Jay Papasan: 0:00

I wanna be the dumbest person in the room every single time I wanna surround myself with people. Codie Sanchez, if you know who that is, she's a friend and lives here in Austin. She's said it on Brandon Turner's Better Life podcast. And I love this. She goes, you need to hang out with people for whom your dream is just another Tuesday. And I still get chill bumps when I say that out loud.'cause I was like, it is so true.

Cody: 0:37

Welcome to the Mind Hack Podcast, where we explore the psychology of self-improvement and mindset to help you live a happier and more fulfilled life. I'm your host Cody McLain, and today I'm excited to have Jay Papasan on the show who has helped millions of people transform their lives through his groundbreaking work in personal development. Jay Papasan is a multiple time bestselling author who you might know as the co-author of The One Thing with Gary Keller, a book that has sold over 3 million copies and has been translated into 35 languages before becoming a publishing powerhouse. Jay's journey took an interesting turn after graduating from the University of Texas. He spent several years in New York working at Harper Collins, but it was his move back to Austin, where joining Keller Williams Realty that really set the stage for his biggest contribution to the world of business and personal development. Together with Gary Keller. Jay has written several game changing books, including the Millionaire Real Estate Agent, the Millionaire Real Estate Investor, but he's not just an author. He's also the Vice President of Learning at Keller Williams Realty, where he helps shape the minds of future business leaders. What makes Jay special is his ability to take complex ideas and turn them into simple, actionable strategies that anyone can use. His work focuses on helping people cut through the chaos of everyday life to achieve extraordinary results. Today we're going to dive deep into Jay's insights about productivity, success, and how to achieve more by doing less. So without further ado, please welcome Jay Papasan.

Jay Papasan: 2:15

Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah.

Cody: 2:17

So I really was looking forward to this conversation because I've built so many businesses in my life and one of the most influential books really was the One Thing I remember just juggling so many different things at the same time. I felt completely scattered and it's like trying to balance a dozen plates, you know, they're all spinning at once and I'd really love to ask, what was the inspiration for the One Thing, what was the conversation that you had with Gary Keller? Or what was the problem that you guys were encountering that really was the pinnacle that started this concept of the One Thing.

Jay Papasan: 2:54

I will give you the origin story and I'll do, I'll do the short version 'cause we can do the long one if we want, but I was, at that time, I've done three stints as the head of KW learning at different times. They needed that skillset in that department. Today I'm running strategic content newsletters, books, podcast. 24 years under one roof. I've just evolved and kind of go where they needed me to go. same skillset is always content, content, content, content. So let's go back to 2008, I think 2007, I just helped the research and writing on a course that for real estate entrepreneurs. What kind of production would they have to do in one year to earn the right to hire their first employee? Now remember back then VA's were not as prominent, right? And so you either had a part-time or a full-time employee Back then, it wasn't like you could just have someone in the Philippines or some other part of the world, inexpensive talent that could help you out, which is where a lot of people start. I had done the course. Gary reviewed it. He loved it. He was ready to release it. He wanted to write a, a foreword. and I'll give you the secret. If you want to be really successful in a real estate sales service business, you need to lead generate. You need to prospect and market. That's that's your number One Thing. That's your One Thing, is that you are always, always looking for future customers while servicing the ones you have. When people don't do that, they have a burst of business. They go all in on serving it, and they look up and they have nothing in the pipeline, and they tend to go through this kind of rollercoaster ride as an entrepreneur. So this whole thing was to teach these entrepreneurs that their first priority was to always be looking for customers. mean they have to spend eight hours a day doing it. Gary took it home. He wrote this foreword and it was called The Power of One, and he laid out, but he did it bigger than the course. This idea of you have to identify your number one priority. And when you've got it dialed into an activity, you put it on your calendar and then you live your calendar. And I remember telling him, I was like, I think this is a book. And he goes, I thought the same thing. And I had worked as a editor at Harper Collins. I'd gotten to work on a lot of big books there. And I just said, what I like about this, if I was wearing my acquisitions hat, is that everything, all of your success lines up around this principle. Like Gary is very smart, but he doesn't always have to be the smartest person in the room. He doesn't work the longest hours. what distinguishes him is that he's willing to take longer to identify the priority. And once he's identified it, he will give it more time and resources than almost anyone else. He can be very singularly focused once he's done that thing. And so I love the alignment. So that actually is how. The book came to be. we hired two researchers that summer and we spent about four and a half years really diving in to the research, the studies, the experiences that led to extraordinary success Through this thing called Focus, you know, to focus on the priority. And, um, it was our first non-real estate book, which is why we took so long. We really wanted to get it right because nobody knew who we were outside of the real estate audience at that time. So that's kind of the origin story. It started with the class started with solving a problem for entrepreneurs in one field, and it ended up, I believe, serving a lot of entrepreneurs.

Cody: 6:21

for the small segment of the audience that hasn't read the One Thing, can you break it down into just a simple core concept?

Jay Papasan: 6:28

Yeah. I think there's two things at play. There is your One Thing from a productivity standpoint, and then there's your One Thing from a purpose standpoint, and depending on what time and who reads the book, they walk out with asking the question, what's my One Thing? I usually have to ask them, which one are you talking about? Are you talking about the, why am I here Question, or the what do I do right now? And so I think what we did is we gave people a simple framework at any given moment for identifying their number one priority and knowing how to actually take action on it. And the extra level, which is that bigger question, is that we try to teach people a framework. Again, a simple framework for how to align what they're doing today with who they want to become in the future. And that to me is very important. That's something I wasn't taught before I started working with Gary Keller, is how do I work backwards from an outcome in the distant future, whether it be who I'm becoming my business is becoming, and break it down so that I know how to behave this week. That's the challenge. You have a big vision for your life or your business. Awesome, but how do I behave this week to be in alignment with that? And I think we provided a framework for that.

Cody: 7:43

in order to, to really focus on the One Thing, I think probably one of your biggest criticisms is, you know, I have so many responsibilities in life. There's, there's, if you're running a business, you have to put on a bunch of different hats. You have to, you have a family, you have a life. You have your health. How are people supposed to just focus on One Thing? What do you really mean when you say One Thing?

