Jay Papasan:
Hey, gang. Welcome to a different kind of episode. This is kind of a life coaching session. We’re gonna walk you through how to build a great 411. It’s the most requested training we have. In fact, we used to call this How Billionaires Set Goals. My writing, co-author, my partner in this business, Gary Keller, he became a billionaire and built the largest company in our industry under one brand around the world using tools like this.
So, I’ve brought in our Director of Training, who has taught the 411 more than anyone else. He is the most requested coach or trainer around this to bring it to your business or yourself. And we’re gonna break it down, so that if you haven’t ever used the 411 or you’re using it and you want some coaching, you can be building a first 411 or a really great 411 by the end of this episode.
If you’re not at your desk, I predict that you’ll listen to this, go back to your desk, download the free resource and start building it. It’s that important, folks. It’s about clarity on one page, so that you can say no to the distractions and do your one thing. Let’s dive into the 411 and how you can accelerate your success.
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Jay Papasan: I’m Jay Papasan. And this is The ONE Thing, your weekly guide that leads to extraordinary results.
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Jay Papasan: All right. So, before we dive into this, I’m gonna introduce Chris Dixon. He is our Director of Training for the last five years. 411 comes up an awful lot, doesn’t it, Chris?
Chris Dixon: It does, most often.
Jay Papasan: And you get picked, ’cause you’ve got the longest line of experience helping people build and understand the 411. And you’ve worked with a mix of corporate customers, like huge companies around the world and also individual business owners.
Chris Dixon:
And I do. I love it because I love the 411. It’s had a huge impact on me personally, and I’ve got to use that tool in so many different audiences, like you described, and see the impact it has on others. And as a coach, it’s an incredibly powerful way to make a difference with our coaching clients. So, I love speaking about it.
Jay Papasan:
The challenge for us is it’s this tool that we believe in, but it’s maybe three paragraphs in the book, right? So, this is our opportunity today to kind of unpack it for people, help them understand what it is, why it’s important, all of those things. But before we dive into all things 411, I want to kind of, like, quickly recap, when people show up at our door, a lot of them are using other tools, and I’d like to identify them, so that people can say, “That’s me. That’s me,” and kind of what we think the challenge with those tools are, so that they have a reason to maybe consider, should I trade in my to-do list for a 411? Should I trade in my Asana board for a 411? Or if there’s other options.
Chris Dixon: Yeah.
Jay Papasan:
One of my clients she used to talk about when she first started running her own business, basically I would call her method post-it notes in a prayer, right? They are diving into their email, their DMs, their text messages, they’re writing down notes wherever they can, often literally on post-it notes. And I’ve done this before, right? You’re like, didn’t get to that post-it note by the end of the day, you stick it in your pocket and hope that you remember what it was for when you got home. But like, what’s the challenge with that, besides the obvious kind of chaos?
Chris Dixon:
I think number one is you’re operating out of reactivity, and you are driven by urgency, and it’s difficult to get your head above water. And I think many people can relate to having that experience of showing up on Monday, and then just running as fast as you can to try to catch up. And you’re looking at your to-do list, you’re going for the things that are easiest to gain momentum, and you’re not necessarily oriented on where you can make the greatest impact, what truly is gonna move the business forward.
Jay Papasan:
I think the seduction of the post-it note in a prayer method is that you’re kind of always in hero mode. So, if a lot of your identity is around knocking things out fast, being reactive has a certain… probably you’re getting something in return for living this way. Client calls, they got a problem, you jump straight on the problem, you knock it out. And then, you’re looking around, what’s my next target? So, it’s like playing a perpetual video game where you don’t know what’s gonna jump around the corner, where you get to be the hero of the story, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going anywhere that you planned to go.
Chris Dixon:
Yeah. You said something, I think, that’s important to call out around identity and someone that’s built a lot of, at least, success to this point. What’s got them here is being the hero and they’ve found success and feel attached to being incredibly busy and being the person that can do a lot. But making that shift to focusing on impact, it’s not necessarily more. It’s doing the right things. And your to-do list may not easily distinguish what is the most impactful thing you can do.
Some people who are really good at using to-do lists, they do a version of prioritization there. They may say, “Okay, on my list here, I’m kind of clear on what number one is for this week.” But that’s this week. We’re not zooming out far enough to think about what really is gonna move me forward towards a milestone I have for this month or connect to my goals for the year in the organization or the quarter. And having that connectivity is missing. If you’re just zoomed in on the week or the short term, it’s hard to really prioritize effectively.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah. And you’re leading us to number two, which is the to-do list, right? A lot of people, that’s all they use.
