Jay Papasan:
This week, I’m talking with my good friend, Jen Davis. And this is a conversation I’ve been waiting close to a year to have. I followed her career closely for maybe close to a decade, and she has hit every single milestone that you could imagine as a business owner, and eventually was running one of the largest coaching companies in our industry when she decided it was time to hit the pause button. It was time to step back, and build some space into her life, or as she will tell us, margin into her life, so she could get clear about who it is she was and wanted to be, and how she wanted to show up for her family and her loved ones. A lot of us running around, whether we realize it or not, have made our identity about our work. We’ve made our identity around our achievements.
And Jen is here to show us a better way. She answered the question, you know, would I rather be special or happy? And she surprised herself with a door opening to a whole other version of herself than she’d ever imagined. And she found it in this place where she paused, first uncomfortably, but then she grew into this space. And she is clearly happy today and has a lot to share with us. Everybody out there, the high achievers who are always running, This is your permission to pause. I hope you enjoy this episode with my friend, Jen Davis.
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Jay Papasan:
I’m Jay Papasan, and this is The One Thing, your weekly guide to the simple steps that lead to extraordinary results.
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Jay Papasan:
Jen, welcome to the podcast.
Jen Davis:
Hey, Jay. So excited to be here.
Jay Papasan:
I’m so excited. I always learn so much whenever we get to chat.
Jen Davis:
Me too. I feel like that goes both ways.
Jay Papasan:
I think when I always look back on the 20 % of my newsletter, whenever I would do post events, I would like my top 10 ahas from the event, there was almost always a quote from Jen Davis. Like you’re also – not to put you on the spot, a lot of pressure – like very quotable. So, wise and quotable Jen.
Jen Davis:
Well, I appreciate that. I think what happens is, sometimes, I have the perk of listening to a lot of information, assimilating it, and then giving the soundbite. I just happen to be in the right place at the right time.
Jay Papasan:
Okay, very humble as always. So, let’s go back. You were leading the largest coaching company in our industry, MAPS. And then, I remember – I mean, I was even kind of on the inside, but I was still kind of stunned to hear that in June of 2024, you decided to hit the pause button to step back. What was going on?
Jen Davis:
You know, there were a lot of things going on at that time. That’s a big role with a lot of responsibility. Those coaches are coaching the top tier for Keller Williams. And we had one-on-one coaches, and you’ve got your road warriors, you’ve got your BOLD coaches, then you’ve got the group coaches, right? And it’s a big role with a lot of responsibility, like many big roles are, right? Whether you’re leading a team or leading a company, there’s a lot of weight to it.
At the same time, in my personal life, my daughter was headed into her senior year of high school. And part of the requirement of the role at MAPS was to be in Austin a certain amount of time, and I live in Springfield, Missouri. And so, Springfield is not a great spot to originate from when you’re traveling. So, you’ve almost always got a connection to go someplace.
And so, what I was finding is we talk a lot about, show me your calendar and I’ll show you your priorities. And my calendar at that time would have looked like every priority I had was a MAPS coach or MAPS coaching instead of it being my kids and my relationships. And so, about that time, I looked up and I was like, I’m missing it with the people that are closest to me. I’m missing time with them that I’m not gonna get back.
Jay Papasan:
What do you think spurred that awareness? Were you just, like, one too many flights from Austin to Springfield, Missouri, or?
Jen Davis:
No. Honestly, it was the six months leading up to that. I think that I made the decision in November before it was announced publicly. It was a lot of little things. It’s gradual, and then it’s sudden. And I think the gradual are, it wasn’t even, Jay, that I was missing anything. I was at Caitlin’s cross-country meets, my daughter’s cross-country meets. I was at Cooper, my son’s basketball games. But I was there, but I wasn’t there. Physically, my body was there. And mentally, I was thinking about all of the meetings or all of the to-do lists or all of the things that needed to happen the next day to support our coaches.
And I got sick, sometimes, which happens. It can happen after big events. We had had fall masterminds. And there were a couple of other things that were happening right around that same time. And I got home, and I got very sick. And I was laying on the couch and there was this-
Jay Papasan:
Like sick as in I’m just broke down, tired kind of sick or like the flu or all of the above?
Jen Davis:
The flu and all of the above. Broke down, tired, pretty emotional. You know, like the kind where you’re like, “I wish my mom lived here.” That kind of a sick. And so, I had time to think. That was kind of that first experience with the pause, when you don’t feel well enough to fill it with something else, to fill that time with anything else. And I had a lot of time to think.
