The ONE Thing

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/

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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

Simone Stolzoff, author of How to Not Know, joins Jay to explore why our search for certainty often leads us into three traps: comfort, hubris, and control. They discuss how replacing those instincts with growth, humility, and acceptance can help us move forward without having every answer.

Simone shares practical ways to build your tolerance for uncertainty, including introducing small doses of randomness into your routine, looking to your past for evidence that you can handle difficult situations, and trusting your future self to solve future problems.

They also break down four questions that can bring clarity during a crisis: What is really happening? What are the trade-offs? What are your priorities? What is the next right action?

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

https://the1thing.com/podcast-episode/how-not-to-know-the-science-of-uncertainty-with-simone-stolzoff/

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We talk about:

[00:00] Why Uncertainty Makes Us So Uncomfortable

[01:34] The Three Traps of Certainty

[06:53] How to Get Better at Not Knowing

[11:36] What Happens When You Randomize Your Life

[20:58] Four Questions for Navigating a Crisis

[34:06] Let Go of the Life You Didn’t Choose

[38:52] The Challenge: Choose Who You Want to Become

Links & Tools from This Episode:

• The ONE Thing Operating System

• How to Not Know by Simone Stolzoff

• The Good Enough Job by Simone Stolzoff

• Follow Simone Stolzoff on Instagram: @thepizza_bagel

• Free Resources

Produced by NOVA

There is no such thing as the perfect productivity system. No matter how optimized your day is, or how many AI agents you have running 24/7, the harsh reality is that you’ll never truly be caught up. And that’s good news.

Oliver Burkeman wrote The Guardian's psychology column "This Column Will Change Your Life" for years before his four books on time and ambition. Four Thousand Weeks was an instant New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller, and his follow-up, Meditations for Mortals, is one of Jay's favorite reads of the last two years.

Jay and Oliver take apart the fantasy underneath every productivity system: the day you're finally on top of everything. The more you optimize, the more work floods in to fill the space. It's the same reason widening a freeway attracts more cars. Burkeman, a self-described "old man yells at cloud" AI skeptic, has watched people feel guilty at family dinner because their AI agents are sitting idle. And the skill he says this all comes down to is one nobody teaches: "the tolerance of the anxiety of letting all the other things go undone for now."

In this episode, you'll learn:

- What to do if you're an anxious, insecure overachiever

- Why it's so uncomfortable to do nothing

- Whether to-do lists actually help

- Why you'll have to say no to things you genuinely want

- How much of your day you should plan in advance

Chapters:

(00:00) Introduction

(01:02) Waiting for Real Life to Start

(12:48) The Jevons Paradox

(17:33) The Discomfort of Doing Nothing

(20:57) The Productivity Paradox

(30:03) Jay vs. Oliver on Time Blocking

(33:58) Time Surfing: A Day With No Plan

(39:19) Just Actually Do It

Know someone who may find this episode helpful? Share it with them: https://the1thing.com/podcast-episode/youll-never-get-on-top-of-everything-and-thats-okay-with-oliver-burkeman/

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Links & Resources:

• Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman

• Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman

• Follow Oliver Burkeman on X

• Free Resources

Produced by NOVA

Look at your bookshelf. Business books, biographies, the ones everyone said you had to read. Now be honest: how many did you finish?

Jay Papasan should be the last person making this case. He's spent 30 years in business books - first as an editor at HarperCollins, then as coauthor of multiple award winning & bestselling nonfiction books. And this week he's telling you to put the business books down and pick up a novel.

Because somewhere between Gordon Gekko and hustle culture, business people decided that serious people read serious books - and quietly abandoned the oldest learning technology humans have. The research says that decision is costing you: focus, empathy, sleep, vocabulary, maybe even years of your life. And the fix can take fifteen minutes a night.

In this episode, you'll learn:

- Why the business books on most shelves have never actually been read

- Why a 12-year Yale study found readers 20% less likely to die

- How fiction rebuilds an attention span that's shrunk from three minutes to one

- How fiction trains the empathy that tells you what your customer will object to

- Which sci-fi novel Gary Keller called the best business book he'd read in ten years

- Why you never owe a book more than 50 pages

(0:00) Why Business People Stopped Reading Fiction

(2:54) The Best-Selling Business Books Are Secretly Fiction

(5:51) What Reading Does to Your Lifespan and Focus

(10:08) Fiction Improves Your Empathy

(13:45) How to Read 50 Books a Year

(18:52) Five Sci-Fi Gateways

(22:41) Historical Fiction

(23:51) Easy Reading

(26:49) The Challenge: One Book, 50 Pages

The 10 books:

Sci-fi - Dark Matter (Blake Crouch), The Martian and Project Hail Mary (Andy Weir), Ready Player One (Ernest Cline), Wool (Hugh Howey)

Historical fiction - Gates of Fire (Steven Pressfield), The Alice Network (Kate Quinn)

Great, easy-reading fiction - For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway), Down River (John Hart), Beartown (Fredrik Backman)

Know someone who may find this episode helpful? Share it with them: https://the1thing.com/podcast-episode/put-down-the-business-book-read-fiction-instead/

The version of success you’ve been sold is really just stress with better branding.

Brad Stulberg has spent 20 years researching and reporting on the top 1% in their field - Olympians, powerlifters, bestselling authors - and has written 5 books on what he’s learned, including Peak Performance and his newest, The Way of Excellence.

In this episode, you'll learn:

- Why work-life balance fails

- Whether your obsession with work is fueling you or burning you out

- Why hitting a goal you've chased for years can leave you empty

- Why positive self-talk doesn't actually work

- Why you can't feel fear and curiosity at the same time

- How elite performers rest without feeling guilty

Know someone who may find this episode helpful? Share it with them: https://the1thing.com/podcast-episode/the-science-of-excellence-how-to-master-your-craft-passion-vs-obsession-the-myth-of-balance-and-more-w-brad-stulberg/

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Chapters:

[00:00] Intro

[01:47] What Actually Counts as Excellence?

[03:45] The Two Ingredients for Meaningful Work

[07:03] The Science of The Last Percent

[10:15] Why Fear and Curiosity Can't Coexist

[15:10] Self-Soothing Doesn’t Work. This Does.

[21:55] Good Passion vs. Obsessive Passion

[24:55] Why Does Winning Feel So Empty?

[28:03] Is An Identity Crisis Inevitable?

[35:02] The Importance of Recovery

[41:45] The Value of Inefficiency

[47:03] Your Challenge This Week

Links & Tools from This Episode:

• The ONE Thing Operating System

• Brad Stulberg

• Follow Brad Stulberg on X

• The Way of Excellence by Brad Stulberg

• Free Resources