Jay Papasan:
Every year Americans spend roughly a hundred billion dollars on education. That’s going to conferences, going to webinars, attending events. They’re trying to improve themselves professionally and personally. And guess what? Research shows that less than 20% will ever do anything with that information. So, you add up the math, that means that every year Americans are wasting about $80 billion.
This week, we’re gonna talk about how to break out of that and be in the 20%, right? The 20% that takes things, ideas, and puts them into action. Whether it’s a conference or whether it’s a book or this podcast, how do we take ideas when we hear them, capture them, and then actually put ’em into work in our lives or at the office, so that we can get an ROI on that money? We are investing not just our dollars in our education, but often our time, which is an even more precious asset.
So, this week I’ll be sharing a framework called TIPPS , and I’ve been teaching it for maybe close to a decade, originally around the idea of convention let down. It’s the idea that you took time out of your work. You left your family to go to some convention to meet a lot of strangers, maybe have some fun, but primarily you were there for personal or professional development. And you came back with a notebook full of ideas, a lot of excitement. And then, a few weeks later, nothing’s changed. Nothing’s changed. How many times have you been through that cycle of getting excited, knowing that change was just around the corner? All of the ideas were in your hands, yet action did not follow and change did not come from it. That’s why we’re gonna cover the TIPPS model this week on how to put ideas into action.
I’m Jay Papasan and this is The ONE Thing, your weekly guide to the simple steps that lead to extraordinary results.
So, TIPPS is an acronym, T-I-P-P-S. And it’s actually evolved over the years, but this is what it means today. The T stands for take notes. The I stands for identify key takeaways. The P stands for prioritize action items. The second P stands for put it on your calendar. And then, the last one, S stands for seek accountability. So, it’s a simple framework for taking notes, identifying what you think matters, prioritizing those things, putting them on your calendar, and then getting accountability so that you can actually put those things into action.
So, whether you’re reading a book, think of how many books you’ve read and had a big idea, but nothing came of it. How many podcasts you’ve listened to. You’re out there, you’re walking the dog, you’re driving to work, you’re running around the park, you’re cycling on your machine, you’re competing, whatever that is, but you’ve got all of these ideas that come into your life, but yet you’re not taking action on them. And obviously we can’t act on all of them, but even one good idea, you’ve read an amazing book, one good idea from that could be life changing over a long period of time. How do we do that?
So, the TIPPS model was originally created as a result of me being the leader of education for Keller Williams. A few years in a row, I had to go into our annual convention and kind of teach the first time attendees. And the model evolved from those conversations. People would ask like, how can I get the best ROI on this? What are the things that I should be doing to get the most out of this event? And a lot of it is really practical. Like, take notes. I mean, come on, duh. We all know that from school, but as adult learners, maybe we’re too cool or we just think we can capture everything on our phone and we’ll actually go back and look at it. Not gonna happen most likely.
So, the model evolved from me teaching a first time attendee session, and I think it was maybe the third time that I taught it, where I had some close version of this, and I was pulling ideas from different parts of my learning life, both as a lifetime learner, myself and someone leading education at the time for the number one training company in the world.
So, this idea starts with taking notes, but I will say this, the one caveat to starting with taking notes is I would say, if you’re going to a learning event, maybe you’re attending our annual event, The ONE Thing Summit, or you’re going to some other one, but go in with intentions. That would be the extra that I could add on this podcast that I’ve never shared before. What do you need to know? What are you hoping to learn from this event? Can you set intentions before you go? ‘Cause that will make your radar be up.
Maybe I need to go and I’m looking for referral partners. Maybe I’m wanting to learn more about how to manage my business from a P&L. Maybe I’m wanting to learn more about communication and connection. Whatever it is you think you need more of in this season, as you go into the event, as you go into the book, as you’re selecting your podcast, your intentions can guide you to make better choices, not only on the way in, but while you’re there.
That way, if you’re reading the book, you can skip some chapters that don’t seem like they’re lining up right with what it is you need. You can go to the different breakouts at an event based on the things that you need. You can listen or select podcasts based on what you need. The whole set intention thing just kind of gives us a direction to follow, and we do get surprises that happen, especially in real life and events. But I would start with set intentions. But what that little caveat said, let’s dive into the model TIPPS and start with T taking notes.