And part of that was my kids are going to look back on this space with me. And they’re going to remember me being tired. And they’re going to remember me being stressed. And they’re going to remember that I was at these games and I was at these races but that every time I was making dinner, I was kind of rushing through it. I was maybe checking some emails on the side. And I thought, I know how to create boundaries but somehow I haven’t.
And I looked up, and it was during that week that I thought, I really need to let somebody know that we probably need to find a succession plan. We need to create a succession plan for what it looks like for me to step out of MAPS. Because with where I’m at, I’m not really serving anyone well. I’m not serving myself well. I’m not serving the coaches well. I’m not serving my family well. And so, it was a series of a lot of little events that led to a big decision.
Jay Papasan:
That’s where, sometimes, the unexpected break, right? Your health kind of broke down. It wasn’t a big one. It’s not like you’re in the hospital on IVs, but like you’re sick and it forced you. A lot of times, our body’s telling us what we’re not listening to already. And now, you had space to sit and absorb. And I could go through all the stats, and I’m sure they went through your head. I mean, I’ve heard 75% of all the time we get with our kids is while they still live at home.
Jen Davis:
Yeah.
Jay Papasan:
And you’re looking up, like, I’ve got two summers out. How old is Cooper?
Jen Davis:
Cooper’s 14. Caitlin now, she’ll be 19 this week. But she was headed into her senior year and I was like, this is it right here.
Jay Papasan:
Right. So, very short runway there. A little bit longer with Cooper but limited time. Something I learned from Dr. Robyne Henley-Defoe, we did a podcast on burnout, and I did not know this, and she used the example that you gave. When we are not living our values, it’s one of the biggest strains we can have on us. And she used the-
Jen Davis:
It’s the alignment.
Jay Papasan:
Yes.
Jen Davis:
She said alignment. You’re out of alignment.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah. And she used the example of being at a sports game, because she’s got sports kids and not being present. And it’s like, yeah. So, yeah, you’re tired. Yeah, you’re getting sick. You’re not completely in alignment. And I know how important it is to you, as a friend, that hat you wear of being a great mom.
Jen Davis:
Well, it’s just we’ve got such a limited time at that. And I look, and I’m going to be their mom for forever. I’m going to hopefully have a space in their life forever. But this was the last time that I could think of that I was going to have proximity as a superpower. And so, that proximity meant I wanted to enjoy it, I wanted to remember it, I wanted to have fun with it, right?
When they’re seniors, they do all of these things, right? Like they decorate their cars, and they have these crazy water gun fights where they find each other around town. And I thought, I don’t want to be annoyed by that because there’s noise happening in my house and I need to be on Zoom. And that I think was it where I was like, I’ve always wanted to be the fun house. I’ve wanted to be the house where everyone hangs out. But if you’re the house where everyone hangs out, you have to be okay with it being messy and you have to be okay with it being loud. And those things didn’t work for the season of life I was in right then.
Jay Papasan:
So, you had this time, you realized it was time to maybe go back and talk to your partners about a succession plan. One, I think it’s really amazing that you, then, were able to navigate seven months to get that in place and navigate it. But that initial decision, I’m sure a lot of people expressed surprise. How did you explain the decision?
Jen Davis:
It was that. I am someone that I have learned really early on that I may not always be as polished as someone else, but I am authentically me, right?
Jay Papasan:
Yes.
Jen Davis:
And I genuinely love people. And so for me, it was important in that season to be as authentic as I could. It wasn’t the job. It wasn’t that I didn’t love the coaches. It wasn’t that I didn’t love the company. It wasn’t that I didn’t think that that work was important. It was that authentically me, at some point, I had been chasing this idea.
And really, part of it – I’m going to step back for just a second – I was listening to a podcast. And the question that they asked on the podcast was, would you rather be special or happy? And it hit me in a way that I was like, I have spent my entire career chasing special thinking it was going to make me happy. And then, you get to this space and you’re like, “Oh, I want to be special to the people I want to be special to.”
So, when people would ask me, they were surprised. But it was like this slow trickle of information because the inner circle at Keller Williams knew. The coaches didn’t know though, because you’ve got to provide stability in a season transition. And so, it was in stages that people found out. And so, it was pretty consistently me answering those questions authentically, which was, I love what I’m doing. I love the opportunity to impact the real estate industry. I love it. And in this season, this is where I need to be. This is more important.
