28. Jay Papasan: The ONE Thing (How To Achieve More By Doing Less)
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Hey everyone, it's Alex from Alex and Books, and you're listening to The Reader's Journey, the podcast that takes you on a journey to meet amazing authors, discover brilliant books, and learn valuable lessons along the way. Now, let's get started. Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of The Reader's Journey podcast. Today we have Jay Papazian, the co-author of The One Thing. Jay, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Hey, thanks for having me, Alex. I'm happy to be here. So I really loved your book, and I'm familiar with the one thing, the main message of the book. But for people that haven't read the book or listeners who are just hearing about it for the first time, what's like the big idea or meaning of the one thing? I think a lot of the ideas are going to be familiar. I think what makes the book distinct is that we give people an approach. It's really about can we identify our number one priority at any given time?

And then do we have a path to actually accomplishing it? So it's really an approach to your work that actually works as an approach to your marriage, your health. It's an approach for getting important stuff done. Hmm.

Yeah, and I see it's like called it focus, but then nobody would have read it. Yeah, yeah. It's a great, like catchy title. And I think, yeah, this book is kind of like a like a Trojan horse. It's about productivity, but so much more than just being productive and work. You can do cover like marriage, relationships, career and so many other aspects of life. And I think that's one aspect like I really enjoyed from the book.

And I'd really love to dive into some of the practical lessons. And so one of the early lessons you teach is that instead of having a to-do list, you want to have a success list. Can you explain what that is and how it works? Sure. I just want to make one comment. I think Gary and I set out to write a productivity business book. But along the way, I just realized he takes this approach in every area of his life.

And there is real practicality in not having to have one mode for your personal life, one mode for your business life, one mode for your relationship. Like if you can have an approach that works in all levels, it makes a lot of sense. So just to give you a little background, for a couple of years, we tried to use an app to help people track their one thing and build habits. And it was okay, but I felt like it was a little bit of a distraction for people, but we still got a lot of data.

The number one application for the book was actually health. So our joke inside is like we set out to write a productivity and business book, and we actually wrote a health and lifestyle book because that seems to be where people go first. So having said that, you want to ask me about to-do list. I actually had this conversation with one of our new hires that was apologizing because she's been a list person her whole life.

And I'm like, lists are fine. There's an amazing book. Have you read the checklist manifesto? Oh, it just shows you the power of building things into a simple checklist. Now, the thing about a checklist that's different than a to-do list, it's an order of operations. And I think what turns a to-do list into a success list is a similar kind of innovation. It's just about bringing priority to it.

So in a lot of our corporate training and workshops, I don't do a lot of that, but my partner, Jeff Wood, and his team does. We can go in and get people to bring their to-do list, right? And so most people have on average around 20 to 25 tasks at any given time that they know they have to do. And I can guarantee you, like my little 80% task list that I keep for the little stuff is probably longer.

But if you want to make it into a success list, it's just a couple of quick questions. It would be, Alex, take a look at that list and just quickly identify maybe a star or underline the things that you know matter more than the others. Great. Say, great. Now take those and start a new list. So now you've gone from 25 to, say, 10.

Say, great. Now, if you could only do one of those 10 things this week, you got it done. Only one and nothing else got any movement. What would that be? All right. So people, what's great about this? I wasn't sure. Most people know the answers. They're like, whoa, gosh, I've got to do X. You know, I've got to prepare for the SAT or whatever that is, right? So you move that to the number one. Say, great. Let's say you get that done. It happens. You get it done a lot faster than you thought. And you now have time for a second thing.

what would your number two be? And great, so they move something up. And what actually happens is people go from a list of 20 to 30 things to often a list of three to five. Because even that list of 10 things

They weren't actually all that important because they realized, well, if I just did number one, there's this other stuff that doesn't matter. And that's where the subtitle, right? I mean, you have this surprisingly simple truth and we have a focusing question. It makes everything easier or unnecessary. If you just take a moment, it usually takes no more than three or four moments to take a to-do list and turn it into a success list. It's kind of transformational what it'll do for you.

And if you've ever had one of those days where you were tasking all day long, I mean, you were crossing stuff off of your list. It's very satisfying in the moment because I love the moment of crossing it off. At the same time, my wife might ask me like,

did you have a good day? And just said, I got a lot of stuff done. And she'll, she, she knows to ask, well, was it a good day? And I'm like, no, I just was running right. Activity kind of lulls us into a false sense of productivity. And that is the difference when you're acting on your priorities, you're being productive when you're just acting on stuff. It's just busy work. So anyway, that's my spiel on to-do list. I still think they're powerful.