Chris Dixon:
Yeah.
Jay Papasan:
And we actually called it out in the book. That’s the only other system we talked about because so many people actually work from a to-do list. If post-it notes in a prayer is a bunch of to-dos in the most random possible, like, reactive way, the to-do list at least advances it. You’re at least putting ’em all in one place, right? I have a list that I keep things on. The challenge with it for me is immediately, it is a great record of everything the world has introduced that you might should do, but there’s also nothing else to it. Like you’re talking about some of the pros and cons. There’s no priority inherent in a to-do list.
Chris Dixon:
Yeah. And there are strengths of a to-do list. It’s not to say that they aren’t beneficial. But by itself, it’s limited. And it’s a great way to capture the things that are on your list that you may need to knock down and track those. So, it’s helpful to keep a to-do list, but we need a way to separate out the things that are higher impact.
Jay Papasan:
Absolutely. I advocate a to-do list for people, 80%. If we talk about the 80/20 rule, 20% of what we do, the big stuff connected to our one thing is where most of our results come from. There’s still a long list of stuff that has to be done. Someone has to answer that client email, someone has to clean the dishes, whatever that is. I, kind of, moved all of the 80% items to my to-do list. Is that what you do or is that what you see other people doing?
Chris Dixon:
I think that’s the right approach because if we don’t track those things and dedicate time to solve them, they will become important, and a 20%, and urgent. And that’ll start to weigh on you. You’ll feel that like a heavy backpack on your shoulders over time. And if you can’t unload that and have dedicated time to do it, it’s hard to then sit down and focus on the higher impact work because you’ve got that weight.
Jay Papasan:
So, the next category is like all of the project management tools. I can’t possibly name all of them. I’ve played around with Trello a lot. I use it with my EA and my chief of staff. Our marketing director loves Asana. We’ve used Mondays, I believe, right here in The ONE Thing at different times. We have all of these project management tools out there, and they’re great for organizing the comprehensive work and also who it’s assigned to and when it’s supposed to be done. What’s the challenge with those tools?
Chris Dixon:
It forces you, I think, to not have a big picture view of everything that’s on your plate, because they’re focused on a singular project or series of tasks. And they’re great. If your role requires working on complex projects, you need a way to kind of map all that out but it still doesn’t help you separate out impact. It’s focused on urgency, “Hey, what’s due on my deadline this week to move this project forward?” but it’s not necessarily helping you zoom out and look at, “Okay, where, where do I really need to get to this month or this week to be on track for the larger goals we have in the organization?”
Jay Papasan:
I think of it as like… because it can be assigned to people, you can put time deadlines on them. It’s great if you’re a project manager or managing a project where you really do need, like, where do we go to see the whole project? But inherently, it’s designed to capture the whole project and not highlight the core thing. So, I just think if there’s a fault, and maybe there’s ways to hack it, it’s that it doesn’t identify clearly the 20%. Like what’s the executive summary of this project? What are the five milestones that no matter what happens, we have to hit those things?
Chris Dixon:
Yeah. And it catches everything, all of the moving pieces. So-
Jay Papasan:
By design.
Chris Dixon:
By design.
Jay Papasan:
By design.
Chris Dixon:
By design. So, it’s inherently complicated. And complex systems are important in certain circumstances, but having a simple way to see what’s most impactful, it’s missing.
Jay Papasan:
I think both the to-do list and those project management tools are great tools applied to the right problems. I don’t know when we talk about goal attainment for personal or professional lives, that they should be the leading domino unless we really work hard on them.
Chris Dixon:
I think just broadly speaking, people either intentionally have a system that they’re using or they unintentionally don’t have a system. And what we’re trying to do is figure out, “Okay, what, how is your system serving you or not serving you?” And what we find in these examples that we shared is, oftentimes, that there’s just a lot of complexity and noise in the environment and someone’s looking at everything or they’ve got a missing sense of priority.
And I think what’s important is there is a piece missing to your system that is simple, that is a place you can go to as a source of truth, where you can separate out the things that matter most and stay accountable to them. And I think that’s what we see. And what I see most often is they just get lost in the noise And in there is a signal of what’s truly gonna move you forward towards your goals.
Jay Papasan:
So, those are some of the tools our listeners might be using. I think if you subscribe to The ONE Thing, you’re listening to this podcast, there are some gaps in all of them. They might be right for specific tasks. They probably aren’t what we… like, if you’re gonna work with a ONE Thing coach or us, I’m not gonna always force someone to go to the 411. If they don’t have an effectiveness problem, they don’t need to switch their system. But if they are challenged identifying their priorities and getting ’em onto their calendar and executing, we’ll let it try their way for a while, but then we’re probably gonna move to this one and see if it doesn’t work. And in my experience, it usually does.
