Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick - The Science of Doing Less and Achieving More with Jay Papasan - E-173

Episode Date: May 26, 2026

Are you tired of feeling stuck, scattered, and constantly overwhelmed? In this episode of Makes Sense, Dr. JC Doornick sits down with Jay Papasan, co-author of the global bestseller The ONE Thing, to reveal why traditional productivity is failing you. Most people think the secret to success is doing more, but Jay explains why "doing more" is actually what’s holding you back from your biggest goals. We dive deep into how to cut through the digital noise and identify the single most important task that creates real momentum in your life and business. Learn how to reclaim your clarity, master your focus, and shift your perception to achieve extraordinary results with less effort. If you’ve been looking for a sign to slow down and focus, this is it.   Connect With Jay Papasan: Linktree: linktr.ee/jaypapasan Book: https://amzn.to/3Q2uQLp IG: @jaypapasan     Dr. JC Doornick Links: Web - www.makessensebook.com YT -    / @drjcdoornick IG -   / @drjcdoornick FB -   / @makessensepodcast Makes Sense Book - https://tinyurl.com/makessensepurchase   MAKES SENSE PODCAST Welcome to the Makes Sense with Dr. JC Doornick Podcast. This podcast explores topics that expand human consciousness and enhance performance. On the Makes Sense Podcast, we acknowledge that it's who you are that determines how well what you do works, and that perception is subjective and an acquired taste. When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at begin to change. Welcome to the uprising of the sleepwalking masses. Welcome to the Makes Sense with Dr. JC Doornick Podcast.   SUBSCRIBE/RATE/REVIEW & SHARE our new podcast. FOLLOW Podcast: You will find a "Follow" button in the top right. This will enable the podcast software to alert you when a new episode launches each week. Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/makes-sense-with-dr-jc-doornick/id1730954168 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1WHfKWDDReMtrGFz4kkZs9?si=003780ca147c4aec   Podcast Affiliates: Kwik Learning: Many people ask me where I get all these topics, which I've been covering for almost 15 years. I have learned to read nearly four times faster and retain information 10 times better with Kwik Learning. Learn how to learn and earn with Jim Kwik. Get his program at a special discount here: https://jimkwik.com/dragon OUR SPONSORS: Makes Sense Academy: A private mastermind and psychologically safe environment full of the Mindset and Action steps that will help you begin to thrive. The Makes Sense Academy. https://www.skool.com/makes-sense-academy/about The Sati Experience: A retreat designed for the married couple that truly loves one another, yet wants to take their love to that higher magical level. Relax, reestablish, and renew your love at the Sati Experience. https://www.satiexperience.com   0:00 - Intro 3:23 - What's it like to be Jay Papasan 15:57 - What was the ONE THING that placed you in a position for your success? 21:41 - Why are people so overwhelmed today? 27:23 - Why does society associate exhaustion with importance? 34:14 - Is technology amplifying distraction or unveiling the weakness in our attention game? 43:43 - What is the ONE THING and how did you come to create it? 51:56 - How do we know if our One Thing is our one thing or the One Thing We were Taught? 56:17 - What is it that most people misunderstand about success? #Productivity #Focus #TheOneThing #SuccessMindset #DrJCDoornick Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I think the challenge for people is twofold. We don't have a quality filter for deciding what we are going to choose. And most people have not developed the muscle of making a radical yes. They are truly committing to do something versus trying to do it all. We all know the old saying, if you try to please everybody, you're going to please no one. Have you noticed that the world that we live in has been doing most of the thinking for you, that your beliefs, perceptions, reactions, fears and doubts have been shaped by unsolicited outside noise? How easy it's been for you to slip into that default sleepwalking mode and label it as life and reality.

Yeah, that ends here. Welcome to the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. podcast. This is your opportunity to start thinking for yourself, reclaim control, and step back into that role as the shock caller and dominant force of your own reality. It's when you change the way that you look at things, that the things that you look at begin to change. So let's wake up. Let's rise up. And let's make sense of why and how shift happens. Makes sense. What I like about you, Jay Papazon, is that you've taken something incredibly complex in the realm of human focus, human behavior, the chaos of modern life, which everybody's aware of. and you've distilled it into something radically simple.

Not simplistic. And I think that in this day and age, I think a lot of people are overwhelmed and a little bit scattered. It's pretty rare. So I think that this book is probably not seen its last days, you know, especially the one thing. Most people today don't have an information problem. That's one of the things that I identified.

There's plenty of information. But what they have is a filtration problem. They don't need more productivity apps. What they need is. clarity. One of the things that we say in our community is we say clarity before action. People that get a dose of J. Popazond find that, and that's really cool. So what I loved about the one thing, well, it's kind of funny to say that. Are we only allowed to say one thing? But what I loved about the book, the one thing, is that it cuts directly through the noise. Noise is a big problem

right now. And it asked the question that most people don't pause long enough to ask themselves, and that is simply what matters most. And I think that that's probably the biggest takeaway and what I love about your work. And I'm excited to find out why you did all this. I would love to just get into it. Thank you very much. But yeah, dive in, but I appreciate that.

I have struggle with gifts and compliments, and I'm just smiling and taking it. So thank you. Well, you and I have something in common. So that's probably why I do that because I want other people to tell me why they like me as well. I'm subliminally throwing that out there. Well, can I just say I like how prepared you are for your audience and to make the people who

show feel seen and comfortable and appreciated. And that's also rare. And this busy day and age to take a moment to just appreciate. So that's a beautiful thing. Thank you. Yeah. Mom, quick, come here. Listen to this. So my first question is, what does it like to be J-Papazan these days, and what is the one thing that you are most excited about at this time? What is it like to be J. Papazan these days? Gosh, that's a great question. I try to never answer the question, you know, how are you doing with the word busy? Just because I think everybody who's running a business is busy. I think right now I am engaged at a level that I haven't been in a long time. And doing at least probably 40, 50% of my week right now is dedicated to creative activities.