But you need to add another step, bring a little bit of priority to them. Yeah, 100%. That has been a big game changer in my life where I do have a to-do list and it felt great crossing things off. But there's a huge difference between crossing off throughout the trash versus work on writing your book. It's like not all tasks are created equally and just applying this simple concept of the 80-20 rule.

And you identify like which tasks are the most important. And like you said, there's a huge difference between being busy and being productive. And there's some days where I feel like I haven't done that much, but I really worked on the productive things and made a huge impact. And there's some days where I'm just running like minor chores or tasks all day and I do a lot, but it doesn't feel like I got a lot done. So that distinction was like a huge like eye-opening chapter. And I really love that part from the book.

I'll be honest, there are days and sometimes mornings where Gary and I will like we're trying to write. And when we write, we usually write for four to six hours at a time.

So it's a huge chunk of our day given to our number one activity. And he's executive chairman of the board of the largest real estate. I mean, so we both have I have a big job, too. So it's tough to make that happen. And so, you know, like every couple of weeks, we'll have a like, I just need to clear the decks. And I know you've heard of batching. So I apply the success rule to my 20 percent activities.

So like we have a whole process, like we just try to work on when we plan for our goals, we're talking about our 20%. What are the big rocks? I then have like another running list. I usually use an app or something. This is just stuff I know I have to do. And I have like a grocery list and I don't want to forget it, but I don't want to walk around thinking about it in the David Allen, you know, getting things done construct, right? Have a trusted place to put it.

And I batch those things. And those will sometimes it's a mental health morning. Sometimes it's a mental health day. But there is psychological relief from kind of clearing the decks. So I just want to acknowledge that. Like, Gary's not a robot. I'm not a robot. But if you go in and 80 percent of your days, you're living with priority.

And the other, like the two out of 10 now are the ones that you're using to just kind of clear the decks from all of the issues and challenges of modern life. You got to clear your inbox. Don't go inbox zero unless you're a psycho, right?

Like that is a complete not productive activity that just makes us feel better. Right. And then there's other stuff that we do, like whether it's Christmas cards or holiday cards or like they're kind of important. You want to get them done, but they're not really the stuff that you do in the morning. So just acknowledging there's two kinds of tasks. There's one where you want a success list and there's other ones. And if we had if I could go back and write a chapter, I would have added a chapter on batching and just said, look, this is the technique for all the other stuff.

Yeah, batching is a great tip that I do as a content creator. Instead of creating content each day in the start of the week, I'll just create all the content I need and then just schedule it. It just makes life so much easier. Jay?

There's so much great tips in your book, so I want to continue. And the next one I really enjoyed was about the myth of multitasking. Because until I read your book, I was the kind of person that would multitask because I thought, oh, the more things I'm doing, obviously the more productive I'm being. But that's a huge myth that a lot of people don't realize, right? Yeah, it's shocking that lots of smart people like you still walk around thinking that multitasking is worth bragging about.

But really, the research was very concretely done back around 2009. Basically, to explain what's happening in our brains, when you look at the research, it might have multitasking in the title, but that's not what behavioral psychologists will talk about. It's actually called switch tasking. And your brain is very rapidly switching between your primary work and your secondary work.

And it happens really fast, right? So, I mean, think about two really simple activities like walking and talking on your phone. There's almost zero interference as your brain switches from one activity to the next, but it's not doing them simultaneously. It's actually moving your focus back and forth. And so if you've ever been to a conference, it may have been a while now that it's COVID, but if you see someone having an important phone call,

A lot of times you'll see them literally turn to face like the corner, and sometimes they will bend down and put a finger in their ear. And what they're doing is they're trying to block out all of the other interference so they can actually focus on something that is more important. If I was walking across a chasm on a rope bridge, I would hang up the phone.

Right. Because I would want all of my focus on stepping on each rung. So I think we take it for granted because a lot of things listening to music while we run, it is very easy to go back and forth. But the reality is there's a cost and I could go through. I think we listed seven in the book.

but I can just hit a couple really high ones here for you. The first one is time. And we actually got to talk to the researchers. So when you actually are bouncing between, there's two things that happen. The first thing is you switch your attention and that is instantaneous. It's like squirrel, we are really good. We have evolved.

to notice things happening in the background. That's the instinct. So like if a saber-toothed tiger were crawling through the grass, we've evolved to notice that weird thing in the background. So that happens fast. But then your brain has to switch from the rules of what you're doing to the rules of what you're now focused on

So if you're writing an important email to a client, right, you're on paragraph two, and then someone pops by or instant message you and says, hey, Alex, what do you want for lunch today? Well, thinking about whether you're going to eat healthy or get the nachos and chips is a different part of your brain. And there's a switching time. And we don't realize it, but like you're a reader. You ever had someone walk in when you were reading, you know, they're talking to you and you're like, I'm sorry, what did you just say?

