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.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

How to prepare for and run a goal-setting retreat with your partner

The big mistakes to avoid

What to say to a partner who is just not into this

The magic of setting a goal you have no clue how to hit

How to navigate a goal disagreement

How to keep these goals top of mind through the year

• 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:

How to get a handle on your email and DMs

Why Cyril deletes 90% of the email he receives

How many of your last 10 emails will matter long term

Why we bias towards more instead of less

Why working over 50 hours a week makes you worse

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:

How to make purpose practical enough to use every day

Why 30 minutes on strangers' emails is 30 minutes less with your kids

The patient photo that made radiologists more thorough

Why your kids should see 50 jobs before picking one

A miserable job can be worse for you than no job at all

What to try before you quit a job you hate

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:

The 5 questions Jay uses to free up time for his ONE Thing

Why chasing a resume line is holding you back

What your calendar can say about your true values

How to know if you’ve set the wrong goal

How subtraction can create more room for meaningful work

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:

Why winners actually DO quit

Why inbox zero is one of the least productive things you can do

What you really give up when you lean on AI for everything

Why a christmas bonus disappears so quickly

How to avoid the #1 worst financial habit

How to build your own list of mental models from mistakes

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

Links & Tools from This Episode:

• The ONE Thing Operating System

• Jay’s interview with Oliver Burkeman

• Free Resources

Produced by NOVA