The ONE Thing

Most couples spend plenty of time talking about what needs to happen this week. Far fewer create space to talk about what they want their life to look like years from now.

For more than 20 years, Jay and Wendy Papasan have stepped away together for an annual goal-setting retreat. What started as a weekend away from two young kids has become one of the rituals they credit with helping them get aligned around their family, finances, businesses, health, relationships, and future.

In this episode, they walk through how to create your own retreat, from getting out of your normal environment and preparing the right information to dreaming 10 years ahead and working backward into five-year and one-year goals. They also share what happens when partners disagree, why one person shouldn’t dominate the conversation, and how regular check-ins keep goals from disappearing after the retreat ends.

• Join us for the FINAL The ONE Thing Summit and Goal Setting Retreat: the1thing.com/summit

Chapters:

[00:00] 21 Years of Setting Goals Together

[05:26] Getting Your Partner On Board

[13:15] The Goal Setting Retreat Process

[20:18] How to Think Big TOGETHER

[23:37] When Your Goals Don’t Match

[29:27] The Biggest Goal-Setting Mistakes

[41:49] Challenge: Put Your Retreat on the Calendar

Links & Tools from This Episode:

• Join us for the FINAL The ONE Thing Summit and Goal Setting Retreat: the1thing.com/summit

• Wendy Papasan Website

• Free Resources

You answer email faster than you did a year ago. The pile is still there tomorrow, now with Slack and WhatsApp too.

Your inbox is a battle you can't win, and you're paying for it with your sharpest hours.

Cyril Peupion, author of Less Achieves More, has spent 20 years teaching the busiest executives at companies like Microsoft and American Express how to get more done.

The usual response to a pile like that is to throw more hours at the problem. Cyril coached a leader living it: two young kids she wasn't seeing, a husband complaining about her crazy hours and traveling, and, by her own account, health that sucked. She told him she'd resign in six months. Six months later she had already hit her target for the year and stopped working weekends. She was painting and playing piano again.

In this episode, you'll learn:

Chapters:

[00:00] Why Doing More Is Making Work Harder

[08:29] Why You Keep Trying to Add More

[16:19] When You Should END Your Work Week

[28:32] How to Get on Top of Your Email

[32:55] Connect Your Tasks to Your Time

[37:34] Stop Checking Email All Day

[47:49] Challenge: Put Your Tasks on the Calendar

Links & Tools from This Episode:

• The ONE Thing Operating System

• Less Achieves More by Cyril Peupion

• Cyril Peupion’s Website

• Free Resources

Produced by NOVA 

StrengthsFinder 2.0 author Tom Rath on why the hunt for purpose makes people anxious, and the questions he asks instead. His new book is named after it: What's the Point?

You've been told to find your purpose since high school. You're still waiting for it to show up.

The word is the problem. Most of us hear it and tense up, as if purpose has to descend from the heavens on a sunny day every ten years.

Tom's books have sold more than 10 million copies. Five months before his newest book launched, he called his publisher and dropped its working title, Purpose Unlocked, worried readers would be too intimidated to read a book called Purpose.

At 15, Tom was diagnosed with a life-threatening genetic condition. His life expectancy was about 40. So he set out to pack a whole career and a whole family into those years, in case he didn't get any overtime. At 40, he realized about 90% of what he'd been doing was trying to live up to other people's expectations. He's convinced most people reach the end of their careers without ever seeing the work they'd have been best at.

In this episode, you'll learn:

Chapters:

[00:00] What’s the Point of Your Work?

[04:23] The Question That Changes Your Day

[11:15] Define Success by Contribution, Not Comparison

[15:59] The Myth of One Big Purpose

[18:21] Stop Letting Kids Choose Careers by Default

[26:59] 3 Ways to Fix a Job You Hate

[33:28] Challenge: Ask “What’s the Point?”

Links & Tools from This Episode:

• The ONE Thing Operating System

• What’s the Point? by Tom Rath

• How Full Is Your Bucket? by Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton

• StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath

• Free Resources

Produced by NOVA 

How to simplify your busy life before setting new goals.

You raised your hand for a committee years ago, and now it’s just draining time and energy every week. It’s out of alignment - and it’s almost goal-setting season.

That work project that seemed like a great idea at the time is still eating your week, and nothing new fits. Before you add another goal to the list, you have to pause and find the space for it.

On August 1st, Jay Papasan left Keller Williams after almost 26 years, and he’s still in what he calls a season of addition by subtraction.

