Jay Papasan:
You know, sometimes, when we really want to do something and in order to do it, the first thing we do is we got to go out there and learn. We got to do all of this stuff. We’ve got to learn everything about it before we start. I know so many entrepreneurs that will spend weeks and months on a business plan before they take the first action, and they don’t even know if they’ll like what they’re doing.
So, my guest today is actually Pat Flynn. He’s a long time friend, huge fan of The ONE Thing, and he’s just come out with an amazing book called Lean Learning. I read it from start to finish in one day. The subtitle is How to Achieve More by Learning Less. Pat has helped thousands and thousands and thousands of self-starters and entrepreneurs launch their businesses with his huge podcast, Smart Passive Income.
He’s also repeated that success by building a massive YouTube following around Pokemon cards, of all things, just a passion project with him and his sons that’s turned into a massive business. And we’re not talking about thousands or hundreds of thousands or even millions of views. We’re talking billions with the B. This guy has really helped making impact in the world. He’s helped lots of people and entertained them. And he’s here to teach you how to get out of your own way, how to focus on the learning that actually gets you faster to action, and the actions you need to be successful so that learning is no longer a delay tactic. It’s no longer an avoidance technique. It’s actually how you get the things you want faster.
I’m gonna get out of the way now. Let’s hear from my good friend Pat Flynn on how he’s using tools like Lean Learning and The ONE Thing to help people achieve more.
I’m Jay Papasan and this is The ONE Thing, your weekly guide to the simple steps that lead to extraordinary results.
All right, Pat. Welcome to The ONE Thing Podcast. I am so happy to get to talk to you on a podcast again. It’s been a while.
Pat Flynn:
It’s been so long and it’s been a dream to be on your show. Thank you so much. This is going to be fun.
Jay Papasan:
You’ve been a longtime fan and advocate of The ONE Thing.
Pat Flynn:
Absolutely.
Jay Papasan:
Gosh, you were one of the first big names to pick us up. And so, when I’m reading your new book, Lean Learning, wow, I was loving it. And the parallels are just all through there. And one of the books right in the middle, when you’re like, “What’s my one thing?” Like, people are asking. That’s the one thing we want people to ask when they read the book. That’s why we have the question mark on the back. What’s my one thing? And a lot of people don’t know the answer, and guess what? That’s a learning journey.
Maybe they have the answer and they’re not sure how to do it. That’s a learning journey. And you’ve written a book called Lean Learning, which is, I believe, you’re taking the procrastination. A lot of learning is a placeholder for “I’m afraid,” “I’m not ready yet,” “It needs to be perfect before I start.” And this is about getting people into purposeful action. So hats off to you. Fantastic book. And I believe it, it’s such a good aid for our ONE Thing family.
Pat Flynn:
The reason I wrote this book is because a lot of my students, I discovered that when I asked them, like, “Who are you learning from?” I started to get this giant list of 12 different influencers, 50 different podcasts, and they always felt like they were behind. And when I asked them, “Well, what are your daily consumption habits?” It was like, “Okay. Well, wake up in the morning, I’d listen to a podcast and I’d continue it in the car, and then watch some YouTube videos during lunch, and I’d come home and I’d read this book because I’m trying to get my book reading in every day,” and it’s like you’re absorbing all this stuff from everywhere.
Number one you’re not giving yourself time to take action, right? But number two, you’re almost over inspiring yourself. You’re overconsumptioning it. We’re treating information like how we used to treat food sources. It was like, “Oh, they’re scarce.” If you think about old Batcaveman sort of times, it’s like if you come across a carcass or a bush with food, it’s like, well, you’re going to take advantage of that because you might not find that again later. So, it’s survival.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah. We still have people who have like a silo of grain in their backyard. Yeah. So, like, “Yes, I’m gonna have my food.”
Pat Flynn:
Great. However, we’re treating information that way, even though information is plentiful now. It’s like you come across this thing and everybody’s talking about it. It’s like, “Well, I have to get this or else I might miss out on something.” When we’ve already said yes to and have committed to other things, and this one thing that we’re trying to search for now becomes, “Well, what if this is my one thing? What if this and this and this and this?”
So, we have to control this because we’re at this buffet line of information now. Not only are we filling our plates with all this stuff just in case, we’re getting force fed from algorithms and other things that are showing us stuff that we didn’t know we needed, but because it’s so well-written or the algorithms are so great, we stop whatever it is we’re doing to watch it and consume it because it feels like we’re making progress, even though we’re not.
Jay Papasan:
We get to tell people, “Oh, I’m becoming a real estate investor. I’m going to start my YouTube channel. What are you doing?” “I’m learning.” We get to pretend like we’ve already begun because we’re learning about the doing, but we actually haven’t started doing.
Pat Flynn:
And it feels safer to learn. It’s like, “Okay, well, the more I learn, the better off I will be.” And I’m here to say that’s not true because things are moving so fast and action today is what’s going to help you learn faster than anything, especially with just how quickly things are moving.
