176 The One Thing That Will Transform Your Productivity with Jay Papasan

"The idea of work-life balance is being sold to us as a destination." - Jay Papasan If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at lewishowes.com/176. Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is episode number 176 with New York Times bestselling author Jay Papasan.

• 0:07Speaker 00

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Speaker 00

  Welcome everyone to the podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in today. And if this is your first time on the School of Greatness podcast, then thank you so much for joining. I welcome you and please give a high five or a hug to whoever introduced you to the show and let them know how much I appreciate them for introducing you as well. Now, I just did a two-week tour in Asia. I went to Laos for a few days with an organization that I support called Pansels of Promise, who Adam Braun is the founder of, and he's been on the podcast as well. We had an incredible time there, going around, checking out all the schools that they're building, meeting with all the kids in Laos, and it was just a great experience.

• 1:14Speaker 00

  Then I headed over to Bangkok for a few nights and spent some time there. I had an incredible experience just touring around the city and seeing the sights. And then after that, I just finished up a few days in Cebu, the Philippines, where I spoke at an event called Tropical Think Tank with a good buddy of mine, Chris Ducker, who's also been on the show. And one of the things that happened every time I go to events, I love attending events. I love speaking at them, meeting the attendees, the other speakers, and seeing what I can learn from everyone at the events. There's always great ideas that are being thrown around, and I highly recommend you guys go check out events if you're looking to grow your business or build the relationships you want to get to the next level.

• 1:57Speaker 00

  Events and meeting people in person, there's nothing else better than that. But one of the things that happens at events is you get so many ideas, so many new tools and strategies and tactics for ways to grow your business or Whatever it is you're trying to do in your career, getting to the next level, there's so many different ideas that come up and it can be extremely overwhelming on what things you should be doing, what you should be focusing on, on how to get to the next level. But the top 1% of the top 1% in the world do things a little bit differently than everyone else. And here on the podcast, my goal is to find those top 1% performers to show you guys

• 2:39Speaker 00

  how to step into your greatness and be a high performing individual in every area of your life. And the person that I'm bringing on today, his name is Jay Papasan, and he talks about the one thing that you can do that will accomplish more by doing less. Okay. Now, this guy Jay Papasan is an interesting guy, and I think you're gonna love this interview. He worked as an editor for Harper Collins for a while. Then he co-authored the bestselling series, Millionaire Real Estate with Gary Keller, who's co-founder of Keller Williams Realty, one of the top real estate agencies in the country. He now runs a top residential real estate team in Austin, recently co-authored The One Thing, The Surprisingly Simple Truth

• 3:23Speaker 00

  Behind Extraordinary Results, which is a Wall Street Journal, Amazon, and New York Times bestselling author. And The One Thing is a book for busy people who are just spinning their wheels and not getting anywhere fast. You're gonna learn how to identify the lies that block your success and the thieves that steal time from your day by focusing on your one thing that you can accomplish more by doing less. So I'm gonna ask you, what's your one thing? And Jay is gonna really help you define how to get there. Now, I get sent tons of books to me every single week. A lot of authors want to get on the show. And you know, there's some that I read and go through, and there's some that I just don't have time

• 4:06Speaker 00

  for, because I get so many. But I never really actually buy books, because I just get so many sent to me. And this one is one that I saw in the airport, and I said, I'd heard so much about it from so many different friends and connections that were like, you gotta check out this book, that I ended up purchasing this book at the airport, and I couldn't put it down. And I think you're gonna learn why, once you listen to this interview. So, without further ado, let me welcome you to the one and only Jay Papasan.

• 4:38Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness Podcast. Very, very excited about today. We've got my man Jay Papasan on. How's it going Jay?

• 4:47Speaker 02

  It's going great.

• 4:48Lewis Howes?

  I'm pumped for this. We were just talking before the recording that I get dozens of books shipped to me every week from authors. And I skim through them. I'll quickly read the, you know, the introductions and check out the kind of the main, the main pages and what's in the book, but I never fully read it. And I actually didn't get a copy of your book for free because I didn't know I was going to be interviewing you. A friend of, a mutual friend of ours, AJ Jaeger, said, "You gotta get this book and read it. It's gonna change your business and life forever." And so I actually bought this book, which I don't buy too many books, and I'm halfway done and I'm loving it. So I'm excited that we're about to dive in about this.

• 5:27Lewis Howes?

  And before we even talk about it, it's called "The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results", by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. And before we even dive into it, I'm just going to tell you guys that you need to go buy this because it's a New York Times bestseller, Wall Street Journal bestseller, Amazon bestseller, USA Today. It's hit every bestseller list. And it's that good. It's so simple and easy to follow. I love when there's pictures and diagrams in books, by the way, so thanks for that.

• 5:59Lewis Howes?

  It makes it easier for me to read because I'm a slow reader. And it's just, it makes sense. I like books that make sense. And that reminds you of what you're really supposed to be doing. So first off, thanks for writing this book and thanks for all the great things you and Gary have been up to in serving the world because this has been really helpful for a lot of people. I know that and it's already helpful for me. So, thank you.

• 6:21Speaker 02

  Awesome. Thank you for that endorsement. And a special shout out to our designer, Caitlin, that helped us with those. We won a lot of awards for those images and I'm a visual learner and as weird as a writer, I love books with images too. It really helps me interact with the stuff. So.

• 6:36Lewis Howes?

  That's cool. Very cool. I usually end with gratitude, but I want to start with gratitude today and I want to know what you're most grateful for in your life recently.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  Um, you know, I just got to take two weeks off with my family. Um, we went to Bali and we got to go to Komodo Island and my daughter, nine years old, Veronica, is absolutely obsessed with dragons. She's that little anti-cheerleader girl. She draws dragons eating princesses rather than princesses being saved, you know?