Are you living your own definition of success, or someone else’s? If you’re a doer, it’s easy to keep doing and never look up to check your direction. Make some space and you’ll feel lighter, Jay promises, even before you know what’s coming into it.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

Chapters:

(00:00) Leaving Keller Williams After Almost 26 Years

(06:26) Whose Definition of Success Are You Living?

(12:14) 5 Questions to Decide What to Subtract

(21:10) What’s Changing at The ONE Thing

Links & Tools from This Episode:

• Goal Setting Retreat and ONE Thing Summit

• Changes to The ONE Thing services

• Free Resources

Winners never quit. Clear the inbox. Outwork everyone. You've followed rules like these for years without checking them.

Charlie Munger kept a latticework of mental models so he'd make better decisions. Jay Papasan keeps his own in a notes document he carries around. About 88 entries so far, written down so he's less likely to keep repeating the same mistakes.

You're most likely to hurt yourself, Jay warns, when you're anchored to a truth that may not be true. So he puts fifteen of his own on the table, then one he's abandoned. He expects you to disagree with a few. The ones that make you angry, he says, are probably the ones you need to think about. Until you learn the lesson, life keeps teaching it.

In this episode, you'll learn:

Chapters:

[00:00] 15 Hills I’m Willing to Die On

[03:56] Build Careers, Not Just Jobs

[12:43] Play Up and Grow Faster

[16:28] Winners Quit Strategically

[22:53] The Money Rules That Matter

[30:46] Hustle Culture and Inbox Zero

[38:47] Your Weekly Challenge

• The ONE Thing Operating System

• Jay’s interview with Oliver Burkeman

• Free Resources

Produced by NOVA 

You work all day and your results still swing month to month.

One month you're unstoppable, the next the pipeline is empty and you can't understand why. Jordan Freed says your business has a first down: one repeatable action that makes everything after it predictable, and most of us have never named ours.

In this episode, Jay sits down with Jordan Freed - head coach at The ONE Thing and Jay's own former coach. He says he has never coached a real estate professional who hit their listing number every single month and missed the rest of their goals.

Just in time for football season, Jay and Jordan break a business down into first downs, first dominoes, and false starts. Jordan's clients are ambitious, and the ambition trips them: they rush from one thing to the next and nothing gets completed. Jay has watched the same people run hot until they burn out, then swing back the other way. Most people never stay consistent long enough to see the other side. Jordan describes it: home to the kids at 5:00 with everything done and the evening already mapped out.

In this episode, you'll learn:

Chapters: 

(00:00) Why Your Business & Life Feel Unpredictable

(02:19) How Tom Brady Made History (and what we can learn from it)

(08:00) Guesswork Is an Invitation to Distraction

(14:21) It Just Takes Longer Than You Think…

(18:26) When You’ll Finally See Progress

(22:46) How to Truly Be “Done” After Work

(26:52) Jordan's 90-Day Challenge

Links & Tools from This Episode:

• The ONE Thing Operating System

• Jordan Freed’s Website

• Connect with Jordan on LinkedIn

• Free Resources

Produced by NOVA

You know what you should be doing every day. But most days you find a reason to make them tomorrow. Then the year ends looking exactly like the last one. Motivation was never going to carry you through work this boring. The people who show up every day set it up so that skipping costs them something.

Jay Papasan edited Mia Hamm's book at HarperCollins. The story that stuck with him had nothing to do with the World Cup. It was wind sprints alone in a park in the off-season heat, and the note her coach left under her windshield wiper. Being number one in your market gets built the same way, out of a few thousand hours nobody sees, and you are wired to avoid every one of them. Willpower runs out long before the work does. Jay has watched three plain strategies carry people through the hours everyone else skips. You only need one.

In this episode, you'll learn:

Chapters:

(00:00) What Mia Hamm's Coach Caught Her Doing Alone

(02:15) Why You'd Rather Be Shocked Than Sit Still

(04:56) Strategy #1: Make It Bigger Than Yourself

(08:09) Who Else Pays When You Skip the Work?

(10:15) Strategy #2: Think in Five Years, Act This Week

(13:05) The Step Before the Step You Keep Skipping

(17:17) Strategy #3: Accountability Without a Boss

(20:20) Upholder, Questioner, Obliger, or Rebel?

(24:55) Very Few People Will Do This Every Day

Links & Tools from This Episode:

• The ONE Thing Operating System

• Chris Dixon's episode about using the 411

• The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin

• Free Resources

Produced by NOVA 

If you've ever taken a new job or a new title and kept feeling like the old you, Shannon Anderson-Finch has a name for it: the gap between a change and a transition. Most people try to skip it.