Jay Papasan: 8:06

That's great because that, like when we actually proposed the title at, New York Book Expo for business publishers, a lot of the publishers just laughed. He goes, what do you mean? It's One Thing. It's never just One Thing, right? Because if you're busy, you have a lot on your plate. and the reality is, I don't think about tasks first. I think about the roles, like I'm a husband and I'm a father, I'm also a son and I'm a brother. I'm an uncle, right? I'm a friend, I'm a partner. I have roles. and How do I know which hat I'm wearing and based on that, what my priority is at any given time. So the trick is it isn't that you only have One Thing in your life, it's that you understand in any given moment what your One Thing is. If I'm with my kids, what is my priority, right? As a working dad, I had mornings and drop off, right? I had drop off in the morning and I had bedtime, and I had to be very clear with the time I got with my children at those early ages, what my priority was and making sure that I was living that. And how do I know what the One Thing is in my marriage? so to me it's a very situational question, and that's why we have the metaphor of the dominoes, and we can go down that path if you want, but everybody listening, at some point in their childhood or adult life, they've lined up dominoes. and if you align them properly, you can knock over one and a bunch will fall down. And we believe that you can do that same sort of alignment in your life. You can line up your number one priority so that by attacking it you get more than just one outcome. And in that way, I believe that work, you can be all consumed by One Thing, but in other areas of the life you do have to counterbalance. So again, in any given moment, whatever role that you are in, like today, we're both in our entrepreneur seat, right? You're as a host of this podcast, I'm here as a guest. I know what my One Thing as an entrepreneur is and where I need to go. I think probably you do too. But like if I'm on the phone with my mom on a Sunday doing our family Zoom, like I'm there first and foremost, even though my sister and my nieces are there, my first priority there is to be a son. because when I look up in five or 10 years, it's very likely that my mom won't be on that call anymore. So how do we identify our priority in the moment and how do we act appropriately in the moment? I mean, honestly, a life well lived is one where we were appropriate in the moments that mattered. That's my belief. So you're catching me on a Friday, so maybe I'm being a little philosophical. If we need to be more practical, I can dial that in.

Cody: 10:47

No, I think philosophy is it's, it's the os that we have, for our thinking mind. So, by all means, go into that. And I love the analogy that it's really, it's in some ways it's a, uh, it's symbolic for needing to have the awareness of asking ourselves what's the most important thing that we should be prioritizing right now? Because there's so many hats that we have to wear, so many things that we have to do, so many people we have to be there for. And yet, in any one given moment, there's really only One Thing that we can be focusing on. It's been completely dis disproven the concept of multitasking. Really what that is, is you're just switching your focus really quickly, back and forth between one or two different things. you, you,

Jay Papasan: 11:28

and doing both of them poorly by the

Cody: 11:30

yes. Uh, exactly.

Jay Papasan: 11:31

the moment you do that you actually are degrading your performance. We're just not usually aware of it.

Cody: 11:36

And I believe your book emphasizes the power of asking a focusing question. I'm wondering what you can, what you mean by this.

Jay Papasan: 11:44

you kind of led into it, and I know that not everybody can see this if they're not watching on YouTube, but every edition of our book, the back of it is a question mark or the question because we were very clear if we could only do One Thing with this book, we wanted people to build the habit of asking what's my One Thing? Because what we observed is that really busy people and entrepreneurs are maybe the most guilty of this sin, right? Because they have to wear so many hats and are responsible ultimately for so many things. They look at their to-do list and they just attack it, and a lot of times they attack it based on the things they can knock off the fastest because what they want is psychological relief. They want to actually shorten the list. So the moment we play that game of just tasking and a lot of entrepreneurs, myself included are phenomenal taskers, you put me to work I can mow 'em down. But what we don't, and we also have a high sense of urgency, so we tend to be decisive and jump in quickly our are undoing, that those strengths can be overused and we start going into work and it's actually this sort of lack of prioritization is almost a form of laziness. We're almost avoiding the hard work because we're doing all of the trivial stuff. And so now I'm leading back to your other question. The heart of the book is a question. We call it the focusing question and I'll share it and maybe you can put it in the show notes for someone who's driving or jogging and maybe they won't get it the first time. But it's, what's the One Thing I can do such that by doing it. everything else will be easier or unnecessary. And I'll say it again and just kind of break it into its component parts. What's the One Thing I can do? We're asking our brains the number one priority that you can currently do. Not could, or would. Or should. It's very important. we want to ask for things that we can currently control and take action on.'cause when we take action, we get feedback and we can adjust the action when it's a could do or a should do. A lot of times we're talking about something that might happen in the distant future. We've identified a priority that we're not currently able to take action on, and that doesn't actually start the domino fall. So what's the One Thing I can do such that by doing it means that you're looking for something that's levered. That is not a one-to-one, if I put in an ounce of pressure, I get an ounce of feedback back. Right. It's not a one-to-one ratio. You're looking for a long line of dominoes. And the scale of that is that if you knock this thing over, it'll knock over so many dominoes in your business or work or life or health that everything else gets a little easier or necessary. And so it's a very specifically worded question, but I think if you ask a big question, that's how you get big answers. I think a lot of people are getting small answers 'cause they're asking very poor questions of their life.

Cody: 14:46

Yeah. And I love the, the domino effect, how you apply that because every domino you say in the book has the power as 50% larger than the previous, domino. And as a result, when you're 18 dominoes in it has the ability to be the size of the leaning tower pizza, the 23rd domino. You can knock down the Eiffel Tower, the 31st, Mount Everest. And 57 is the span between the distance earth and the moon, which, seems a little mind boggling.