Jay Papasan:
The paradigm, like I was reading your book, and a friend, John Meese, I don’t know if you know him, he’s here at the event, we’re at Craft & Commerce recording this, and he talks about the difference between just-in-case learning and just-in-time learning.
Pat Flynn:
That’s exactly what it is.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah. It’s people who want to actually do extraordinary things in the world, you’ve got to lean into just-in-time learning. Do I know just enough to get started? And then, with all of that plentiful information and kind of some of the techniques we’ll talk about here, how do I lean into just-in-time learning, so that I’m learning what I need when I need it versus learning stuff that I may not even remember when I need it?
Pat Flynn:
Right. I mean, how many of us read books, and then maybe do one thing from the book?
Jay Papasan:
Yeah, maybe.
Pat Flynn:
And then move on. Like how much value is there versus knowing exactly what you need next, finding the one resource that can best serve you with that, and then implementing and learning as you go. It’s similar to the way business used to be taught was, like, you write the business plan. That was like the first semester of business school, it’s like “Learn how to write a business plan.” But most people who know, who finally take action on that business plan, know that’s just a best guess. And in general, stuff’s gonna happen that will take you somewhere else.
And new opportunities will arise as well. So, even sticking with that business plan will kind of hold you back from other opportunities that might be available. So anyway, yeah, the parallels with The ONE Thing, I mean, maybe that’s just because I’ve absorbed so much of your stuff, it’s just a part of my DNA. And I’ve been able to take it through my own filters and my own experiences of life, and then portray it in this world now of information overload.
Jay Papasan:
It’s been my experience, I get to interview, a privilege of interviewing lots of people who’ve done and built extraordinary things like yourself, is a lot of people who have never read the book will go, that’s kind of how I do it. Like I do think that we kind of captured, kind of, a timeless model for how people approach things. So, I think, people can kind of follow the same path, and then you just kind of recognize each other. It’s like, yeah, that is like, we’re going to narrow the path, we’re going to focus on the things that really matter. And in this case, we’re going to focus our learning around the things that actually matter so that we can do them and get the results, which gives us feedback, so we know what we need to learn next. Like, it’s a neverending journey of learning.
So, on the parallels, I wanna dive in ’cause you gave me the opportunity. The only foreword I’ve ever written for a book-
Pat Flynn:
Thank you.
Jay Papasan:
… that’s got my name on, and I was so honored. You wrote a book called Will It Fly? And not to go down that path, but you were trying to solve a problem. All these people were taking your skills to start a business, and you were really effective, and people were making great businesses that they hated running. And so, this idea of not just will it fly in the world, but will it fly for me?
Pat Flynn:
Right. And your airport tests.
Jay Papasan:
The airport test.
Pat Flynn:
That was huge.
Jay Papasan:
Okay, yeah. So, let’s go into the future. And if you want to, we can go to the 88 miles per hour, which we talked about in this book. But that’s so central to, I believe, healthy goal setting is we’re working backwards. So, what does that mean for you? Like that go into the future. We did the airport test or the 88 miles an hour.
Pat Flynn:
The thought experiment that I always run myself through and my students through, because if you don’t know where you’re going, then how do you know what to do? And I think it’s important to, like you said, work backwards from what is meaningful for your future life. Not somebody else’s or not inspiration from all these other things from the outside, but let’s actually go into our DeLorean and travel 88 miles per hour and even just go one year into the future.
And a lot of times, for example, if you’re trying to figure out your one thing, hypothetically choose one of those many things that you might consider moving forward with and then travel to the future. And just for the experiment, consider that everything worked out the way you wanted it to. What’s your day like? Who are you with? Are you enjoying yourself? Do you have any regrets?
Jay Papasan:
What activities are you doing?
Pat Flynn:
What activities are you doing? What are you learning about then? And oftentimes, when I run this experiment with some of my students, like, tears start to come out because number one, they might find that this thing that they’re so excited about right now in the future actually is not where they wanna be. And it’s so, so amazing to discover that now, before you then spend the time, money and effort to go down that path-
Jay Papasan:
We’ve met people that have gotten to the destination without doing the thought exercise. It’s not a pure guarantee. It could still show up that way. And then, they realize, “Oh wait, I’ve built a gilded prison for myself. I have this wonderful opportunity that I really don’t love.”
Pat Flynn:
Right. You’ve climbed the ladder, you’re at the top, but you’re at the top of this wrong… the incorrect ladder for you. And then, if you have other business ideas that are in there or other options for your one thing, you come back to today, you’re like, “Okay, that was interesting. Let’s go down this time path and do the same thing.”
And then not only doing that alone. I found that when others are able to then talk to the other important people around them in that situation, like a spouse or a business partner, then you can start to uncover other things that you might not be seeing. You can’t read the label when you’re inside the bottle, even in your own thought experiments. So, amazing discoveries happen.
Sometimes the opposite of what we just talked about happens. You go there and you’re like, “That’s exactly what I want.” And now you’re more driven. And so, now, you can be more learning from, well”W they don’t exactly align with this thing that I’m trying to get to. So, why am I even learning about these things?” And typically, I find that it’s a FOMO, it’s a fear of missing out, because other people are saying how great this thing is. It’s a best-selling book, so of course I have to read it or else I’m going to miss out. Maybe it has a golden ticket.
