestyle change. It's how you must think about things in the future.

Everybody out there knows Cabela's catalogs and the other one, the fish guys, whatever the place where you buy all your fishing gear and stuff. They've got those huge factory stores and outlets all over the place that sell all kinds of cool stuff. So, we would have people that came to the ranch for 13 years, and I would tell them when I talked to them on the phone, and when I sent them emails back and forth, or texts, "Don't go to Cabela's and buy your gear before you come to the ranch, because you're going to be up in the high country in Colorado, so make sure that everything you buy is high-viz orange or high-viz pink, and you'll find it again." And you know what they did, Brian? They went to Cabela's, in that fish place, and they bought a range cam or a trail cam or whatever else that they wanted to. And while they were going around, and they got on and off their horse, and had lunch, and took a picture of a damn porcupine, they left that camera on the side of the trail somewhere. And me, with eight different ranch hands, were up there arm-in-arm searching around, and guess what? Nine out of ten times, we couldn't find shit. Why? Because it was camouflage.

So, is that human behavior pattern recognition analysis? Of course! Because even though your instincts are going to tell you, "This guy told me that the best way is to buy something bright," you thought it would look a lot cooler to have that hand-me-down lighter, that Zippo, in flat black. And you can't find the son of a bitch anymore. So, a simple idea like that. Let's turn that on our edge: before you buy a fishing lure, take a look at the water and figure out what the fish sees. So, simple things like that came from my skinned knees growing up, my father the Marine smacking me and teaching me, my mom and my aunt, the twin towers that lived right across the street from each other, that not only survived the Nazi Party, but they survived the Russian purge after that and had to live on their own. So, all of that street knowledge was that people always telegraph things before they happen. People are always on transmit. So, if I pay attention to those sound waves, if I pay attention to those particles that are always present that are around me, they hurry up and heat up and move faster, or they slow way down and get thick and boggy when something's about to happen. You know that. Anybody out there knows that before an ambush, all of a sudden, comms either spike and they're all over the place, or comms go down to nothing. You know that just before somebody smacks somebody, everything goes real good and real quiet, or things go noisy right before they happen. So, all I did was turn it into a gosh-damn art form by writing down all these things and telling people. And then, you know what? I had to deconstruct it.

The greatest part about "red integration" (retrograde analysis) and those types of things—science folks, go look it up and understand—is that you have to take a look at a situation backwards. You have to take a look and reverse engineer it: "How did we get here?" And if you can do the "how did we get here" before you knock on the door, before you step out of the Scout car, before you go to apply that first handcuff, before you fire that person at a business meeting, or approach that kid at his locker—if you can do those things before, hence the term Left of Bang, then you're likely to be able to conduct predictive analysis in real time and avoid dangerous situations and capitalize on those that are going to benefit you. It's really that simple, and that's so hard. It's taken me my entire life to tell people.

And one of the things I like to tell people is, "Know your role and your goal." Meaning, what is your job in this situation? What is your role? Whether you're at the store with your kids, or you're at work, whatever, what's your role? And then what are you trying to get? What's the end state you're working towards? When you walk into something, what is the goal I want out of this? Because to me, that helps with that orientation of what I'm going to perceive. If my goal is, "You know what? I'm going to get the kids and I'm leaving right now because I don't like where the situation is," or it's the opposite, "I have to go into this situation, what is my goal? What is the way I want this to end?" What am I working towards? Because that helps frame everything that happens. The way you perceive everything, it has to start there. Because if I don't have something specific in mind, then it's chaotic.

So, you're almost like we started. Like you said, "All right, if we're going to pick apart something from the past and say, 'How did we get here?'" That's easier because the facts are already known. I can look back in time and gather data, or whatever. So now, to project that to the future, it's like, "Well, I have to know where I would like this to go. What do I want this ending to be?" And therefore, I will perceive the elements that are necessary to get there, or they won't be there, and I'll be able to go, "Okay, well, that's not going to happen based on what's happening, so I need to come up with a new goal and then reorient myself." Does that make sense as sort of just an overall mental process?