Jay Papasan: 15:12

Anything that grows at an exponential rate eventually blows your mind

Cody: 15:17

because

Jay Papasan: 15:17

it'll always look like a hockey stick on its side. It looks like it's flat and nothing's happening when you step back, until you hit the, elbow of the curve and it just starts doubling at a crazy rate. The first time I really experienced this idea of compounding or exponential growth, we were writing the Millionaire Real Estate Investor, which was our second work, and there's a story that Gary told in there about choosing some sum for payment. It's like a parable, or you could have a penny that doubled every day for 30 days. Do you remember that story? Because I think you've read that book. A penny doubled every day. I want to say by the 30th day is like $7 million. And you're like, what? And it's because our brains don't, we, it's very hard. We think linear, right? that's how our brains work to think exponentially. It kind of blows our mind. So every domino can knock over one that's 50% larger. A guy named Lauren Whitehead, we read about him in the American Journal of Physics. It was 1983. We were back in the archives, but he's the one who discovered it and he built them out of wood. And he said the first domino fell with a tick. And the 10th ended with a large slam. It was as large as a doorframe. And I remember reading that and I was like, it blew my mind. and I was like, this idea of lining up your dominoes, I thought was pretty cool. But the idea that they would get bigger. And so I went into Excel it took me a while to figure it out, but I figured out how to start with two inches. And grow it by 50% every time. and then I wanted to see how big it got and how fast. And I don't know if you've read that book Made To Stick by Dan and Chip Heath. I had read that, that not that long ago. And they talk about, it's so much cooler to explain things like in story, they tell a story in there about a thing of buttered popcorn in the movies they had laid out like bacon and eggs and a cheeseburger and milkshakes, like this giant stuff of food. And they said, this bowl of popcorn has this much fat. and that that's how they made the impression. And that's kind of the leap that we took to, well, these are famous structures, the leaning tower, how tall is that? And which domino would that? And when I started going through this inventory of famous, tall things to figure out where they would end, um, the Eiffel Tower kind of blew my mind. I, I lived in Paris for, three and a half years. and when you're in Paris and you see it, you don't realize it's almost as tall as the Empire State Building because there's no buildings around it. You've got no sense of scale. The tallest buildings around it are like eight stories, and it's just ginormous. But you can't tell that, because there's nothing, there's no backdrop against it. So anyway, that's the idea of, I believe that that hockey stick growth, exponential growth, that is the shape of exponential success. It can happen with your skills and mastery. It can happen with your business success. if you look at success stories long enough, time and time again, it's uncanny. People who have blown up in the world toiling in a garage, right? Um, in front of a keyboard for usually eight to 12 years before they blew up. and They were growing and getting stronger and then they burst into the scene. think about James Clear, he was enormously successful as a blogger and newsletter writer, he spent, I wanna say 11 or 12 years before he published Atomic Habits, growing an audience. And I think when he started he had like 400,000 readers, which is crazy. That's huge. Well, he went from selling 2000 a week with Covid to selling 35,000 a week, and I, I don't know if he sold like 8 million copies now, like he is by far winning and lapping the rest of US nonfiction authors. he's got like 3 million people reading him. that elbow of the curve happened with his book and he blew up in a huge way. He had the right topic at the right time, and he was the person with authority. So I, I'm sorry, I digress.'cause this is a bit of a soapbox for me. I look for these patterns once you learn to recognize them, you're like, great, how do I build this in my life?

Cody: 19:35

Yeah. love that. I mean, I, I, knew James Clear before he was successful, and I saw him take off so, so much. It was, incredible. You just start seeing him everywhere. It's like, all of a sudden, uh, he was able to take all of these ideas that he'd been talking about. He had a, I, I believe he was blogging, was it once every day or once every week. and he just did that so consistently.

Jay Papasan: 19:57

an

Cody: 19:58

week.

Jay Papasan: 19:59

study it was twice a week. Yeah.

Cody: 20:01

And all of his ideas, they're, they're not nothing, they're not really any new ideas, but he was able to hone some of these preexisting ideas and put them together in a way that was comprehensible for other people to really follow. And I think he, he grew really the idea of the atomic habits, which in a way also relate to the concept of, the domino effect, where you, you need to start small and then that gains your confidence and you just focus on what's in front of you. And then the next thing and the next thing.

Jay Papasan: 20:32

He pulled from a lot of the same research we did. Like I was reading research by BJ Fog and same people, like when I look at his, um, the back of his book, I'm like, oh, that looks a lot like the back of ours.'cause we were writing about habits. we came out a little bit after the power of habit, but he pulled from a lot of the same sources in what his, his gift. And this is the thing people will say, but someone's already done it. Every, almost everything that James shares and almost everything we share in the One Thing someone else had already done. But you always have an opportunity to present something in a new way. Gary and I both are, we think a lot, we think big. I can be intellectual, but at the end of the day, if I'm reading a book, I want to know what to do with it. tend to be very pragmatic. I wanna put this into action and that's where Gary and I align, and that's one of the reasons I admire James' work. It wasn't an intellectual treaties it was very functional. If I wanted to build habits, he gave me a lot of steps. Very simple ones to go do that.

Cody: 21:37

and so you've, you are clearly somebody who reads a lot. I'm wondering is are there any, any techniques, any, anything that you do in particular that, whether it's choosing a book based on an issue that you're presently encountering, whether it's say, pausing and pondering something, is there anything, what's your process, whether it comes to, to. Choosing a book to read and how to retain or apply that information because there's so much of this controversy between, some people say that you shouldn't use books as therapy and that they're really not as helpful. And I find it kind of mixed. I think it's not just reading a book. There has to be some follow up action. And I'm wondering what's your process like?