• 7:01Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  Um, and so it was one of those kind of, one of many, I hope, trip of a lifetimes, but it was great to really check out and recharge on huge, you know, family time, way out of my world. No cell phones, no email, two weeks in Indonesia. So that was awesome.

• 7:17Lewis Howes?

  That's pretty cool. I'm actually going to Asia next week, so I'm excited to be traveling around there as well. So, very cool. Well, let's talk about, first off, why did you decide to write this book? And how did this idea come about, writing The One Thing?

• 7:32Speaker 02

  Um, I think that, well, the, the, literally, the book came out of an essay. Uh, my partner Gary, you know, founded Kellie Williams, and we were working on a course to help realtors sell more houses. And he, he said, I want to take it home for the weekend. I want to jazz it up a little bit. I'm going to write an essay to lead it off, an introduction. And he came back with this, like, eight-page essay called The Power of One. And I had been an editor at Harper Collins. Um, I'd worked on a lot of bestselling books and I was like, wow, th- this is kind of it. You know, we'd already written a couple of bestsellers together, but I knew that this was his book. And it's about, Gary has always kind of known intuitively, um, and his secret of his success was that he was willing to identify the priority

• 8:17Speaker 02

  and give it more time and effort than anyone else. He's a really smart guy, but he doesn't have to be the smartest guy in the room. He works really hard, but he doesn't work long hours. I mean, the, the key to all of his success was that tool, um, that prioritization. And I just remember thinking, wow, this is going to be his good to great. And that started a five-year journey where we took this, his reflexive technique for success in business and tried to systematically research it to make sure that we were right. And that was just an amazing journey. So, it, one, came from an instinct, right? That, wow, this is his thing. And one, everybody needs it. You know, we got too much on our plates, our calendars are too full. We need a reason to say no.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  And, um, my biggest gift from the book is when you know what you're saying yes to, really understand it, it really gets easy to say no. And that's a really good gift to have in this day and age.

• 9:08Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's powerful, yeah. And did you say it took five years for you guys from start to finish?

• 9:12Speaker 02

  Yes, um, kind of ironically, you know, we set out to write a book on Fokus and we got distracted. We actually wrote another book, um, called Shift in the meantime, because the market crashed and we had to respond to it. But, um, that only took us about 18 months and then we, we had two researchers working in the background throughout that. So it's, it's about five years of work from start to finish.

• 9:34Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha. Okay. So what do you think is the biggest challenge in the world right now? Let's just say in America, what's the biggest challenge for most entrepreneurs or people that want, that dream bigger? That are up to big things that are, put a lot on their plate because they, uh, you know, want to tackle all these different things. What do you think is the biggest challenge that they face?

• 9:54Speaker 02

  Um, I think my instinct goes, and I'm not sure it's going to be the exact right answer, but I, I go straight to technology. You know, um, I, I, there's a graphic that, you know, we created for the book and I can't even remember if it made it in. But it's this idea of work-life balance and that's an incredibly new phenomenon that we've even identified that as a problem. I don't think that, you know, serfs back in medieval times worried about their work-life balance, right? This actually showed up in the eighties and a lot of that has been really exacerbated by the fact that cell phones and smartphones, there's no barriers between when we're at work and when we're at home. And that happened really rapidly and you can see like the year the BlackBerry came out,

• 10:39Speaker 02

  the number of times that showed up in popular literature just goes through the roof and it actually peaks with the iPhone. So I think that I love all the tools we have to be entrepreneurs from home and to not have to be renting and, and have the expense of an office, but we have to also have an adaptation to know when are we at work? When are we doing our work and when are we at home and living our lives? And I think that that's a, that's a big challenge for us right now.

• 11:06Lewis Howes?

  And do you think work-life balance is, is possible or is that a way, are we supposed to be having a balance in work and life?

• 11:14Speaker 02

  Um, you know, that's one of the lies that we identify in the book. It's actually being sold to us as a destination. This idea that we just get our life just really organized, it's all going to fall into place. And we'll have a great relationship with our kids and our spouse and with, you know, our work relationships. And it'll all be just like Nirvana and it's actually a verb. And it's something that you have to do actively. Um, that was like a big aha. It's a big point that I try to make. A lot of the people we work with every day are female entrepreneurs. And I think they have it doubly hard, right? They're trying to balance a strong obligation to family. Um, they often neglect their personal life completely to take care of family and work.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  And so this idea that there's a nirvana out there, it's a disservice. It makes us think that other people are succeeding. Um, when they're not. So it's just something you actively do.

• 12:09Lewis Howes?

  So, I mean, so what I'm hearing you say is that work-life balance is not possible. Is that right?

• 12:15Speaker 02

  I think that is absolutely correct. Um, that's the way we come at it. I think that a huge business, a hugely successful business is by nature going to be a little bit messy. And if you're focusing on your one thing, like we talk about in the book, you're going to be neglecting a lot of the little things.

• 12:30Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 12:31Speaker 02

  I think that's okay to be out of balance professionally, but you can't neglect your health. You can't neglect your key relationships. You can't neglect your spirituality. If you neglect those things for too long, you're going to have a real problem, a profound problem. It might derail the work that you've done.

• 12:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and I think the importance is, from my own experience, is that they need to be in balance at some point, like, but they are not equal balance. For instance, you know, when I'm running my business and I've got a launch or I'm working on a book for the last year, I'm putting a lot of energy into that and it's sometimes, you know, late all-nighters I'm putting in, so I'm not balancing, you know, relationships or other certain things in my business because I'm putting a lot of energy into one thing. Um, but I think that I need to have a check and a balance at a later point where I recover and I, and I get back to something else as opposed to just putting all my time into the one thing forever. That's what seems to work with me. If I just grind all day, all night and never balance anything in my health or my relationships,

• 13:30Lewis Howes?

  then there's going to be a downfall, I think. Is that what you're leading into?