That's brilliant. So, let me street it up again. Driving through the streets of Metropolitan Detroit on midnight shift with the windows down, even in winter, what am I listening for? I'm listening for fences. I'm listening for somebody to hit a cyclone fence at night. That's interesting to me. What am I listening for? I'm listening for dogs barking in one area and then barking in another. Is it a possum, or is it a B&E (breaking and entering) boy? All of those things that are environmental are out there: a smell, a sound, a feel. Brian, the more I get in tune with those, the more they tend to match mental models, my file folders. Or it's something so nuanced that I haven't seen it before, and now I know whatever external stimulus is creating this, I have to know more about, because this might be a thing that turns dangerous or turns opportunistic. So, I have to—and we're back to early diagnosis.

The idea is that these things are probably something more than the average night, because on the average night, none of them happen. And then decisional space. Brian, you said something I want everybody to listen to. You were talking about not only the range of feasible options or choices available to you, but you're also talking about what's the investment. If I'm with my family, I may retreat much more quickly. I may move to cover or just absent myself from the situation much more quickly than if I was alone. But the other thing is, look, I don't want to get clipped pulling my legal carry gun because the cop thinks I'm part of the robbery. So that's part of that decisional space rehearsal phase. The other thing is like, what right do I have to just walk away? Well, you don't. You are your brother's keeper. I've had thousands of 911 calls go to dispatch where I was listening, where the dispatcher heard something like this: "Hey, this is probably nothing, but there's a person out on Route Six that's hitchhiking, and it's dark, and they're wearing all dark clothes, and it just didn't feel right." Or, "I saw these two guys, and one was wearing a camouflage shirt, and one was wearing camouflage pants, and these guys certainly weren't hunters." Or, "I saw this kid, and he wasn't running for the bus; he was running from the bus." Do you know how many calls come in with that partial information? And somewhere there's an expert dispatcher going, "Hey, this is different. This is somehow interesting to me," and sends a car out. Or a cop hears that and goes, "I wonder why those dogs are barking. I wonder why that guy's in that backyard. I wonder why that person's still laying on that park bench."

Brian, your level of intrigue, your level of interest, thinking that things are interesting, is the key to situation awareness. And the gift of time and distance is that credit card I carry with me to make sure I can buy myself out of a shitty situation. You have to have both. If you don't have both, then all your decisions are made on the edge. And being on the bubble is no damn prize pig. You get what I'm trying to say? You want to be able to back off. Look, when we see stuff like Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, you're on the bubble, you're on the X all the time. Nobody goes, "Hey, drive me to the scene. I'm a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu expert. I'll chase the guy down and then do my damn thing." You see what I'm trying to say? It's literally called self-defense for a reason. So what we are is we're sort of countering that by saying, the more intrigue you put to life, into events, left of the event, the better you will be at demystifying it when it comes time to act or decide.

And you're talking about switching from that defensive mindset to an offensive one, that's proactive. But here's my question about what you brought up: how, with all of those perceptions and then everything else in life competing for my attention, how do I attend to the things that matter, versus just bringing in, "Okay, yeah, I noticed the trash on the ground over there, and the smell over here, and maybe a dog bark there"? I can't, as a human being, process all of that in my environment at a time. If I try to, that's the hyper-vigilance, that's where you're just going to go nuts and constantly look for something. How do you do that switch?

Yeah, that's the perfect question. But you're riding for a fall if you keep thinking down that direction. What I mean by that is, you have to be on the offense without being offensive, because if you're questioning things all the time, sooner or later, somebody's going to punch you in the eye, or get pissed, or throw you out, or you're not going to have a job, or your wife or your significant other or your husband's going to leave you because you're spending too much time on it. But the idea is this: when you go to turn the ignition in your car, you understand that a seatbelt is going to save your life. You understand that cars were built so good at one point that when they hit, they killed everybody in the other car because the car didn't have a crumple zone. You understand that the faster I drive on inclement conditions, the greater risk of hydroplaning and crashing into something. So, while we understand that science is always at work, we don't acknowledge it.