So Chris, let’s dive into the 411. I’ll give, like, a high level overview of kind of what it is. And then, since you teach to this and coach this all the time, I’d love for you to fill in some gaps on why it’s set up the way it is from your perspective as a coach and a trainer and someone who’s been living it for a very long time as well.
So, basically, if you just had a piece of paper, it could be digital or analog, doesn’t really matter. You divide it into three rows. In the top, you would have your annual professional and personal goals, like two columns. What are my annual goals for my work? What are my annual goals for my personal life? The middle row is your monthly, and what are the milestones of those annual goals for this month for my professional and my personal life?
So, if you were gonna try to sell 120,000 widgets, make the math easy, your monthly goal, the milestone to feel like you’re on track would be at least 10,000, right? That’s how that math would work. The week is where things change a little bit because by the time we get to the week, it doesn’t really help us. We were talking about this earlier, to just write down outcomes. You look down and I could say, “Of those 10, this week, I need to do whether that’d be like two and a half a week to get to that goal.” Well, what does that look like? How am I gonna do two and a half? What does that look like on a day-to-day basis? So, we tend to work with people and say that the last row, your weekly is activities. It’s the actions you’re gonna take to make the outcomes happen. And that’s a big step, isn’t it?
Chris Dixon:
Yeah. What I commonly see is that, say in your example, they have 120,000-widget goal, that means this month they need to hit 10,000 to be on track. And they’ll go down to the week and say, “Well, this week, I need to do 2000 to feel like I’m moving towards my goal for the month or 2,500.” And that’s where the opportunity is. It’s this shift that from the outcome to, “Hey, what’s the one thing I really need to accomplish this week?” Like, “What do I need to go do? What’s gonna make the difference? How do I act differently this week, so that I can achieve that 2,500 to be on track for the month?” And that switch is where it’s powerful.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah, you ask that question in the focusing question. It might be I need to call on our top 10 customers in the northwest region and see what their orders are for this week or this month. And if you ask the question right, you can get to the activities. And those activities can actually go on your calendar. Whereas some vague outcome, it’s really hard to block time on your calendar.
So, let’s put this in the context of the ecosystem. They hear just a recap. The 411 is on one side of one piece of paper. So, it is not a business plan. It is not a project management plan. It is meant to be kind of a heads up display of all of the 20% stuff, the big rocks that you need to achieve to hit your goals. At the top level, you’ve got personal and professional goals for the year. In the middle, you break it down to milestones for the month for each of those. And then, at the bottom, each week you look up and say, “Based on my progress this year, what do I have to achieve this month? Based on my progress this month, what do I have to do this week?” And it’s, “What do I have to do,” now, it’s my activities.
But the 411 just doesn’t live by itself in our system. Those activities at the bottom get calendared for us. They go into our schedule. We call it time blocking. And that’s a big part of the context is the play between, I know what I now need to do, now I need to go time block when to do it.
Jay Papasan:
What would you add to that picture?
Chris Dixon:
I think if we circle back to some of the common challenges that we see with the systems that people come to us that they use, one is the complexity. There’s everything that we could do and all of the noise. And you said 80/20, that’s just important to hit on. Again, it’s the 20%. That’s what goes on your 411. It’s not everything we could do. It’s what’s the most impactful things that we could do. So, the 20%.
And a common challenge we see is connecting the work we’re doing in the week with our goals for the month and the year. That goal setting to the now principle from the book lives in the 411. And that’s incredibly powerful too. So, understanding those two concepts, what’s most important? Not everything. And how do we connect today to tomorrow?
Jay Papasan:
When people are just aiming at the week or the month or even a 90-day period, what they don’t realize is because they’re not working backwards from a larger goal, you can look up after three or four months and realize that you’re running in circles. You’re just chasing the low-hanging fruit. These are easy targets, I can hit this goal, but you’re actually not making the progress thing you think. And I’ve seen it again and again where people, lots of activity, not as much productivity.
Chris Dixon:
Yeah.
Jay Papasan:
Productivity is acting on our 20%. This gives us a proven tool for identifying it and keeping it front and center. I love it because from a team standpoint, if I’m sitting down with someone on my team and I ask to see their 411, that’s usually how we schedule our meetings together, you can look and immediately see, what do they think their priorities are. We’re not dealing with the small stuff now. We’re dealing with the big stuff, and that gives us an easy way to stay on the same page about our goals.
Chris Dixon:
So, Jay, just to make this a little bit more concrete, is there a good example you can think of, a client that you’ve worked with that you’ve seen this experience with the 411?