And as a business owner and a leader, I've had to do wear all the hats. But those are the two, the creating and the sharing of things is my favorite. So I get every week to write a newsletter that reaches a large audience. I get to do a podcast that reaches a large audience. I'm actively working on three book projects and keynotes on the side. So all I just say is there was the time I was in Yellowstone with my family. And if you've ever been to Yellowstone in a car, you're drive, drive, drive, drive, drive, like sometimes for hours to get from one place to the other and then stop and look and then you drive, drive, drive.

So we played lots of word games with my kids. And I remember my oldest Gus saying, would you rather? Because we were playing, was you rather, be. trapped in an elevator with mom talking to her client. She's a real estate agent or dad talking about his books. So when I'm in creative mode, I just love to share the ideas that I'm learning about. It's just one of the things that lights me up. So what am I most excited about? I've got a keynote I'm delivering in just a few weeks at a conference called Craft and Commerce. It's run by the email platform kit. It's kind of a conference that's near and

dear to my heart because it's a small conference and it's just filled with creative people. And I have, I guess I am more nervous about delivering this speech than I've been to deliver one. I've delivered in front of, gosh, 20,000 people. But this group of 400 people that I think of as friends and peers has got me excited and nervous in the best kinds of ways. I love that. I mean, just off the cuff, how do you, I mean, with your vast knowledge of everything that you know and your systems and everything, how do you prepare for something like that? Is it mostly some sort of a mental match? Or do you have a system of getting yourself in the right state and prepared for that? So I'll give you like a 90-second story. The first time I really went on stage,

I taught a little bit here and there because you're running a business. I, uh, We lost our business partner, Dave Jinks. He retired. And so I originally co-authored three books with Gary Keller, Dave Jinks, and then there was me. And when Dave Jinks retired, he was one of the main people on our stages in our company, Keller Williams. And so I got to be in the background as the editor, the co-author.

I got to be my book guy. I didn't have to be the front guy yet. This was just early in my career. I think it was 2007. We were preparing for the signature speech of our, signature event, got 8,000 people back then. It was in Orlando, Florida, and I'm preparing my co-author Gary Keller, the founder of the company for this called The Vision Speech. It's 90 minutes of detail on the economy, everything that's happening so that people are informed. Very complex speech.

And I spent weeks helping him prepare. And I kept asking, are you sure you don't want me to help? Because I knew I had to mentally get jacked up for it. And he said, no, no, no. Well, I got a call at 5.30 a.m. the day of the vision speech from his EA saying, Gary would like you to be backstage by 7.30. You're going to help him deliver the speech. Same day. Same day. If there was a gift, I didn't have weeks to stew about and get nervous. I just had to like, what am I going to wear? How am I going to get to? Like, I didn't even know how to get backstage. So I get on stage and it was a nightmare from my perspective. If you've, ever been on a big stage think about rock bands they all have the little monitors in their ear like

you're doing right now in a big auditorium if someone's voice they just say it with their natural voice they'll go to the back of the room and bounce back with the speakers it creates an echo chamber so you're hearing things the audience hears it once but on stage you hear it twice and they overlap they didn't have the sound right for me so for 90 minutes probably every 45 seconds, Gary would turn to me, Jay, what do you think about that? And I couldn't hear a word he was saying. And I just made up answers. Like, well, when I look at that slide and I didn't know if I was answering the question or not, no one knew but me, but I was sweating bullets. And I came off stage and I just said, never do that to me again. I was hot. I was like, never do that to me again. I could have prepared. We could have gotten my sound, whatever. And he said, I won't do that. you want to be a best-selling author, and you'll have to get comfortable being uncomfortable. For you, that means being on big stages.

So I committed at that moment, I was like, I will never be that uncomfortable again. And I committed to a journey of raising my hand and volunteering to give speeches every chance I could. And so here's my formula, to go back to answer your question. It comes from a place of fear and terror. Right. I know that if I prepare intensely for about four hours for every hour I'm on stage, the nerves go away. I don't have to look at my notes. And I will deliver a high quality class performance, whatever it is.

That's my formula. And to this day, I still look for that ratio. And the shorter the speech, the more likely that I'll go six hours for one. because a shorter speech, like we were both, you know, the gym quick, we had 25 minutes on stage. Right. When you have an hour, you have the luxury of rambling a little bit. When you have a very tight window to share your message, it has to be tight.

So for me, if I'm not creating it from scratch, I'm often mentally rehearsing it with a clock and sometimes rehearsing it in front of a team member. And I will go through that multiple times until I barely have to look at the material. And then when I've internalized it, I believe I've earned the right to extemporize. So I don't script anything, but I want to internalize the message such that, depending on the audience, I can be engaged with them. If they're nodding their heads, I'm on track. Right.

But you can sometimes tell, like, I lost them and I can go back. And so that's my preparation method. It's just a lot of repetition. It's really boring. And it happens in private so that I can perform in public. You know, this is such a funny conversation, and it really is completely not what I had planned for today. But so I've- You asked the question. No, no, no, it's great. And I very much resonate. I've actually taken a stage in front of 15,000.

And I've had that sound problem before. So I was with you. I almost started sweating, just thinking about it. But what's interesting about it is that I have the complete opposite strategy as you. And people don't like to be around me because what I have found is that what makes me nervous is being too prepared. Isn't that funny? So I'm the kind of guy that goes out on stage and likes to figure it out there. And I know that that sounds crazy, but that's how I get into my calm space is where I just say everything's going to be at a workout. So I've had people, I'm walking out on stage and all these people are back there preparing everything. And they say, what are you going to talk about?

And I go, I don't know yet. And I walk out on stage and they're like, I never want to be around that guy again. I know. I was like, I envy you. And I'm sure if I was backstage having the nerves, I might want to stay away. I stay away from people. That was our ex-partner, Dave Jinks. He was like you.

Oh, he was like that. And I'll just say this for people listening. I know that for a lot of people, public speaking, is like they fear it more than dying, right? And so it's a very acute fear for a lot of people. there's a book, and I can't remember the author, it's called What I Learned, Losing a Million Dollars. And I've written investing books, and I'm a big investor. And my takeaway from that book is that he lost all this money,

and he's like, I'm going to learn from the greats. And what he discovered is you study Warren Buffett, and you just name them, you know, Sir Edward Templeton, and all of these people, they all became multimillionaires and billionaires. But if you looked at the formula that they said, this is how you get rich, a lot of them are contradictory. And so I think there are some domains and public speaking from just our conversation is that there is more than one way to perform at a high level.