And in general, learning doesn’t come from finding a golden ticket that’s gonna change your life in a day. It’s by finding a resource that maybe is backed by an author or a creator who is living the life in that future that you want.
Jay Papasan:
Well, you get out there in your future, you think you’ve found your destination, and we usually just have people walk it back. Like you’ve got this someday vision of where you’re going, where would I have to be in five years? And a lot of people are setting their learning goals around where they might eventually be someday or five years in the future. And you really want to walk it back. If I’m heading to this destination based on my five-year goals, what do I have to kind of get done in the first year or even the first quarter or the first month?
And those learning journeys are very different. You can keep the other ones in mind, but there is an order of operations here. Like, if I have a vision for building an eight-figure business or a nine-figure business someday in the future, I don’t need to learn how to hire a CFO day one. No, but I need to learn how to maybe read a P&L or balance my checkbook. Like, what is the first journey on that little bit?
And you have a matrix, I believe it’s called the Inspiration Matrix. It’s a good framework for people when they’re kind of going into the future to know, like, I can’t remember your labels, but I remember for me the top right, and you’ll have to walk people through it, it’s like, there’s things that are like calling you forward.
Pat Flynn:
Yeah, your passion pursuits.
Jay Papasan:
Passion, and it’s really important. And then there’s kind of, I called like the vocation, the work, like this is really important and it may not be as high on the passion, but it’s non-negotiable too.
Pat Flynn:
And you’re going to do those as well.
Jay Papasan:
Right. So, walk people through the Inspiration Matrix just real quick. I know it’s a visual.
Pat Flynn:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s in the book but there’s this matrix and a spectrum, if you will, of excitement for things, as well as just requirements for things as well. And so, where people can get most of the value is in the lower left, the things that were actually not as valuable for their life and things that are not as exciting even though they’re masked because there’s an initial spark. I call them junk sparks.
And this is where we get in trouble when we’re in social media, and we’re allowing ourselves for too much inspiration. We’re not just overloaded with info, we’re overloaded with inspiration because it’s always pulling us from the passion pursuits that we have or the other obligations that we have in our critical commitments, which is the stuff that you have to do that you maybe don’t want to, but you’re going to have to do anyway.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah, it’s non-negotiable if you want to achieve that result, these are things like, if I’m going to run a marathon, I have to run on a regular basis.
Pat Flynn:
Right, right. So, then, taking in all these things that you are inspired to do that are a part of your life, and then kind of dot matrix, putting them in there to see where things live. And very clearly, you can see that most people, especially creative entrepreneurs, have a ton of junk sparks. They’ve started and stopped, and start, and stop way too many things. And it’s like how much, not just time doing those things, but like brain space is used to kind of even consider those versus what they could be used for other things.
And then, to the point of, well, okay, we’re in the future and we found maybe this matrix is looking good now, what do we do? There’s a question that I had been inspired to use in my entire life for understanding, well, what action should I take? And that is, if this were easy, what would it look like?
Jay Papasan:
I heard that a long time ago, I think on Tim Ferriss. I don’t know if it came from that.
Pat Flynn:
It’s credited to Tim Ferriss in the book. Yeah.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah, if it was like… and I get mad when people ask me that sometimes. I’m like, “Ugh, don’t make me do that.” But it’s a great thought exercise. Well, if it was easy, what would it look like?
Pat Flynn:
Yeah, we overthink literally everything. I mean, my first business, for those of you who don’t know, I was helping architects pass an exam after I got laid off from the architecture industry. And my first inclination when I discovered this world of internet business was to go to a business school. I was like, “Oh, I wanna be an entrepreneur.” Therefore, I need to spend the most money and take the most time away from taking action because that’s what I was taught. Like, learn everything first and then pick and choose and that’s not how it works.
And plus I was moving back home with my parents which I didn’t wanna do, I was getting married, this is not the life that I wanted to live having gotten laid off. I had a reason to take action now and I needed to take action now but I didn’t know what to do.
Now, I got involved with a group where I discovered that I could potentially write a study guide, an ebook. And I never sold anything before, let alone figured out how to sell anything online. And so, I started to dive into the education. And I was like, “Oh my gosh. I have to write this thing, I have to learn how to format it, I have to learn how to sell this. I need to learn copywriting. I’m not a marketer.” Again, by learning-
Jay Papasan:
Cover design.
Pat Flynn:
Yeah, by learning all the things, I was talking myself out of it. But I needed to get it done. So, I said, “Okay, if this were easy, what would it look like right now?” Well, I have to just write the thing. So, I’m gonna open up Microsoft Word. It’s literally here on my toolbar, and I’m just gonna start writing. And that’s what I did. And after three weeks, I had 74 pages of notes that were in this giant long essay format, but I had all the words there.
Great. Now I’m starting to build a little momentum. This is great. But oh my gosh, where do I go from here? Well, I need to format it. Well, I found a resource on YouTube on how to make the Word document not look like a giant essay. And after a day, it was exactly what I needed it to be.