That's one of the few times most people, I get it when I'm reading, other people get it when they're watching a movie or something, right? Someone comes in, they're intensely focused. They know that someone's talking to them, but they can't process it and they have to ask them to go back. That happens all the time. And so research shows that the modern worker who bounces between their work and email and Twitter and phone calls about 28% of their day is lost to the switching cost. So first and foremost,

If I could give you back more than a quarter of your time, how would you invest it? Would you go home for that time and hang out with your friends and family? Would you put in some extra work and get ahead faster and retire earlier? Most people will never get to answer that question because they multitask all day long. Second big cost is it literally lowers your intelligence.

So there was a group, I think it's College of New London. They did a meta study of different IQ tests, and they looked at three big sample sizes. One is people who just took a IQ test while they were focused. They had group B that had all taken an IQ test, but they had to get interrupted with phone calls and emails while they did it. And then they had a third sample, which is a large number of people who took an IQ test while stoned on marijuana.

Right. I have to be careful who I teach this one to because high schoolers might take away the wrong lesson. Obviously, we know about it because unsurprisingly, the people who were focused, right, not doing anything else and not on any drugs scored on average 11 IQ points higher than the other people, which is a giant leap in terms of IQ. What's funny is that people who were stoned on average scored six points higher than the people who are multitasking. So it literally dumbs down your work.

So it costs you time. It costs you quality. And I could go through a dozen other studies where people make more mistakes. I mean, there's a reason if you're a pilot or a surgeon or a bus driver, you're not allowed to multitask. As a surgeon, you can't even pick up your own tools. You just hold out your hand and say scalpel, right? Like they're very focused because lives are at stake.

And so the question I would ask you and everyone else is if you're really committed to multitasking, chances are you're not a surgeon. Chances are you're not a pilot, right? But whose life are you risking? Yours. I mean, what you're doing is you're taking your most important work, whatever that might be, and you're putting it at risk because you're not getting the full use of your time or your brain power to actually get the best results.

And I don't know, like that number one activity, it might be like for me writing, right? Or for a coder coding, right? Or for a salesman making sales calls, whatever that number one activity is. But then there's also what about dinner with your family if you're not fully present? Like there's a relationship cost and there's a life cost. And so it's a big one.

I usually do this, and I don't know what you're feeling right now, but a lot of times the audience, if I'm giving a speech, starts to feel kind of beaten up. And what I'll do is I'll go, but engineers at Apple and Google and Microsoft, I mean, they're paid bajillions of bucks to distract us all day long. And it's a reality, right? We are going to do some multitasking. So usually I'll say, knowing all of this, here's my challenge. You just brought up success list, so this works.

When you do your success list for the week or the day, just don't multitask. Make a stand. Don't multitask when you're doing your number one activity. Allow yourself everywhere else. But when you're doing your number one, put your phone on do not disturb. And like, I don't know about you, but have you seen the new James Bond movie? Yeah, I loved it. Did you look at your phone throughout the whole thing? Nope. The theater I go to will kick you out if you open up your phone.

I'm happy not to have my phone out or my neighbor's phone out because I wanted to see Daniel Craig for the last time. We know to do this sometimes, usually for entertainment or in a setting like a wedding. We know it's just not right. Yet we violated all the time in our personal life. Just identify. You know what? As a working dad, my number one time with my kids was reading time at bedtime. I had their full attention.

And they were there. They were cuddled up. They were in that post bath. It was like the perfect environment. They might have been grumpy in the morning going to school. That was my job, too. But getting them at the end like that is the last time I should be looking at my fantasy football scores. I be focused, be present during that number one and no matter what area it's in. So if you can't tell, that one feels a little bit soapboxy because I was guilty of it.

And then I've realized that a little bit of discipline, right, just being focused for a few hours a day when you're doing that core activity, it gives you so much more freedom everywhere else. You can really kind of be undisciplined everywhere else.