• 13:34Speaker 02

  I think you're dead on. I just want, we want people to be purposeful about it. And if I go into it, like there's an event we do every year where we host about 14,000 people over one week. And it's a grueling, you know, period of time working up to it. That week itself is really tough. I'm kind of an introvert, so I'm like, you know, and mobs of people for a week. And you just go into it knowing I've got to counterbalance. And that's kind of the word we introduce.

• 14:00Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 14:01Speaker 02

  Is that you're going to consciously, it's okay to get out of balance, especially with work. But you've got to immediately counterbalance. You can't, you know, say, all right, you know, when this business goes public, I will go back and help them out. That might be too long, right? You might have neglected things for too long for that to work. So it's a regular sort of attending to those things so they never get too far out of balance.

• 14:22Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha. What's another major lie that we're, that we believe in or that we're told that's going to help us be successful?

• 14:30Speaker 02

  You know, we kind of prioritized them. The first one is this idea that everything matters equally. And I actually don't believe that people walk around defending that idea that everything's equal. They actually just act that way. And I think that when you have too much on your calendar, your to-do list is too long. You end up doing what I do. I mean, I'm guilty of this. Instead of doing the most important thing on your list, you do the things that will make your list shorter.

• 14:59Lewis Howes?

  And you push off the important things.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. And you're just trying to make the list shorter for psychic relief. And I think we all fall guilty of this sometimes when we really get overwhelmed. And the real key here is you need to always be prioritizing. Because doing the most important thing always trumps that other stuff.

• 15:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Okay. So prioritizing, and what about multitasking?

• 15:21Speaker 02

  Well, that's number two, right? So when people have too many things to do, the first thing they fall prey to is doing the little stuff, right, to shorten their list. The second thing is they'll try to do two things at once. And it's funny, while we were writing this book, I kept trying to figure out how many articles I could find on Google. It was just one of those little fascinations. And in the beginning, I could find like 100 articles. And it was then a million. And then it was like, at one point, it was like 3.9 million was the last time I checked. Articles on how to multitask better.

• 15:50Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  And so there's this idea out there and people are proud of it. Women say they do it better than men, but it really runs in the face of all the science. And, you know, there's a guy named Clifford Nass that we kind of... Led the way for us. And what I loved about his research is Nass, he was a Stanford University guy, and he actually idolized multitaskers because he wasn't a good one. And he designed a study to figure out not why they were wrong, but how they did what they did so well. And so he surveyed, I think it was like 208 grad students, divided them into groups of people who multitask well according to them and those who didn't, and then gave them a battery of tests. And I'm just going to quote what he said in the New York Times. The results

• 16:36Speaker 02

  were multitaskers were suckers for irrelevancies. They were lousy at everything.

• 16:42Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 16:43Speaker 02

  Every single battery of tests, the people who were bad at multitasking outperformed those who thought they were good, including a test of multitasking.

• 16:50Lewis Howes?

  That's

• 16:51Speaker 02

  And yeah, you just find that and you're like, you know, so you're you're fooling yourself.

• 16:57Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 16:57Speaker 02

  It costs you time. On average, about 28% of our workday is lost to this kind of juggling back and forth between task and having to reorient. It's really one of those things that's been sold on us and it's kind of selling us down the river.

• 17:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and I love in the beginning, somewhere in your book, you have a quote or a little graphic that says, if you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one, right?

• 17:20Speaker 02

  That's right. It's an old Russian proverb.

• 17:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I love that. And, you know, I think everyone's experienced that probably when they're multitasking, they feel like they're getting more done. But really, when you do one thing at a time and you're focused on that energy and you clear distractions, you're going to be more productive at it. It's going to be a better result and you actually get it done faster.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  That's the truth. And when you study people who are achieving at a really high level, at least for a period of time on a regular basis, they're not multitasking.

• 17:48Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  You know, you wouldn't let your surgeon multitask. You wouldn't let your pilot multitask. Hopefully, you don't let your driver multitask.

• 17:53Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  We know when lives are at stake, we treat it really seriously. And it's kind of a shame that people don't treat their their most important work just as seriously.

• 18:03Lewis Howes?

  Right. I want to go over one more of these lies and you say, "Big is bad." Can you talk about that line?

• 18:09Speaker 02

  It's funny, our publisher really wanted us to cut this from the book. He was like, "What? People don't argue with big. People want big. That's why they buy business books." But we've been coaching and training entrepreneurs for decades. And when people start lining up and doing the right things, they identify their one thing. They don't multitask while they do it. They make it a habit. All of those things we talk about in the book. At some point, you're going to hear them say, "But you know, I just want my business to be comfortable." Right? "I don't want a big mess." And people have these preconceptions about what big actually means for them. It's very unusual to find people who are really, really want to shoot for the moon. And so, we kind of tried to blow that up.

• 18:52Speaker 02

  You know, Gary was fortunate, the brief period of his life where he was employed, he worked for about four people and he only ever worked for millionaires.

• 19:00Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 19:01Speaker 02

  And that was his experience, is the way they viewed the world. And his point and our point in the book is that when you aim at a really big goal, and you allow yourself to aim at a big goal, you're going to pick bigger models and systems to work it, and you'll have bigger relationships to help you out. And the moment you start aiming low, like a safe goal, like, you know, that's a comfortable goal, you're going to adapt those same habits and systems. And those are the things that really define us and our relationships around them. And it's nothing you would ever advise your kids to do. So, I mean, we don't take our own advice, right? You know, go ahead and aim big and build those habits and build those relationships because they're going to drive you a lot further.