All I'm saying is that in your day-to-day, what are the most—look, you remember Bruce Willis in The Fifth Element? He looked through the eyehole before he walked out into the hallway, and it was a guy with the hat of the hallway on. So, when he looked out, it looked just like the hallway, but when he stepped out, it was a guy wearing a hat of the hallway, and a guy robbed him. So, what am I trying to say? Well, simple physics will set you free. Before you walk into a lit room from another lit room, shut off the light in the room where you're at, because now you're not going to have a backlight when you walk into that room, and your eyes have had a few nanoseconds to adjust before you've got this new lighting situation. That's simple. Have you walked around your house to listen to where the creaks are? So, if you're lying in bed, do you know what it sounds like when somebody's walking up or down your stairs? Before you step outside, do you look out the window? Maybe because of the weather, not because somebody's going to rob you in your neighborhood. Brian, those are so low on the calorie-conscious level, and those are so easy for everybody to do. But if you just did that, if you just increased a couple of those things on being more observant and priming yourself—before I get into the car, I'm going to walk all the way around the car. What am I going to do? Look for leaks. I'm going to make sure there's nobody in the back seat, make sure my trunk is secured, so I don't have to secure that son of a bitch when I'm on the road. You know how many people don't find out about burglaries until they're confronting the burglar? How the heck didn't that happen to you?

So, simple things, just like I'm saying, a fish doesn't know it's raining. So, before I go fishing and somebody goes, "Oh, it's raining outside," I don't give a damn, that's how fish eat. But you know what? I have to know what's the water temperature? What colors does that fish see? Is a vibrating lure better than whatever? So, if I'm doing that for fishing, and you see those Saturday morning shows are on all the time, then why am I not doing that before I walk into a 7-Eleven? Why do I not park for just a minute before I put it in park, and look around the parking lot? "Hey, why is that car backed in and idling? I haven't seen a tow truck in this neighborhood in the last five minutes." Those kinds of things will save your life. But we know better, and we know better is that chemical cocktail that's in our brain saying, "The more we repeat behaviors and nothing happens, the more likely that becomes in the future." And that's just not true. The strength of the argument is: gas stations are more dangerous, driving above the speed limit is more dangerous, having too much to drink and staying in a bar too long is too dangerous, because you're going to get punched, or you're going to get robbed, or something else is going to happen. And we know that. So, science will set us free. Math doesn't go "well, sometimes, you know?" But we don't want to listen to that because life is more fun. So, my argument to you is, it's more fun screwing and drinking and partying and listening to my loud music than it is being situationally aware. But a moderate level of situation awareness, operating in a zone forever, is attainable. So, why wouldn't you want to do it? But it's hard. It takes calories. So there's the argument for humans. I'm telling you, "This is better for you," but why do I want to do it? Because not doing it—

Well, and it's the small, moderate improvements over time. It's a far better strategy than the "do everything right now" or getting the right husband, wife, for training your kids. But immediate gratification is what we're all about, Brian, and our limbic system is still in that loop, right? That's a great point. There's this double-edged sword, in a sense, of how we're wired and how our unconscious brain works. It can be really, really good for us; however, it gets hijacked by our emotional state, and things get overwhelmed, and then we fall back on survival.

But you know, and this is why I brought it up at the beginning, it's both a literal and a metaphorical sense with this time and distance. Because what you're talking about is literally like, "Stop, take a look." Look into the window of the 7-Eleven before you walk in to see if there's someone in there with a gun to the head of the cash register. It takes three seconds. But we have a lot of other things in our mind competing for our attention, and we're distracted. But what's more important than our own survival? You see, but the problem is that we live in an environment that's not as dangerous as we're making it out. And so, there's far less consequences than early man. So, therefore, we've lulled ourselves into the fact that, "What are the chances there's going to be a robbery at the 7-Eleven that I'm going to today?" Well, there's a damn dead guy in the cemetery that's saying the same thing. It's a balance, isn't it?