I think what's probably true for both of us is we had to invest time to figure out the framework that worked for us and then commit to it so that we could both be successful. And I think a lot of people just want to borrow someone else's framework and say, that's going to work for me. And, you know, I'm not sure that always works that way. Yeah, that's a rough. That's a rough road. That's a rough road doing things the way other people are doing them. And just one more on that with the idea of this one thing and we're going to get into that because I know that a lot of people are like, talk more about the public speaking thing. That's my problem. Do you find that using that idea of the one thing, do you find that it's important

and valuable to put your focus on the right thing. Like, for instance, when I go out there and it's about me, I'm going to be in trouble out there. But when I go out there to serve, you mentioned the nodding heads and everything. How important is that? I think it's our duty, J.C. I just do. I think it's our duty. Someone invited us onto that stage or people paid to be there.

So there was a promise mate somewhere along the way. maybe it was in the marketing for the event that you or I was going to deliver on that promise. And so I think we have a duty to address that expectation and if possible, knock it out of the park. So it's always about the student. It's always about the reader. It's always about the listener. And people get confused about that because the world is littered with stories, especially with entrepreneurs, is I was just solving my problem and shared it with other people.

And that is a great formula for starting a business, right? I figured out I had this problem. It bugged the crap out of me. I solved it. I turned it into an app and lo and behold, it became this business. And I do think that it works again in that domain. But if you're in the role of a teacher, and that's what I think of, if I'm doing a podcast, if I'm doing a book, if I'm giving a speech, like I'm in a teaching role and it has to be about

the student in that case. And if we make it just about us, there's always going to be something hollow about it. Like we've all heard that speaker, man, they sounded great. Their technique was perfect. But it just doesn't resonate beyond the experience. Well, long story short, good luck on that talk. I'll be thinking about you. Everybody will be praying for you. you're quite the accomplished individual, and I think we're probably getting a little bit of a sense of why, you know, just from hearing these stories. So we've got, you know, the publishing of books, and, you know, the big one that everybody knows is the one thing. And your relationship with Gary Keller and this juggernaut business that is not just a successful business. I mean, it revolutionized that

industry as well. So you played a big role in that. So my question would be, what would you say is the one thing that placed you in position for this wild ride that you've been on? So rather than just saying, take us back to your old story. True. How did you figure that out? And what would you attest is the one thing that you can pinpoint was the reason that all this has happened? You hinted at it earlier. And I think I have a marketing mind and a strategic mind.

And I am a natural problem solver. I work a crossword puzzle every day for as long as I could remember. I like to do lock picking and safe cracking. I love a good puzzle, and I like to share the solution. And I think my gift is in that last piece. I am highly curious, but the thing that has opened every door for me has been my ability to communicate solutions. I learned it first, I guess probably growing up with my dad

and my mom and who were great leaders, but as an editor at Harper Collins, working on big books, learning the craft of communication. And over time, that's translated to writing books and becoming a teacher and a coach. So I think if you have the ability

to synthesize the chaos that everybody's going through and reflect it back in a simple, understandable way, you've got a huge leg up. And for me, it's been the one thing. And most people think of me as a writer because that's where I've had the most success. But I see that as the skill that made me a great writer that's made me, I believe, a pretty

decent coach and a pretty decent speaker as well, is that I can distill a very complicated idea into something that's digestible. So you know this. If you are leading a business, you're leading yourself. A lot of the solutions that were offered in the world can feel very, very good. complicated, right? There's a, like, I go to chat, GPT or whatever, like, how do I do this thing? Because a lot of our world can feel very complicated. We can't live in those places for long. And I believe most of what makes people great is doing the thing over time. So if I'm following a

complicated program, a complicated plan, if I'm trying to understand something that's complicated. I can actively focus and grip my teeth and do it for a small period of time. But if you're going to make a long-term commitment to those things, it needs to be dead simple. And so I feel like that's why I ended up writing nonfiction, business, and self-help books. I feel like that's why the nature of my coaching and speaking is there as well. How can I simplify the complex so people have clarity about what they're dealing with? and as a problem solver, help them find the path forward. Yeah.

And if you take a look at the book, I mean, like even in the distance, you can just see, it says one. You know, I mean, that's got to be a draw right there. Yeah. I love that. I'll add, I'm also practical. Yeah. I am a nerd. I know stuff about stuff that I have no business knowing about.

That's just my curious brain. But I do have a bent towards pragmatism. I don't want to just know for knowing sake. I'd like to know for doing sake. And so I think that's a little nuance in there. There are books that I read that make me smarter, but they don't help me do anything. And I do enjoy those books, but I try to be in another category, make people smarter and help them do better. It's interesting because, you know, I'm hearing that you've had your own experience and you've kind of, this is almost like a pay it forward.

thing. You know, it's like something that you value, you know, quite a bit you want to share with others. But I think that to have the impact that you've had, there also has to be this like inborn desire to help people. Like it sounds like that's, that's the biggest superpower that you have is that you've got this desire to help people as my podcast is called make sense of things. You can maybe see this if people are watching on YouTube. Those are are my core values. I have them on my phone. We look at our phone 70, 80 times a day. So you said something deep inside of me. My number one core value is impact. What I've realized if I've gotten older, the thing that motivates me most is having a positive impact on others. And that's my

fuel. Yeah. I would love to make money while I do it. And I try to because I'm an entrepreneur, but the real fuel is getting a note back from a reader. It's hearing from someone, your speech changed my life. I get chill bumps saying that because that's the real thing. So you did tap into something. You're very observant. But impact, if you want to manipulate me, hey, man, this is going to make such an impact. Let's do it together.

I'm like, what, what, what? You know, go ahead. You've got the magic key. I guess what I'm saying is, I don't think that's an easy thing. to teach someone to want to impact. I think that that's, you know, whenever I get the opportunity to interview so many greats and that's one thing that, you know, I see they didn't learn how to do that. They had this desire, this fire to do that.