• 19:43Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  That all sounds kind of trite, but it's something that every entrepreneur has to hear. If there's one thing I'm guilty of violating in this book again and again and again, it's not thinking big enough.

• 19:53Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, really?

• 19:55Speaker 02

  I mean, we came out of the gate and we were talking publishing beforehand. And, you know, it's called the one thing. We obviously wanted it to be a number one bestseller.

• 20:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 20:04Speaker 02

  And so, we did the science, right? We looked at the trends over the last three years. We felt like, you know what? If we can get about 40,000 copies pre-sold, I feel pretty confident we'll be a number one. And so, we started building our marketing plan around pre-selling 40,000 copies. Well, you know, the first time I sit down with Gary and that, he goes, "What in the heck are you doing? Didn't you read our own book?" It's like, he goes, "Double it, triple it." I want you to, I want to see a plan for selling 100,000 copies.

• 20:32Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  And that immediately made me uncomfortable. I mean, forty thousand's huge.

• 20:37Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 20:37Speaker 02

  Then we start really asking bigger questions. And only because of that did we actually reach our goals. We ended up, I think our total sales over the first month was like sixty six thousand.

• 20:48Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  But guess who came out at the same time? You know, a lady named Cheryl wrote a book called Lean In.

• 20:54Lewis Howes?

  That's tough.

• 20:55Speaker 02

  And so we're going head to head.

• 20:56Lewis Howes?

  Facebook.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  Oh, gosh, I know. And so it was like, you can't control that.

• 21:01Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  But if we had thought smaller, we'd have never reached our goals. And so I just look up all the time and I find myself short of an expectation or saying no to something where if I just thought bigger and been working from a bigger model, we could have had more.

• 21:15Lewis Howes?

  You're, you're inspiring me right now because, you know, I asked my publisher, I said, I asked like the lead salesperson, I said, what number will make you literally rip your shirt off and run around Times Square half naked screaming because you'd be so excited. We hit that number by the end of the first week. And she said, as a woman, she said thirty thousand copies within the first week would be really great. It'd be amazing. And I said, okay, cool. I'm gonna go for fifty thousand then. But now you're, you're making me think like I should go for a hundred thousand to start even thinking bigger. So I might be inspired to create my new goal as a hundred thousand.

• 21:50Speaker 02

  Well, I'm gonna challenge you even further. Here's the, here's the end goal. Within a month of that, Gary was asking me for a plan on how will we sell a million copies in one year?

• 21:59Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 22:01Speaker 02

  And, and, and, and in the world of nonfiction publishing, there's, there's only a handful of people you can even model and even ask, how did they do it?

• 22:09Lewis Howes?

  Right. Yeah, a lot of our phenomenon's like Four Hour Work Week, you know, it just like took off on its own.

• 22:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. I mean, there's a limit where now you're kind of way out there, you're past any benchmarking, you're into just kind of this airy fairyland where luck played a big part. But you can start asking, well, what did they all have in common? So you at least have that in place. But anyway, like I said, every time I think I'm thinking big, uh, my partner will remind me that I can think bigger and there's never, there's never any thing that hurts you for doing that.

• 22:41Lewis Howes?

  So you, so is it, what about people say, well, I don't want to think unrealistic because that's never gonna happen or, you know, it's too soon of a time for it to happen if it's a first time author, you know, whatever it is, if someone needs to lose a hundred pounds in two months. Uh, it may be such a huge unrealistic goal. How do you tell them that it's not that big to dream that big?

• 23:02Speaker 02

  Okay, that's a great question. The, you know, you look at that and I would just say, there's no harm in asking the question. The whole point of a goal, and it's one of the, the better parts of the book, and I think you're a chapter away from this, is this idea that the only reason we set goals is to identify the actions we would need to do to hit them.

• 23:20Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  It's not about setting it out there in the world that, look, we're shooting for this big number because we're hot shots. It's just to work backwards from that goal and say, well, what would the activities need to be in order for us to achieve this?

• 23:33Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 23:33Speaker 02

  And so I think you can then sit down, like if it's a health goal, you consult with a doctor or professional because they'll tell you exactly like your point, you know, 50 pounds in a month is not sustainable or healthy.

• 23:46Lewis Howes?

  But a business goal could be different.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  A business goal can be different, right? If you want to say, I wanna, I wanna increase my sales by 10%, that might represent millions of dollars. There's no harm in asking, all right, let's just ask the question, what would it take for us to double our sales in one year?

• 24:01Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 24:02Speaker 02

  We tend to think incrementally and it's a little bit different to occasionally ask the question, well, what would it look like for us to take a giant leap forward?

• 24:11Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 24:12Speaker 02

  It may not be possible, but asking the question at least identifies the things that you may or may not be willing or able to do.

• 24:18Lewis Howes?

  Okay, got you. So let's talk about this. What is the one thing then? What's the one thing, um, what's the question that we ask ourselves? What's, what do you call it? The focusing question, correct?

• 24:29Speaker 02

  That's right. The heart of the book is a, is a fairly humble tool, but highly effective one. Um, it's the focusing question and our goal with the book was that when people set the book down, they would ask themselves some form of this question, you know, basically, what's my one thing? But the way we word it is, what's the one thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?

• 24:56Speaker 02

  And it's essentially a question in three parts, right? What's the one thing, not two or three? You're really trying to narrow it down to you. You can't hedge your bets. It's something that you concurrently do. It's not a would do or a could do or should do. It's like the Shel Silverstein poem. All the woulda, coulda, shouldas all ran away and hid from one little did, right? We want you to get you into action.