Yeah, that's really like, I'm glad you spent so much time on the lesson because so important. And like, personally, it has a huge impact on me. Like, I've noticed the difference between like, even if I'm talking with my girlfriend, if I have my phone out, the attention like divides, and it's not as like enjoyable weather. Or now it's like we both put our phone away and we like kind of talk to each other one on one. And like the quality of the conversation is a lot more enjoyable.

is just more valuable and more enjoyable and applies to work and so many other areas in life. So thank you so much for sharing that and kind of busting that myth of multitasking. - Here's a pro tip for those out there that are still dating. Every time we go to a restaurant or whatever,

Would always face the wall and quote being a gentleman allow her to face the rest of the room What was I also doing whether I had a phone or not? I didn't want to get distracted by anybody walking by her at the next table I knew like I knew pretty early on that my wife was the one I wanted to make sure that I had nothing to distract me Because I am distracted, but we all are so I extra extra precautions even when there wasn't a phone present, right? That's awesome tip

So Jay, so we covered like, you know, you want to have a success list, you don't want to multitask. Is there like another big myth in the book that you feel people should know about? - You know, the next one in the order, right? We did put these in order of priority was about discipline. You know, people look up and they kind of make the mistake that everything matters equally. And that's what a to-do list does. It puts everything on equal footing. It's actually in the order that you remembered them.

And taking it to priority is how you kind of get around that. So once they have all those things on their list, the other thing they're tempted to do is, well, I've got a lot of stuff. I'll just do two things at once. And that's a problem if you're doing things that really matter. I think the superpower that I've increasingly come to recognize in people is that when you look up and over a long period of time, you start to see the same number one showing up week after week.

As a young working professional, it might take time to figure out what your number one contribution to the team or to your industry is. But we all hope, you know, that path to mastery we talk about way at the end of the book. But over time, if you're doing this activity, you're going to see a pattern. Right. I have my best weeks, my best months when I'm doing more of this activity. Well, the goal then we called it success.

that a disciplined life is a lie. It was the third lie. This idea that if I was just more disciplined, right, I would do these things on a regular basis. And people don't understand what discipline is. I literally, you ask anybody who's young enough, they're going to tell you it's punishment. But most other adults mistake it for what we now know is more about willpower. They think that discipline is kind of this inner grit to be focused on what you need to do.

Discipline, as I understand it in our research, was it's training yourself to do something until it's automatic. So I like to go to the disciplined soldier. I actually ran into a guy when I was teaching this book the very first year in Nashville, and he showed up for one of our speeches like an hour and a half early. I thought he was part of the work crew.

And I was like, hi, I'm Jay. I'm here to, I'm actually one of the presenters. I was like, just setting up. I was like, are you with the crew? He's like, nope, I'm just early. I can't help it. It's a habit. And he said that H word, this is long before atomic habits or, you know, the power of habits came out. And I just kind of tuned in. I said, tell me about that. Well, he goes, it's been almost a decade, but for nine years, I was a green beret and I was trained to show up early and observe before I did anything.

So my wife hates it. We're always really early for our reservations, really early to the movies. And we stand around waiting around. But he goes, it's just a habit I can't shake. So he literally was in the military and trained to do something until it was so uningrained in him that he couldn't undo it. How can we then when we see that number one showing up again and again?

How could we work to build a habit so that then that habit would become as automatic? Our success becomes automatic. I call those success habits, right? I mean, brushing your teeth is an amazing success habit, not just for your health, but for your social life, right? And as a parent of two teenagers, I can tell you it takes as long as a decade or longer to build that habit in your children.

But now as adults, we all take it for granted. What if coding or writing or calling had become ingrained in your behavior? And I know adults that it is. And actually, when you talk to the most successful people in the world, a lot of their most critical behaviors are scheduled and ritualized. Hey, I'm sorry. I tried to meet James Clear. And he's like, I'm sorry. I don't eat before 12 o'clock, but I'll have a black coffee with you.

So he's got his health dialed in and he's got his writing time and he doesn't violate it. I tried to have coffee with Noah Kagan and he's like a big marketer and entrepreneur here. And my ritual was around Wednesday mornings because I had built free time to network into my Wednesday mornings. He refused because he had built his into Tuesdays. I was like, oh, he's playing the same game. Really, really successful people.

It sounds, again, like it would make you robotic. You're not structuring 24 hours a day. We just look up, and the most successful human beings on the planet, their morning tends to be fairly structured. They have a lot of their health goals and personal goals get taken care of before 8 a.m.,

They exercise, they journal, they meditate, they do their green smoothie, whatever it is, right? Some formula therein. So they show up to work having kind of checked a lot of boxes for themselves. And then in my experience, a lot of them go straight to their number one priority. And it's usually the same thing. So that to me is.

If people could just string those three together, right? Figure out what your number one is. Don't multitask when you do it. And if it just keeps showing up, commit to making a habit of it. And in our research, it shows it takes about 66 days on average. That's not a magic number. It's just a lot more accurate than what most people think, 21 days, which is way too short an amount of time to have behavior change.