So let's talk about people. I love excuses that people make for why they can't live an extraordinary life. And the biggest one is the word overwhelm. So in relation to everything that you've learned, do you think that most, people are overwhelmed today because they genuinely have too much? Because that's the illusion is that there's too much going on. Things are moving too fast and all of that stuff. Do you think that that's the reason people are overwhelmed? Or do you think, and I think I know the answer, that it's more about their inability to identify what actually matters most? Great question. I do think that one of the

benefits that we got when the one thing came out is that we were probably only about five or six years into the age, true age of everyone having a smartphone and always being connected all the time. And we, I don't think we've adapted as human beings the tools to naturally deal with the volume of data that comes at us every day. We do have an information challenge in that there's too much, too many opportunities, too many obligations that most of our adult listeners are facing. I think about a lot of the people probably listening may have like teenage or even becoming adult kids, but they also have aging parents. They have a business to run. We have a lot of hats we wear, right? How do I become, be a good spouse and a good parent? How to be a good child to my aging

parents. So we have a lot of conflicting opportunities and overlapping obligations. So that's real. I think the challenge for people is twofold. We don't have a quality filter for deciding what we are going to choose. And most people have not developed the muscle of making a radical yes. They are truly committing to do something versus trying to do it all. We all know the old saying, If you try to please everybody, you're going to please no one. And it's the same thing. If you try to do everything, you're not going to do any of it well. And you may not do anything.

We get overwhelmed in those moments. The key isn't that there's too much. It's that we don't have the right filter. And then we don't know how to radically choose and make a commitment. And I think a lot of people, that choice is day to day. And to change their lives, it would just be an investment of 20 to 30 minutes. regularly that if they worked out for 20 to 30 minutes every day, my gosh, what would that happen to their health? If they just spent 30 minutes on Sunday or Saturday meal prepping for their week,

how different would their nutrition be? It's small investments that we often underestimate, done over time, that change the trajectory of our lives, which is coming back to, it needs to be a simple commitment. It needs to be repeated, but it's got to be that word commitment. Right. I'm committing to becoming the kind of person who goes to the gym every day. I am committing to the kind of person who, you know, more or less tries to eat clean, who tries to not be lost in a doom scroll and instead reading things that enrich me. Like these are all commitments that we can or can't make. And as easy as the commitments could be, it's always easier to say no. So first is a filter. I use my values. That's why they're on my phone. If I'm making a big decision, it needs. needs to align with all three of my core values. I now know directionally, that's my compass. I don't know always where I'm going, what the destination is, but it should be going in a direction that aligns with impact, family, and abundance. If it is, you know what? I might feel a little lost today, but I know I'm on the right track. And so that's my filter. And then we use

the focusing question in the book, what's the one thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier unnecessary. Once we know where we're going or the direction, we can ask that question to get, what's the essential thing that I can do to be making progress? And it distills it down again to something small. And those commitments are over time. I think you said it earlier. Information's not the problem. I think it was Derek Sivers, I think is the guy who said it. If information was the answer, we'd all be billionaires with six-pack apps. I think most of the people listening already know what to do, but they can't figure out how to just commit to it and do it.

And that's the challenge. And we fear the problem is me. No, the problem is the pattern of behavior that you've made habitual, and you've got to break that pattern and find a new one that suit you. This is so fascinating because it sheds even more light on how important it is to know what matters most. because one of the tenants of my ecosystem is we always say that it's who you are that determines how well what you do works. And what I like to explain to people.

I love that. Yeah, I love it because what it says is like maybe you're not the right person for the job at this time. And we're in a hustle culture. And it's like society has glorified exhaustion. And it's like if you're exhausted, you're on your way, you know. I don't believe in that. That's a soapbox.

Be careful getting into the, that's a soapbox. box for me, but be careful there. Well, I'm leading you right now. I don't know if you're aware of that. This is a complete lead on. But I mean, I want your take on this because, you know, we forgive you for you, know, not what you do, all of these people, you know, they're out there buying into what they've been programmed to think equates to success to the point where being a workaholic

is like something that people think that they should get a trophy for. So why is it that society still equates exhaustion? with importance. I'm going to hit that twofold. You said who you are. I love your mantra. So I know, and I've talked to other people, teachers, we all can name someone who's from the outside

has an amazing career business. They're making lots of money. They built something that matters to the world, and they're also completely miserable. It's because they did the things that you have to do to be successful, but they failed to do the things that make success right for them. And so it does start with having an inkling. You don't have to have perfect knowledge of what you do want in life.

Success is getting what you want. And most people don't honestly know the answer. So what we fall for then is the illusion of productivity and success, which today is very much busyness. If you look up, I remember reading an article in HBR, Harvard Business Review, and the guy was talking to an immigrant who had mistook the word busy for good. And when he asked him, why did you think the word busy was good? He said, well, every time I ask someone how they're doing, they say busy. You start paying attention to that. And you ask people, it's crazy how many people

when we ask them, how are you doing? The answer is some form of busy. And if you look at the Renaissance paintings, one of my friends was just in the museum and I was looking at her Instagram this morning with coffee and you look at these Renaissance paintings and everybody's a little fat and a little pale because it used to be the status symbol with how much idle time we have. Today, the status symbol is how many hours we work. You just said it. It's like a badge of honor, right? I've got the scarlet be on my chest because I am busy, therefore I must be productive. And it looks like productive because you're always doing stuff, but activity is not productivity. You can do a lot of stuff that adds up to nothing. Doing one thing that matters is being productive. So the trap that people

fall into is that busyness gives the outward illusion that they're being effective and getting stuff done. But the reality is they could be running in circles and getting no closer to what will make them fulfilled or happy. And it's a real challenge. It means we have to hit pause and decide what matters and focus our attention on that. I could have a day that from the outside looked incredibly unproductive. But if I knocked down my first domino, the first big task on my list to get me what I want, and that's all I did, it's a great day because I made progress towards the big goal, the thing that I actually want. So I don't know. I think we talked about this when we chatted earlier, when a coaching client sits in front of me and they talk about how busy they are,