It is.

And so, you're basically saying we don't exercise the gift of time and distance as much anymore, simply because—yeah, I mean, more people die today from overeating than undereating, right? It's just a different world than what we're wired for. And so, taking—we now have to learn this skill set. But it has to be framed within some context that I can use it in.

Let me throw this at you, because you have a daughter that's right in the age range of these incidents. I've been on a number of incidents, way too many, the damn range. No, I'm not saying that. I'm talking about the insurgent terrorist range, where she's learning enough about the car bomb that it ain't an Irish car bomb. The idea is that what happens is, she's going to go to a party, and it's going to be a birthday party, and you're going to relax because she makes good decisions, and you know the other family and everything else. But I've been on the other end of that, where I have to go and take the report on, "Well, when was the last time you saw her?" And "Is it a runaway, or was she kidnapped? Did this happen where a predator watched this and knew and conducted surveillance?" So, Brian, if you want to avoid those things that you never see because you're not in the inner loop, you've got to read more, you've got to study more, you've got to look around more.

There was a caper at the—I don't know if I'm saying these things, if the places are even still around—but it was a homicide at the Memphis Lounge. I remember that the dog was on the scene and was giving me updates from the information that was going on. The idea was that it was very interesting to me that this person walked in, they were still doing karaoke night. I need you to understand that, and someone was like, "Hey, can you shut off the music and turn up the house lights on a homicide at a packed bar?" So, what does that tell you right away? However that person shot that other person in there, it was very, very discreet. Why? Because people would have screamed, they would have run outside, the house lights would already be on. Nobody would still be singing karaoke. So, this is me processing it, and I've got another expert that's on the scene telling me about it.

So, I'm in another bar, and I see a guy get out of his sled, and he's walking up to the front of the bar, and he's got both hands jammed down in the front of his pockets, and one of his pockets is smoking. And I go, "Well, that's interesting." And then all of a sudden, I'm going, "Well, why would this guy's pocket be smoking?" Well, if he fired the handgun from inside the pocket—and I rolled the guy up, and it ends up being the right guy. Now, somebody else listening right now is going, "Oh, you're just lucky, right place, right time." Nope. Smoking pockets. I needed to know what was going on. And guess what? Historical perspective. I was able to use my situation awareness to link that to other events that it may be important to. You know who didn't do that? Franz Ferdinand, and he's dead.

So, the idea, Brian, is absolutely everything is on transmit. But if I don't stick my toe in the pool water, I'm going to get frozen when I jump in. I have to look before I leap. I have to consider. I have to understand that priming occurs. Even though I'm an expert, I get primed, and I sit down for breakfast, and I leave my flashlight and PR-24 (Police Baton) and everything else in my Scout car. You see what I'm trying to say? Even the best experts in the world, we relax too soon in an environment. I'm not talking about being constantly "geeked." I'm talking about looking at those things. You know, one of those families where that girl was missing, the family had no DNA evidence, so we couldn't help use that. The family shared a toothbrush, they shared the comb and the brush in the bathroom. And you're thinking, "Well, that's the worst-case scenario, that I've got to be doing DNA to match my daughter's body out of all the bodies in the morgue." Yeah, but if you work far enough Left of Bang, Brian, in almost every one of those incidents, it's preventable. And that's why we teach HBPR-RNA. We teach you to be a harder person to capture, a harder person to kill, to make you more resilient over time. And guess what? The beauty of our system is, the more you do it, the better you get.

And that's our process for gaining time and distance in a very methodical way that is process-oriented, that allows you to sense-make and problem-solve. And, like you said, in any circumstance. So, my thing is, what are those—and you're talking about—those things that I do, or you can do, on a daily basis? It really is taking that second to have that foresight of, "Well, what's my role here? What's my goal here? Where do I want this to go?" Can I take a second, a minute, an hour, whatever is necessary, to plan something out? A lot of people think that, "Well, you can't take the time; you've got to make a decision right now." And my thing is, you rarely ever do "right now." What situation in life couldn't take an extra second? I know that's what we jam on, we jam on that gas pedal, and then go, "Whoa!"