• 25:16Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  Such that by doing it, just says that this action can't just be cause and effect alone. It has to have a series of impacts. And the scale of that is everything's going to be easier or necessary. The metaphor for the book is a domino run. And what we're trying to get people to do is to line up their dominos. We know it's not just one thing. We want many things to happen. But if you line them up correctly and do the first correct action, you can create these chain reactions in your life. And the question is designed to find the longest domino run currently available in your world.

• 25:52Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha. So would you, so would you first set a goal that you have for yourself? And then ask this question to see what's the one thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or necessary that day, that month, that year? What's the process for that?

• 26:08Speaker 02

  Um, I think you only ask it around what's important. Um, on page one fourteen in the book, we identify seven areas of your life. We think are worthy of asking the question because otherwise, I mean, if you're asking about how do I fold clothes? You're going to drive yourself crazy unless you make your living folding clothes.

• 26:24Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  Right?

• 26:25Lewis Howes?

  Unless it's your business. Yeah.

• 26:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 26:27Lewis Howes?

  So your business, your spiritual life, your finances, physical health, personal life, key relationships and your job.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  Right. And we, we kind of prioritize those, right? You know, what's the one thing for my spiritual life would be first for us? If you don't know why you're here, you know, you're postponing a pretty big question. What's the one thing for your physical life? What's the one thing for your personal life? And a lot of people push back on prioritizing thing, three, three things around you before key relationships. But it's like on the airplane, you know, you put the oxygen mask on first before assisting others. And it's a long view, right? You need to take care of yourself so you can take care of the people you love. So the question you ask, and we'll go to that, is, is it the timeframe, it can be relative. We have a section in the book called goal setting to the now.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  There's the big, the highest possible level is what's my one thing? And that's kind of for your life. What am I here for? You know, you've devoted a lot of your life right now to sharing knowledge with others.

• 27:28Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 27:29Speaker 02

  Right? You're trying to give back and you've made a really big impact. I don't know if that connects to your ultimate life mission or not, or if it's just part of it. But usually when I see somebody that's that successful, there's usually a pretty strong connection, whether they're aware of it or not.

• 27:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I mean, I'll tell you, my, my, my vision right now is to, and I feel like my vision over the last decade has evolved and changed, you know? And I've talked about this on the podcast. When I was in high school, I wanted to be, get a scholarship in college and play college football. And then I wanted to be an all-American athlete and then I wanted to play professional football. And then I wanted to, you know, make my first thousand dollars after I got injured. And it's evolved. I wanted to have a girlfriend, you know? It's always a different stage. And now I've, I've, I've had a lot of, a lot more experience in my twenties and I'm thirty two now. And since starting the podcast, I really got clear on wanting to make a bigger impact in the world. And I said, and this is interesting because I'm glad I made this number as part of my goal.

• 28:25Lewis Howes?

  I remember thinking, people always talk about, when I ask them the question, you know, what's your dream? What do you want to achieve in your life? And a lot of people would say, you know, I want to help, I want to inspire people. I want to help people. And then some people would say, I want to, I want to inspire millions of people. And I never, I never felt like anyone was ever actually clear on a specific vision, like a specific number and specific impact. And so I just said a couple of years ago, my mission of my life right now is to serve a hundred million people, to show them how to make a full-time living doing what they love. Because I believe if people are doing what they love, doing the things that fulfills them the most, and they're making an income around it, then they're going to be the most fulfilled they can be. And they're going to inspire other people around them by their actions.

• 29:10Lewis Howes?

  They're going to love themselves because they're doing what they love and getting paid for it. They're going to feel worthy. They're going to treat themselves better and they're going to treat their health. Health better. And that I feel like that is gonna literally heal the world in a weird kind of way. By teaching that and by educating and being a symbol for that in a way through having a podcast and content and doing whatever I can, a book. To inspire people to to teach that. So for me, I remember saying it and being like, is this crazy to say a hundred million people? And how am I gonna track that? And how am I gonna know? And this and that? But I'll tell you what, since I've declared it and been clear on it. Things are moving out of the way for me to realize what I need to do to act bigger and to play a bigger game to to create more leverage.

• 29:55Lewis Howes?

  With my audience, so that they will spread the word for me. So it's not as daunting of a of a goal anymore.

• 30:01Speaker 02

  That is really cool. And you know, the only thing I would, you know, I would add that is there, I think when people are doing the thing that they love the most. Not only will they be most fulfilled, it's not always true, but most of the time, I actually think they make the most income a lot of the time.

• 30:16Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 30:17Speaker 02

  Because they're passionate, right? And they they develop mastery. So many things come from working within our purpose. So I love that. That's exactly like, congratulations to you for figuring that out. And it only took you what, thirty years? That's actually like probably the record for a lot of us, right?

• 30:36Lewis Howes?

  You know, who knows? Maybe in a few years, my my vision will shift and it'll change and something will happen. Well, I'll be like, well, actually. I have a new mission, but right now this is where I'm at and I'm committed to it.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  You know, and the number one thing that holds people back is from articulating a mission statement. A purpose statement, you know, it feels heavy. They feel like they have to get it tattooed on their arm right away. And it's really something that you need to date a while. You don't have to get married and it will, it will evolve.

• 31:05Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 31:05Speaker 02

  You know, I've had a mission around helping people with our books. And what became clear to me through a crisis was that as motivating as I was around, I love writing and I love sharing ideas. And the creative process, those are things that I'm passionate about. It wasn't why I was doing them. And mine's totally corny. Right, I wanted to be the best I could be so that I could be the best father and husband I could be. Totally cheesy, but at the end of the day, like I want to keep winning the respect back of my wife. And I want to live in integrity with my kids and what I tell them to do, I'm actually living. And that's a really tough standard for me to be the best I can be, one you never get there.