So, some 25 years ago, the day after Labor Day 2000, I had my first day at Keller Williams Realty. And back then, there were like 27 employees. And I went through my little new employee orientation. It was pretty small time back then. They gave you a little spiral notebook and a pen, and they showed you to your desk. They showed you your desktop. You know, like, “Here’s your password. Here’s where the bathrooms are,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And I remember, like they handed me the notebook. And I said, “What’s the notebook for?” And they just said – ’cause I’d worked at a really big company in New York, Harper Collins Publishers, and nobody gave me a notebook on day one. They just said, “In our company, we’re a learning company and we expect people to be active learners. So, when you’re attending meetings throughout the day,” and this was back before online meetings by the way, so everything was in person, “we expect you to have a pen up and your notebook out and to be taking notes. So don’t just pass the time. Engage. If you take notes, you’ll learn more.”
So, that was the first time someone actually said that to me. And over the years, both as a learner myself and leading learning departments, I’ve accumulated a little bit of research around this. So, notetaking is a very, very good way to increase your retention. So, passive learning, just sitting and listening, people have a very low retention rate, but the moment you start taking notes, you’re engaging actively, your brain’s trying to follow along.
But here’s the thing you maybe don’t want to hear. If you’re taking them by hand, and that is literally writing them out, and if you want to cheat, use one of those great remarkable pads, so that you get the same action. You’re writing it out. What happens when people type notes is, people can type so fast, they tend to do things verbatim, they’re actually trying to capture every single word. And the focus it takes to do that means they’re just capturing a string of words and sounds, and they’re not synthesizing it.
People can’t write that fast. If someone’s talking really fast and you’re taking notes, your brain actually has to summarize it or synthesize it. And that is the part where you get a little bit higher stick rate. By synthesizing the information, if I had to sum up what that person just said again, and again and again over the last five minutes in this class or this lecture on this webinar at this event, what did that mean to me? What did that mean to me? And that becomes your synthesis of it and your retention rates go up much, much higher.
When people are just passive, they can only remember about 5% of anything they learned two weeks later. So, a very, very low retention rate. But when you’re an active learner, those numbers can jump to 75 to 95%. So, the act of taking notes, especially if you’re doing it by hand, folks, it’s very, very, very effective.
Now, I would kind of quibble a little bit here. If I’m taking notes on my phone, I have to use two thumbs. I’m not very fast. So, the key here is, are you transcribing or are you synthesizing? So, I don’t want to, like, index too far towards the analog way. I bet if you’re doing it on your phone and you’re not super fast, you’re not doing it verbatim. So, you are synthesizing; and therefore, you are actively engaging in the learning and processing as you go.
The last thing we need to do is just to count on an AI note taker. This is taking convention let down to an extreme. Now, you’ve got some AI note taker that is actually engaging, summarizing everything for you, and at the end of the day, you do get a nice summary – if you ever read it. I can count on one hand how many times I’ve gone back and done the AI notes on a meeting that I attended because there was something specifically I wanted to remember that I already forgot. But maybe if I’d been taking notes, I wouldn’t have forgotten to begin with.
So, I’m not a big believer. I love AI. I love a lot of the things that it can do for us. I love that it can take notes for people who couldn’t be there, but if you are there, take notes yourself and do it in a way that forces you not just to transcribe what’s going on, but to synthesize it. There’s tons of research around this. Everything from the cognitive load of having to focus, all of those things mean you’re gonna remember more of what actually happened in that session, and you will be able to take it into your life further.
So, as a teacher, I just tell people, when in doubt, write it out. When in doubt, write it out. Take some notes, take them by hand, and you will learn a lot more than everybody else in the room. I’m kind of addicted to it. If you went into my office, I got a chest under my desk. And in it, I’ve got some 25 years of notebooks of learning. And occasionally, I go back and flip through them to see what was happening in different points of my career and what I was learning at those moments.
For me, as a writer, it’s invaluable. But I will tell you, just the act of writing it down, even without going back and reflecting, is going to increase your ability to learn in the real time. So, at the end of the day, just take notes. That’s the first step. If you do this, you have higher retention rates and everything that follows will build off of those notes. And the fact that you took them meant that you engaged with them and you’re probably doing something along the way, which is the next step, which is identify key activities. Let’s go into step number two.
So, identify key takeaways or key activities. As you’re taking notes, come up with some sort of system. Maybe it’s a star, maybe it’s underlining, but how can you add emphasis to the information that you’re taking? And the only thing you’re really wanting to do is, “Wait, this is something that I might want to implement in my life. This is something that I need to share.”
So, I’ve had different systems over the years. I’m a book writer, so I usually have some sort of acronym. Like our first book was The Millionaire Real Estate Agent, and we would abbreviate it MREA. And when I heard something that might go in the future edition of that book or be part of that book, I would dash out the initials MREA in the column right by the notes. And so, I would put it there on the side of the page, and that would be when I scan through my notes, “Oh, wait. Here were some ideas that connected to this other project.”