And I was like, okay, I have this thing now. Now, I need to sell it, where do I go? Well, I went to somebody who had already been selling digital products online. I didn’t have to go to business school. I just asked somebody, right? Found the one resource. And they said, “You should get this tool. It’s called eJunkie.” And it’s no longer around, but essentially you can upload your digital product, and then get a button that you could put on your website. It took an hour. And that’s it.
And now, I had this button and I put it on my website, but there was no information around this to help convince somebody. So I was like, “Okay. Well, now, I need to write a sales page.” I’m taking an iterative process and I’m at the sales page stage of this thing. But I had never written a sales page. Again, my mind wanted to go into, “Well, now I need to go to copywriting school.” No, I didn’t have the time. And I said, “If this were easy, what would it look like?”
Well, there would already be a sales page that I could just use as a template. And I asked a friend and the same person who taught me about the thing. And he said, “Well, there’s this book by a guy named Yanick Silver. And it’s called Moonlighting on the Internet. And this book is 200 pages of various strategies to make money online, from eBay to what have you. But you don’t need that. There’s an appendix at the back of the book, and it has a template for a sales page. You can just put your own product in there, your own features and benefits. And I was like, “Yes. Okay, let me take that and I’ll put it on my website.” And I did. And that sales page template has earned over seven figures with my architecture guide. And it’s still doing its thing today. Now-
Jay Papasan:
It’s so crazy.
Pat Flynn:
… 16 years later, it’s the same template. I wanted to overcomplicate things. And most of us do.
Jay Papasan:
A lot of times, we overcomplicate things because it prevents us from failing, even though it’s actually the cause of our failure. Not starting as failure, but if we actually get out there and do it and fail, I do think that we do that as a form of self-protection, where we look up and we’re like, we don’t know it’s happening, but we’re kind of afraid. What if I do this big thing, this scary thing, and I fail? And we’re subconsciously creating more work, so that we’re preventing ourselves from having to find out whether it will or not. But it’s actually a self-fulfilling prophecy. We’re not going to get there. So, I want to acknowledge, that was like a little master class in the idea of what would it look like if it were easy? So, thank you.
Pat Flynn:
You’re welcome.
Jay Papasan:
And just go a little deeper before we go to break. I would say, when I think about The ONE Thing, and we call it Extreme Pareto, right? Like what’s the 20% of the 20% of the 20%? The thing that either is by far the most important thing that I should focus on.
Pat Flynn:
The first domino.
Jay Papasan:
The first domino, exactly, which I have tattoos to remind myself, because I’m very guilty of cheating on this. My instincts are to overlearn. And then, the other one is there’s something that everything else would be dependent on. And if I don’t do it, none of that matters. Like we tell business people all the time, it’s great that you’ve got all of these certifications and service, but if you don’t learn how to market and prospect for clients, you’ll have no one to serve.
So, you having clients is the first part of every business. You have to have a manuscript to need a formatting or a copy editor or a cover. So, there is like this question of like, is there one thing here that everything else is dependent on? Well, that’s the start. How do I learn how to do that? And then, if I have to do that, what is the one thing for that project? You’re just breaking it down.
And the beauty of this is it narrows your focus. That big scary list that makes you feel like you might fail now gets very narrow. And it’s not like years, an MBA. Well, three years to get my MBA, a year to write my business plan. You can create these plans or you’ve now broken it down. It’s like, well, I could do that Saturday afternoon. You’ve got these little milestones and you get to celebrate progress.
Pat Flynn:
Right. And you can pick the one resource for that thing. And then, when the time is right, you can move on to the next. For my students in my community, we’re learning about YouTube quite a bit. YouTube is a very popular thing right now. Obviously, many of you are watching this on YouTube right now. And so, when people come to me and they’re like, “What’s the one thing I need to learn that would help me across the entire spectrum of YouTube?” And right now, it’s storytelling.
If you learn storytelling, you could have the worst video quality. And if you tell a good story, it can still be a banger video. That’s the one domino that can then lead to all the next things.
Jay Papasan:
Oh, I love that. All right, I wanna take a quick break, and then I wanna pick your brain on the other side. When you’re trying to figure out the one resource for writing your ebook, or I wanna write my business plan, like whatever your first domino is, you’re gonna go out, you’ve been doing this, you’re teaching thousands of people to do it, you’ve written a book on it, how do we select that one resource, that lean resource for us? So, let’s take a quick break and on the other side, we’ll dive into that, because I think that’s an important piece of the puzzle.
Pat Flynn:
Yeah, very. Let’s do it.
Jay Papasan:
This is a selfish question, Pat, because I look up, we talk about read for what you need. Like everybody’s bragging about how many books they read. But how many of them do you need?
Pat Flynn:
Right. LIke, how do you find that one resource? The first thing to do is realize that other people have probably tried to go down the same path before. And so-
Jay Papasan:
People have lived before you.