Jay Papasan:
Yeah. I’m working with an executive coaching client. She’s been following The ONE Thing for a long time. She read the book, she listens to the podcast, she even came to our annual summit. And so, she’s familiar with the 411, but she’s never had any formal training in it. And just outta curiosity, when we closed up our February call, I kind of wanted to say, like, what’s been the transformation for her every week just voluntarily, she’ll send me a copy of her 411. Like, here’s my 411 for the week. And that provides context between our calls for her progress and her priorities.
I went back and looked at her very first one in September of 2025. And if I looked at it, on her annual goals, she had this jumble of personal and professional goals. She had 13 big rocks that she was chasing across those two categories. And some of them were subdivided. Her number one goal had, I believe, eight subcategories under it. So, just chasing a whole lot.
You fast forward to the end of February, and there’s only six goals. So she’s more than 50% just at the high level narrowed her focus by identifying what does matter versus all the things that she might do. So, she’s actually kind of clearing the 80% out. But it took a little trial and error. And we see this.
Usually, I know Coach Jordan free that we work with, sometimes, he’ll say, most people will adopt this. They won’t really find their rhythm until they’re about 10 weeks into it. You just practice it and practice it. It’s a muscle. It gets better. Is that really a priority? I think it is. And people err on the side of including it, which is more of a to-do list style.
So, we look up, and I’m just kind of looking at the nature of what’s written down on the goals. In the beginning, they were tasks. They were just tasks. And now, it’s more about very specific activities or habits that she knows will drive the goals that she wants. They went from kind of vague and aspirational to very concrete and accountable.
So, now, they’re written down in a way instead of, you know, I am going to write… like one of her goals is to write a book. I’m gonna write regularly this week. It comes down to, every day between this hour and this hour, I’m going to write. And there’s a word count attached to that. So, now, I can ask the question, were you successful or not? We both have a measuring stick for deciding if that was going to happen. And that activity of writing for this period of time, for this many words, she knows exactly where it shows up on her calendar and that leads up to her milestones in her annual.
Then, like, I look at it broadly, she actually added as one of her top priorities, every single week is planning. She now understands, and that’s the next segment we’ll get to is kind of the rhythm of how we build our 411s, interact with them. She knows that that 20-minute meeting every week where she sits down to craft her 411 is a core part of her success and she’s just not reactive anymore. She’s not reacting to her environment because her priorities are clear and when your priorities are clear, it’s kind of easy to say no to all the other junk.
Chris Dixon:
So, a couple powerful things that she experienced as you went through that with the 411 that I think are just really important to circle back to and highlight, one, that shift from all of the things that she could focus on and was doing down to what is we would call the 20%.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah.
Chris Dixon:
And that transformation is what we want to see. That is something to celebrate. Naturally, we find a lot of people have an allergic reaction to that. They’re like, “Well, wait a minute. What about all these other things? Like, I still need to do them.” And I think an important thing to say is it doesn’t mean you can’t still give those time and attention, that those things won’t happen at all. We’re trying to say, where are you gonna give it a disproportionate amount of focus and attention. Like, how do we separate the things that matter most out and knock those down, and make sure that we’re not saying no to those no matter what.
Jay Papasan:
Your number one is usually the place that you’re choosing to refuse to lose.
Chris Dixon:
There’s something that’s challenging at first when using the 411 in the week and the actions that you take just going small enough. Like are we digging into the root? And it goes back to, we just are programmed to identify the outcomes that we want. It’s like, I need to get here by the end of the week, and maybe we go a layer deeper and it’s like there’s some high level action, but the real power in using the 411 is saying, “Okay, well, what’s the one thing I can do to accomplish that? So, how do I go a little bit deeper and get down to the root of what needs to really happen?”
And as you move through that from, “I want to get to selling 2000 widgets this week,” to, “Okay, what’s the one thing I can really do to accomplish that?” it’s like, “Well, I need to make those calls.” It’s like, “Well, what’s the one thing you could really do to accomplish that because you’ve clearly not been hitting your call volume every week?” It’s like, “Oh, you know what? I need to be in a better environment because I get distracted.” And it’s like, “All right. Well, how do we create a better environment for you?” It’s like, “Well, you know what? I need to get to the office at 8:00, find that space, block that time and create an environment for success.”
Now, we’re really starting to get into something that’s powerful, right? That’s what you want to get on your 411 because that’s where you’re gonna move the needle.
Jay Papasan:
We often call that kind of getting to the first domino. People know what the thing fundamentally they need to do. They need to make those calls in that instance, but they don’t know where to start, so that that becomes a regularly achievable goal for them.