So, if you’ve got a project you’re working on, maybe it’s not a book, you’re like a normal person, but maybe it’s for an ops person on your team, or maybe it’s a sales idea, you can come up with your own very complex or very simple. The simplest thing is, just put a star. Just put a star by things that really you think, “Wow! When I’m done with this class, I want to go back and revisit this idea. And then, I can decide what to do with it.” That’s all we’re doing. We’re identifying the things that speak to you, and you’ll feel them resonate in real time. You’re like, “Whoa!” You get the freeze on. You get the little bumps on your arms. You’re like, “Wow! That’s a great idea. Now, what do I do with it?”
First thing you do is recognize it’s a great idea that you may want to implement and note it somewhere in there. You can note it with a simple star. You can note it however you want, underline it, highlight it, whatever that is, but it needs to stand out because next step, we’re gonna go back and we’re gonna scan for all of these things and collect them ’cause that’s how we get into action. We’re gonna put stars or highlight, identify the key takeaways as we go, so that at the end of the event, at the end of the book, at the end of the podcast, we can quickly identify the things that matter to us.
All right. With those first two letters covered, let’s take a quick break and then I will catch you on the other side.
Welcome back. We’ve covered the first two steps. We’re gonna take notes, so that we’re an active learner, and we’re gonna retain as much as possible because we’re actively engaging in whatever it is we’re trying to learn from, whether it’d be a book, a podcast, or an event, or a speaker. The next step is to identify key takeaways. Because you’re taking notes, you have the ability to underscore it, to highlight it, to put a star, to do some sort of code that says, “Well, that’s a big idea that I want to remember. Of all of the stuff that I’m consuming and taking notes, this is one of the things that stands out for me.”
Now, we’ve done that. Maybe we did it for the whole book. Maybe we did it for the podcast. If it’s a podcast, it might be a pretty short list. If it’s a book, you might have a bunch. If it’s an event, you could have a lot. I can remember coming home from events, and I would have 47 different ideas from a three-day conference that I went to. How in the world do you take action on 47 things?
Remember, this is The ONE Thing podcast, not the 47 things. So, we have to identify the priority here. How do we winnow away all of the, “Maybe that’s a good idea,” to the ones that actually matter. So, we’re gonna use an exercise which we wrote about in the book called Pareto’s Principle. And we’re gonna take it to the extreme. So, when you have all of your notes at the end of the event, the book, whatever, get another piece of paper, whether it’s a physical one or just another document, and then copy over your key takeaways to that document.
So, now, you’ve gone from pages of notes in a hotel notebook or whatever it was you were taking the notes. Now, you’ve got maybe five or 10 things that are really standing out for you. Maybe it’s a lot. Maybe you were at that three-day conference like I was and have like close to 50. Whatever the case, you’ve now got them on one piece of paper. We’re now gonna take them through the process of Extreme Pareto. You have to ask the question of all the things that I could do, what other handful that I should? So, we’re gonna go through, and we’re going to star the ones that really matter from the ones that really matter. Of all of these things that really struck me as appealing, the things that I might want to do, remember, or implement, what’s the 20% here? And we’re gonna identify those with another little star. So, circle them, whatever you want to do.
What I find is no matter how many ideas you have, you typically, now, can winnow it down to no more than three to five, and we’re just gonna rank them in order. If you can only do one idea from this list, what’s it going to be? If you can do two, right? So number one is, number one, if I get a chance to do another one, what would my number two be? So, you’ve gone from as many ideas as you might get from a conference or a book. It could be 47, it could have just been five to begin with, but now we have two force-rank them in order of importance in this season of our life.
There’s nobody to judge this but you. Only you know. And it doesn’t resolve, like, with an equation. You don’t need to use ChatGPT. Just kind of follow your heart. You kind of know what you need. Of these things, these things, this one right here feels like it matters most. It’s my number one. If I can get two of these done, this will be the second. And you work your way through the list.
Now, here’s a cool thing. If you run a business, you might be creating a list for you and one for your executive assistant. You might be creating one for your director of growth. You might be creating one for your director of training. You might be creating one for your CFO. Whatever that looks like, you’ve got key takeaways. Now, you’re like, “Hey, I just went to this conference, Mr. or Mrs. CFO, I’ve got these three takeaways. If you could only add one of them or explore one of them for us, I would want it to be this.”