Shannon spent 15 years at Google and Deloitte, where she was named Coach of the Year, before starting her own practice. She now coaches new VPs at a large retailer and a first-time hospital president through that same gap.

Her model runs in the wrong order: an ending, then a messy middle where you're neither here nor there, and only then a beginning. The middle is where she watches high achievers get impatient, and it's where she does most of her coaching. Jay tells a story in here about the morning his own affirmation changed one word on its own, and it gave Shannon goosebumps.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

-How to tell the difference between a minor change and a major transition

-Why big transitions often require an identity shift

-How to navigate the messy middle without rushing through it

-Why strengths, feedback, and core values can help you grow into a new role

-How experimenting with a new identity can make it start to feel natural

Chapters:

[00:00] When Change Requires a New Identity

[08:38] The End Comes Before the Beginning

[12:00] The Strengths That Move With You

[19:24] Don’t Rush the Messy Middle

[27:09] Becoming Who the New Role Requires

[34:59] The Challenge: Try On Your New Identity

Links & Tools from This Episode:

• The ONE Thing Operating System

• Anderson Finch Coaching

• Free Resources

Produced by NOVA 

We spend a lot of energy trying to make life faster, easier, and more convenient. But what might we lose when we remove too much of the hard?

Jay breaks down the “fun scale,” from Type One Fun that feels good in the moment to Type Two Fun that feels difficult while you’re doing it but becomes meaningful in retrospect. Then there’s Type Three Fun: hard experiences that never seem worth it.

The difference often comes down to three things: choice, completion, and connection. Did you choose the challenge? Can you see a finish line? Is the struggle connected to something meaningful?

Jay also explores what calculators, GPS, AI, and other conveniences can quietly take away when we stop exercising skills ourselves, and why leaders should help their teams “do hard better” instead of trying to remove every challenge.

Know someone who may find this episode helpful? Share it with them:

https://the1thing.com/podcast-episode/type-2-work-and-the-hidden-cost-of-convenience

***

In this episode, you’ll learn:

-What Type 1, Type 2, and Type 3 experiences look like

-Why some hard experiences become your most meaningful memories

-How choice, completion, and connection help you decide if hard work is worth it

-Why making everything easier can weaken skills you still need

-How to help yourself and your team “do hard better”

Chapters: 

[00:00] Why We Need More Type 2 Experiences

[03:51] What Convenience Is Costing Us

[06:43] The 3 Tests for Hard Things

[07:29] Why Hard Needs a Finish Line

[11:16] How to Do Hard Better

[14:48] The Challenge: Test One Hard Thing

Links & Tools from This Episode:

• The ONE Thing Operating System

• Oliver Burkeman and his previous conversation with Jay

• Free Resources

Produced by NOVA 

Mallory Rowan was building a successful powerlifting apparel company, competing at a high level, and finishing university when her body finally forced her to stop. A routine doctor’s visit revealed that she had been living with pneumonia, but the warning signs had appeared long before: irritability, emotional exhaustion, unexplained health issues, and the growing feeling that she was no longer herself.

Mallory joins Jay to share what it took to recover, ask for support, and separate her identity from her work. She explains how burnout changed the way she builds businesses, from creating stronger boundaries to designing for her personality, interests, and changing seasons of life.

They also explore Mallory’s “toddler test” for uncovering what you truly want, why financial security can give entrepreneurs more freedom to take meaningful risks, and how expanding your options can protect both your health and your ambition.

Know someone who may find this episode helpful? Share it with them: https://the1thing.com/podcast-episode/building-a-burnout-proof-business-with-mallory-rowan/

***

In this episode, you’ll learn:- How to recognize the emotional and physical signs of burnout- Why separating your identity from your work matters- How to design a business around your strengths and season of life- How the “toddler test” reveals what you actually want- Why financial security creates more freedom to take meaningful risks

Chapters:

[00:00] The Burnout Wake-Up Call

[05:37] When Pushing Through Stops Working

[13:38] You Are More Than Your Work

[19:18] What Do You Really Want?

[25:54] Making Work Optional

[33:12] Sustainable Ambition

[37:07] The Challenge: Find Six Solutions

Links & Tools from This Episode:

• The ONE Thing Operating System

• Check out FundClub here

• Mallory Rowan’s Website

• Follow Mallory Rowan on Instagram

• Free Resources

Produced by NOVA