Chris Dixon:
Yeah.
Jay Papasan:
So, we’ve covered about half of the big stuff around… just to recap before we take a quick break. 411 is where we break down our 20% professional and personal goals, annual, monthly, weekly. And that helps us figure out this cadence of… it answers the question, in order for me to achieve the goals I want this year, how do I have to behave this week? It goes from outcomes to milestones to activities. And those ultimately go to our calendar.
There’s another piece to the puzzle. We mentioned it at the very beginning. Anything that’s not in your 20% has to live somewhere. So, we teach people to kind of keep some list of their 80%. So, if you can think about everything that matters goes on your 411, those things get copied over at some point to your calendar. Everything else goes into your to-do list. And you mentioned it earlier, like they’ll build up pressure. So, we usually coach people regularly throughout the week, you’re gonna time block time to knock out those 80% items. You’re just gonna limit the time you give ’em. So, that’s part of the ecosystem. After the break, let’s break down, kind of, how people live that on a weekly, monthly, annual basis.
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Jay Papasan:
Alright, everybody. Welcome back from the break. We’ve kind of gone over some of the big ideas of what a 411 is. Now, we’re gonna break down kind of like how you build rhythms around it, so that you can use it. We call it the rhythm of accountability. Chris, break that down for us..
Chris Dixon:
I think something important to understand about the 411 is it’s what we call a living document, right? It’s not a set-at-once and then run with it for weeks on end. It’s something that we want to update every week. You have weekly actions in there, and each week is unique. And it speaks to a core challenge that I see that we see with many people is that they just don’t have a good regular rhythm of reflection.
Jay Papasan:
Right.
Chris Dixon:
A way to hit pause and find time to say, what worked with this week? What were my opportunities? What do I want to continue to do that’s giving me momentum and energy? What do I need to course correct on? And those small micro changes over time keep us on track with our goals.
You think about an airplane flying from New York to LA, on autopilot, it’s making these small, tiny corrections as it goes through the flight to stay on course. And if we don’t make those corrections, even a one degree change in direction, you end up in Seattle by the end of your trip, right? And this is what we’re trying to do at this weekly reflection. And this rhythm is catch those small changes that we can make week over week to keep us on track.
Jay Papasan:
A good example of that is if I’ll get… I’ll leave the widgets behind. I’m trying to use the universal, right? But let’s just say I was supposed to… my activity would be to call on my sphere, my core people in my database in TCPA compliant manner, folks, always, and generate X number of appointments is the outcome I’m looking for. Let’s just say my outcome to be on pace for the month was five. I need to generate five appointments with potential clients. I only got four.
When we reflect on our week, we might say, “Well, given the quality of the leads I had, four was actually a good week.” I now have a choice. If I’m still committed to hitting my monthly goal, maybe I have to add one more to the next week and increase my activities with poorer leads. Like, these aren’t great leads, so I need to have more time to call more of them to get the number of appointments I need to hit my goals. You have to do that math. At the end of the week, you look back, what were my results? How do I feel about that? Now, I get to adjust my activities to get different results.
Chris Dixon:
Just dedicating the time to ask simple questions is something I think so many people know that they want to do, just don’t create the space to do it. And you can dig into it and build some routine that’s your own, that’s something you’ve developed, but just something so simple as, “Hey, am I on track or off track for the month for this goal? What’s one thing I could do differently next week?”
Jay Papasan:
Yeah.
Chris Dixon:
That would take you five minutes to answer that question, maybe a little bit longer, but just starting with a ritual of reflection that you’re asking questions about your goals. And the 411 is leveraged for you to have a source of truth that you can do that, and it’s not all the things you could do. It’s not this scorecard with 20 things on it. It’s like, “Hey, I did the work to get clear on what matters most this month. It’s Friday, I’m sitting down, I’m reflecting on my week. Am I on track or am I off track? And what do I need to focus on next week or do differently to get back on track or to stay ahead?”
Jay Papasan:
There was an acronym that I know some of us used to use, and the system I grew up in for the 411. I’ve been doing this, gosh, since September of 2000. Like it’s crazy. It was required. It wasn’t an option for me. And I was doing it with my co-author, Gary Keller. And so, the standard was set pretty high, but I think I’ve done over 1300 times. I’ve done exactly what you said. How did I do last week? Based on that, how do I need to make an adjustment for next week for me to stay on track to my goals?
But we used to say, like, if we were working with a teammate, “What was your goal?” “Great. What was your plan?” Which is like, “Well, I planned to make this many calls on this many days at this time.” “Great. What were the actual actions you took?” “Well, I planned to do it five days, but I actually did it four days.” And then, “What were your results?” And then, I usually will ask, “Well, how do you feel about that?”
