Host: Jay Papasan is at Keller Inc, which is the publishing arm
of Keller Williams Realty. And getting a chance to talk with
Jay is excited because Jay is also Gary Keller's, co author.
And they've written several best selling books, including The
Millionaire Real Estate Investor, which was a New York
Times bestseller. And then the one thing and the one thing was
a number one, or is a number one Wall Street Journal, business
best seller, Jay is the co author. He's here with us now he
is one of the most powerful people in real estate and just
an awesome, awesome guy. So Jay, thanks for being here.
Jay Papasan: Thanks for having me.
Host: So if people haven't heard of the one thing, can you like?
What is the main premise kind of overall concept in a nutshell?
Jay Papasan: We wanted to explore, you know how people get
extraordinary results. Not average, but extraordinary.
What's an approach that we can take for that? And for us, it
was about focus, but we tried to come at it from a new angle. How
do you identify the one thing, right? What's the one thing I
can do such that by doing it, everything else is easier or
unnecessary? What's the one thing I can do such that by
doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary? You're
looking for the biggest lever in July, to achieve your goals. And
we wanted to help people identify that and then implement
that day.
Host: In the one thing, Jay, you know, kind of the opening part
of the book, you talk about the lies of productivity.
Jay Papasan: Before we talk about what we want you to do, we
often say what do we have to get out of your head. And in this
book, we call do the lies. And the first lie, which we felt
like was the number one was this idea that everything matters
equally. And I actually don't think people argue that or
express it, in fact that way, and it's because our to do list
or to fool, our calendars are kind of overflowing. I've had
moments in my life where I was literally mapping out my days in
15 minute increments. And there are a lot of people who feel
that way, we have a lot of opportunity to do stuff. And
we've have a lot of obligation. And I kind of compare the way we
operate. With so many things kind of stressing us out the
need to do them all, to like being a character in the BR
movie that runs up the stairs, instead of out the front door,
we make really bad decisions to spend our time. And so the
antidote to that that first line was essentially, you know, we
want you to launch your day by identifying the things that you
could do, and then identify the handful that you really should
do, and then prioritize them for one to whatever. And that's line
number one, the second why people have a lot, they're
looking at all the things they might have to do. The other
thing, they're really tempted in this day and age to do with
multitasking. And we make a strong argument that
multitasking is a lie. And the big crux there is that, in
reality, when we think we're multitasking, researchers call
it switch tasking. If they call anything in their research or
multitasking, it's just in the headlines so they can get it in
print. But they call it switch tasking, because what actually
happens is, we're doing our work. And then we decide to
switch. And that's instantaneous. It's like
squirrel. Oh, we're off to the next thing. The thing that they
realize challenged us is when you switch tasks your brain has
to reorient to the new role for the game. And there's a lag. If
you've ever been like writing a really complex email, and maybe
your spouse walks in and starts talking to you, you know,
they're talking to you. You can hear words in the air, but you
actually don't comprehend them. And you say, Oh, I'm sorry, what
were you saying? You repeat that? That's that lag time. And
every time we switch between screens, you know, stopping our
emails to pick up a phone call, we experienced this lag time.
And researchers believe about a quarter of our day 28% is lost
to this and we're not even aware of it. It's a huge loss. I mean,
as an employer, I look, wow, I have five employees when I might
need four. If they were all just being efficient with your time.
There's just tons of research out there that the funny one
that always kind of, you know, people say this is making me
smarter or whatever, you know, I can do all these things. There's
a guy in the College of New London, and he did research into
IQ test. And he compared the results of people who were
focusing even compared the results of people who were
having to multitask. They had to juggle emails and phone calls.
Well, they took an IQ test and very hilariously, He compared
them to people who were stoned. You know, nobody was surprised
that on average, the people who were focused scored 11 points
higher than the other two groups, they were shocked that
the people who were stoned, on average scored six IQ points
higher than the people who are multitasking. So I could go
through six ways, we don't need to go there. It costs you time,
it makes you dumb, and you're just less effective. So we
really tried to get people, if not stop multitasking all the
time. When you're doing your main thing, you're one thing, at
least that multitasking, then, if I was actually more focused,
when I was at work, that I have more time with my family, I
think there's a real human cost that I think about, and it makes
me a little bit sad, you know, the economic cost is one thing,
but what's the cost to my family if I'm working late every day,
just because I'm not being as effective as I could be. So the
next few slides are just little after July. And then willpower
is always on, we'll call the why. And what we tried to break
out two things, discipline, one of the meanings for it, is
training yourself to do something until it's so that you
will, when I was giving my welding talk in Nashville, a guy
showed up an hour and 15 minutes early, and I went up to him and
I said, Oh, wow, you win the early bird award, you know, are
you with the team? And he has no, but I'm just here. I'm
always early, it's a habit. I knew that habit word. And I'm
like, Dude, you know, tell me more. And it turns out that he
had done a Greenbrae. He did, I was nervous for almost two
decades. But he's been in it for 15 years. And he said, I was
trying to show up early and observe. And I just can't shake
the habit. Everywhere we go, we're early, we're early to
dinner to the movies, it drives my wife crazy. And I love that
because it's a perfect illustration that in our sense,
and when we were building our construct, we really wanted to
hit on this idea that being disciplined all the time, which
we go into and willpower, there is some science about how you
there is an ebb and flow to your we often call this one that I'm
going to call willpower. But this other definition is, if you
know what your one thing is, the very next thing you would want
to do is make a habit. Because if that became habitual, you
work to build the habit, and then the habit would work for
you. And kind of the big aha we had here was that when we looked
at the research, like how long does it actually take to form a
habit, most people conventionally believe it takes
either 21 or 30 days. But the most recent research we found,
they had asked, I think over 200 graduate students to take on a
new health habit, anything from drinking a glass of water to
quitting smoking, whatever they wanted. And for a year, they
followed them around and said, Did you do it? Yes or no? And
how hard was it every single day. And what they discovered is
that on average, around 66 days is when it got as easy as it was
ever going to get. So it takes us about three times as long as
most people think to form a habit, even on average, we want
to at least keep our foot on that pedal right for that long.