Jay Papasan: 22:18

Oh, uh, you're walking into my wheelhouse. I love this question 'cause I've, books are kind of the through line of my life. I was an editor, a bookseller now, um, I got to be a co-author and now an author. And, uh, gosh, I've, I've spent a lot of time writing books and editing them, so I will tell you. one of my coaches in our One Thing business, he says, read for what you need. And so I agree with that. I, every year, and I've tracked it now for going on 13 and a half years, I set out at the beginning of the year to read 50 books. I had a mentor, um, he wrote a book called FedEx Delivers, and I'm going blank on his name. but you look the book up, it was a bestseller. And he lived in Memphis where I grew up. So we went to coffee and he said, Jay, if you want to be a professional writer, a professional author, key skill is in creativity, is connecting dots. And that's, that to me is the simplest way I can describe creativity, is your ability to connect the dots in a new and interesting way, make connections between ideas. was like, okay, I can buy that. I was like, 18. he goes, if you wanna be a professional, need to have more dots to connect. Which means not only do you, I knew that you had to write if you wanted to be a writer goes, but you have to read with purpose. And so I always took that seriously, but it took me a long time to learn, to love to read nonfiction. I love fiction. That was my first love. So today, those 50 books every year, and I think I'm up to like 513 since I started tracking, but I've never actually hit 50 in a year because I refuse to read short books to make the win. I just, I usually end up around 48 and Wendy, it drives my wife crazy. She's like, can I just give you a couple of short books so you can, it's like, that's not the point. The goal is to get me read books to always have a book in my hand instead of just just watching sports or tv. So I read 25 Fiction and 25 nonfiction is kind of the books I select I write about personal development. I write about finance. I also surprisingly have found myself talking a lot about health. So every year I usually read probably four or five books on investing in finance. And I'm an English French major, so it's not like I showed up and was hungry for this information. I just kind of evolved into having a curiosity and then became an investor. And now I know people who understand how money works tend to hold onto theirs and get more of it. And not that money matters, but it is a currency that a lot of our life depends on. And a lot of the things I do love some of it. So that being said, health, relationships. So I usually, I can't show you, but I've got stacks of books. If I think I might read it, I usually buy it. And then when I'm looking at my goals, I'll start grabbing books from the stacks and creating my little, I think they call 'em in Japanese. Is it? sto, I can't remember. They have a word for a stack of books that you haven't yet read, which I love.'cause that is every, in every room of my life. I've got one of those stacks. But I'll usually have a book that's my kind of OnDeck nonfiction. I tend to read nonfiction books in paperback form or hardcover because I write actively in them. So now we're getting to the point of your question. I've selected books that I think will help me achieve my goals, read for what you need, or help me have a deeper sense of mastery over the things that I want to be in authority around or an expert around. And when I'm reading, I'm not just underlining and highlighting. That's great. That's a way for you to find the parts that you like. A lot of times I'm tying those together with phrases in the margin so that if I were to grab that book, . I could flip through it and very concisely between the underlines and what I've written between them, basically have my very own cliff notes. Sometimes if there's white pages at the beginning or the end, I will create a small summary of the book. And this has been my process for 20 years maybe. So if there's ever a fire and I lose this bookshelf, I'm gonna regret that method of using pen and paper maybe. But I find the analog format helps me focus even on a Kindle, which I enjoy reading on my fiction on an electronic book. I'm killing fewer trees. what I know is that my brain is still in an electronic environment. And for me, that doesn't always work for focus. But if I have a piece of paper in front of me, I will be very, very disciplined about keeping my brain there. And not looking at my phone. So that's just my cheat. And one of these days I'll figure out how to grab my summaries and make them electronic so that they can never die in a flood or fire. But the act of writing them, I'm synthesizing the ideas. This is an important statement, not just underlining, I'm not just writing things down verbatim because I'm kind of summarizing and synthesizing. My brain is processing the ideas differently and my research says that that makes it a lot more likely that I will retain that information. I almost always, and this is just me who I am, but you could choose to do it, get to the end of the book is based on this, do I have a paradigm or a model for my life than that is different than what I had before? I don't know if you've read that book Principles, by The Investor. It's a big black book. I'm trying to think. But his principles are what I would call models. how to think about hiring a VC firm. Here's how to think about this, right? What is your mental model for how to approach this problem? And I look at this book and say, does this impact the models I currently have? Does it create a new one? And I try to make sure that I'm aware of that. I actually have a diary electronic one, and it's, I call it my own mental models, after the Charlie Munger, he has his mental lattice work. He wrote about, um, I know Shane Parrish who writes a blog called the Farnam Street, which I love. He latched onto that, which is how I found him.'cause I was googling around Charlie Munger's mental lattice work and reading as much as I could before it had been published. So I found him that way, but I collect them. But like, what I want is, if it's important to me, I want to have a model for how I approach it. So I'm not reinventing the wheel every single time I show up. It's not about being robotic, it's about being purposeful. And I don't do it for everything, but I have a model for hiring. I have a model for training in the first 100 days. I have a mental model for how I believe money is made and lost for investing in real estate, for investing in businesses. are big things in the stakes can be high. I have a mental model for my health and it's not all my ideas. I'm just taking what I think is the best and trying to make it actionable. So I take notes and synthesize wherever possible. I top grade a model or at a new model. A lot of times what I'm reading is actually more reinforcement for something I already believe to be true. And as someone who teaches and writes, it's like, great, I've got new facts, I've got new research to support that. But I tend to be very slow to get rid of a model that is working at a very high level for me. I, I know the temptation of novelty and the moment you move to a new model, it, it's one of the reasons, even though I know there's risk in these books behind me getting burnt in all of my notes going away, I'm resistant because I know there will be a learning curve for me to start a new model and I won't be as effective for a very long time.'cause I've been doing this one for over 20 years. highly effective. So there you go. That's how I read to learn. And do read, I take notes and I synthesize them and then I try to move them into a model for action whenever possible. And that's how I believe it translates to results in the real world.

Cody: 30:48

Yeah, I, I agree. And it reminds me so much of Ryan holiday's, personal version of that, which is even more extensive than yours, where he goes after he's done a book, he goes back and he rewrites all of the highlights that he made into a separate book that's more similar to a commonplace book, which is popularized with Benjamin Franklin, et cetera. and so I think ultimately that is probably the most time consuming, but also probably one of the most effective because he seems to be one of the most, the smartest and most, uh, stable and, happy people that I've ever had the pleasure of meeting in my life. Uh, personally, I have not been able.