Yeah, it reminds me of that great phrase, like when the morning, when the day. And yeah, when I look at my own like routine, it's like I do start in the morning, like I do my most important task. I take care of my health, you know, have some kombucha or something healthy or, you know, go outside for a walk, get some air, get some sunlight. And it's just fascinating how if you just do like one or two things in the morning, you have so much more productive day because you also get that momentum going as well. Oh, I love that you use that word. Momentum is a big part of it.

And I'll also say you get to avoid the guilt factor. Like a lot of times when we procrastinate on our number one, it's kind of like hanging around our neck like an albatross, right? And at come noon, you're like starting to go, oh crap, right? I'm going to have to stay up late tonight. But the days that we tackle it, like early in the morning, I know like when my wife and I, we work out with a trainer three days a week. We did that this morning. It was a hard workout. But I was also like,

I feel completely entitled to have a little extra Halloween candy today because I did my hard thing in the morning and I can cheat, but I've earned it now. It's not just, you know what I'm saying? So there's great psychic relief in knowing that the most important thing in whatever category you're working on, you've already checked it out.

checked it off rather and everybody else might still have it on their to-do list. Yeah, totally. And I kind of want to dive into that because that was going to be my next question, which you kind of just mentioned is about balance. And you have a section in the book where you talk about work-life balance. So is it really possible to have more time at home and also get more stuff done at work? It feels like it's too good to be true. Is that possible? Yeah. I mean, I think the way most people think about balance is inherently flawed.

And it sets them up for a lot of unhappiness. I think when people talk about having a balanced life, what they intend to do is structure their life in such a way that they have this harmony between their work and their personal life. And that just doesn't line up with anything I've experienced and doesn't line up with much of the research that we found either. Life is way too unpredictable.

If it hasn't happened to you yet, just wait until you have kids. Or have kids in a business in the sense that you have employees, the people you depend on to deliver value, something comes up. It's just a fact. It always will until you're constantly making adjustments. Again, if I am teaching this in person, a lot of times I'll ask everybody to stand up and I'll say, "If you're physically able, will you stand on one foot?"

And so you have all these people kind of waving their arms. And I say, are you balanced or are you balancing? Everybody says balancing. I'd say, great. That's the main point. The act of balance is something that you have to actively do. And you have to understand that there are areas of our life that are inherently capable of being out of balance longer than others and some that are very fragile.

When I look at our spiritual, physical, personal health, right, mental health, our key relationships, those are things that if we go out of balance for too long, there may not be recovery. You know, the old Hemingway line, how did you go bankrupt gradually and then suddenly?

People will draw down deposits on their health by not sleeping enough or drinking too much or just another cheeseburger with bacon, whatever it is. And it feels like nothing is happening. But in fact, you're losing so slowly, you might think you're winning. And then it goes from gradually to suddenly. There's so many areas of our personal life that do that gradually, suddenly thing. So they actually have to be maintained gradually.

with a lot more energy, with a lot more vigor. If I'm traveling for three weekends in a row, I probably need to take some time off and really, one, have some personal time and have some family time. One, I would never agree to do that because I've learned so many lessons, you know. But you have to, we call it counterbalancing. The one area of your life that is incredibly resilient is your job.

We quote, I'm trying to think of the guy's name, but we quote, it's like, if you've got juggling these glass balls, work is actually a rubber ball. When you drop it, it doesn't crack or shatter, whereas the other ones can really be irreparably harmed. So I would just tell people, you build a life and you pay attention. And to really be successful in business, you'll probably focus on one thing to the exclusion of a lot of things,

And I know that sometimes I walk through the office and I feel like I have a thousand brush fires burning. But I'm very clear in business, if I stay committed, if I don't get distracted, we win. Because the one thing is so pronounced there, right, to be the first mover on a product, right? There's so many things that give you disproportionate advantage, right?

Perfection is way overrated around everything else, but your health, your spiritual life, your personal life, which we saw really last year with COVID, how much mental and personal mental health, right, taking care of ourselves matters. And then relationships, if they're neglected periodically and over long amounts of time, it can really have devastating effects that are hard to recover from.

Is that kind of what you were looking for? I hope I wasn't too close. Like I'm hewing to the book without just trying to regurgitate it. No, a hundred percent. I think that kind of goes back to the point you met earlier, which is why this book was such a health hit for people in the, like the health, we're trying to get the health on track because the health is one of those glass balls that if you drop it, it's really hard or sometimes impossible to get it back. So now I see like maybe the correlation between those two ideas. So it makes perfect sense.