Now, you don’t need a boss. You don’t need an accountability partner to do that. You can do that for yourself. Like, what happened this week, and can I change how I’m approaching my work next week?
Chris Dixon:
Let’s share a prescription, if you will, of what best case would be on how we recommend you do this reflection, this rhythm of accountability. And I’d say it starts with, let’s assume you’ve built your first 411. It starts with five minutes at the start of every day where you just look at this document that you’ve created. You don’t have to make any changes or adjustments. It’s just five minutes. And you do this before you crack open your Slack, or you open up your email, or you start getting rolling on your day, so that you can look at your calendar, remind yourself of what’s most important, and just start with positive momentum. That’s step one. So, five minutes, very small time investment, huge. ROI.
Jay Papasan:
We call that, often, goals before phones. Before you get lost in your digital world, just look at what you said was important this week. It’s amazing the impact that has
Chris Dixon:
Yeah. And creating a good mental bunker for yourself, a good mental environment at the start of your day is so powerful. Like why not start your day with clarity on what’s most important for you to accomplish, to be on track?
Jay Papasan:
Right.
Chris Dixon:
It doesn’t require a ton of work. It’s just a thought, mindset, go.
Jay Papasan:
So, what does that look like on a weekly level?
Chris Dixon:
So, step two would be, I’d say start with 30 minutes, right? Let’s go for consistency over intensity here. And start with 30 minutes, find 30 minutes at the end of your week. I like Friday afternoons. Some people prefer the weekends. It really doesn’t matter. I would just suggest finding this time at the end of the week before the start of the next week, so you can play with a lead.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah. I think a lot of people want to do it on Monday morning when they get to work. What’s the problem with that?
Chris Dixon:
Well, you’re already behind, right? Everybody’s calendars are gonna be filled up. You’re gonna have a hard time If you need to coordinate with others, like play with Elite, get out in front of the week as best you can.
Jay Papasan:
If you don’t know what’s waiting for you when you get to work, you may not get to have that planning time.
Chris Dixon:
Yeah.
Jay Papasan:
So, doing it Friday, I know lots of people do that. I’ve shared it a million times, my wife and I tend to do it on Sunday, early in the day. That’s just when we both tend to regularly get together ’cause we have to plan our family calendars as well. So, there’s 30 minutes. What am I doing in that 30 minutes?
Chris Dixon:
So, you’re reflecting on the prior week. Step one, look back on the week. We talked about this earlier. Where was I successful? Am I on track? Off track? Where, maybe, do I need to course correct? Go small. And then, you’re going to build next week’s 411. If you’re doing this digitally, it’s create a new tab, duplicate the tab, all of your monthly goals will pull forward and you just update the week.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah, super easy.
Chris Dixon:
Super easy. You’re just looking at the month. Each one of those goals you have for the month asking, what’s the most important thing I need to get done next week?
Jay Papasan:
So, once I’ve got my new 411 built, what do I do?
Chris Dixon:
Then you’re gonna connect your weekly 20% actions to your calendar. Create your time blocks.
Jay Papasan:
What does that look like? Gimme an example.
Chris Dixon:
Let’s say you have a goal to spend two hours, invest two hours three days next week making phone calls to get to your 2000 widgets goal, right?
Jay Papasan:
Got it.
Chris Dixon:
That’s your weekly action. Then, you’re gonna actually go look at your calendar and put those time blocks on the calendar.
Jay Papasan:
What we’ve seen, and we added to this book after our original publication, is people, they know what they’re supposed to do, when they attach it to a specific time and place, right? You’re putting on your calendar when and where am I gonna do it? That’s a calendar invite. Whether you’re on Outlook or Google Calendar, it doesn’t matter. That increases the odds that you’ll actually do it by about three times. You go from about 35 to 38% to over 90% likely to do it. So, that simple act of time blocking, we’re good at looking at our calendars, so that we can try to live it.
Chris Dixon:
Yeah. And you’re starting to gain a perspective of what’s realistic next week. Not all weeks are the same. Maybe you have some other commitments and you’re like, “You know what, realistically, I can’t do what I thought I was gonna do. I have some fixed objects on my calendar.” So, then, you can go small. What can you do? What’s realistic? Kind of arrange your calendar for success. So, at least, you’re starting with the right clarity for the week.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah, the on-track and off-track’s really important because maybe you had a sick kid the week before, you lost a day that you didn’t plan for. Now, you can make adjustments. When we level up to stage three, we’re going to the month.