Pat Flynn:
You know what, there’s such a stigma of like, “Well, I don’t wanna rely on others to help me on my journey.” There’s some pride involved, right? Like maybe it’s a man thing, I don’t know. It’s like there’s some-
Jay Papasan:
There’s a self starter.
Pat Flynn:
Right, there’s some sense of pride of, like, “Well, I’ll figure this out.” I remember this even when for my architecture website, I tried to do literally everything myself. I was the coder, I was the designer, I was the writer and all the things. And even when I started to get some income coming in, I didn’t want to hand any of that off. And I remember there was a point where I was literally trying to move a image from the left side of the website to the right side.
Jay Papasan:
And you wrote about this in the book.
Pat Flynn:
Yeah, yeah. And it took like 10 hours, and I was going nowhere because I was trying to learn how to do JavaScript or something. And my wife is just like, “Are you okay? You just seem really mad, and there’s like a weird energy in this house right now.” And I was like, “I’ve been trying to do this thing.” And she was like, “Here, talk to my friend Mel,” who’s like a web designer. And I was like, “I don’t want to talk to Mel. I don’t want to bother him.” I kept making excuses because I wanted to figure this out on my own. I had already put 10 hours in.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah, your sunk cost.
Pat Flynn:
My sunk cost. I don’t want to waste it. Anyway, I talked to Mel and literally in five minutes, he was like, “Oh, man, who coded this website? It’s terrible.” And I was like, “Me.” It was done in five minutes. He’s happy to do it.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah. And we got to get out of our own way. I don’t know where the instinct comes from. For some people, I think it’s control, right? They just don’t know how to delegate parts of anything. They need to feel like they have control. I don’t know. Maybe it’s pride. Whatever it is, it doesn’t serve us. Asking for help. There are people out there to do these pieces of the puzzle. We don’t need to learn them at all. We just need to know… the only thing we need to know is who to ask.
Pat Flynn:
Right. And those people have already made those mistakes. Perhaps many of them have already come up with a learning structure around that path. And this is where having mentors is really important. Because if you have a mentor who’s gone down that path who you have direct access to, they can literally tell you, “This is what you need to do.” And that’s it. Don’t do anything else.
Jay Papasan:
Let’s just pick a fictitious skill, like I want to study jujitsu. I’m just going to assume that you know nothing about it. I don’t. I have a friend who does, but like, I think I’m going to take this up. I need to go find a resource to be unlearning. Like, how would you go select the starting point for that journey?
Pat Flynn:
So, my buddy, Dale, he does BJJ, Brazilian jujitsu. And I would just literally be like, “Hey, let me take you out for dinner or coffee, and let’s just talk about it,” from somebody who I trust, from somebody who I can get the experience from, who I already have access to. A lot of us already have access to the information we need at that moment, right? So, that’s where I would start.
Jay Papasan:
Start with the who. And I think that’s the ultimate cheat code. And what’s really weird is it can be a complete stranger. There is someone out there. Like I happen to know one of my friend’s sons is obsessed with trains. And he started a YouTube channel on trains, like when he was probably eight or something crazy. And he’s very shy, he’s very quiet. And they were at a volleyball tournament. And his son’s like, “Oh, he’s mapped in.” He goes, “There’s a very unique train that’s going to be going at this intersection at this time, we’re going to go get a video.” And he goes out there with his son.
Pat Flynn:
That’s amazing.
Jay Papasan:
And like, three people at that intersection, also there for that train, like, you’re so-and-so. But there’s someone. And he knows everything about every train. And now he’s 18 but there’s someone out there that has read every book, watched every YouTube video, read every blog, and if you reach out to them, say, “Hey, I’m starting my journey.” My experience has been, a lot of them will say, well, they get to ask it all the time. They have like a copy and paste answer for you, “Well, here’s where you start.” If you have a friend, they’ll sit down for coffee and they’ll tell you, “Here’s where you start.”
Pat Flynn:
Right. Or get involved in a community like around that topic, and you’re going to start to just notice some patterns of different resources and/or people, maybe even other community members who have special abilities or even you might find that in your research, there are certain sub-niches in that space that you can get involved with as well. And so, just get involved. I mean this is how I learned about Pokemon which led to this giant Pokemon empire.
Jay Papasan:
I don’t know if we have time, but how many views does your side hobby Pokemon channel have now?
Pat Flynn:
10 million views a day. If you include the shorts and reels and TikToks kind of all together. And I didn’t know anything about Pokemon growing up. I was a magic gathering person. And my kids got me into the Pokemon.
Jay Papasan:
If people have been living under a rock, like both of these are card-based games. And then people tend to collect the cards.
Pat Flynn:
Right, right. And there’s a lot of nostalgia during COVID, the collectible scene kind of came back.
Jay Papasan:
Pokemon Go became a thing.
Pat Flynn:
Pokemon Go, exactly. And my kids got me into Pokemon and whatever the kids are into, I want to learn as well.
Jay Papasan:
I’m with you. All right, so we’ve identified where we’re going to start. It’s probably, if you could only do one thing, start with asking the who question. And find the who, like who’s the person I already know or that I could reach out to that could help me start?