Jay Papasan: 31:26

There's like a German, I think that engineered some of that system that he uses for the note cards. I know what I mean. I've gone and did deep dive. I know a couple of writers who do it. I. There's a part of me, I was like, man, I did a lot of this on Evernote for years, and now it's kind of locked into a platform, so I get the benefit of having an analog system. You're not locked into any software. Yeah. But I admire that. My hat's off to him. I don't know that I'm that patient today

Cody: 31:55

Right.

Jay Papasan: 31:56

and spend that much time, but man, rewriting all of those quotes is a reason that just all flows out of his head when you're interviewing him.

Cody: 32:04

Exactly, and I think for me, I'm, I'm in the, web 2.0 crowd, where I use read wise.Io, which is probably the most popular version, where it's able to sync with Kindle highlights. And every day I get an email of various highlights from books. I will tag them and if a highlight feels particularly relevant to me, I add it to a quiz where I'm able to either ask myself a question about this if it shows up again, or I'm able to, to remove part of the, of the quote of the phrase. And I try to recall what that is and I can decide is this more or less important? And so it's, it's nowhere near as effective as I think Ryan, or even your method, that seems like to be a little bit of a happy medium where it's not too much, extra effort.

Jay Papasan: 32:49

I thought you were gonna say like, and you do it all in obsidian or one of those, so

Cody: 32:53

Oh, I'm not that, no.

Jay Papasan: 32:55

of them Yeah, they've, they've made it electronic, what Ryan does in some ways, which is really cool too. Um, yeah, I haven't played with read wise. I love the idea being able to tap into other people's highlights. I think it might be, just think as an interesting idea, kind of having a conversation with an unknown. number of people reading things that you're not currently reading and you're, they're just sharing the highlights. these are the things like, I almost always, when I read a Kindle book, I turn on the x-ray, so you can see where other people have highlighted, and I find it somewhat instructive. Right? It's kind of interesting. What, what is it that catches the world's eye?

Cody: 33:36

Yeah. and really, reading is something where it's becoming less common now, where we have the age of TikTok and it seems that it's also weakening our attention spans. And in, in the book there you talk about this concept of the, the most important thing isn't always connected to our results. Whereas, like we might think that, well, Disney makes most of their money selling merchandise at Star Wars, but in fact it's the movies that drive the sale of the merchandise. and just like productivity, it's quite effective, the idea that we might not see a financial component to say, sleeping along eight hours a day or, or reading 30 minutes a day. But that's, that seems to add up and it has this effect that we can't always put a metric on.

Jay Papasan: 34:24

Yeah, I think that it's this ability to kind of trace your, your success to its roots. And identify those things that on the surface don't seem as inherently valuable. I thought you actually said it very well me. Like people would say, oh, but you write all the time. Yes. But I think that the reading allows me to write it at a higher level and that's kind of the dominoes knocking each other down because I read and I take notes and I do it in a systematic way. Like a lot of my quotes and things, I have a document that I drop them into what is cool about electronic and sometimes with now you can do it with your phone. You can take a photograph and then copy and paste straight from that and 'cause it's very easy, it picks up the writing. Now with ai, like I build quote banks and idea banks and so a lot of times if I'm interrupting my reading, it's because I've got an idea for writing because I'm, again, I'm reading for what I need. I'm reading to be a better writer. and The fiction is just for my enjoyment, by the way. Um, and sometimes it spurs thoughts, but if you have a mechanism for recording those inspirations as you go, then you can take action on 'em later. I heard, uh, James Clear and Tim Ferriss do an interview and he was describing his notes and stories doc, he's got a big Google sheet that he uses and I was like, wow, that sounds like my Google documents that I use. And I have multiple ones. He's got one with different tabs. And I was like, okay. So we're all doing versions of the same thing. And I think that's a very important model for people to listen to. when you hear about people with extraordinary outcomes. Look for the common pattern. They may be doing it differently. You're doing it electronically. I'm doing it in analog. James Clear is recording his in a Google sheet. I'm doing it in a Google Doc. The mediums that you're using may or may not be relevant, but what's the pattern? There's usually a pattern that a lot of people who've experienced something extraordinary. Success in that is common, and that usually is the model. That's my belief. I want to know how to climb Mount Everest, I'm gonna look at the 20 people who did it the least health repercussions, the highest opportunity to come back down, alive that didn't get frostbite. Like I've got my criteria for what I'm gonna call a successful summit of Everest. Then I'm gonna ask, what did they all do in common? not what did they uniquely do, because if there are nine or 10 things that all of them said, and I did this, chances are that's part of the fundamental model to repeat that success.

Cody: 37:01

Yeah. Uh, unfortunately nowadays with Everest, it's probably more so dependent on how well did the people ahead of you and behind you study and learn how to do this climb, uh, rather than your own individual success. but I digress.

Jay Papasan: 37:15

I say that's example.'cause I won't even, like, I have friends that have done Kilimanjaro and I'm just like, I'm 55. and I have kids. I don't think that I'm gonna do anything there's that much of a risk of life and limb. Like I ran with the Bulls when I was 19 years old. God bless me back then for doing something crazy and fun and I've jumped out of an airplane. Probably not gonna do that now. Adventure is a song in a different tune at my age.

Cody: 37:40

hmm. but I suppose you still adventure in, in business and ideas. so currently, what would you say are the, like, the hidden things that have enabled you to have the success? I know that, that you're considered one of, one of the most successful people in the real estate industry, or influential at least. you work at a, I believe a billion dollar company with one of the world's, richest people. It seems that, that you've been able to put yourself into a position of success. And inevitably, there's, there's a lot of things that are, are obvious on the forefront that you've done. But what are the things behind, I know that we've already went into depth about reading, and I know that recently you've been going into health. so what are some of the habits or ideologies that you'd say that has been, you know, it's below the surface layer, but have helped to contribute to the success that, we see today?