Jay Papasan:
The whole time I’ve known you, you’ve been an overachiever. You were the first person I’d ever heard of that, you know, working with buyers and showing assistance, I mean, I don’t even know what your record is now. It’s like 150 or something in one year. You were-
Jen Davis:
225. 225, Jay.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah, sorry. There we go.
Jen Davis:
That’s okay. I’ve been surpassed. I’m no longer at the top. It’s okay though. I feel good about it.
Jay Papasan:
‘Cause you’re just happy regardless of whether-
Jen Davis:
I’m happy.
Jay Papasan:
Right. But like you were showing a lot of people what was possible in different roles. And you’d made a habit of that. And then, you came into a company that had been in transition, and you did a lot of really hard work to kind of get the ship headed in a new direction with new energy. So, just acknowledging you did a lot of hard work, and you weren’t completely done with that work when you made this decision. I’m going to give myself permission – we’re using the language of pause because that’s how I first heard you say it. You gave yourself permission to pause. Not stop, not to quit, but like, I’m just gonna hit the pause button and be present in this season.
So, one, I just acknowledge that had to have been scary, and also liberating. You get to June of 2023, you’ve had the discussions with everyone. And then, you look up one day, and you’re waking up in Springfield, and you don’t have to go to virtually work. What was that like when, suddenly, reality hits?
Jen Davis:
Surreal. I think you prep for it, right? You think it’s going to be a certain way, and you’ve got this space of, “I’m worried about what this is going to be like.” You have this space of fear of missing out of, “I’m no longer sitting at a table that I was at before. Am I going to still be relevant?” Ego shows up in a really big, kind of scary way, where you’re like, “Where do I fit?” My identity was wrapped up in this. for a long time, and all of a sudden you look up and you’re like, “Oh, no one needs me. And my phone isn’t doing – Is it working, right? Is it still- You know, you’re like-
Jay Papasan:
This must be broke. This must be broke. Yeah.
Jen Davis:
Something’s wrong. And I’d be, like, calling to Kate in the other room, “Can you call my phone? See if it still works.” But it’s surreal because you have this idea in your head of it’s going to be this moment of like, “Oh!” Like the clouds part and the sun’s shining. And then, reality sets in and you’re like, I have been going a million miles an hour for as long as I can remember. And being a buyer’s agent to running a team, to running MAPS, you have all of your identity wrapped up in metrics. You have your identity wrapped up in people’s perception of you. I mean, not the healthy way, but that’s how I had done it, right? It was all that was tied into it.
Jay Papasan:
I think a lot of people have, right?
Jen Davis:
Yeah.
Jay Papasan:
And people say, you know, like, instead of saying, like, it’d be weird to say, “Hi, Jen. I’m Jay. Who are you?” We say, “What do you do?” So much of our cultural kind of the way we communicate, we’re kind of setting people up to first identify – and maybe that’s the safe place to start out – with their actual job role, not their identity. And so, they become blurred. So, I think this idea that your identity had been caught up on this journey, I think a lot of people would look up and say, if I’m honest with myself, I’m there.
Jen Davis:
You’re there. And it’s funny, if you don’t know if you’re there or not, try and introduce yourself without telling what you do or giving any statistics of what you’ve accomplished in the last 12 months or where you’re at in relation to goal, right?
Jay Papasan:
225.
Jen Davis:
I can’t break it. It’s still me. I’m still me. It’s so funny though because yesterday, I gave a talk somewhere and I’m like, it was not real estate related. And I was like, I wonder how I introduced myself, right? You kind of have to work through, how do you build validity? That’s what we’re doing is we’re building validity with a group. So, I think that first week was surreal.
Jay Papasan:
How do you introduce yourself today?
Jen Davis:
I just go with, “I’m Jen Davis,” right? And it’s dependent upon the circle that I’m in. So, sometimes, you know, “Hey, I’m Jen, I’m Cooper’s mom,” right? That’s sometimes just the circle I’m in. Sometimes it is that I work at Keller Williams, right? I’m still an agent at Keller Williams. I do a lot of work with the church that I go to. And so, sometimes, it’s, “I’m Jen Davis with North Point.” And so, now, where it was always this, now it kind of depends on the audience.