Well, I think Gary and I believe I'm going to say, I think I believe, right. Cause I don't know that there's research, but I do believe that on page one 14 of the U S hardcover edition is the only page I have memorized in my book. We have the seven circles of your life. You could apply the book in and I, you heard me saying I'm spiritual life, physical health, personal life, and key relationships. I think that they're foundational in that order.

If you're not asking questions and attending to your spiritual life, you're delaying what may be the most, I believe, maybe one of the most important questions you could ever address. And we see people who delay it and they have a crisis much later in life of a different kind. Your physical health, if you're gonna do extraordinary things, it's gonna take energy. And again, we have horrible examples in a lot of businesses of people who cheat on sleep and diet and appear to be winning.

But there's that gradually, suddenly conversation. Working moms and dads, but moms more likely, are really, really likely to neglect their personal life. I don't know why it seems to be, at least in the culture that I see every day, men are entitled on some level to having hobbies. I'm going to go fishing with my buddies. I'm going to go golfing.

Whereas a lot of the women that I work with and I'm around, that doesn't seem to be something culture is actually pushing them to do. It's the opposite. So I usually tell them, like, going to the spa once a quarter to decompress does not mean you have a personal life. It needs to be something that every week you're kind of refilling that bucket.

Um, and, and be able to show up. And obviously, you know, if you spent the first 15 years of your child's life working for your retirement, what in the world makes you think they want to hang out with you as a stranger when you're 16? Right. So a lot of times we justify I'm working for you.

That doesn't matter, right? Those relationships have to be attended over time. So it's a big deal, this idea of kind of counterbalancing along the way while living a wildly contradictory life about relentless focus on the one thing at the expense of others in business. That's the area where that play plays so well. It's the other areas where it can really kind of undo you. Hmm.

Yeah, and I actually have a like a little bookmark in that page 114 as you mentioned and I believe you call it the focusing question Which is like what's the one thing you could do that by doing it? Everything else will be easier or unnecessary and such an important question to ask yourself and you could apply it So like like you said multiple aspects of your life and it is really a great tip So really glad you share that well that question I used to think this was in the book, but it was part that got cut and

So like when I first got introduced, I let Gary know that I'd been, you know, worked at HarperCollins and had published some of his favorite books. That's how we got to be writing partners. It was on one of his consulting days. So he used to consult with our coach, our top 1%, like two days a month. He still does often.

And it was literally call after call after call. And he was describing to me how the focus in question that you just recited, which I'm very impressed with, by the way, kind of came to be born. I don't know if you've had a coach, Alex, but a lot of coaching relationships, you'll meet weekly, monthly, whatever. But you usually end by kind of setting expectations for what the coachee has to get done between now and the next session.

And what Gary noticed was a pattern that people would often do several things on their list, but often would neglect the most important ones. And it was kind of in parental frustration. It'd be like, Alex,

If you can only get three things done between now and next week, what are they going to be right to hit this goal? And you'd say one, two, three. And the next week you'd come back and say, look, I did number two and number three. And he'd be like, ah, so it was finally, uh, he just like, he narrowed it down to one thing. He just says, Alex, if you can only do one thing between now and next Monday to move your goals forward, what's it going to be? I'm going to hold you accountable.

And what he discovered, and this is like, it's funny to watch him, the hair goes up on his arms because he's reliving that moment, is that when people only had one thing on their to-do list, they virtually always did it. And the other thing that happened is all those other things that he was aware that they would have to do, they did them anyway.

So just by flipping the focus, by focusing on one thing, they tended to get all of the stuff done that was actually important. And that's where that very strangely worded question, you know, what's the one thing I can do, not could, would, or should, what I can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or necessary, that evolved over a series of years of use and

into a very specific question that gets you kind of a big answer. And I love that most people know it. They just never ask the question, so they kind of walk around with this residual guilt that they're not as focused on the priorities as they should, whereas if they just hit pause and ask that question, it changes things. That's why we don't have quotes or testimonials on the back of our book. We just wanted people, like, put it up, like, ask that question, ask it relentlessly.

Yeah, I was wondering what the – yeah, it's such a great design thing to put on the back of the book. And yeah, it's such a simple but yet effective strategy that once you learn it, it's like I can't believe I've gone so long without using it. So yeah, I really enjoyed that lesson. For those who are not watching it, there's a giant question mark on the back of our book saying this says, what's your one thing? It was just like in lieu of all the other marketing junk we could have put there, we thought maybe –

the one thing we want for people, if they got nothing else from this book would be to ask that question. Yeah. And yeah, for everyone listening, this will be on YouTube. So you can watch it there as well. And so I just want to continue down. I know we're not going to be able to cover like all the tips in this book, but I just want to get through a few more because I,

It's just like goldmine after goldmine. And I think one big lesson I took away from the book was that another great way to be productive is to say no more often. But I think a lot of people, including myself, we have a hard time saying no because we don't want to come off as a jerk or mean or like people come up to you with the opportunity. It's like, hey, this is a great opportunity, but you know it's not part of your one thing. You know it's not kind of moving you in the direction you want to go to. So what strategies do you use to say no more often or what's like a nice way to say no to people?