Pat Flynn:
The opposite of this is the person who goes to Barnes & Noble, and they buy literally every book on the topic, right? Which is the quintessential, sort of, view of what it means to learn. It’s like, “Oh, you have all those books around you.” And it’s like, “Okay.” But like, you’re not… you’re just… no.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah, they form a nice little barrier between you and your future if you’re not careful, those stacks of books.
Pat Flynn:
That’s true. And then, you share it on social media. And you’re like, “Look at me learning about all this stuff,” versus what it really is, look at me hiding behind all this information.
Jay Papasan:
Yes, exactly. So you have a whole section to protect your progress. And there were some spots in there. Like, basically you have, “Unsubscribe from everything, be clear about your time blocking, have a four later system.” Can we go into some of that? Like you’ve started down the journey and all of those are things that we teach at The ONE Thing too. But like, just starting with unsubscribe with, now, you know what you’re doing, just get rid of all the noise.
Pat Flynn:
Right. It’s just like our inboxes and we realize we have subscriptions to Netflix and a hundred other things. You’re like, I don’t even need those things anymore. Let me just declare subscription bankruptcy or in this case, let me declare information bankruptcy and just now choose only the things that I need.
Pat Flynn:
Right. And that exercise is so freeing for so many people because then you realize, “Okay, I can now clear my focus and just kind of narrow things down.” And then, the time blocking part is important. This is more of a mindset shift on what it means to time block. Time blocking is not anything new. Put a block of time on your calendar to commit to this thing. But when you take the approach that I teach, which is you are literally creating a shield around those hours in the day. That in and of itself stops even distractions that would normally happen because you do what you can to protect that.
Maybe tell your spouse or your kids, like, “Hey, during this block of time, I really need you to understand that this is gonna be my focus time for recording my podcast,” for example. Versus just like you put it in there and then things happen and you’re like, “Oh, well, life happens.” That’s our excuse.
Jay Papasan:
There’s like intention research that when you pick the time and place, you’re gonna do an activity. Like this is you making an appointment with yourself. That’s what I call time blocking. It could be with someone else if that’s your one thing. But like the intention act itself, like thinking through, it forces you to contain it in time and put it in the future. And we’re really decent at following our calendars. It makes you about three times more likely to do it.
Pat Flynn:
100%.
Jay Papasan:
But you still have to protect that time because we know life happens. If you work from home, kids knock on the door, dogs rung between your legs, like you have to then set up some barriers. And frankly, the unsubscribe from everything kind of idea, this idea of clean out, most people think focus is a spotlight. It’s this giant Batman light that they aim at the thing they want. And really, what we have to do with our brains is black out everything but the thing, which is so much more effort.
So, the time block is one of the ways we’re blocking out everything around it, so that this one thing gets our spotlight focus. And I actually, when I’m really intense, like a book project, I will move all the newsletters and things that I do want to read because they pertain to the book project. I will just set a rule that they go into a folder. So, I don’t want to unsubscribe from all those other things. But now, my action is I go to that folder and that’s where the pure learning is. Like I’ve found a way to black out, so that I can focus.
And it just takes so much of the willpower out of it. Like it is really hard to resist the urge of all these little digital impulses. Like I’ll do anything not to work some days. Oh, my wife would love it if I did the dishes right now. I can justify the heck out of it. So time blocking, clearing out some of the noise, anything else you would advise people?
Pat Flynn:
Yeah, I mean, along the lines of clearing out the noise, again, why are we so compelled to want to learn everything? It’s the FOMO. That next thing everybody’s talking about might be the thing that I need when really you already have access to it. And so, dealing with the FOMO and the mindset of just letting things go past you is the key but also very hard.
So, for a while, there was this strategy called JOMO, the joy of missing out. But here’s the strategy that I use, the joy of opting out. And that is your choice to recognize that those other resources or that new thing is there, and then basically saying, “I see you and I don’t need you right now because I’ve already committed to this thing over here for a certain period of time,” for example, or “This is what’s in my time block today,” or this week or for the next 60 days or whatever it might be. And that gives you a re-up on those things. So, those new things actually become strategies to reconfirm and go deeper into the thing you’ve already committed to. And that’s been huge for me.
Jay Papasan:
I like the language, the joy of opting out. And let’s just admit, JO is not gonna be as catchy as JOMO. But it’s a choice. And I like that you’re also giving people their agency. It’s not happening to them. Missing out is “I missed it.” It’s “Something happened to me,” opting out. Like that’s very important to me is that people never lose their agency.
Pat Flynn:
You are in control.
Jay Papasan:
I’m in control. It’s a choice I made.
Pat Flynn:
Now, if you’re still struggling with that, a lot of my students still do, we do this strategy where we have a folder, similar to like what you do, Evernote, Notion, wherever. When you come across a resource and you’re like, “I want that, but I know it’s not for me right now,” put it in a folder, whatever that folder might be, knowing that you can always go back to it later.
Jay Papasan:
Yes.