Jay Papasan:
That’s cool. That’s cool. I love that. I remember when we had been new to Austin, maybe three or four years, my wife had a friend that was going to visit us and we were all going to go to dinner. And she’s like, “Oh, I want you to meet this fella. He’s a writer.” I was like, “Cool. I don’t know a lot of writers. I’d love to meet this person.” So, I remember going, we’re sitting in a booth at Shady Grove, which is not even around anymore. And I turned to him and I said, “So, Wendy says you’re a writer. Where have you been published?” And he goes, “Oh, I’ve never been published.” “Oh, are you writing anything?” He’s like, “Oh, I write from time to time.” And like, there was nothing. There was no evidence in the world that he was a writer.
And then, going home, I remember I was kind of frustrated. I said, like, “You said he was a writer, but he’s never been published. I don’t think that he’s writing anything to the intent to publish. He writes, but he’s not-” And she just said, “Jay, stop. You’re not your job title. You’re not your accomplishments. You understand he just identifies he’s a writer. That’s who he is. He’s telling you who he is, not what he does.”
And that was revolutionary to me because I was judging him. I was like, “But wait, where are your accomplishments? Have you been on a bestseller list?” It’s just like, no, he’s just someone who loves to write and all of the things that comes with it. And he was very clear about who he was. And it made me really clear that I also was not clear. But that was like a real turning point and a gift I got.
Jen Davis:
It is. It’s funny, I think when I made the transition out, those first couple of weeks, you start to figure out who you are outside of a job title or a task list. And I think that was the thing that I was not prepared for. I was really not prepared to go into a season of pause.
Jay Papasan:
You didn’t have a plan.
Jen Davis:
None. Zero. I went into it with a summer bucket list with my kids. We were going to go to water slides, and we were going to do these things. And what I found is that the personality of achievement just kind of followed me. I was still structuring days. I still had things to do in the morning, I had things to do in the afternoon, I was making plans. And what I found was I had structured time off. I hadn’t really structured pause. And so, that took several weeks to finally figure out. I was like, these core issues, the stuff that I’m feeling inside are still here.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah, I’ve got no more water parks to visit, no more recipes to cook. Like you’ve gone through all of that list and you look up and like, how am I gonna deal with this now?
Jen Davis:
Now what?
Jay Papasan:
All right, let’s keep that question because we need to take a quick break. And on the other side, we’ll answer now what.
Jen Davis:
Perfect.
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Jay Papasan:
All right. Welcome back, everybody. So, you get to this place, Jen. You’ve taken time off. You really don’t change the way you behave. You’re still structuring your days. But now, instead of work at a coaching company, it’s work being a present mom. But you’re still checking off lists and things. And then, you kind of hit a wall. Like, you now have to confront something different. What was that?
Jen Davis:
Well, I think that is just the internal work of like, what did I need a break from? How did I get here? How did I get on this path of chasing special? What about that is important to me, right? What is it that I want from this time with my kids? Because, Jay, quite honestly, at that point, Kaitlyn’s headed into her senior year. She actually did not want to spend that much time with me. She didn’t want to go to every water park.
Jay Papasan:
I know. There’s not a lot of seniors in high school that do.
Jen Davis:
No. I think that, for me, was something that I was like, “Okay, there is something more here than me just needing a break. There is something more here than-” And it was the misalignment. And I think the internal work was deciding, I’ve got to be okay to sit in the quiet. I’ve got to be okay to sit with my thoughts and figure out, who is it that I want to be? What do I want the next 12 months to look like? What do I want the next two years to look like, right? What do I want the next 90 days to look like? Whatever that was, but it was the idea of who do I want to be if a role doesn’t matter?
Jay Papasan:
You know, this reminds me of – and we’ve shared this quote together and with our friend Jordan Freed, I think it’s John Maloney – if busyness is your drug, rest will feel like stress.
Jen Davis:
That’s right.
Jay Papasan:
And you were living it. Like, I say that out loud and, usually, you get like a gut punch sound from the audience because they feel it. They’re like, “Oh, wait.” When someone shows me their schedule and they’re just going from meeting to meeting to meeting and they talk about how busy they are, one of my first thoughts is, what are they hiding from? Like the coach in me is like, that busyness is a form of camouflage, you might be hiding from something you’re not ready to confront.
Jen Davis:
It usually is. There was a mentor of mine that used the quote, the enemy echoes what we are afraid of until fear feels familiar and peace feels peculiar. The enemy echoes what we’re afraid of until fear feels familiar and peace feels peculiar. Guy’s name is Jeremy Johnson. He’s a local Springfield guy. He said it to me. And I thought most people, I think, are afraid of failure. Most people don’t start, right? They get ready, they get ready, they get ready.” I’m like, “I’m just going to go, go, go, go, go.”