Chris Dixon:
That’s right. I’ll say one more thing about the weekly reflection, and this is true for the month too but this is in my experience, without an accountability partner or a coach that’s helping you really stay accountable to those time blocks, it’s the easiest one to say no to. And you really have to put it at a time of day where you’re likely to be successful. So, if it’s Friday at four o’clock after a long week, and you’re not accountable to anyone but yourself, are you really setting yourself up for success to sit down and do this kind of clarity work when you’re exhausted? I’d say most cases, probably not. So, just not all time blocks are created equal throughout the day. It’s probably one of the greatest ROI time blocks you can have in the week. Put it somewhere where you’re setting yourself up for success.
Jay Papasan:
You do yours on a Friday afternoon?
Chris Dixon:
Friday at 3:00 PM. I still have some gas left in the tank.
Jay Papasan:
All right. So, Chris, I think we definitely hit the meat of it. Like the weekly appointments with yourself to check in with your goals and your progress, if there was just one habit, that would be it. Reality is we have to update the month. What does that look like?
Chris Dixon:
So, what we’re doing here is we’re reflecting back on the month. We’re saying, “Was I successful? Am I on track or off track for my goals for the year?” And what we need to do then is update our goals for the new month.
Jay Papasan:
Right.
Chris Dixon:
So, based on my goals for the year, what’s most important to accomplish in the new month, so that we have a fresh month on our 411?
Jay Papasan:
And usually, it doesn’t need to be more than three or five, kind of, big milestones you’re trying to hit in any given month. In my experience, when I see 10, they don’t get past four or five.
Chris Dixon:
Yeah. I always encourage people when they’re starting with the 411 to keep it as simple as possible. And a great framework to follow is for every annual goal that you have, have one single milestone for the month, and then one weekly action you’re gonna take. And it constrains you down to what is the true 20% of the 20%. And earn the right over time as you build this habit to add other goals because sometimes, naturally, there might be more than one 20% for an annual goal in a given month, that’s okay. But as you’re building this habit, it’s far better to start with as simple as possible.
Jay Papasan:
Okay. So, whatever your rhythm for your weekly rhythm, you’re following it. but for the month we’re gonna add some time. 15 minutes. It usually takes me an hour, if I’m honest. Also, are you time blocking when you’re updating your goals?
Chris Dixon:
Yeah. Naturally, because when you’re doing your monthly reflection, this 45-minute – in your case, an hour reflection – which I do also, but I try to encourage people to start small-
Jay Papasan:
Yeah, I got it.
Chris Dixon:
… so it doesn’t feel so daunting.
Jay Papasan:
Just admitting for transparency that maybe I’m a slow candidate here, like it takes me longer.
Chris Dixon:
Fair enough. But the reason why you have some extra time is because you’re not just updating the month, you also have a new week. And so, we’re week over week when we’re doing our weekly reflection in the month, we’re updating the week. Now, when we get to the end of the month, we have both a new month and a new week. And so, we’re gonna go back to that same process. We connect the year to the month. Now, what’s the action I’m gonna take in the week? Put it on your calendar.
Jay Papasan:
This is also where I will time block, sometimes, all the weeks. If I have a big activity that I know is gonna show up every single week, I might go through my calendar. You mentioned earlier, if you wait till Monday morning, if you have 20% items that are going on your calendar that require other people, the month’s a good time to get ahead of that, you can start planning some of those meetings or these lined up correctly.
Chris Dixon:
Yeah, I think you’re speaking to something that’s important to understand about the 411 is make it your own over time.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah.
Chris Dixon:
And find your system. The system you use is the one you should use. And there are some things we should watch out for, which we’ll talk about here in a minute, just to protect with the 411. But over time, find your system. I tend to… as a coach teaching this, I try to keep it in that super-
Jay Papasan:
A tight box.
Chris Dixon:
… early on, so that you can form the habit ’cause there’s some traps to watch out for if you’re not careful. By keeping it simple, you build the habit, you’re gonna get great value outta following that process. And then, over time, you can kind of loosen up the bumpers on the bowling lane a little bit and find your own system.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah. Like I said, I’ve been doing it 1300 times. So, is that everything on the month or do we get to tackle the year now ’cause that would be the last step?
Chris Dixon:
Yeah. Let’s talk about the year. So, as we mentioned, the 411 has three sections. You have your annual goals, your monthly goals, and your weekly actions, right? Outcome target for the year, milestone action for the week. Naturally, at the end of the year, you’ll hopefully accomplish all of your annual goals and you will have to create new annual goals for the year.
