Author, speaker, and executive Jay Papasan explains a few of the biggest lies about productivity, defines "switch-tasking", and dives into the science of discipline, LITERALLY feeding willpower, and the demonization of open floorplans.

Jay Papasan is at Keller Inc, which is the publishing arm

of Keller Williams Realty. And getting a chance to talk with

Jay is excited because Jay is also Gary Keller's, co author.

And they've written several best selling books, including The

Millionaire Real Estate Investor, which was a New York

Times bestseller. And then the one thing and the one thing was

a number one, or is a number one Wall Street Journal, business

best seller, Jay is the co author. He's here with us now he

is one of the most powerful people in real estate and just

an awesome, awesome guy. So Jay, thanks for being here.

Thanks for having me.

So if people haven't heard of the one thing, can you like?

What is the main premise kind of overall concept in a nutshell?

We wanted to explore, you know how people get

extraordinary results. Not average, but extraordinary.

What's an approach that we can take for that? And for us, it

was about focus, but we tried to come at it from a new angle. How

do you identify the one thing, right? What's the one thing I

can do such that by doing it, everything else is easier or

unnecessary? What's the one thing I can do such that by

doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary? You're

looking for the biggest lever in July, to achieve your goals. And

we wanted to help people identify that and then implement

that day.

In the one thing, Jay, you know, kind of the opening part

of the book, you talk about the lies of productivity.

Before we talk about what we want you to do, we

often say what do we have to get out of your head. And in this

book, we call do the lies. And the first lie, which we felt

like was the number one was this idea that everything matters

equally. And I actually don't think people argue that or

express it, in fact that way, and it's because our to do list

or to fool, our calendars are kind of overflowing. I've had

moments in my life where I was literally mapping out my days in

15 minute increments. And there are a lot of people who feel

that way, we have a lot of opportunity to do stuff. And

we've have a lot of obligation. And I kind of compare the way we

operate. With so many things kind of stressing us out the

need to do them all, to like being a character in the BR

movie that runs up the stairs, instead of out the front door,

we make really bad decisions to spend our time. And so the

antidote to that that first line was essentially, you know, we

want you to launch your day by identifying the things that you

could do, and then identify the handful that you really should

do, and then prioritize them for one to whatever. And that's line

number one, the second why people have a lot, they're

looking at all the things they might have to do. The other

thing, they're really tempted in this day and age to do with

multitasking. And we make a strong argument that

multitasking is a lie. And the big crux there is that, in

reality, when we think we're multitasking, researchers call

it switch tasking. If they call anything in their research or

multitasking, it's just in the headlines so they can get it in

print. But they call it switch tasking, because what actually

happens is, we're doing our work. And then we decide to

switch. And that's instantaneous. It's like

squirrel. Oh, we're off to the next thing. The thing that they

realize challenged us is when you switch tasks your brain has

to reorient to the new role for the game. And there's a lag. If

you've ever been like writing a really complex email, and maybe

your spouse walks in and starts talking to you, you know,

they're talking to you. You can hear words in the air, but you

actually don't comprehend them. And you say, Oh, I'm sorry, what

were you saying? You repeat that? That's that lag time. And

every time we switch between screens, you know, stopping our

emails to pick up a phone call, we experienced this lag time.

And researchers believe about a quarter of our day 28% is lost

to this and we're not even aware of it. It's a huge loss. I mean,

as an employer, I look, wow, I have five employees when I might

need four. If they were all just being efficient with your time.

There's just tons of research out there that the funny one

that always kind of, you know, people say this is making me

smarter or whatever, you know, I can do all these things. There's

a guy in the College of New London, and he did research into

IQ test. And he compared the results of people who were

focusing even compared the results of people who were

having to multitask. They had to juggle emails and phone calls.