My fear is not most people’s fear. My fear is the quiet. My fear is the, “What am I going to find? What am I covering up?” You know, we talk about, like, the idea of, like, self-soothing can come in different forms. For me, it’s work, right? If I have a bad habit, that bad habit is work.
Jay Papasan:
And that’s the place that we go to get busy, right? We go and get busy. Like, I know I use it for self-soothing. Like, if I’m dealing with grief, we’ve lost someone, like, I’m just like, “Okay. I can go to work and I compartmentalize.” And all I’m doing is delaying something that needs to be addressed. And finding that space and getting comfortable going there more frequently is a skill I think we all need to adapt.
Jen Davis:
A hundred percent. I think what you just said is what so many people feel, right? When life gets heavy, sometimes, people will go and they’ll have an extra margarita, right? Or some people will go and they’re going to-
Jay Papasan:
Scroll.
Jen Davis:
They’re gonna scroll. I think for me, in that season of pause, when work wasn’t an option anymore, when adding another meeting, making another phone call, checking an email, doing those things were no longer an option, my initial thought was, “I’m going to go hang out with my kids,” right? I’m going to go do this. I’m gonna read a bunch of books that aren’t gonna teach me anything, right? I’m not gonna be productive in this. But what ends up happening then is you’re still just delaying that inevitable breakthrough of like, “I’ve gotta figure this out if I want to live the life I wanna live.”
Jay Papasan:
So, did you find the secret to happiness?
Jen Davis:
For me, I did. I think the secret for me is I need to have margin. I do like to be productive. I like to make impact on people. People matter to me. I like their stories. I like to be part of their story. I like to know about their story. I like to feel like I’m doing good work. But what doesn’t work for me is to be so jammed in that my identity is wrapped up in that. So, for me, it is this idea of the secret for happiness is I’ve got quality time with the people that I love, I’ve got time to make an impact, and I’ve got margin where I can say, “Okay, was I my best self today? What corrections could I make tomorrow? Where am I at? How do I make these adjustments?”
Jay Papasan:
Let’s break that down a little bit. I mean, you’re a natural teacher and a coach. You’ve done this for a long time. I love that. Keith Cunningham introduced me with his book, The Road Less Stupid, that we all need a little bit of thinking time. That’s what he called it. Like every entrepreneur, every business person needs a little space to actually consider their lives, so – in his words – we do less stupid stuff. It’s not that we have to be smarter. We have to do less stupid stuff.
I like the word margin better. Like maybe because I’m a book guy, and I associate it with the book. That’s where I write my ahas in the margins, right? I’m reading but if I don’t write it in the margins, it’s unlikely I will remember them after I read the book, right? And so, that margin space. is where we can absorb and assimilate and grow. What would that look like in the beginning? Like, you jumped into the deep end, which might be in character, and then had to figure it out. For someone who’s saying, I’m Jen, but I’m Jen in November of 2022, before she hit the pause button, how would you advise someone to start building margin into their lives?
Jen Davis:
I think it’s recognizing how long things take, right? Like actually looking at your day. So, how you structure your days is how your life is going to be structured, right? Like, so show me your days, I’ll show you your life. And we constantly live in this thought of next season, it gets easier. After Christmas, things will lighten up. Next month, right? All of a sudden, everything’s going to be figured out.
Jay Papasan:
We have a collective delusion that we’ll have more time in the future than we do today, which is absolutely not the truth and science proves it again and again.
Jen Davis:
You’ll never have any time and what will happen is the time that you do have will get lost to other things. And so, for me, in November, the November ahead of actually leaving the role, I think had I been able to recognize, hey, the beginning of my day, middle of my day, and end of my day, there needs to be a little bit of space to not only think, but to have a…” I don’t ever want to just react, right? You want to respond to things.
And so, I was in this space of really not having the ability to take advantage of an opportunity or a thought or a good idea. And so, at that point, I think, tactically, had I been able to say, here’s how much time this takes out of that time that I have allowed during the day, this much can go to meetings, and then this much needs to go to actual work, right?
Jay Papasan:
Right.
Jen Davis:
Moving something forward, thinking through something. Because otherwise, what happens is we get to the end of the day and we’re like, “I’ve been five minutes late all day long and I haven’t accomplished anything yet.”
Jay Papasan:
No, no, attending meetings, like as a leader, sometimes attending meetings and making decisions is one of the things that you do. But there’s also the work that has to be done that you decided to do in the meetings. And I see a lot of people that go to meetings all day, they get dinner to the table, they put the kids to bed, and then get their laptop off at 9:30 and work till midnight, because that’s the only space they have to do the work.