Jay Papasan: 38:31

this. Is that not something I get asked very often? So. I may give you answers that are not necessarily in the order of priority, and I'll reserve the right to go back and say that third thing I said is actually the most important. So it's a great question, but usually when I try to give answers, I try to think of if I only had one answer, that should be the first thing out of my mouth. I don't quite know. I think that I've made a habit of thinking big. I think that's something that I, my parents, my dad was a leader and a little bit of an entrepreneur. I do think they were actually conservative and I was a little bit risk averse, but I did dream and then I started working for someone who always encouraged me to think bigger for my life. And that would've been, that's my writing partner and business partner, Gary Keller. so I do think the mindset of allowing yourself to think big and ask big questions of your life is very important. And the consistent theme of the last 24 years of working closely with Gary, who is indeed a self-made billionaire and remarkably successful in business. He's also human, right? He stubs his toe like everybody else and has bad days and does dumb shit. That's just, he's a human but he is extraordinary at a few things. he's always pointed out when I could be thinking bigger, and I think it's really important. Number two would be to have someone in your life who is in your corner, who is going to encourage you to step out of your comfort zone. Um, I pay for coaches. I have a coaching company. I'm a part of another coaching company, like I believe fundamentally, if you want to be your best, you need someone like that in your corner. I. And if you don't have a, a mentor or a business partner or a romantic partner that's gonna do that for you, there's a whole field of people that will take a check and say, I will be your accountability partner. So I think mindset and accountability are the bookends of all huge success, and I try to partake of that. and I came from a humble place, like I did think I was a risk averse person to begin with, and I still kind of am, but I found ways to trick myself into making giant leaps forward, even if I'm scared. Over the last 24 years talked about models. I think the people who perform at the highest levels over a long period of time are not just being willy-nilly about it, whether they have a formal model or an unconscious one. They have an approach to their success and they're incrementally trying to make it better as they go. So you can go down the long digression into kaizen and the incremental improvements. But this idea I was sharing like, how do I think about investing? Does this book change that? What would I add to my thesis around that? being kind of purposeful in their approach to things that matter. And a lot of people hear that and they think robotic. It's not the truth. The beauty of a model is it gives you a simple framework that's actually highly effective and predictive of success to approach with it. It actually uncomplicates your life. So think big, have an accountability relationship in your life. I think when it matters to you, try to work from a proven model and then make that better over time. And I'll give you one more and then we'll stop.'cause I, I probably could go into other success principles. I do believe that it really, really, really matters who you surround yourself with. there's research that we read in the book, it's buried at the back, right? Your, your environment doesn't support your goals. That's a thief of productivity at the end of the book. And one of them is people and one of them is environment. If one of your friends becomes obese, and it can even happen if the primary nature of your relationship is social media, you become 50% more likely to become obese as well. That's how powerful our environment shapes our sense of what is okay and normal. we would tell this to our kids, I don't know Cody if you've got kids, but I've got a 20-year-old and a 19-year-old at this point. Most of my work around this is done because if they don't know it now, I'm kind of screwed 'cause they're in college. But like I want them to choose their friends wisely. Nothing will impact their grades, whether they do drugs or not do drugs where they get in trouble more than the people they spend a lot of time with. And how they think about those things. So I want them to play up. And by that means like if I have a choice, I wanna be the dumbest person in the room every single time I wanna surround myself with people. Codie Sanchez, if you know who that is, she's a friend and lives here in Austin. She's said it on Brandon Turner's Better Life podcast. And I love this. She goes, you need to hang out with people for whom your dream is just another Tuesday. And I still get chill bumps when I say that out loud.'cause I was like, it is so true. because honestly, if you hang out with those people and they think big, right? And they believe in accountability and they work from models, guess what? Just choosing to be in that small friend group or peer group, you'll start to do those things too. because as human beings, we want to belong. We want to be a part of that little group. And so, I mean, I always hung out with smarter kids. I'm naturally a B student, but of my friends were in the honor society, yada, yada, yada. And so, man, I was making a's just so I wouldn't be embarrassed to hang out at the school table with them. So there you go. There's four ideas. And it's funny, the last one, did you hear it? kind of moved it to the front. If you could only do one of those things, hang out with people who believe in those things and are performing better than you, and it'll rub off.

Cody: 44:32

Yeah. and, uh, that reminds me of, that famous quote by Jim Rowan, is that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, it certainly is true. And if you hang around people that are more successful than you, then, I mean, on, on one hand there's the aspect of how do you avoid feeling envy about that? How do you, how do you shift that to, uh, seeing a desire, for your future self and, envisioning yourself? And that actually takes me back to, to when I was young. I mean, I wrote a book called From Foster Care to Millionaire, and, it starts off really what was the key to my own success is I was a poor kid that went to a rich school and every day on the school bus, we'd go by, it was one of the richest high schools in the country. We'd go by these huge mansions, some of them had helipads on the roof. And I would just see all of this success and, you know, kids pulling up a Mercedes. And I, I would see what I could not have. And the very act of seeing it and being exposed to this other culture is what drove this inner desire, this inner flames inner ambition that I wanted to achieve something too. Lo and behold, as far as I know, I'm, I'm more successful than any of the of the rich kids that also went to that school. but yeah, it certainly rubs off on you and I think that's a, it's very, very key insight. And you, you should try to identify who are the friends or people you associate with that are pulling you down. And I think we don't really ask ourselves these, these fundamental questions to help ourselves achieve the vision and the life that we dream for ourselves. Because so many people are just stuck in this mindset of, of that they can't do things. I mean, the, the amount of people I'm sure you and I meet, that you can just sense when you speak to them that their sense of ambition, that they're, they're self confidence is so lacking. And I mean, I've seen 40 and 50 year olds that, that they still feel bad about themselves as if like they were picked on when they were kids and they haven't been able to resolve that, that internal view of themselves. And it's really like I was somebody that I thought I'd never achieve anything in life. And just by starting small, by doing those little small things, you achieve One Thing, you achieve something a little bit bigger, the domino effect, and it cascades. And then I realized, wait, there's so many successful people that most assuredly never thought they would be as successful as they are now. And it's not that they were, some gifted child or, blessed in the universe. It's that it's that they were able to sequentially allow themselves to, to dream big and achieve greater and greater things in their life.