my first question is, what are they hiding from? I think that busyness is a place that outwardly successful people go to hide when they don't know the answers and they don't know what direction they should be running in. Are you familiar with Robin Sharma? Oh yeah. So I had a really weird Robin Sharma experience in the sense that I signed up for one of these like retreats where you like check your phone in and we went on like at this island in Montana or whatever and I had no idea who he was and he was my roommate just like you know he's like yeah I'm an author I'm like what a monk who sold his Ferrari I'm like oh I haven't read it but anyway he said something in this sense that I attribute he was the one that originated it rather than saying busyness in light of what you

said of what you're hiding from. He calls it fake work. Oh, yeah. And, you know, just the idea of, without even knowing it, staying busy so that you could pretend that you're working. You know, I love that. That word, I remember now,

because we did chat about this earlier, there's a guy named Stephen Pressfield. He's coming on our show in two weeks. Well, I'm a huge fan. I love him. If you can make an introduction, please do. But the War of Art, most people have read. battling the resistance between what you know you need to do and what you're not doing, right?

The resistance is this mystical force keeping us from our mission in life. Right. He wrote another book called Turning Pro, and he described what Robin Sharmer called Fate Work as shadow work. Yes. And he gave the illustration of the musician who lives the rock and roll lifestyle, but doesn't write songs or practice them. And so everybody walks around, they've got the long hair, they've got the ragged, They've got the guitar. They can drink whiskey out of a bottle.

They look very rock and roll. But that's all shadow work. The hard work, often done in private, is the work that makes people truly successful. So shadow work, fake work, trying to think one of the guys that runs Google X, he called it performative work, right? All the same thing. We're performing for others. And I think as a coach, if we're not doing the thing, right? This is a form of protection.

If I'm not doing the thing that really matters, then I haven't failed yet. And if I haven't failed yet, I still have hope. And when people have doubts, they will do all of this performative work to maintain the illusion and have hope because they fear that if they really did the thing. And I think this is unspoken, maybe even unconscious, that they might fail and realize that dream is not for them. And that's not the way failure works. everybody becomes, become successful through lots and lots of failure. That's how you become the things that you want to become. But I think that's maybe this subconscious thing. And in my coaching sessions, I will probe for that. And it's often true. You know, this is such a funny angle at this whole thing.

I'm enjoying this conversation because you're making my brain come up with new ideas. That's how I know I'm having a good conversation. The idea of finding the one thing, like someone could be very, very you know, frustrated about that. I don't know, what's the one thing? I've got to read Jay's book again. But part of figuring out the one thing is finding out the things that are not the one thing and like you said, struggling.

So let me throw this at you. Do you think that, you know, I mean, it's, you can't get away. And now we're hearing about agentic AI. It's like, you know, everybody's, everybody now is panicking like, oh crap, I'm going to have to learn all this stuff. It's moving so fast.

and 10 years from now, you know, it's going to be moving a hundred times faster. So do you think that technology is responsible? Because we've got to blame somebody here, Jay. You know, I mean, when there's something wrong with my car, I want to blame the manufacturer. If it's something wrong with me, I'm going to blame my parents. So do you think that technology has amplified distraction or is it actually exposing how untrained our attention is? I don't know that I know the answer, but it's a great question. I can tell you factually that people have been complaining about overwhelm before there were automobiles and electric lights. So, I mean, and technology might still be the answer, right? You know, there's a time before the printing press was widely used and a household might have three books and then suddenly there are libraries and oh my gosh, how do I choose? So, it definitely has accelerated the number of options.

And like I said, the amount of data, whether it be just the experiential data of walking through the world, like you can get overwhelmed in the woods if there's a million birds singing. And it's just all, like you can't, you're just taking a tiny fraction of what you're experiencing and you're able to consume it. So technology has accelerated it.

But I think that's an, I don't know the exact answer, but I'll go back to my earlier one, I think the opportunity for us is to build an increasingly more concrete filter for how we choose. So if you've got a really tight filter, it doesn't matter how many things are thrown at us

because there's still only going to be a handful actively being considered. And I don't think it has to be super complicated. But like I go into, like I've got, I don't know, 22,000 contacts in my database. I start searching. If I search for brown, there's going to be 50 Browns in there. But if I search for Alexi, there might be two. Right. So the quality of the filter is how we narrow the choice. And it comes back to like, what is it do you think that you actually want? But AI and the acceleration that we're going through, people have gone through it before.

And what most people, there's a saying, I can't remember who said it, so I apologize to someone who's probably dead, people always overestimate the near-term impact of technological change and underestimate the long-term. So I think everybody right now is in that early phase and saying it's going to be so big, it's going to be overwhelming. And that is probably going to be true, but a lot later than they think. and every technological change that we've seen in the past has also created brand new opportunities. What it means is we have to be adaptive. If you choose to stop learning and growing, you will get left behind.

But if you're committed to exploring what the new opportunities are, man, there's so much to be had. My wife taught me this, until they had like the mechanical grass cutter, right, a tractor pulling it behind it. we didn't have the ability to have a lot of the sports that we have today. So like a weird series of invention made a baseball field possible. Because now you can have short grass and you can actually hit a grounder

and it doesn't get hung up and lost in the grass. So we don't know yet what the downstream opportunities of AI will be, but we don't also need to go straight to everybody's going to be on universal income because nobody will have anything to do. I just think there will be new things to do. And people also may appreciate the artisan handmade things in a new way if you choose to go that path. So, like, I have to have this conversation with my adult children's. I've got a 21-year-old and a 20-year-old.

They're about to head out into the workforce. So we have this conversation. Don't overemphasize what might happen. Stay focused on what you can control. And whatever you decide to do, try to be your best at it. And there will probably be opportunity there if you're, willing to grow and adapt. I have a 22-year-old, a 21-year-old, and a 16-year-old. And, you know, so this is an important topic for me because, you know, I'm at this age where, I mean, it's like, it's not that I

don't care about myself. I just care more about them and their future. This idea of helping somebody and guiding somebody to determine what matters most is becoming more and more difficult because it appears that people are feeling compelled to keep up with and get engaged and take interest in things that they're not actually interested in. You know, there's this interesting thing where human beings are having to keep up with stuff so that they're not left behind. What I like to talk about, and this is the next book I'm writing, is I'm talking about the topic of how careless we are with what we care about. And it's kind of the same idea. It's the carelessness of how easily persuaded we are to care about something or someone. And I think it gets us into a lot of

trouble. You know, it seems like it's more about there, it's not that people have too much to do and too much to catch up with. It seems more of like a hierarchy problem. And that's what I'm so fascinated with with your work. It's like they just, they're losing their priorities. And, this is going to be bad parenting. This is, if it's not done right, if they don't read the one thing, they're going to, without even knowing it, screw things up. And at the same time, feel like they deserve a trophy for screwing things up because they're doing a good job of keeping up with the Joneses, you know, so.