That's great. Like you actually read far enough to get into the thieves of productivity. And that's like number one is the inability to say no. I actually find that the first two are inability to say no and fear of chaos. And it's almost like a personality test. If you tend to be a little bit more people focused and outgoing, inability to say no will be the number one thing that will undo you.

If you're more of an engineering type, right, you're focused on doing things well and efficiently and effectively, chaos can undo you. So they're kind of like twin cousins out there. But vast majority of people, that's why it became number one, the inability to say no. So I think the first thing you have to do in order to empower yourself to say no more is actually know what you said yes to.

So the analogy I've used, and I'm trying to think of there was an author that used it, but John Maxwell used a similar metaphor once when he said I do to his wife. He understood inherently that that yes was no to everybody else. Right. I remember when I finally quit smoking, I was a smoker for many years and I said no, kind of several times. Right. Yeses and no's are on a spectrum from maybe not to absolutely not.

And, but I remember when I met my wife, like she was like not having any of that. So it was a very easy decision to make then. I had a good reason. I was saying yes to her. And part of that was saying no to cigarettes. But I remember when I quit, it felt very different than all the other times. Like there was even this moment of nostalgia, like, oh gosh, I'm going to miss this activity. Cause I knew it was like, it was a different quality. I don't think we feel that way about a lot of our yeses and nos today.

So usually it starts with getting really clear. What are my real priorities? Maybe even talking about we talk about purpose in the book. One entry point into that is like, what are my values? Like, what have I truly decided that I want to say yes to in my world? So I find that when people are clear, hey, I'm I'm training to do a marathon. I've decided to go vegetarian.

The no is like, "No, I won't have a pork chop. Didn't I just tell you I'm a vegetarian?" When you clearly make a choice that's a yes, the no's actually become easier. So that's the first battle. The second one is more technique. A lot of people feel like they don't feel like they've been empowered to say no. And so their boss might swing by or drop on Slack, "Hey, will you handle this?" And the appropriate answer is yes.

But what we tend to do is drop what we were currently doing and attack whatever the person in authority said to do. And what I usually teach folks in my world to do is immediately do an assumptive kind of expectation setting. Like, Alex, I'm happy to take this off your plate. If I get back to you next Tuesday with the answer, would that be okay? And almost always next Tuesday, at least is buying me a weekend and hopefully a workday.

It might be buying me eight days, but the words next Tuesday are key. And they almost universally will say, sure. Because most people in authority, if you ask them, how quickly do you need it? What do you think they're going to say? As soon as possible. Because that's how they want everything. So you don't offer that as an option. But if it's actually not urgent, they'll be like, great. Because the number one thing they wanted was having that task off of their plate and on yours. Right.

So it's not about no, it's a yes when. And we can do this with our kids. We can do it with our spouses. Hey, I'm really focused right now. Would it be okay if I did that a little later? And we'll negotiate our time a little bit. I like to put conditions. A lot of people want to ask me, what does it take to write a book? And I usually will set tasks in front of them that they have to complete before

that'll actually make the conversation better, right? I don't have to say all the basics if they do these activities and then we can get together. And in my experience, because I tracked this for over a year, when I put the barriers between us, right, I'm saying yes, but conditionally, and it wasn't outrageous, right? I was asking for an hour of their time. Only one in seven would come back. So I got to say no effectively, right? I was netting six out of seven no's. I don't know what percentage that is. I'd have to get out a calculator.

So those kinds of techniques, right? It's yes, but on my calendar's terms. Some other great techniques, put your phone on do not disturb. And I know a lot of really great professionals that every morning they have one of their voicemails saying,

Hi, this is Jay Papazian. I'm sorry I'm not available right now, but between now and 12 o'clock noon, and you say the date, today is November 1st, I will be in important meetings. From 12 to 1, I will be returning my calls. I'll look forward to getting back with you then.

When people have an expectation for when they'll hear from you, they stop running around. Again, they want to get it off their chest. They want to kind of know where that loop's going to get closed. I know a lot of professionals who basically have drawn a line at six o'clock at night. They stop working and they'll turn on a voicemail that says, hi, this is so-and-so. If you're hearing this, it's after 6 p.m.