Jay Papasan: 47:05

I love that and I love your story and I hope people are inspired by it. I also know sometimes that story of our self-image becomes a, a trap of kinds that you do need help to get out of. I believe, um, a lot of us, I wanna believe all of us have always have the tools to make change, positive change for our lives, but I've also seen that some people really do need help. So I'll just throw that out there. But I wouldn't start first with the premise that you probably already have everything you need to take the first step be moving to becoming a whole new you and your proof of that. And I also think that there's a gift. If you're a little bit below average, I think that being average, whatever average is in your world, like that place where you grew up, that rich high school for them, average was a Mercedes and above average was a helicopter, right? Like they had a very skewed sense of what was normal. But when you're below average and you're looking up, you have to do something different to change that outcome. When you're in the middle and everybody is kind of, it's a fat middle, there's just not a lot of pain to average, below average, there's usually a gap that you're aware of. And I can't, I could list a thousand times where I've seen someone, a student, someone we're coaching, someone in a training who has clearly got a disadvantage. and Is therefore motivated at the very least, to not stand out as someone disadvantaged, but the simple act of doing one purposeful thing, adopting one really good model for their life, I'm gonna start getting up early and exercising and I'll just have more energy and when I get to school, maybe that'll help. Like whatever. Like a lot of times there's unintended positive consequences, but they take control of this tiny thing. They often will leapfrog average look up on, they're on the other side of it just by being purposeful. and there was good research, I can't think of the woman's name, Dr. Megan, we talked to her, she was in Australia she shared with us this idea that when people form a positive habit in their life, it has a halo effect. They were working with all of these college students and asked them to form a habit. the research that I still believe is the. On average, it takes 66 days, a lot longer than most people give it to form a habit. I haven't seen anything that's been published and verified that has refuted that idea to me. So it takes a long time. But they said these kids would report back like, yes, I'm drinking eight glasses of water a day, or I'm exercising for 20 minutes a day, whatever their habit was, even quitting smoking. but then they said, I've also noticed that there's fewer dirty dishes in the sink and I'm eating a little healthier. And I believe it's kinda like the, do you know the Pygmalion effect? Cody?

Cody: 50:07

I've heard of it. It's been a while now.

Jay Papasan: 50:09

Okay. I I, It's perfect 'cause there's probably a lot of people listening to this, walking their dog, driving their car, whatever on their, their, their bike and they're going, what the heck's the Pygmalion effect they made, the play My Fair Lady, and it, the Pygmalion Effect is this idea that when someone believes in you, I. You perform better, we rise to the expectations of others. maybe it was Sahil Bloom, a writer like had suggested maybe that works for ourselves. When we do this thing for ourselves and prove that we can take control of this tiny little corner of our world, we start to believe that we can do a little bit more and we get a little greedy, concsciously or unconsciously. It starts to create a positive snowball where we have a little bit more confidence in ourselves. Like, Hey, I said I was gonna quit smoking and I did. What else can I do? We start to believe in the promises we make ourselves, and that's a very, very powerful cycle to step into. And all of this coming back to, if you're listening to this thinking, but I'm at a disadvantage, maybe we need to change that paradigm. Maybe your disadvantage is actually an advantage will give you more motivation, more reasons. make one tiny change that can set it set in motion, a series of changes that will help you outstrip all of the people that you're currently looking up to.

Cody: 51:33

Yeah. That, that's so true and very powerful. And, there was a phase in my life in which I really focused inward and I was, I was trying to see what do successful people do, because I was this person before success. I had a business, didn't have a lot of money and I was trying to think what do successful people, and I started to read Forbes and Ink back when they were actually good and that it was like successful people. They, they read, they exercise, they meditate. And so I started to form this core foundation for myself, which I called my Mindbody soul routine, where I would exercise for 60 minutes, I would read for 30, and I would meditate for 20. And I realized that not everybody has the ability to do something like that, but to be able to establish this core foundational self and where I'm putting resources towards myself instead of just my business. you establish this foundation just by focusing on just trying to build that one habit as James Clear would say. And then you go from having these established habits, these established mindsets, and you're fixing all these things that kind of see like the, the success that you have in business and your life. they're all investments in time that you've put into building out the, these mindsets and these habits. And as you say in the book, extraordinary results require focused attention and time. Time on One Thing means time away from another, and it makes balance impossible. But it's only by focusing on One Thing in particular, that you're able to create that into that habit, that self-fulfilling, prophecy or cycle.

Jay Papasan: 52:57

Yep. It's like, uh, if you've ever used a magnifying glass to harness the rays of the sun to like do a wood burning for your sixth grade class, like you have to hold it there for a while for it to get the intensity to actually make the chemical change happen. I think we all want it to happen faster, and the reality is if people could just show up every day for a lot less than they think it would happen faster over time, I think the level of success that people can gain in five years would astound them, but they want it to happen in one year and they often quit because of that. If we could change our expectations on her time horizon, truly believe that people were willing to do just a handful of things over time. Most people could transform their lives in less than five years if they could be patient enough to do those things for that long, The dominoes get bigger, it takes a little while for that momentum to get to a place where people start to look up and go, Cody, dang. Like, what's changed? Is your business taking off? Like . You won't recognize it before the people around you will start to recognize it. It's like when you're doing a diet or something and you feel like nothing's happening and you're not losing weight anymore, and then someone just outta the blue says, your face looks different, what's going on? And you realize that there's this transformation that's happening so slowly for you that you no longer recognize it. But other people who intermediately will show up in your life will see it and go, it's like your nephew. You only see him in the holidays once a year. You're like, dang kid. You shot up over the year. Like he didn't notice it, but he grew six inches.

Cody: 54:38

Yeah. And so, the growth and the focus that we often experience, it's hard for ourselves to notice it. it's almost like, like the boiling the frog in the pot, which is actually not true. But, you know, it's a great analogy where we often don't notice these things happening around us or to ourselves. And so I think that goes back to having great mentors, having great friends, people who pull you up and inspire you and show you what is possible. Because if anything, we need more of what's possible in today's increasingly distracted world. and I, I know that we're running out of time, but I just want to ask this, this thing, if, if you were writing the One Thing today. In 2024, to address, let's say, the new challenges that we might have with distraction or kids' attention spans or even ai and how it's, affecting our ability to think or perform our work. what would you say, what would be that new chapter?