• 31:49Speaker 02

  And it's led me to ask bigger and bigger questions because I want them to do that. Does that make sense?

• 31:54Lewis Howes?

  It makes a lot of sense. And when you say you want to win the respect back of your, of your wife, does that mean you lost the respect at some point?

• 32:01Speaker 02

  I never want to. I never want to take it for granted. Um, every day I want to make her prouder that she said yes.

• 32:10Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 32:10Speaker 02

  And, you know, just holding yourself to that standard. She's my best friend, right? Um, love of my life, best move I ever made. You can go on, be as cheesy as we want to go. But, um, the fact is she also holds me accountable. And she was one of the people that helped me understand, you know, I was going to mail it in on a book. And she said, wow, you know, you're an author. You do this for a living. We tell your, our kids that you're an author. And it sounds like you're not going to do your best on this. And when she told me that, I hated her for just a brief moment. And then I surrendered and I said, you're totally right. I've, I've got to, I've got to change my attitude about this project. And that was when it became clear. I was like, I could on my own terms have done a mediocre job,

• 32:54Speaker 02

  which would probably have been better than some, some other one. And I think I'm pretty good at my craft. But it wouldn't have been my best. And there are days that you have to do that if you really want to walk down that path. So she helped me get really clear and I changed it. I have it on my little goal sheet that I carry with me everywhere. That's at the top of it. And that helps remind me that I gotta always be raising my game. I always gotta be trying my best because that's what I, you know, I gotta practice what I preach. I gotta live in integrity.

• 33:20Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 33:22Speaker 02

  So if that's the height of it, you then work backwards. It's like your goal of a hundred million, I would ask you, if you were following, you know, the system, where would you want, have to be? What would be the one thing that you would have to accomplish in the next five years to feel like you were on track for that?

• 33:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's interesting. Since I started reading this about a week ago, I've been asking myself, you know, and I've been asking questions and having conversation with my team and being like, what am I, is what I'm doing right now serving that mission? Or can that be, you know, can someone else, can someone else do this task? Or is this making everything else easier or unnecessary for all these other things? So I've been asking myself that question because I feel like, you know, I'm, I'm fairly successful in certain terms and I'm, you know, I always achieve what I want to achieve and I'm always driven and focused and committed and dedicated. But I'm like, am I doing everything I need to do every single day? That one thing that's going to serve the hundred million mission and get there faster.

• 34:17Lewis Howes?

  So I've been, yeah, I've been asking myself and what I keep coming up with is like, you know, the relationships, like really, I'm the only one on my team that can develop these relationships that can create the leverage of the audience. So a lot of it is the, making sure my interviews, I'm getting the right people on the interviews who can spread the message that I want to serve people. Now, when people listen to it, they are so inspired, they want to spread the message. It's like when you have a great book, you know, you don't need to have a great marketing plan. You just need to write a great book and it'll do the marketing for you if it's that great. So I'm, I'm re, you know, evaluating everything and, and asking my team and telling my team to read this. And making sure that they're holding me accountable for what I am doing and what I'm not doing.

• 35:00Lewis Howes?

  And yeah, what's going to best serve the overall mission. So it's been, it's been a lot more of that.

• 35:05Speaker 02

  Your role playing, one of the, we hinted at this earlier, one of the greatest benefits about getting clear about where you're going, is it makes it easier for you to say no to anything that's off that path.

• 35:15Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. Yeah. And it's interesting, I also said to, you know, I had Tim Ferriss on the, the show recently. And I, and I asked him, you know, he gets inundated with opportunities, like amazing opportunities constantly. He showed me his inbox, it was like 1500 messages in the last few weeks or something that he just can't reply to because it's so overwhelming. And it's not junk mail, it's like. Invest in this opportunity that could be a potential, you know, another multi-billion dollar company in the next couple of years. Invest in this. It's speaking for a hundred grand here. It's, you know, all these different opportunities. And I go, how do you make your decisions? And he goes, unless it's a fuck yes, it's a no.

• 35:54Lewis Howes?

  And I was like, that's really interesting because, you know, at some point when you get so, so many opportunities, if it's not like the most exciting thing in the world, that's going to serve your mission or that's going to be on, on part of your mission, then it's a no. And I think that's really hard. It's been hard for me in the past to say no to a lot of things. That seemed cool or awesome or whatever. If it's not going to serve that mission. And I think people get caught up and they get distracted because of all these opportunities.

• 36:19Speaker 02

  You know, if we were to go back and add a chapter to the book, I would have added another lie. And it would be the lie of the low hanging fruit. And I think that because most of us aren't absolutely clear about where we want to go. And that's okay. Right? I mean, it's great when you are, it's okay to be a little bit unsure. But that lack of uncertain, you know, certainty, because we haven't stopped to work on it. The low hanging fruit, we're like, wow, that's a huge win. I can go do that and acquire this many customers or this many listeners, whatever your goal is right away. But if it's not actually on the path to where you're going, you could have just set yourself back a year. And again, it's a distraction and, but it's coming under the guise of low hanging fruit. Right?

• 37:03Speaker 02

  It's an easy investment. So I like his answer, right? If it's not an absolute F yes slam dunk. Boom. You know, you've got a, you've, you've got to say no to it. I would much rather say no to a hundred good opportunities than take one bad one.

• 37:18Lewis Howes?

  Man, yeah, that's powerful stuff. I mean, what is someone, how does someone start to evaluate these things? You've got a great exercise in here. That's kind of like a list for your spiritual life and your physical health and your personal life. But what's something that someone can do as a conversation starter with, say, their, their, their husband or their wife or their business partner? What's something that they can do just to start the conversation? And get clearer and clearer on their mission. If they, whether they know what their mission is or they're unclear about it. And they just want to be more productive. What does that conversation look like?

