Jay Papasan

I am so ready to go. Thanks for having me.

Jay Papasan

I think that Gary and I were fortunate enough to put this out at a time when people needed it. I think that we look up and everything is accelerating so fast. I think about your audience, people who are entrepreneurs and self-starters, who are looking into improve their lives. The amount of information that’s available to us, the opportunities and in some ways, I’m getting to that place where not only I have kids but older parents, the obligations that we face. I think there’s a lot of overwhelm going on.

What we need is a mechanism to help us filter out a lot of the noise so we can focus on the one thing that really matters the most.

I think that’s why it’s kind of resonating. It’s just that we got the right time in our lives, this moment in history when the world is advanced a little faster than we can adapt to it.

Jay Papasan

It’s kind of the ultimate successful. It would be like in the world of physics, we have gravity. In the world of accomplishment, we have the 80/20. It comes from an Italian economist in the 18th century. Vilfredo Pareto observed that 80% of the wealth in Italy was held by 20% of the people and that little observation by obscure economist lay dormant until a guy named Joseph Juran, heard about it while studying executive compensation and he was a big quality control guy and he said, “Oh wait. When I look at the assembly lines, 80% of the defects come from 20% of the flaws.” He admittedly knew that there was something bigger there. So it was actually on his manual on quality control that it got popularized. In the mid-80s, the 80/20 Principle Book was written. And that’s where Gary Keller was exposed to it, my co-author.

Jay Papasan

The 80 and the 20, I think those numbers confuse people because they don’t always show up. They do a lot but there’s a minority of what we do.

So what we want people to do is look at that to-do list and instead of just marching through it like we often do which is to cross off the stuff we can do the fastest or the easiest, most of us are working to make it shorter, to put it in the some sense of priority.

If I can only get one thing done today, what’s that thing? And that becomes your number one perhaps learning some time management techniques. And if I can only get two things done today, what’s that number two? And most people go from the list like it goes as long as a page. 20 or 30 things down to 4 or 5, really essential ones and they know what their number one is. That’s their 20% and we just want to say what’s the 20% of that and the 20% of that until they know exactly what their number one priority is. That’s extreme Pareto.

Jay Papasan

Well, the first thing is when we call the book, The One Thing, I remembered going to the book expo in New York and all the New York publishers were just laughing like there’s never just one thing when we all have too many things on our plate. So, one of the metaphors in the book is this idea of a domino run.

Jay Papasan

I’m going to get exactly to your answer here. The idea is I want to acknowledge that there’s a lot of stuff on the list and as entrepreneurs and self-starters, we feel we do have to get to them all but when you line them up properly, just like you’ve probably done with dominoes at home, one thing, I actually knock over a bunch of stuff and that’s the secret truth behind the idea of this Pareto’s principle, in our case, the one thing.

When people make a stand and say, “You know what, for my new business, my number one thing is I’m going to be working on cold media. Cold media to drive traffic to my website and I’m going to give that all of my focus. That’s where I’m going to start my days. That’s going to be like all of my energy.” When people actually live that commitment, there’s a halo effect.

By taking real control over that priority, you end up doing a lot of the other important stuff just by default.

It’s just amazing having you put the conversation from all the stuff that they have to do to this one essential thing that they must do. All the stuff still gets done. So I think, that’s the first message people need to hear because they look at that list, they get it intellectually but they can’t get pass the fact that numbers 20 and 21 still have to get done and I’m just promising you if you’ll live it even for a short period of time, like you’re talking about. You’re doing your top 3. I learned that from Tim Ferris.

But when you live these priorities, all the other stuff either goes away completely or it gets done without you having to give it a lot of energy. Setting priorities is one of the key time management techniques.

Jay Papasan

Yes. When someone truly sees the vision for their life, it often evokes this need to be making progress towards it and it can be hungry and impatient especially among entrepreneurs. Many of us are fidgety about it.

The idea of being really active often takes priority over being productive, activity over productivity and what we are trying to get them to do is just start with the big one. Start with those top one, two, or three and what I love about that when we go back to the overwhelm is on those days when I know I’m not done with my priority and I got it done before noon. Because I’ve launched my day with it, I feel kind of righteous the rest of the day. There is this sense of satisfaction that I know that my number one priority got checked off already. And even if I have a bad afternoon, I don’t feel the same way I do as if that’s still hanging over my head at 3 o’clock. And then I get it done right before I get home. Just flipping the conversation to let’s start with the most important thing just released a lot of stress for me.