So, if you want to get the extras, it takes extra people. Everybody gets one thing and that includes you. For you, what’s your number one? The moment you’ve identified that, you have finished this step and you get to move to the next P, which is put it on your calendar.
So, the second P is put it on your calendar. And I want you to do this immediately. So, if you’re on the airplane coming home from the event, that’s the time you get out your notebook and you prioritize. You’re going through there going, “Okay, here were my key takeaways. Of all of these things, which is number one? Which is number two?” whatever. The moment you have your prioritized list, your Extreme Pareto, within 24 hours, I want you to put it on the calendar.
And there’s this thing, and it’s called the Ebbinghaus. I’m sure I’m getting that wrong. Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve. We tend to forget things we want to remember really, really quickly. There’s some evidence that we forget 50% of something within the first hour. So, one hour after you listen to this podcast, you’ll have forgotten more than half of it. I hope that I’ve said a few memorable things, but you know what? They’ll be gone unless you do something with that information. And the Forgetting Curve says that, usually, within 24 hours. we can see as much as 70% of the information go away.
Now, this was research that was done by a researcher named Ebbinghaus back in the 1880s, but it’s been replicated as recently as 2015. And that Forgetting Curve, it can change if you’re revisiting the notes, you way slow it down. You retain so much more. And the more space repetition we do, the more effective we are at learning. That’s why that second step where you’re going back through your notes and looking for the key takeaways, guess what? That’s space repetition. That’s gonna help you remember it longer. The act of prioritizing it, boom. Now, you’re into it a third time for the things that really matter. You’ve now read them three times in a very short period of time, which means the likelihood that you will retain them in the future goes way up.
But now, you gotta put it on your calendar. And I’ve seen research that suggest that if you can put your ideas into action, right, so that thing is going on your calendar to take the first step, within the first 24 hours, you’re about 70% more likely to actually follow through. It’s all about starting that momentum path. So, what would be the first step? You can’t do it all. Maybe it’s a really big project you wanna start, but maybe you can set the first step in the first 24 hours that’s on your calendar to meet with someone to talk about it, to meet with someone to build a project plan, to meet with yourself to frame out exactly how you’re going to tackle it.
All you have to do is begin the action process within 24 hours. It’s not a hard rule. I don’t even know that this is more than a theory, right? It’s a hypothesis that has actually shown true in my life. When I have started the implementation faster, I tend to follow through at a higher rate. But the research would suggest, you’re highly likely, if you take action in 24 hours, to keep going. So, why not just go with the suggestion? What’s it gonna hurt? Surely, you have 30 minutes within the next 24 hours to take the first step. And that first step is putting time on your calendar to do that first step, whatever it might be. Call someone, inform someone, create the plan, begin the process.
And guess what? When you finish that, all you do is go out. The next 24 hours of the next week, you’ve started the process and say, “What’s the next step and when am I going to do it?” That’s how achievers take ideas and put them into action. They put it on the calendar and they do it quick.
So, all of this, imagine you’ve gone to some convention, all of this can happen on the plane ride home. All of this can happen if you’re in the passenger seat on the drive home. It can all happen if you just take 30 minutes the day that you get home and just go through your notes. You’re gonna identify the key takeaways, you’re gonna prioritize them, and you’re gonna put one thing on your calendar, so you can get started. ‘Cause here’s the thing, of all of the events in your life that you did nothing with, how different would your life be if you just did one thing? The point here isn’t that you implement all 47 action items. The point is that you actually implement the most important one.
People underestimate how a little bit of implementation over time adds up in their lives. It is how dominoes grow and get exponential and get bigger, and we knock down bigger and bigger targets. It is one of the secrets of The ONE Thing approach. The little input adds up to so much more over time. So just make the first step in the first 24 hours. And that leads us to the last step of our tips process, which is seek accountability.
If you could sum up Gary’s and my approach on almost everything we do around learning and adult behavior change and training and development, it’s gonna start with mindset and it’s gonna end with accountability, right? The people who perform at the highest level start with the right mindset, and they almost always tack on some form of accountability. They have a coach somewhere in their life to make sure they will do the things that they want to do.
And accountability is one of those words that a lot of people have a lot of kind of baggage around. I get it. It feels like punishment to some people. For some people, it’s got some specter of maybe a bad teacher or a bad coach in the past. But we can choose to be accountable to our goals. We can choose to be truly committed to our goals. And the gift of a coach is they’re helping us keep those commitments to ourselves. So, this last step, seek accountability is kind of like one ring to rule them all. If you do this step, you can be very imperfect in the others and still go way, way far beyond what most people will do.