• 37:55Speaker 02

  Um, in terms of identifying your purpose?

• 37:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I'd say identifying, I'd say, well, I'd say identifying your purpose and identifying your one thing. And, and making sure that.

• 38:07Lewis Howes?

  Well, let's start with like, what is your one thing?

• 38:10Speaker 02

  Well, you know, it's funny is there's, there's this great book out there. You probably have run into it. It's an older book. It's called the Happiness Hypothesis. And he was the first guy to introduce this metaphor, and I've read it in a dozen books since. But it's the idea of the elephant and the rider. And if you've ever seen like on National Geographic, some, you know, 90 pound kid riding on the back of an Asian elephant through the jungle. His question was, is there anything that boy can do to stop the elephant from leaving the trail? If the elephant absolutely decides it's going to leave the trail?

• 38:43Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 38:43Speaker 02

  There's nothing.

• 38:44Lewis Howes?

  Right. Unless he had a gun. I don't know.

• 38:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, then, but then the elephant ain't going anywhere, right?

• 38:49Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 38:50Speaker 02

  So he said, look, understand that the rider is your intellect. It's where we think we want to go. It's where we want to direct things, but the elephant is our heart. And when I read that, I got, it was once, one time I was like, wow. So I just need to listen to the elephant. Where have I been heading this whole time without realizing it? Because whether you were going there consciously or not, you've been inching up to it. Like, I've always wanted to be a writer, but I worked in bookstores, right? I secretly short, so, you know, wrote short stories. I got an MFA worthless, right? And then you turn around and find yourself as an editor in New York. I'm backing my way up to the thing I most want without ever articulating it.

• 39:34Speaker 02

  And so at the end of the day, when I sat down and asked the question, I went through a life transition, got married to my wife. We relocated to Austin. I got to, to restate kind of where I wanted to go and start identifying myself, not as an editor, but as a writer. And so, you know, the gift of it is, is that you've probably been heading down this path a long time. And the people who know you best will say, look, if you're not aware, this is what you're here for.

• 39:59Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 40:00Speaker 02

  And a lot of times, people know it, but they don't trust it because it's coming from them and someone hasn't endorsed them, right? They haven't been blessed with this title that they can go do it.

• 40:11Lewis Howes?

  Or they don't have the credentials, the credentials or the education, the degree or whatever. A lot of people come to me and say like, you know, I get so frustrated when I hear this, when they come to me and say, I don't think I can charge this because I don't have the certificate or the degree or whatever. And I'm like, listen, if you can get people results, you can charge whatever you're worth. And it just frustrates me. I hate seeing that.

• 40:35Speaker 02

  The people who end up making the most are the ones willing to actually ask for it and then deliver. They won't make it again if they don't deliver. That's, that's clear. But I, I think that when people ask the question, sit down and say, you know, what is it that if I could do it, you know, working, not like, you don't write down fly fishing unless that really is true. That's what you want to do as a profession. But what would I do that really, I wouldn't care how much I got paid to do? Most people kind of know the activities, like I love to negotiate, I love to work with people. They can narrow it down to some extent, even if they don't have a job title. And then what would I be working for? And for some people, you know, it's about knowledge, it's education.

• 41:17Speaker 02

  And I think just asking a couple of key questions, you'll be in the ballpark. I, I just say, pick a compass direction. You don't have to know if you're going to Detroit, but if that's north of you, start heading that way and see if you like that journey.

• 41:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 41:30Speaker 02

  Most people don't take the first step and that's, that's really where it is. Just start taking that first step to articulating why you're here and explore that and see where it takes you.

• 41:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. So I like you have a diagram, I want to ask a few more questions before we finish up, but I like you have this diagram here on one, page 107, that's a circle with a dot in the middle. And it says, the big picture, what's my one thing? And then the small focus, what's my one thing right now?

• 41:55Speaker 02

  Right.

• 41:56Lewis Howes?

  Can you talk more about that? Let's use me as an example. If my big thing is a hundred million people, then the one thing right now is that each day, is that each month, each year? What does that mean? Like the one thing I can do in this moment that's going to help me get there?

• 42:11Speaker 02

  Yes, I mean, we talk about it. It's called an exercise we call goal setting to the now. And this is the first step in that journey. That what you're doing now should be informed by what you plan to do many, many years down the road. Like where am I going? Should inform now, but it's very hard for most people to close that gap.

• 42:29Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 42:29Speaker 02

  You know, it's very hard for me, you know, I, if you're thinking a hundred million, right? It's very hard for me to know what I should do right now.

• 42:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 42:37Speaker 02

  But if you work backwards systematically, like where would you need to be in five years? Take your best guess, right? Maybe it's 20 million listeners, right?

• 42:45Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 42:46Speaker 02

  Great. Where would you need to be in one year to feel like you were on track for your five year goals? I don't know. A million listeners.

• 42:53Lewis Howes?

  Sure, yeah.

• 42:54Speaker 02

  Then, then you're now getting back in the frame of reference, hopefully of something that you might have a clue about what to do. And you say, well, what would I have to accomplish at by the end of this month? What's the one thing to feel like I was on track for my year? So, well, I would have to have this. Well, then what would I have to do this week to be on track for my monthly goal? And what would I have to do today to be on track for my week? And when you really break down the way like Bill Gates, like I've read articles and we like we reversed engineer this huge thing around his charity. I was like, wow, he was, he was working backwards. And a lot of high, high achievers, that's actually how they actually measure their next step. Whether they're conscious or not, they're working backwards from the goal. Cause it just makes everything else kind of fall apart.