We should always praise effort, but what gets rewarded in life is outcomes, right? If we don't praise the effort, this is like the parent talking, they stop making the effort. but the outcomes through come through a lot of effort over time to figure things out. And all of the traps that you very aptly identified, I know people, and I'm sure you do too, that are diving into Claude Code, and they're not coders, right? And they're, yeah. And I've felt this like, gosh, as an entrepreneur, I don't want to be left behind. So I've had that same fear.

And so I've started doing it and educating my team, like, okay, let's start with Claude Co-work. we're going to be sharing and we're going to have a culture where we're learning together. And last week, we hired an AI engineer, a young person that has only lived in this world to come in and work with us on our team. And he said, well, there's this new tool. It's been around for about six months. And all it does is to, you were getting just when you were getting good at prompting, right, to get answers, we started having to.

And now you have to write code. so that you can get action, right? We're trying to go from answers to action with all this AI. And they someone in like entrepreneurs, right, hey, people are struggling with this. They have anxiety around it. Why don't I solve that problem by taking what they already know how to do, which is ask questions and look for answers and then offer up a really good solution for how to do it.

So I think it's called twin.com. I don't own anything of it. I've just played with it. I was like, oh, wow. this looks like the cheat shortcut version of Claude and it's not the same thing, right? These are tasks. All of the things that we're doing as amateurs are tasks.

Like we can get someone to check our email and draft emails, all of those things. It's still not going to build enterprise software. Like that is way in the future. So like I just thought, you know what? I'm going to trust two things. As we experience what appears to be an insurmountable challenge, human ingenuity, someone's going to say, that's the problem I choose to own for my career,

and I'm going to present this solution. I like that. So it doesn't mean to sit there and hope that someone solves it for you. Like, struggle forward, but don't give up hope because you might look up and go, wow, I just did all of this, and then this new thing showed up, and it just got so much easier. Right? People used to have to crank their cars to start them. So I would love to have the automobile if I hadn't ruined my shoulder and couldn't crank it to start it, right? Well, it might be that way with some of this technology too, where they

come up with something called an ignition, a starter that does it for you. A whole new generation of entrepreneurs coming out that are saying, let me handle that for you, old man. God bless them. God bless them. God bless them. And I'll give them my money. I will give them my money. That's it. You just reminded me, because I've been unconscious to this, because I've been so excited to learn about Claude Code, you just reminded me that all the time that I've spent learning about it, I've been stressed out and anxious. So I think I'm going to have somebody else do it for me. So let's come back to our human form here for a second.

You know, everybody take a deep breath and, you know, we'll move out of the fast pace that we were just referring to. For someone that's hearing this concept for the first time, okay, so I'm talking to those people now. They're like, hey, slow down, guys. what about the one thing? So I would love you to personally define what the one thing is and how is it that you came to realize that that question could change anything or everything. The way we tried to design the book is to create a simple way for people to get clarity around what

mattered and then a simple way for them to consistently take action on it, right? Clarity followed by action, man, action and awareness is power, right? So you get those two things together. So the clarity comes from the focusing question. What's the one thing I can do? And you can say for my marriage, for my business, for this week and my sports or whatever it is, such that by doing it, everything will be easier or unnecessary. It's a very big question, but powerful questions give us the best answers. And when we were writing the book, I didn't have any experience as a coach then. I remember turning to my co-author at one point saying, what happens if people, don't know the answer. And I was really worried, right? What if they don't know the answer? And we have a

little part of the book, like six pages dedicated when you don't know the answer, here's how to find it. To my vast surprise, as I've taught, I don't know, tens of thousands of people, this concept. Most people do know the answer. They just not asking the question. And when you ask the question, they're very clear and they might feel a little guilty for having neglected it. And so question, usually unlock the answers, but taking knowledge to action has actually been the greater threat for most people. I know what to do, but I can't make myself do it. So the simple system that I've lived in this organization since September of 2000 is every week we do a little exercise. I've talked about it on the podcast. We called a 4-1-1. But basically, you look at your annual goals,

based on that, what do I have to do this month? And based on that, what action do I have to take this week to make progress? So you go from this really big lofty thing and you work backwards to what do I have to do now? And we just tell people the moment you identify, I have to write 2,000 words this week. You need to put it on your calendar. Most people are pretty good at following their calendar. So they have clarity. They get it down to a focus. This is the goal I want. This is the activity this week. It'll get me a little bit closer. It's not a perfect answer, but you know you're heading in the right direction. Getting it on your calendar, there's research that suggests getting it on your calendar will take you from awareness, 30% of the people will do it to awareness in a blocked calendar about 90% success rate. It's that staggering, three times more likely. And it's just the act of making a commitment of time to do the thing you know you need to do.

my phone, I don't get any alerts. I get alerts when my wife, my family texts me. I get alerts when I have a new appointment on my calendar. It's very reduced. So there's little noise, but my phone will beep or whatever, and I know in 15 minutes I have to transition. So technology is already our helper and helping us transition to that thing. There's still barriers there, but I've found if I can help people get clarity about where they're going, the big goal, if I can help them reduce it to the action they need to take in this time frame a week, usually, or today, we call that the first domino, like the first domino we knocked over to start the progress. Usually, if I can get it on my calendar, most of them are going to experience a period

of success just doing that activity. I was going to ask you if you think that everybody knows what the one thing is, but they just, you know, struggle to execute on it. And I'm so happy that you mention that. I think if you say, what do you think your one thing as apparent is, right? Most people can narrow it down to two or three things or something very specific, very quickly. If you ask them, what do you think you're meant to be here on this earth for? That's a really big question. And most people don't know the answer. That's a longer question. So some people confuse the one thing, like, what's my one thing? What am I called to do in life? Research suggests less than two out of 10 have the answer to that by the time they'd become adults.