Pat Flynn:
Nobody goes back to it later. And here’s the thing, by the time you need that information, somebody else would have created a better, more relevant, and more timely resource. It’s just a method to get it out of your brain so you can move on.
Jay Papasan:
For later, so I’ve got files that I save quotes. So, like I do, like I’m a writer, so I do collect things like that. I have no idea when I’ll need them. And I remember hearing an interview with James Clear and Tim Ferriss where he was talking about he had a Google Doc and whenever he read research he thought he might need, he dropped it into this thing. Whenever he heard a quote he might need, he dropped it in that. I have the same system. I was like, “Yay, I’m using James Clear system. I must be on the right track.”
But I can tell you for every quote I use in writing, I’m probably collecting 15 that not only will I never use, but I might not ever even look at again. But I’ve got a system, like I think I saw the quote yesterday, it’s David Allen, your brain is for… what is it? Using ideas, not for holding them, right? But this idea of us holding information and stuff, like just let it go, have a system for putting it somewhere you trust, and you probably won’t go back and access it but the act of putting it somewhere you know to look for it just takes all of that anxiety out of the way.
Pat Flynn:
Here’s one more story that I found after the book was published that I really love and it involves Sherlock Holmes.
Jay Papasan:
Oh, you know that this is my hero.
Pat Flynn:
Really?
Jay Papasan:
Yeah. So I read everything, like biographies of author Conan Doyle in college. I read every story 50 times.
Pat Flynn:
Oh, wow.
Jay Papasan:
But he also only knows about things that matter to him.
Pat Flynn:
When Watson and Sherlock Holmes-
Jay Papasan:
I know exactly what you’re talking about.
Pat Flynn:
… meet for the first time, Watson helps Sherlock Holmes discover that the earth revolves around the sun, which he didn’t know. And Watson is like, “What the heck? Like, how did you not know that?” And he’s like, “Well, now that I know it, I’m gonna do everything in my power to forget it because it has nothing to do with me trying to be the best detective that I can.”
Jay Papasan:
He only wanted to remember all of the esoteric things. It seemed esoteric, but for him, they were all important for solving crimes. Period.
Pat Flynn:
Like what are the different soils?
Jay Papasan:
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, I want to do one more thing. We’re running out of time. And so much of what I think about, we’ve talked about quality inflation, right? So, the world is getting better. If we just want to stay kind of in place, we have to keep growing. We have to evolve. So, this is necessary. So, you’ve got these things, you call them micromastery, like little and like little force functions. How do we just make sure that we’re sharpening this all? Like, we talked about “Be on the path to mastery.” You’re just always trying to get better. What are some techniques you can share before we close?
Pat Flynn:
Yeah. So, micromastery is such a special technique for learning how to do something better. And it’s taking this big thing that you’re doing, let’s say I have a friend, his name is James, he’s an ultra marathon runner. And one way to get better at running is just to run. And the more you run, sure, you’re gonna get better, your endurance is gonna improve, but him as a very scientific person, ultra marathon runner, he, for example, will take one component of that sport and hyper-focus on it for a period of time and find all the right resources just about that thing for a period of time.
For example, he hired a film crew, a crew who had this super crazy slow-mo camera, like the ones they use on YouTube, to record his stride. Just so he could look at the way his heel hit the ground and the transfer of energy within that.
Jay Papasan:
His heel strike.
Pat Flynn:
His heel strike. Like literally just that one component he was focusing on. And for an entire three or four-week period or a month, he was working with people to try to optimize that. Just that one thing, even though there’s a million other things you could optimize. And by hyper-focusing on that, by micromastering just that, he was able to then absorb that and learn about it. And then, now, it’s ingrained in him. Now, he doesn’t have to think about it anymore because it’s part of who he is. And now, he’s moving on to, you know, I don’t know, his Hoffman breathing technique during ultra marathon running. And he’s like an award winning-
Jay Papasan:
So, like normal people who don’t run marathons or ultra marathons that matter, we can just look at what we do, but we’re trying to take a tiny, very specific sliver and just say, “What’s that thing?” Like, can I type faster? So, now my output is more. Or like, what are some examples for-
Pat Flynn:
Like editing faster. This is something that happens with more reps-
Jay Papasan:
For YouTube.
Pat Flynn:
For YouTube that you get in. If you wanna be a public speaker, this was my journey, being deathly afraid of speaking, I started to learn my way into becoming a professional speaker, (a), by first getting a mentor, Mike Pacione, who’s here at this event, and he’s a big part of my history. But as I wanted to improve and get better than anybody else, I micromastered. So, I’d go into a talk and be like, “What’s the one thing in this next talk that I just want to learn everything about, so I can master that and absorb that?”
So, it got to the point where storytelling, again, first domino, that was a big part of it. How do I start-
Jay Papasan:
If you could only learn one skill for marketing and speaking, and like that is one of those skills, like that is huge. Got it.
Pat Flynn:
Very applicable for many things. And so, it was included there. And I learned that and I learned how to tell a good hook in the beginning of the talk. But then, there’s also the closing. How do you close and be memorable? Or if there’s a call to action, “Okay, let me focus for the next few talks on just nailing the call to action.” I’m gonna see how I get more email subscribers or not based on these resources that I’m now grabbing for that specific thing.