Jay Papasan:
That, to me, is the most time consumptive. That’s why a lot of times, we tell people to do like your little retreat, get on the same page. If you have a spouse or a partner, what do we want to accomplish next year? But yeah, it’s a little bit bigger process to build it for the first time and at the beginning of the year, ’cause you’re thinking through the whole year. But that’s all the reason to keep it simple. Don’t have tons of goals.
Chris Dixon:
Yeah. And something we should also mention that’s a good practice, in your 411 is week over week, month over month and through the year, mark where you’re successful and you’re not successful on your 411. So, in the week, a great practice is mark it red or mark it green if you’re doing it digitally or a strikethrough. If you’re doing it on paper, you can draw a line through. However you wanna do it, start but just acknowledge where you are successful and where you’re not successful because that perspective is incredibly powerful.
Jay Papasan:
Well, I love by the end of the month where I have almost everything crossed out on mine, I know the little control shift X that does a strike through on my little spreadsheet.
All right. So, we’re gonna wrap this up soon. What are some of the big mistakes people make? Like they’ve heard what it is, kind of what the rhythm is, you’ve already addressed like the number one thing they might skip is the weekly appointment with themselves.
Chris Dixon:
Yeah, I’d say that’s one for sure is, there’s just a few here to watch out for. One is not truly forming the habit. And having that weekly reflection and making it something that is a mainstay on your calendar that you’re committed to. And that can be challenging at first. So, keep in mind that scale down. Like if you were just doing something this week to update your 411 and connect your calendar so you keep the momentum, I’d say that’s number one.
The second one that’s incredibly common because it’s like gravity and you’re changing behavior and shifting a new way of thinking about the 20% is your 411 creeping into a to-do list. Right?
Jay Papasan:
You’re just writing down everything you have to do. Not the truly important stuff.
Chris Dixon:
Yeah. On your weekly, it starts to look like a glorified to-do list. You know, check email shows up on your 411. It’s a good signal you’re starting to go the wrong direction there. So, it’s not a to-do list. It’s meant to be something distinctly different.
Jay Papasan:
Anything else comes to mind when you’re helping people build this out that is kind of a common mistake?
Chris Dixon:
Yeah. Another one is just overcomplicating it. We talked about simplicity a lot in this. There’s things to do to make it your own. We talked about that. And that’s an important evolution, so that it’s something that you find value in but watch out for making it something it’s not intended to be. It isn’t a project management tool. It isn’t a scorecard inherently. This is something distinctly different. So, just watch out for unnecessary complexity.
Jay Papasan:
It’s a focus document. It’s supposed to be your heads up display for your most important goals. It doesn’t have a lot of other jobs.
Chris Dixon:
Got it. Okay. Last thing, just not being clear about what success looks like. This, as a coach, is something that I love about the 411 because it is a view into the way people think about goals and words matter on the 411. So, be specific about what success looks like when you’re writing down your goals. Naturally, we tend to be a bit shorthand because we think we’re keeping clarity in our mind, but make what the words on paper are reflected as clearly as you can, how you would know you’re successful.
Jay Papasan:
So, like you could go down the whole path of smart goals, which I’ve already heard. But basically I like to say if someone was looking at my 411, how would they know I was successful? If it’s too general for a third party to look at your results and say you win, then you need some work to do. And that usually means it does need to be time bound, it does need to be specific, it does need to be measurable. You don’t have to have a list of 50 things. But that’s kind of what you mean by being really specific with your goals.
Chris Dixon:
Yeah. And I use this question all the time. Just ask yourself, how would I know I’m successful? If you can answer that with what you’ve written, you’re on track.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah, it doesn’t have to be more complicated than that. All right. Thanks for doing this deep dive on the 411 ’cause I know so many people dive into this, and they just have the wrong expectations, they don’t quite know how to do it. What would be our challenge for the week, Chris? What would be a small challenge we could give people? They’ve listened to it all the way to the end, they really want to tackle the 411, how can they get started?
Chris Dixon:
Go get the tool first. Go get the spreadsheet. It’s available for free in our free resources on our webpage, on our website. So, go get the tool. And my challenge to you would be to go time block that 30 minutes at the end of the week where you’re gonna build your first 411 and week over week. Start that reflection.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah. So. that resource is at the1thing.com/resources. Super easy to find. If you just go to the main webpage, there is a free resources tab, and I think it’s the very first resource that we have.
Chris Dixon:
Yeah. And keep it simple.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah.
Chris Dixon:
That’s it. Don’t overcomplicate. It’s more about consistency than it is about intensity.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah, Thanks, Chris.
Chris Dixon:
Thank you.
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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