And most of them are highly religious, meaning their calling is to something in the next life. So like, but think of it. Like how many people do you know that said, I wanted to grow up as an astronaut and I became an astronaut and I'm a happy astronaut or a doctor or a lawyer? It's very few. Usually we had to go out, try a few things on, fail, as you said, what I don't like, to eventually discover what I do like and the man, I like this a lot. It's like dating. The first person you ask out on a date is unlikely to be your spouse. You probably dated a few people, maybe a few bad ones along the way, to find the one that was right for you. It's like that in life.

So if you ask someone a narrower one thing question, I've asked this to people who know nothing about writing. They want to write a book. They come to me. What do you think the one thing you need to do to write your book is above all others. And they usually will tell me a version of it, based on my experience, I can endorse. I'll be like, that sounds good. Let's reduce it to something you can commit to five days a week or seven days a week so that you can get momentum and success

and trust that the longer you do it, the more effective you will be at it. I think that I would recommend that everybody buys your book at the same time that they buy atomic habits with James Clear because it's like, you know, which one do we choose? Yeah. My first big keynote was Power Habits. Like, once you know what to do, the ultimate hack is to turn doing it into a habit.

Yeah. And he wrote the best distillization of all of the knowledge around how to form habits in our lives that I've ever read. And I've read all of the source material that he pulled from. I've interviewed BJ Fogg. I've talked to Eric Anderson. I've talked to all of these people and interviewed them for our book. We just chose to make it a bigger book where a habit was one small portion of it.

He went deep on this, how do I take regular action? And I love it. He says identity goals. Like I heard him say out loud to me when we were meeting the first time. You know, I just chose to become the kind of guy who goes to the gym every day. And that it becomes an identity habit that makes so many other things possible. I want to be weary of your time because, you know, I'm obviously not going to be able to ask you all my questions that I have for you. Well, I'm having fun.

Okay, good. All right. We can keep talking. I get it. I have a saying in my ecosystem where we say, whatever it is that we consume, we assume. We're in a world right now where people are consuming and consuming. You know, we were talking a little bit about that. But you're also consuming from your mother, father, teacher, preacher.

and what it is that you think you're supposed to do. And I find that there's a new challenge that's becoming worse and worse or more challenging, and that is that you might think you know what the one thing is, but you've been conditioned to think that you know what the one thing is. So I teach a system called the Interface Response System that's all about practicing cognitive distancing. It's like knowing when to pause and, stop your automatic knee-jerk reaction, like the answer to what's your one thing, what's your thing.

And taking a second to like think about it. And I just think it's such a funny thing that we live in this society where if you ask me a question and I take some time to think about it, you're going to get very uneasy about it. So where does this play into this? I don't know if you've gone into this deep end here, but. I would assume you ask somebody what their one thing is, and they might just tell you what their dad told them to say without knowing it. There's a, well, I love the term cognitive distancing. I could go crazy on that. We wrote about this at the end of the book. And there was a book by a lady named Bronny Ware, and she was a hospice nurse. And she started asking her patients what their biggest regrets were. And the number one regret of the dying, according to her book. was that they failed to live their own life. So they ended up living in the should, that their parents thought you should be a doctor, you should this, right? What society told them they should be versus what they wanted to be. So you did hit the nail on the head in that that is something that if people haven't taken the time to step back, cognitively distance in some way, like,

just take a little time to start reflecting on the things that make you happy and unhappy that make you feel fulfilled and versus drained. The relationships that do that for you, it's very hard to get clear about what direction you should be heading. And the trap is that the farther people go into the blind and in our culture today, they will fall into that busyness trap where they think that just doing something is a replacement for doing the right thing. They have less and less time. So I talk to people, if you're unclear about what it is you need to be doing, you have a very poor filter. When you have a very poor filter, you start making too many commitments. When you make too many commitments, you start to run out of time. Time poverty leaves us no time

to reflect and think, which means we make increasingly poor decisions. And that becomes its own kind of negative cycle. When you look at people who are responding to the world versus reacting, most people are reacting. They have a knee jerk. Yes, I'll go. Yes, I'll do it. Yes, they react. You're talking about pausing, thinking about it, maybe using your filter about whether you should say yes or no to it and giving it a thoughtful response. That reactive cycle can create a loop where you have no time to step back and respond because you feel like you're always behind. You feel like you have no time. You feel like you're always letting people down and you always feel rushed. And that's a cycle that perpetuates. I mean, if there's a good news, because there's someone out there going, he's talking about me,

stop. You know, I don't want to see that part of me in the mirror. The good news is it's not like you have to go to a monastery for a month to fix this. It could be solved as easy as finding a way to find 15 or 20 minutes in the morning to just reflect on your day and journal, right? It takes such a small dose of distancing to get a little perspective and ask, how am I doing? How do I feel about that to actually start to make a difference? We have a fun. I usually wear a hat and it says, H-M-M-M, which is the sound. Hmm. And that's what I teach people to say.

And I say, you have permission to evaluate something you're interfacing with or a person or an interaction and you're allowed to think about it. So a nice thing to do is to go, hmm. And that sound says noted. I'm going to think about it. And you might run into trouble. Like my wife says, don't, hmm, me. But what it stands for, because there's three M's is it stands for,

haven't made up my mind. And what I love about that is I love teaching people, why do you have to make up your mind so fast about things and people? By the way, I have a great idea for, I know you have three books in the works, but I have a fourth for you. You ready for this? Sure.