. Jay Papasan: 55:32

you worded it differently than I've heard in the past. I know that based on what you just asked me, I would change anything. I think that AI on distractions, I do feel like the truths that we have in the book would be effective for those. And I think almost always it's a combination of learning to focus those selected disciplines for small periods of time around the important things up a lot of distraction over time. You can be very undisciplined for a lot of your time if you're disciplined for a little regularly disciplined for a little. the thing that I first think up when I think about what I would add to it today is the idea of core values. You know, we built the book around this idea that people who have a clear sense of purpose know what their priorities are. And when you are acting on your priorities, you're as productive as you could be. That was one of our thesises and it was conveniently all peace, purpose, priority, productivity, you name it. and what we found is a lot of people came out of this book saying, I need to figure out what my purpose is. Why am I here? Which kind of brings us back to the beginning of our conversation and it's very challenging. A lot of people feel like it's heavy, feels very, grandiose, and it's hard to get their brain around it. But in the years in our training and our coaching, in 30 minutes, I can take you through a very standard psychological exercise where we can identify your top three core values and those become a wonderful compass for your life. people can't see it, but every time I open my phone, I've got my top three core values, impact, family, and abundance. And they've changed a little bit over the last 10 years. The order has at least, but I believe that if I'm gonna make a big decision, it needs to be a nine out of 10 on those three

Cody: 57:22

So, do you keep that on your phone as a wallpaper?

Jay Papasan: 57:25

yeah. Yeah. that you, the average person looks at their phone 87 times a day and I was like, I look at my phone, I use it for my alarm clock. I have lots of bad habits with it. Maybe the first thing that I notice about it should be the thing that should be core to my being, my core values. So I tried to keep my, I call it my compass. If I have a big decision to make, it should be in alignment with those three. Which means theoretically it's in alignment with my purpose, and I believe it is. I've done some of that work over the last few years and gotten a lot clearer about where I want to be in 10 years and beyond, and it does line up with those, but that acts as a very handy compass for me. Like that's a simple exercise. Oh, I'm thinking about leaving my job at X and starting at Y. Well, based on what I understand about that choice, on a scale of one to 10, will my impact be greater or lesser? a scale of one to 10, will it get me closer to my family or pull me farther away? On a scale of one to 10, right, would it create abundance in the world or is it making one person very rich at the expense of others? And I don't have scientific answers for those, but your gut usually speaks pretty loudly and a lot of things will be really high on one and really poor on a few of the others. Someone asked me why three? If I'm using the Compass analogy, I have to plot a course and I only have to go through one dot, I can draw a line in any direction and go through that one dot. It's got zero sense of direction. If I have two dots, can always draw a line through it. So any decision can be hit both of them, but it could go in two directions. It doesn't gimme clarity. If I have three dots, it's very, very hard to align those three dots so that the line more or less cross through all of them, which very much means I'm saying no to a lot of stuff that doesn't align. Don't know if that's always true or not, but that's how it's been for experience for me. So I feel like that's been innovation in our training and coaching that has helped give people a lot more clarity for how they should lead their lives. And it doesn't show up in the book at all. So there will be a day in the future, maybe the next couple of years, where we come out with a second edition. And we have a few other things that we've learned, but that's the biggest one.'cause I think it would make the biggest impact. And that's my number one value.

Cody: 59:55

Yeah, I absolutely love that there are so few people in this world that have even put an ounce of thought into what are my values? Because it's often those times when you're not sure what to do. We are faced with one or two decisions that could impact yourself or others. And you either make, you can make the wrong decision or you don't make a decision at all, which is also making a decision. But if we are reminded about our values, which I also love, you just gave me a great app idea of having the values. What if we can put everything that is meaningful to us that we need to remind ourselves on our phone wallpaper to remind us?'cause that's, that's a, I love that. It's an amazing idea

Jay Papasan: 1:00:35

I worked with at Best Self Company. If you know her,

Cody: 1:00:39

Oh yeah. I've, I've, I, I know her, met her several times. Yeah.

Jay Papasan: 1:00:43

I created little cards on business cards for, I think it was 200 different core values. I looked at all these different inventories and I walked her through the exercise in a coffee shop, remember saying, does this work? And she goes, that was a great experience, and I developed a process. So she actually partnered with me to make core values deck, and I've always thought it'd be really cool to turn that into an app someday I could see the word impact and kind of swipe left or right, and then accumulate the sense of which ones mattered, and then narrowed them down and then create. So if you wanna, like, we should talk, if you want to do something with that.

Cody: 1:01:18

Yeah. Uh, thank you again. That's a, it's brilliant. And, overall, Jay, I mean, this has been an incredible conversation and I know our listeners have gained so much value from your insights despite how short this conversation has been. But before we wrap up, I'd love to know where can people find out about you and your work?

Jay Papasan: 1:01:37

I think the first stop should be the One Thing.com with the number one, the, the number One Thing.com. Um, everything about our book, the podcast, which I am as of 11 11 24, I'll be the host for the first time in eight years. I'm leaning, leaning into the company around the One Thing. It's where my passion is and we've got all kinds of free resources. Whether you read the book or not, you can go and start to tap into some of the stuff that we've talked about. And frankly, Cody, I can't hide, as best I can tell, among close to, what is it, 8 billion inhabitants on Earth. There is only one Jay Papasan, in the age of AI powered search engines, I just can't hide. But I would love it if they found me at theonething.com.

Cody: 1:02:21

Well, I wanna thank you, Jay, for sharing your wisdom with us today. what I love most about the One Thing is that it's, it's not just another productivity book. It really is a framework for living a more purposeful and meaningful life. And that's really what this podcast is about. So, to our listeners, remember, as Jay has shown us today, extraordinary success isn't just about doing everything, it's about doing the right thing. If you enjoyed this episode, please don't forget to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. Until next time, keep focusing on your One Thing and we'll catch you in the next episode.