And so that was the discipline thing.
Host: So clarify the willpower part. So then what's what what's
the distinction? What would you call willpower?
Jay Papasan: So we dove into the science of you know, how we say
yes to what we need to do, and how we say no to everything
else. But the researchers, the scientists, right, the guys in
the lab coats, we're calling it willpower. And they define that
as the power to say yes to what you need to do, if I'm on a
diet, I mean, you know, carrot sticks and hummus and no to
everything else, so no nachos for me. And both of those they
measure it literally take energy out of your system. And kind of
shockingly, your brain is 1/50 of your body mass, and it takes
up 1/5 of all of the energy you consume. It's the hungriest
organ in your body after the liver. And so literally, if you
make a decision, you know, I am wearing black shoes today in a
black tie that little tiny decision, they can measure the
glucose in your bloodstream will drop. But there's things that
require a lot more power, like I'm going to focus on this task,
I'm not going to go play on Twitter, I'm going to focus on
my work, I'm not going to go hang out by the coffee machine,
saying no to those temptations or saying yes actually uses a
lot of energy. And that was our big aha Is that what you're
calling discipline in what we're calling willpower is actually
really fragile. It's a lot more like the battery on an old
phone, it's always going to zero and it's plugged in all the
time. So for us our big highs you tend to have the most in the
morning. That's what it's always highest. And you can replenish
it by eating properly. So we tell you give willpower the time
of day and feed it. It's not that you're you know, willpower
is hungry. I think about kids, right? You have a kid a young
child, what is the mom do for a young child every day around
three o'clock. At snack that's like an essential thing that
come up from school. The first thing they do when they outgrow
the nap, they get both when they hit certain age, they get a
snack. They've used up all of their discipline at school
sitting in their chair straight walking in line waiting. And so
we tell you make it a habit in the morning, right you're one
thing do it in the morning and you naturally have the willpower
to say yes to it. And then throughout the day if you've
looked in my office, I've got power bars, I've got nuts. I've
got foods that are high in protein and complex
carbohydrates to get I want my brain out have all that
discipline or willpower it needs throughout the day. And those
tend to feed your bloodstream for long periods of time versus
just slacking it sugar, that we wanted to talk about making
things a habit and managing that discipline willpower thing
throughout the day itself. I've kind of observed, like, you
know, open floor plans have been kind of all the rage. And
they've looked at some of these and I do foster more creativity,
but they haven't necessarily fostered more productivity. And
my theory, and it's not been mentioned yet is, if I'm in an
open office, and I'm in an environment full of
distractions, I'm using a lot of my willpower to focus on the
task at hand. And you know, we have noise cancelling headsets
in our office, in the cubes, people literally put up like
shower curtains and they do all kinds of things to try to get
more focused so that they have to the distractions take less of
a toll. But I do think that, you know, an environment is one of
the things that I became aware of is your environment, support
your work and your focus? Because that can say no to all
that stuff can be really tough.
Host: So how do I know what my one thing is? And I know that
kind of comes back to the premise that we started with,
but do you have any, like practical ideas for how to find
the thing that by doing it, everything else becomes easier
or or not necessary?
Jay Papasan: On the simplest level, we want people to put
down the book and ask that question, what's the one thing I
can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier,
unnecessary. And for a fair number of people, they kind of
know what it is, and they feel guilty for not doing it. They
just haven't been told that you know what, you're smart enough
to know your own answers. For those that are still struggling.
And I find especially a lot of younger people. Maybe people go
through transition. It's the idea of thinking, what's my big
reason for being here? And then you work backwards to and what
do I need to be doing right now?
Host: I love it. Well, Jay, thank you for making the time
here. Thank you so much, Jay, for being here.
Jay Papasan: Thanks.