Jay Papasan

All right. I’m going to give tough first and then I’m going to let you completely off the hook.

Jay Papasan

We have a whole chapter on multitasking. Learning the skill of multitasking is one of the important aspect of time management techniques. I’m not asking you stop multitasking all the time but when you know you’re working on your number one priority, it’s probably a good idea not to have Twitter opened while you’re doing that. Just a small dose of extreme focus has magnificent benefits for the rest of your day. You don’t have to abandon your work style.

Jay Papasan

It eliminates a lot. I think that one of the titles we cater around at one point was just clarity that the people who tend to achieve the most in life seem to have the clearest idea of whether going even if it’s just like north. They don’t even know what the destination is but they know they’re supposed to go north.

When you ask yourself a question like the focusing question in respect of learning time management techniques, it really forces you to narrow it down to one thing. It does give you a sense of where your priorities lie and just by that default, that little exercise I role played earlier, by knowing out of all this stuff on your to-do list, that there is 1, 2, 3, even a 4 and a 5. What it lets you know is all this other stuff isn’t as important. You get both of those benefits, the clarity about what isn’t you really should be in your sights and the other stuff that you might be doing for fun. You can also just kind of let it lie.

If you can learn how to focus, you can master time management techniques easily. So there’s just so many benefits to just that little bit of taking a moment and I tell people just get an egg time. I’ve got one on my Chrome. I’ve just got it bookmarked for egg timer. I set a timer for like 3 minutes. I’ll go to my task sheet and say “What is my number 1?” That’s just a little exercise I can do and you don’t take any longer than that to identify your priority to what I always say is most people know what it is but because they don’t stop long enough to ask the question, the just walk around feeling guilty for not addressing it.

Jay Papasan

Yeah, you got it, prioritizing things is one of the time management techniques. That’s the simplest form of the process if you wanted to take it one notch up to make those things. Now you know what your priorities are or priority, ideally. You want to kind of time block it which all it means is make an appointment with yourself to do that every day and I’m betting that you probably do this. There’s probably some rituals to your morning. There are things that you do on a regular basis most days whether it’s just meditating or working out or how you do your breakfast or maybe even just how you fix your coffee, and each of what you do needs some time management techniques.

We interviewed some of the most successful people in the world regarding essential time management techniques. A lot of them made their one thing a ritual. They had a standing appointment. First thing they did in their office or often before they got to it, they were already addressing that thing.

In our research, I could go into the long research but there’s a study in British Journal of Health Psychology, if you just make that appointment in time, just navigate, then you’re going to do the thing you know you have to do, you’re about three times more likely to do it. Just that simple act triples your effectiveness.

Jay Papasan

Okay. So the biggest challenge is first and foremost, to stay willingness while implementing time management techniques. They can intellectually get the 80/20 but if they aren’t willing to be accountable to it, to hand themselves over to it, they’ll often stumble because they’ve maybe blocked off an hour each morning to try to focus on the priorities.

This is going to be my working on the business time or working on myself-time, whatever your priority is, not the other stuff, and then the fire breaks out. Something urgent but unimportant happens. That is probably the moment of truth for a lot of people is they’re going to stumble a few times. They’re going to get distracted and then they’re going to think, “Well, this thing doesn’t really work.”

I encourage folks and in our programs to try restrained together a series of days. Just give it a couple of weeks and see if you don’t start to see results. I mean, really rapidly, but that instinct to go jump on whatever the fire is, an argument or something happens on social media, if you are kind of just shut all of that away just for a few days in a row, you’ll look up at the end of those days and you’ll see the results for what they are. It shows up much faster than people anticipated. So, it’s battling those distractions. That’s got to be the number one thing.

Jay Papasan

Well, thank you for saying that. I think that we’ve identified six lies between people and success, overlooking time management techniques one. That was the convention we used in. The number two was multitasking. And when I give keynotes or when we’re teaching material, it’s probably the one that most universally people are like, “Woah, that’s me”. We’re all guilty of it. It’s the age we live in.

I mean right now, I can’t walk through the park without people bumping into you because they’re playing Pokemon Go when they’re supposed to be walking their dog. So, you’ve gotten this thing going on.

Again, I just say, if you know what your number priority is, can you just take a moment and say, “Can I create a bunker for myself? Is there a place?” I know this is important. This is what your next guest is going to talk about how prioritizing things is important in implementing time management techniques.