And just understand that all calls will be returned promptly starting at 8 a.m. tomorrow. Thank you so much for your patience. And virtually all problems will follow that path. Yeah, we're like, the customer always comes first or whatever. And it just doesn't make any sense. And it's a recipe for burnout and unnecessary work. So like if you're on a customer support queue for a TV, that's a 24-hour gig. But you also knew that when you took that job.

But for most of us that are in service businesses or in roles, we have the ability to set expectations. I say next Tuesday, "Hey, can I get back to you tomorrow morning? And if I have questions, I'll ask them then, or I'll just give it to you." All you have to do is a small negotiation and you can have a lot more control of your time. So it's weird, the inability to say no or something that's the equivalent of no is what we're looking for. And it's all the equivalent that most people miss.

Yeah, just setting expectations and like setting boundaries is such an important tip. And yeah, it really helps to like know when to say no and also know how to say no. And Jay, I want to be respectful of your time here and respect your boundary. So I want to ask my closing question here. So your book had a huge impact on me as a young adult. What two books had a huge impact on you as a young adult? And how do those books change you? Well, it's funny. I always thought I was going to be a fiction writer.

So I read very little nonfiction that wasn't assigned to me in school until I was probably in my late 20s when I was in publishing. So like the first book, like when you say as a young person, I remember there's a poet and novelist named Dennis Johnson, and he wrote a collection of short stories called Jesus's Son. And it was nominated for some awards. But for whatever reason, that book, like it just it caught my ear.

And I would read it like two or three times a year when I was training myself to be a writer. There was something in his voice that unlocked my voice. So that's probably not what you're looking for in terms of books that I give out a lot. A book that I've given out a lot over the years is a book called The Defining Decade by Dr. Meg Jay.

And it's really about that decade after college, 25 to 35, and how we tend as a culture to think that a lot of the decisions we're making then are inconsequential when we're actually kind of building momentum for the rest of our life.

And it's very practical and actionable. And as someone in their 50s who has a lot of younger people on their staff, it's been great for me to have better, more proven advice to give them when asked or just to give it as a gift, right? As something that they might want to dive into themselves. So that's the other one that jumps to mind. Well, appreciate those book recommendations. My girlfriend actually just finished reading The Defining Decade and recommended it to me. So definitely gonna have to pick that up.

There you go. You're on the hook now. She's got a new edition, which I haven't read, but it's an updated edition. And so that's on my reading list as well, because I want to see if there's material stuff that's changed. Her whole career is dedicated to counseling individuals in that age group. So I imagine it's a it's a growing body of work for Dr. J.

Yeah, well, that's incredible. I'll have to pick up the updated edition as well. And for Jay, so for everyone listening who, you know, enjoy this conversation, they want to learn more, they could pick up your book, of course. Where else can they go or where can they find you online, social media? Where should they head to? Well, the great thing about a name like Jay Papasan is that there's only one in the world that I'm aware of.

So I have great Google ranking. You can find me on any of the social medias. I am not fast because it's not my one thing, but I do try to respond personally. And sometimes my EA helps me on LinkedIn. So I am findable. But all things one thing are at the one thing dot com. That's the the number one thing dot com.

And if you scroll to the footer, they just updated the website. So I don't know when people might be hearing this. There is a free resources section with all kinds of tools and I think useful free information for you to take advantage of. And there's also some training around how to kind of live this life in a community there.

Yeah, I went on the website and really I downloaded a few of the free resources that I really enjoyed. And I'll definitely have links to everything you mentioned in the show notes below so people could easily find it. And Jay, I just want to close by saying thank you so much for writing this book. It had a huge impact on my life. I've learned a lot and I'm sure a lot of people will enjoy this conversation and will find your book to be a fantastic resource to be more productive and living a more fulfilling life.

Thanks for having me. As we talked about before we started recording, I love how dedicated you are to showing up prepared. It's so clear that you really read the book and studied it and you're trying to curate great questions for your listeners. So thank you for what you're doing for them. Clearly, you're dedicated to what you're doing and doing it at a high level. Yeah, I guess you could say reading books is like my one thing.

Yeah, and you're doing it right. So thank you for that. That's a gift. I'm a book guy now, for sure. Well, thank you so much, everyone, for listening. We'll see you soon. Hey, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this episode of The Reader's Journey. You can learn more about what's covered in today's podcast in the show notes below.

If you enjoyed this podcast, the best way you can support it is by subscribing and leaving a positive review. If you're looking for reading tips or book recommendations, head over to alexandbooks.com. If you want to join my reading journey, you can follow me on Instagram and Twitter by searching for Alex and Books. That's all for now. Thank you so much for listening, and I hope to see you soon. Read on, everyone.