Well, they took an IQ test and very hilariously, He compared

them to people who were stoned. You know, nobody was surprised

that on average, the people who were focused scored 11 points

higher than the other two groups, they were shocked that

the people who were stoned, on average scored six IQ points

higher than the people who are multitasking. So I could go

through six ways, we don't need to go there. It costs you time,

it makes you dumb, and you're just less effective. So we

really tried to get people, if not stop multitasking all the

time. When you're doing your main thing, you're one thing, at

least that multitasking, then, if I was actually more focused,

when I was at work, that I have more time with my family, I

think there's a real human cost that I think about, and it makes

me a little bit sad, you know, the economic cost is one thing,

but what's the cost to my family if I'm working late every day,

just because I'm not being as effective as I could be. So the

next few slides are just little after July. And then willpower

is always on, we'll call the why. And what we tried to break

out two things, discipline, one of the meanings for it, is

training yourself to do something until it's so that you

will, when I was giving my welding talk in Nashville, a guy

showed up an hour and 15 minutes early, and I went up to him and

I said, Oh, wow, you win the early bird award, you know, are

you with the team? And he has no, but I'm just here. I'm

always early, it's a habit. I knew that habit word. And I'm

like, Dude, you know, tell me more. And it turns out that he

had done a Greenbrae. He did, I was nervous for almost two

decades. But he's been in it for 15 years. And he said, I was

trying to show up early and observe. And I just can't shake

the habit. Everywhere we go, we're early, we're early to

dinner to the movies, it drives my wife crazy. And I love that

because it's a perfect illustration that in our sense,

and when we were building our construct, we really wanted to

hit on this idea that being disciplined all the time, which

we go into and willpower, there is some science about how you

there is an ebb and flow to your we often call this one that I'm

going to call willpower. But this other definition is, if you

know what your one thing is, the very next thing you would want

to do is make a habit. Because if that became habitual, you

work to build the habit, and then the habit would work for

you. And kind of the big aha we had here was that when we looked

at the research, like how long does it actually take to form a

habit, most people conventionally believe it takes

either 21 or 30 days. But the most recent research we found,

they had asked, I think over 200 graduate students to take on a

new health habit, anything from drinking a glass of water to

quitting smoking, whatever they wanted. And for a year, they

followed them around and said, Did you do it? Yes or no? And

how hard was it every single day. And what they discovered is

that on average, around 66 days is when it got as easy as it was

ever going to get. So it takes us about three times as long as

most people think to form a habit, even on average, we want

to at least keep our foot on that pedal right for that long.

And so that was the discipline thing.

So clarify the willpower part. So then what's what what's

the distinction? What would you call willpower?

So we dove into the science of you know, how we say

yes to what we need to do, and how we say no to everything

else. But the researchers, the scientists, right, the guys in

the lab coats, we're calling it willpower. And they define that

as the power to say yes to what you need to do, if I'm on a

diet, I mean, you know, carrot sticks and hummus and no to

everything else, so no nachos for me. And both of those they

measure it literally take energy out of your system. And kind of

shockingly, your brain is 1/50 of your body mass, and it takes

up 1/5 of all of the energy you consume. It's the hungriest

organ in your body after the liver. And so literally, if you

make a decision, you know, I am wearing black shoes today in a

black tie that little tiny decision, they can measure the

glucose in your bloodstream will drop. But there's things that

require a lot more power, like I'm going to focus on this task,

I'm not going to go play on Twitter, I'm going to focus on

my work, I'm not going to go hang out by the coffee machine,

saying no to those temptations or saying yes actually uses a

lot of energy. And that was our big aha Is that what you're

calling discipline in what we're calling willpower is actually

really fragile. It's a lot more like the battery on an old

phone, it's always going to zero and it's plugged in all the

time. So for us our big highs you tend to have the most in the

morning. That's what it's always highest. And you can replenish

it by eating properly. So we tell you give willpower the time

of day and feed it. It's not that you're you know, willpower

is hungry. I think about kids, right? You have a kid a young

child, what is the mom do for a young child every day around

three o'clock. At snack that's like an essential thing that

come up from school. The first thing they do when they outgrow

the nap, they get both when they hit certain age, they get a

snack. They've used up all of their discipline at school

sitting in their chair straight walking in line waiting. And so

we tell you make it a habit in the morning, right you're one

thing do it in the morning and you naturally have the willpower

to say yes to it. And then throughout the day if you've

looked in my office, I've got power bars, I've got nuts. I've

got foods that are high in protein and complex

carbohydrates to get I want my brain out have all that

discipline or willpower it needs throughout the day. And those

tend to feed your bloodstream for long periods of time versus

just slacking it sugar, that we wanted to talk about making

things a habit and managing that discipline willpower thing

throughout the day itself. I've kind of observed, like, you

know, open floor plans have been kind of all the rage. And

they've looked at some of these and I do foster more creativity,

but they haven't necessarily fostered more productivity. And

my theory, and it's not been mentioned yet is, if I'm in an

open office, and I'm in an environment full of

distractions, I'm using a lot of my willpower to focus on the

task at hand. And you know, we have noise cancelling headsets

in our office, in the cubes, people literally put up like

shower curtains and they do all kinds of things to try to get

more focused so that they have to the distractions take less of

a toll. But I do think that, you know, an environment is one of

the things that I became aware of is your environment, support

your work and your focus? Because that can say no to all

that stuff can be really tough.

So how do I know what my one thing is? And I know that

kind of comes back to the premise that we started with,

but do you have any, like practical ideas for how to find

the thing that by doing it, everything else becomes easier

or or not necessary?

On the simplest level, we want people to put

down the book and ask that question, what's the one thing I

can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier,

unnecessary. And for a fair number of people, they kind of

know what it is, and they feel guilty for not doing it. They

just haven't been told that you know what, you're smart enough

to know your own answers. For those that are still struggling.

And I find especially a lot of younger people. Maybe people go

through transition. It's the idea of thinking, what's my big

reason for being here? And then you work backwards to and what

do I need to be doing right now?

I love it. Well, Jay, thank you for making the time

here. Thank you so much, Jay, for being here.

Thanks.