If it’s truly your passion, it’s worth making this one investment so that you can do it right. One of the areas that it hit home for me, this implies to every area of your life. I looked at as a working dad, what’s the one thing I can do to make sure that I’m constantly engaging with my kids at these different areas and for many years, I wanted to have bedtime. I wanted to read to them every single night and a kid will teach you, you can’t multitask. You can’t have your phone out and be reading them a book, right?

See, you laugh but it’s so true. Like, we could get it and we will tell our kids to behave this way and when we’re at our best as parents, we behave that way with our kids. But then, we go to work and —

Jay Papasan

God bless you for that, right? I think I have all these intellectual reasons like we really point out. Like, 28% of your day is loss to this ineffectiveness. You lose on average I think 6 to 10 IQ points when you’re multitasking. I can go through all the science on that but the thing that hits home for people was actually a little line at the end of that chapter and you’re hitting on it now.

The things that actually matter the most are our relationships and the people that we love most. When we can’t even give them the respect of our full attention, what is that saying about how we’re going to succeed or fail in those relationships?

So, good for you on calling our friend, Luis on that. I’ve been called on it. My Mets are in the World Series or whatever and I really wanting to have my phone out under the table. I get it but we don’t want to that person in the moments of truth of our life that matter most. And that’s the whole point of this book. You don’t have to be perfect all the time.

Jay Papasan

So I love that you’ve been called on that. We all have. Being aware of it, we don’t always treat our work with that much respect. If it’s our lives work, our life is at risk then just like our relationships would be. That’s what I try to tell people. Give your work that much respect as well.

Jay Papasan

I don’t like it when I’ve been called on it but I know it’s good for me. That comes from love, right?

Jay Papasan

No, I haven’t seen it broken out but I know that is largely a myth. I think it was Stephen Colbert who coined the word, “Truthiness,” that may have any relevancy with the time management techniques.

Jay Papasan

Right. It sounds true therefore it must be true and the idea that women are better multitaskers because they had to tend to the kids while they work in the fields for millennia. It makes sense therefore we wanted to be true but I actually don’t think there’s any proof that they’re any better at multitasking than men. Neither they are good at adopting time management techniques.

Jay Papasan

Well, I think you’re referring to the Pomodoro Method and I definitely played with that and this is the idea that we need to break our focus every 20-25 minutes and then we get a fresh spurt of focus. What I know is that focus is a muscle. It’s like a fast twitch muscle and that it diminishes very rapidly. But I also know that if you’re going back to your future guest, when we’re in our passion zone and we’re working at the edge of our abilities, you’ve also heard the term flow, correct?

Jay Papasan

Yes. When we’re at that edge of our abilities, we do lose track of time and I personally, I want to hit flow when I’m writing and researching so I do not set clocks for that sort of work because I can achieve flow there. My work is best when I achieve flow, that comes from mastering time management techniques and I really don’t want anything jarring me out of it. I have very little science. This is my personal experience.

So for those things where flow matters, this idea of getting in the zone, if you are familiar with it, it’s a huge, huge asset when we can get there. And you have to be pushing to the edge of your abilities and then usually something like a hobby or passion that we can lose ourselves in. That’s amazing.

However for things like email, I tried to get into email on social media during three windows throughout the day. I usually set a clock 20-25 minutes because in my experience with the volume of messages and things that are happening, that is work that truly will expand whatever time I give it. So I just limit it. And now, I’m playing a game. How many emails can I completer before that clock goes out? I think that’s the idea they call batching.

For things that tend to be a little bit repetitive, we’re not really going to get into flow unless that’s just how quickly we can do them. I love using timers for that to quickly and effectively get it off my plate and then move to the next things.

So, that’s my 2 philosophies; big blocks of time for my most important work, little blocks of time for the ton of stuff. That’s how do we need to implement time management techniques.

Jay Papasan

I just want to encourage people, if this is resonating for you, if you’re thinking of something that maybe you should be doing that you’re not doing is just make a commitment to try to do it tomorrow. I think that when people effectively take even one step towards self-improvement but they do it within a very short period of time like 24 hours, the odds go to the roof that they’re going to continue because often the first step, it’s what I tell you to put your running shoes by your bed, just the first act that first domino can create just enough momentum to keep you going so if that’s been haunting you and a lot of people will come out of the audience or say they’ve read the book and like, “Oh! I realized that I was neglecting this relationship” or “I was neglecting this.”

Make a commitment right now to make even the tiniest amount of progress tomorrow or today but no later and see what happens from that.

Jay Papasan

Thank you so much!