Remember, very few people will do anything. Americans waste about $80 billion, if you believe the research on trending and development, ’cause they do nothing with it. You can be part of the 20% that gets a huge ROI on learning and development by putting into action. And the biggest thing you could do is just seek accountability.
Now, you remember we wrote about this in The ONE Thing. Dr. Gail Matthews did research. She looked at two different elements. People who set goals, people who set goals and wrote them down, and people who set goals wrote them down and brought accountability to the equation. People who wrote them down were more than 30% more likely to achieve them, but the people who just had biweekly check-ins with an accountability partner via email, I mean, this is not like an expensive executive coach, this is just someone saying, “Hey Jay, did you do the thing that you said you were gonna do two weeks ago or not?” We feel really strongly compelled to do that. So, the people who do that are 76.7% more likely to achieve their goals.
That’s what we wrote in The ONE Thing. That research is still relevant. I have seen other research, right? It’s out there. It’s from the American Society of Training and Development. They showed that people are 95% more likely to achieve what they set out to do when they have an accountability appointment with someone. Okay. Again, very low level. They’ve just said, “Hey,I’m asking you to check in with me on this date to see if I did what I said,” and I’ve seen this show up so, so many ways. Hey, I do this to people all the time.
I did it to … if you remember my interview with Daryle Cardone, then Captain, now, Admiral Cardone, if you’re out there, salute to you, sir, for your achievements and for your service. But he had a goal and I just said, “Hey, can I check in with you in 30 days?” And he said, yes. I said, “Great. I’m gonna make a note. And in 30 days I’m gonna text you and see if you did this.” And guess what? Of course he did. Now, I think that Admiral Cardone was gonna get it done. He’s that kind of guy. But I also love the fact that he embraced accountability. He said, absolutely. And we’ve actually had that a few times just as friends, nothing formal there, but can we hold each other accountable to do the things that matter to both of us?
Accountability matters, folks. Pure and simple. So, whether you have a coach or not, I hope you do. If you really want to achieve extraordinary results, there is nothing better. Do you have an accountability partner? Who is that person who will reach out, and the key here is they just don’t let you off the hook, right? This is not about our mom or our best friend. They have to be someone who’s willing to tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear.
We will let ourselves off the hook. We know everything that’s going crazy in our life. We know about the altercation that happened at work just around the corner from our desk that made everybody kind of be on pins and needles. We know about the market crashing or whatever it is, we all have legitimate reasons. call them excuses, call them reasons, for not doing what we said we want to do. Who’s the person in your life who can ask you, “Well, how can you do it anyway? How could you still do it? If it was easy, what would it look like?”
Those accountability partners will just push us to do a little extra. And knowing that they’re going to ask those questions is one of the reasons we do them. We don’t wanna show up and be the guy who didn’t do their homework, not for that person. So, who is that person for you? Whether it’d be formal or informal, seek accountability. It, to me, is the ultimate step if you want to take ideas and put them into action.
So, a quick recap before we do our challenge. You’re gonna take notes. If we go back one step, if you’re going to an event, if you’re going into the library, you’re going into the bookstore, you’re perusing for the next podcast, can you take it a step further and set intentions? What is it that you need right now, and start there. Then, take notes. Then, identify key takeaways. Then, prioritize those things so you know what your number one is. Put your number one on your calendar. Remember, if you can do it within 24 hours, there is some magic there. And finally, seek accountability. That is the formula for ideas into action. If you follow it, I promise you, you will get a higher ROI on your learning.
Now, for our challenge for the week.
Let’s put it to practice right here. If you’re still listening at the end of this podcast, you probably got something out of it. What’s the one thing that you want to do based on this podcast? Maybe, “Hey, I really need to get a notebook, so I can start taking notes,” “Oh, you know what? I’ve wanted to get a remarkable pad. This is gonna be my excuse.” Whatever that is for you, what’s the one thing that you thought to yourself while listening to this episode? Dude, you should really do that. Whatever that is, I want you, right now, pull over the car if you’re driving, do it at the next stoplight, open up your calendar and make an appointment with yourself to take action, to take one step towards making that happen in the next 24 hours.
I promise you, if you start experimenting with these ideas into action, identify the priority and get it on your calendar fast, I promise you, you will start to see a cycle of success in your life. That’s it for ideas into action, the TIPPS framework. I hope you enjoyed it.
Disclaimer:
This podcast is for general informational purposes only. The views, thoughts and opinions of the guests represent those of the guests 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, timeliness or results from using the information.