It got to the point once where I went in and I was like, “Okay, I’m going to learn everything I can about my hands,” because I always struggle with that. I always put them in my pocket or kind of just do this nervous tick, but I’m going to watch a hundred TED talks, but I’m only going to look at what people do with their hands.
Jay Papasan:
Wow. That’s so cool.
Pat Flynn:
And I’m gonna hyper-focus on that. And then, now, it’s like just a part of who I am because I’ve spent the time to learn just about that. So, that’s mastery by going small.
Jay Papasan:
I had a friend come up to me and when I was teaching, I tended to point. And he goes, “Jay, really small thing. Whenever you’re pointing, do it with an open hand. It’s so much less threatening.” And it’s like the nuances that you don’t think about until you say, “I just want to focus on…” Like, “What is that thing that I feel awkward about? And can I master that one little piece?” You’re just getting these little incrementally better all the time.
Pat Flynn:
Right. Even in like Toastmasters, they have games and processes for unlearning poor speech or to get better at removing filler words.
Jay Papasan:
Filler words. Like.
Pat Flynn:
Those kinds of things. And so, even just by people going to Toastmasters, focusing on removing filler words and keeping track of them, you immediately, sometimes without even trying, just the conscious effort of wanting to get better at that micro skill, you will get better.
Jay Papasan:
I think people underestimate, and this is kind of like the domino principle. Like as you go down the journey, it’s not just showing up every day and doing the same thing. If you’re on the path to mastery, like you’re doing it again and again, you’re going to get better. Doing micromastery, like you’re teaching us, you’re going to actually accelerate the exponential journey.
Pat Flynn:
For sure.
Jay Papasan:
Because you’re going to get exponentially better on multiple, like you’re layering them on top of each other. Not only am I getting the reps and the confidence and the abilities just through exposure, but now I’m consciously kind of turning up the volume every single time.
Pat Flynn:
Right. And if you can increase the angle of success just even a little bit now, and now that skill is ingrained into you over time, the difference is huge.
Jay Papasan:
My last coach, Jordan Fried, our head coach, he likes to ask the question, when he gets into that moment, and he’s like thinking that he’s not good at it now, I’m not so awkward with my hands on stage, he’ll just say, “I wonder how good I’ll be after doing this a hundred times?” And like, he just goes into that magic place of going into the future, 88 miles an hour, And then, that’s where you like, “Oh, and I can study this. And then at a hundred reps, I’ll be so much better.” And he gets out of his head, “I wonder how good I’ll be when I’ve watched a hundred TED talks to study this thing?” And you just get to that place.
All right, I could keep going for like six hours.
Pat Flynn:
Yeah, same.
Jay Papasan:
And I’ve only scratched the surface on my notes on this book. So I’m just gonna tell everybody again, if you are on the journey and you just wanna succeed in life, you need to read Lean Learning. You did a great job.
Pat Flynn:
Thank you.
Jay Papasan:
This is an important book. And I think it’s gonna be around for a long time. So, thank you so much. We’ll definitely have to do this again.
Pat Flynn:
Absolutely.
Jay Papasan:
Okay. I can honestly say that we could have gone on for about three hours and cut about six different episodes. I had about three more pages of notes from his book, and we just kind of stopped where we were. And hopefully, you enjoyed that. And if you really like it, leave a review and we will get him back and we will continue the conversation. I know he has so much to share.
Right now, I need to give you your challenge for the week. And very conveniently, we talked about micro-learning. It’s this idea of taking something that’s really important to your profession or your craft and taking the smallest tiny piece of it and saying, “I’m gonna get better at that.” So, if you remember, there was the Olympic runner he was describing that was just focused on his heel strike. Pat is trying to get better as a public speaker. So, he watched a hundred TED Talks and just watched people’s hands. He’s like, “What do people do with their hands?” They stick them in their pocket. Like it’s always awkward. So, he just focused on one tiny element of his game, so that he could have a tiny breakthrough that would add up to something bigger.
So, my challenge to you is in that area, your one thing, that thing that you do to be successful, what is the tiniest sliver that you could identify and say, “I’m gonna get better at that?” That’s your challenge for the week, a microlearning challenge. Pick a very small piece of what you do and say, “I’m just gonna focus on being a little bit better at that.”
Now, next week, when you’ve completed your micro learning challenge, you’ve got a real treat in store. We’re gonna have Gary Keller and we’re gonna talk about The Way: Five Big Ideas for Living Your Best Possible Life. Can’t wait to share that episode with you. See you next week.
Disclaimer:
This podcast is for general informational purposes only. The views, thoughts, and opinions of the guest represent those of the guest and not ProduKtive or Keller Williams Realty LLC and their affiliates, and should not be construed as financial, economic, legal, tax, or other advice. This podcast is provided without any warranty or guarantee of its accuracy, completeness, or guarantee of its accuracy, completeness, timeliness, or results from using the information.