• 43:39Speaker 02

  If I look forward, I see all the options. If I look backwards, I see the pack up path I actually took. It's funny, if you run out in the future, even though you're guessing, that path is fairly straight when you look back on to now. And I tell people, you may not have any clue how to get to a hundred million. Set your sights on your annual goal. Chances are you can get in the ballpark. And after a few months, you'll know if you're doing the right thing.

• 44:04Lewis Howes?

  I like that.

• 44:05Speaker 02

  That's the process for getting there.

• 44:07Lewis Howes?

  That's great. Um, I love this book. I'm excited to finish it. I've, I've got a lot out of the first hundred and fourteen pages so far, so I'm excited to dive in more and I want to make sure everyone picks up a copy of this. I'll have it linked up over on the show notes, but it's called The One Thing, The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. I want to ask you a couple of questions left. Uh, one is it's a, it's a hundred years from now and it's the last day and you've lived a healthy, happy life. You've achieved all your dreams. All, everyone that loves you is sitting by you for your last minutes. The only thing is all of the work that you ever created has been deleted. Everything you've ever written,

• 44:51Lewis Howes?

  all the books somehow vanished. Something happened in the world where they all disappeared. And your, your wife hands you a piece of paper and a pen and says, Jay, you've got a piece of paper and a pen and you have three things that you should get to write down. The three truths that you know to be true about what you learned from your experience here on this earth. And, uh, this is what your family, the legacy you leave behind is going to read forever about what you learned. And, uh, there's nothing else that people will read about you that you've written except for this. What would be the three truths that you could speak into right now that you would want to write down and leave behind?

• 45:34Speaker 02

  Um, it's funny when you say that, I just say, wow, all my work wasn't for naught if my wife and kids are right there.

• 45:41Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 45:41Speaker 02

  Right? Because that is a big part of my mission. I do think that fundamentally at the end of everything, um, it is about our relationships and those, that's what I imagine I will be focused on, on my deathbed and how well I did. And hopefully it'll be, you know, as Gary always says, I'm glad I did, not I wish I had. Um, I don't want regrets. I want to be glad about what I attempted, even if I failed. And hopefully I have achieved in relationships and experiences because I think that's what lasts. Even if there's no evidence to the world.

• 46:17Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  So I just gave you two. Is that too much prioritization? Should I throw in a third? Maybe my dog.

• 46:22Lewis Howes?

  Throw in the third. What's the, the third truth?

• 46:24Speaker 02

  I'm obsessed with my puppy right now, Taco. So maybe it's that relationship. Hopefully you've, I've reached beyond my wife and family and impacted others.

• 46:34Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 46:34Speaker 02

  Uh, like I said, that to me is a relationship, a spiritual question, and um, you want to have an impact. You used that word earlier. I, I think at some point, the numbers, the money, all the physical things fall aside. When you realize the biggest opportunity of all is to change lives. And the first time most of us experience that is when we become a parent. And we're like, wow, this little life has been entrusted to me? And I get to nurture it for a few years to set it on a trajectory. And then you look up and you realize, I mean, maybe you've already realized this, that you actually have the opportunity to nurture a lot of lives. If you're purposeful. And that's a really great gift that we all get.

• 47:15Lewis Howes?

  That's cool. Well, I've got one more question for you, Jay, but I want to take a moment to acknowledge you for the thing that's coming up for me. That I want to talk about is your courage because I feel like it's very courageous of you to essentially leave a steady, safe, comfortable, successful job, uh, career as an editor at a publisher. And transition into doing what you actually were born to do, which is right. And for me, that takes a lot of courage to, you know, leave your reputation, your network, the community, and go somewhere new and take on a new journey that you did.

• 47:55Lewis Howes?

  Um, and in my mind, it's paid off a million times over on the impact that you guys have created with this book and the other books that you've, you've written. So I want to acknowledge you for that courage and your commitment to your dream and your passion. Because um, you know, reading this alone has had an impact on my life. So thank you.

• 48:13Speaker 02

  Thank you, man. It's awesome.

• 48:15Lewis Howes?

  And the final question is what's your definition of greatness?

• 48:18Speaker 02

  I think greatness, we always say success, greatness. I always want to say, tell people, if you, if you know what you want and you get what you've want, you've achieved the greatest possible success. And the problem for most people is they're not really clear about what they want.

• 48:35Speaker 02

  Greatness to me is, is doing your best. So I, I need to know what I want to be my best at and then, and absolutely strive. It's not, I think it's an internal question is what I'm getting at. I think it's, did I do my best or not? And that's a very personal spiritual question, not did I run the race faster than the guy next to me?

• 48:56Lewis Howes?

  I love that. Jay Papazan, thanks so much for coming on. I appreciate you.

• 49:00Speaker 02

  Thank you very much for having me.

• 49:04Speaker 00

  There you go, guys. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Jay. If you did, make sure to share it with your friends and check out all of the resources and show notes over at lewishouse.com/176. Again, feel free to post it over on Facebook and Twitter and anywhere on social media. Get the word out. If this is your first time coming to the podcast, thank you again so much for being here. Thank you for showing up. I hope you had a great experience. And if you did, please pay it forward by letting another friend know about this episode or check out some other episodes and share them with your friends. That's how we've grown so fast in the last couple of years is mostly word of mouth. And it means a lot to me when you guys continue to share it, promote it and let your friends

• 49:49Speaker 00

  know about the School of Greatness. Thanks, Ian, guys. Again, episode number 176, lewishouse.com/176 for all the information. You guys are incredible. We've got some big guests coming up next and you guys know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.

• 50:39Speaker 03

  Woo!

• 51:34Speaker 03

  Part, part, part.