Layed on me. It's the sequel to the one thing, and it's called Your Thing. The One Thing could be like broadcasted from other people, but we're talking about Your Thing. or you could call it, no, your thing is what I mean. Here's a question. You talk a lot about in your book and a lot of the stuff that I've heard you talk about

the idea of helping people get extraordinary results. And what do you think people most misunderstand about success? What do you find? I think that they think it's a sprint. I think that a lot of people feel like it will happen faster with a fast-sustained effort, then most of the time what happens in reality. I think we see all the stories on social media

and in the news of these overnight successes. And I've had the privilege of interviewing multiple billionaires and all these successful entrepreneurs. And if you look under the hood, often sometimes for as long as a decade, they were tinkering in a garage. They were journaling. They were writing drafts that weren't ready to be published.

There's always another story about how they got to that success. And unfortunately, unless we're really conscious as parents, as leaders, we lead people to believe in this sort of instantaneous success. So I think people believe that it happens faster than it really does. It does happen fast sometimes. And also people win the lottery. That's lucky, right? but I think for most of us, the extraordinary, right, us kind of getting the big thing that we really want is something that we chose and made a lot of investments over time to finally get there.

I had a brief stint in a private equity, a little small family firm. We had an intern and we were trying to teach them about investing. So we had them read this book. It was like the Forbes, the best 100 companies of all time. and I asked that intern, would you go look at those 100 companies and tell me what was the average number of years that they took to build that business before they broke out? And depending on whether you said the average or the median, it was 10 to 12. And so, I mean, it goes back to even though he's since stepped back from the 10,000 hours rule, Malcolm Gladwell and Eric Anderson's research, that's not like a hard and fast thing. but the 10,000 hour rule,

I remember when you did the math, it was about 10 years. And so if you wanted to become a master, you wanted to become great at something, we all wish for the silver bullet. But I think that actually works against us. I think trusting that the small investments we make on a daily basis,

if I want to write the Great American novel, I need to sit down and I need to write for 20 or 30 minutes every day. There's so many stories of people, who had to get up before their kids were awake to just write two pages of their novel or their book. That's where they started their business on the weekends and the evenings because they had to keep a job.

Those small investments added up over time to become the big thing. So I think don't walk into it believing that it's going to happen fast and without sustained effort. I don't think that serves us. If we go in saying, hey, this is going to be a big investment, that of one puts a filter. of do I really want this? Because if I'm going to have to work for five, six, seven, eight, ten years, I'd better really want it. And I'll have to do something on a regular basis for that

period of time. And it could happen faster. And if it does, God bless us. But I would rather my kids have that expectation and be happily surprised than the other expectation and be disappointed. Yeah. I want to ask you just about your own personal practice. I would assume you have one. It doesn't have to be necessarily a morning routine, but what is it that you do personally to protect your own attention and clear your mind? Like how do you, and I would assume

that this is something you teach your children as well. Yeah. When I've had coaches, one of my non-negotiables is that before every meeting, I'm going to send you my goals and I track them. And you have to ask me about these five, things. And after that, I'm going to trust your instinct, so we'll go wherever you want. But as my career has progressed, and I know what my one thing is, right, basically writing or this ideation and

creativity, I know that I have to write on a regular basis. So I track how many days of writing I do. I have to read books. Your inputs determine your outputs. Garbage in, garbage out. But if I'm reading quality stuff on a regular basis, I have better ideas to write about. So this is my formula. I then I want to connect with people on a regular basis and add them to my database. As a business person, I want to grow my network. Small target. I want to add one person to my network every week. But I've been doing that for 14 years. That adds up. Right. So my wife, who's very social, like, that's the smallest goal I've ever heard. I was like, well, it was very appropriate for this introvert and it's working for me. So I've got a series of habits that I've just given

myself over to. I have surrendered to the habits that I know will lead to the success I want. And so that's where I start. And when I'm working with my kids, you know, one of my sons wants to be a writer and I try not to get too excited, right? Because I don't want to scare them away. But that's what we talk about, right? And when he's open to listening, that's what I'm going to tell him. Like, he wants to be a fiction writer. I was like, even if you're writing fantasy or sci-fi, you should take some time to read the greats and learn from them. And whatever you're writing, just make that a habit that you show up and capture your thoughts and ideas. And if you just did those two things, on some long timeline, you have a really good shot at getting where you

want. And I know there's a million other things that you have to learn to become successful or whatever. But those are the foundations. And when we skip them, we're unlikely to succeed. Wow. That's some great advice that most people will say yes, yes, and then do nothing about. Just action is always the biggest challenge. So for that person that I've just exposed, that's the thing about podcasts and YouTube videos. Nobody can see you guys listening and watching. But we know you're there. We know you're there. So to that person that's watching or listening today that maybe resonates with feeling scattered, overwhelmed, and maybe stuck and saying things like, yeah, but what would you say is one practical step that they can take? You know, we talk about diluting it down to just one thing.

What's one practical step that they can take like this week that will help them reclaim clarity and maybe get enough return to capitalize. on it and go further. Okay. I'll ask them two questions. Dear listeners, viewers if you're on YouTube, this season you're in, you can define it as this semester in college, this summer, this year, I don't care. When you go out a year from now, what is it that you most want to remember that you accomplished in this season? I find that most people pretty quickly get to an answer. now that you have your answer they probably just sprang to mind

well I really hope to start that side hustle or I'll finally finish this thing or I'll go to all of my kids soccer games great now right now go to your calendar and make one commitment to taking action you don't have to plan the whole thing out just make one commitment and put it on your calendar

and that's the start I love it oh man so much value. I definitely highly, highly recommend this. I'm so excited to find out what your new projects are on the horizon. Thank you so much for being with us today. You've got a newsletter, you've got a podcast. So what would you say action step-wise would be the best way for people to engage with your stuff besides obviously getting the book? Well, all of it is if you go to jpapazan.com. And currently I have the benefit to being the only J. Papazan

that Google knows about at a 7 billion people. So I can't really hide. So if they Google Jay Papazan, they will find my website. It's often the first result. And you can link to my books. You can link to my podcast. You can link to my newsletter. That's kind of a one-stop shop.

Hi, I'm Jay Papazan, and this podcast makes sense. That's it for today. To support the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. podcast, be sure to subscribe, like, and share, as well as follow the Make Sense substack for free daily quotes, live streams, and blogs. And remember, learning without action is just another form of distraction. If something hit home and you learn something today, give it away. That's the only way it's going to stay.

See you next time. Makes sense.