Yeah, it's like—you remember, let me give you another example. You remember we were working with some of the best-trained DEA operatives ever, and there were some BORSTAR (Border Patrol Search, Trauma, and Rescue) and BORTEC (Border Patrol Tactical Unit) people that were smattered into that training. And we were out in the middle, it was 120 degrees in the shade, and we were on conexes with binoculars, and we were watching. And the one guy ran from the ambush that we were setting up and went around a building. What we taught those folks is to time it: "How long did it take them to get from here to here? How long did it take them to get from here to here?" So, what's a likely amount of time that they're going to spend behind that building? And then they could figure out where that person was likely to come out, and if the person ditched some goods behind it. Why? Because, guess what? They took longer behind that building than they did between these other things. And those guys had that epiphany moment. You remember we had the female and the male agent sitting up there going, "Holy shit, never thought of that!"

So, you know what? That's better than having a dog to go back and find that gun. It's better that when that person spills out into a crowd, figuring out that, "Wait a minute, that person came out at the right time, but they're wearing a yellow shirt rather than a red. Go back there and see if there's a red shirt." The idea is that it's a game, Brian. It's like being Sherlock Holmes, trying to deduce stuff without the Calabash pipe. And it's fun! So, why wouldn't you want to have fun every single day? "What's this person telling me? What's his clothing telling me? What's the lint in his pocket? What's the garbage in their car? What about where they park? What about if the car is running?" All of those things matter, and we just have created a system that's much easier for you to quickly address those. It's no longer like Plinko, sitting there scratching your head. Now, you're looking at a situation and going, "This is what I think is happening. For this to continue happening, the next thing I'm going to see, sense, smell, or taste is going to be this. And if I see that, then I know what's happening, and I can avoid it." That's magic. And unless you've been to a course and seen it, and unless you've tried it on your own, you won't understand how cool it is.

What I mean about fishing—I keep going back to the fishing metaphor. There were guys in Iraq and Afghanistan who were trying to equal my success. And you know what they could do? They could find a VBIED (Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Device). They could find a body bomber. But you know what they couldn't do? They couldn't pass that knowledge on to you. And the difference, the legacy that we've made, Brian, is we can transfer these skills so you can go out in real time and use them no matter where you work and no matter what the environment is. And that's pretty cool.

So, that's a lot on time and distance and what we mean by the cognitive edge, and maybe some simple exercises to do. And they aren't—it's like people go, "Yeah, okay, I get it," and "This seems self-evident," or "It seems, I got it." But unless you're doing some sort of deliberate practice with it, it's not going to be something that you do all the time, and you're not going to get better at it.

Right, right, right, right, right. All right, well, I don't know anything else we need to go into about time and distance. You should give a warning before these episodes: "Take two (Tylenol) and sit back in an easy chair," because basically, what this was, is an intro to, "Welcome to the gift of time and distance." So, we need to go deeper, but you know how we go deeper, folks: you've got to write your questions.

Yeah, I agree. To reach out, and then obviously we always have more on Patreon and give out examples and stuff on there. But yeah, okay, that was good. I kind of wanted to just cover that with everyone and talk about, define what we mean by time and distance, and just how big of a concept it really is. And also then how you can integrate that into your daily things that you do. Iteratively, over time, you will do it unconsciously, basically, at that point. That's the point, is to get it to the point where you're doing it without realizing you're doing it. Habits are hard to break.

Yep, they are.

They definitely—we all know that habits are hard to break, so why don't you make it a good habit? All right, well, appreciate everyone for tuning in again. Always reach out to us if you have any questions. You can shoot us an email or hop on Patreon and ask. But thanks, everyone, for tuning in, and don't forget that training changes behavior.