Jen Davis:
And then, you never have a minute where you’re not making a decision, right? I think that’s the other part of it is like the idea of decision fatigue, right? If you’re constantly in this space of making decisions, going to meetings, making decisions, going to meetings, making decisions, what ends up happening is you actually haven’t thought through any of the decisions that you’ve made.
Jay Papasan:
No.
Jen Davis:
And you’re not even looking around a corner to think what is the most important work, right? What’s the one thing I should be doing? You’re just on this conveyor belt of problems that are heading your way, and you’re making decisions, and you’re making adjustments, but you’ve not given the time to think, this is the one thing that I need to be doing because you’ve not built in space to think around the corner.
Jay Papasan:
I think about the difference between reaction and response.
Jen Davis:
Yes.
Jay Papasan:
And I don’t know, even though I’m a writer, to me, reacting is something we do in the moment. It tends to be very intuitive. It’s almost an impulse, right? I’ve got reflexes. I react. If someone throws a baseball at me, I hope to catch it. I’m certainly going to duck. Respond comes from a place of having some sort of plan or some sort of model or some thoughtfulness to it. And what you’re describing to me is that a lot of people listening to this podcast spend all of their days reacting to their work and with no space to thoughtfully respond.
Jen Davis:
It’s exactly right. It’s like going into triage, right? Like we go-
Jay Papasan:
Yeah.
Jen Davis:
And it’s like emergency medicine instead of going into and saying, “Okay, what would I need to correct at the core,” right? It’s the idea of, I’m just gonna triage all of this all day long and I’m gonna live in a state of cortisol fueled by caffeine.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah, it’s a drug. It is a drug.
Jen Davis:
It’s a drug.
Jay Papasan:
Yes. And you said it earlier, you feel important. I’m doing a lot of things. I’ve been praised for doing a lot my whole life. So, it’s like hitting all of the ego boxes. I’m in charge. I’m taking action. There’s a lot of things that we and the world reinforce around that behavior.
Jen Davis:
Well, and you look at it and you’re like, “Okay, if I never have space to think about it, I also don’t have space for any type of feedback.” So, it’s not even that there’s not feedback that I can give myself. It’s that, generally speaking, when we get that busy, we’re also not being coached well or mentored well because we’re not inviting anybody in. Because if I don’t want to see what’s messy inside, I certainly, Jay, don’t want you to see what’s messy inside.
Jay Papasan:
No. So, you implied but let’s be explicit, so that people who really do need to take a step in the direction from this kind of busyness, starting the pause process is finding margin. So, you implied that maybe it was the bookends. Do I have a little time at the beginning and the end of the day for reflection? Is that like an hour? Is it 15 minutes? Like, where would you suggest someone start?
Jen Davis:
I think if I were going to say this is, right now, for someone that’s like, “Jen, I can’t even take a whole day off. I can’t. There’s no way, I think. it would be 15 minutes to set my intentions for the day. And so, it would be, these are the one or two things that if I nail it today, I feel like I’ve accomplished something. No matter what else happens, these are the two things I’m going to accomplish today. And at the end of the day, it’s looking and saying, “Did I get those two things done? And could I start to look ahead for the next day?”
So, I might start with 15 minutes at the beginning of the day and 30 minutes at the end of the day because, all of a sudden, at the end of the day, now I’m like, “Oh, I doubled my time for the morning.” I’m now starting to look ahead to tomorrow, and it can start to compound, right? Like we can start to snowball some time. So, if you did nothing else this week, I would say start with 15 minutes in the morning. What’s my most important thing? It could be a conversation. It could be a thing to do. What’s that? And at the end of the day, how did it go?
Jay Papasan:
I’ve shared it on this podcast before, but like the most impactful habit we ever did was ask people to look at their goals before they pick up their phone. And so, that’s a bigger set of intentions. What are my goals? Great. Now, I’m going to go out in the world, but at least I’m clear about what direction I’m supposed to be headed in versus jumping straight into like a swirling maelstrom that most people’s days looks like.
You also, by the way, are mirroring some of the best management advice ever, this guy named Peter Drucker who wrote in Managing Oneself, that was one of the practices. He talked about being clear about your intentions and also reflecting on not just, “How did I do today?” but like “And what did I love to do today?” because his whole thing was you start to see patterns when you reflect at the end of the day, like “Man, I I kind of kicked butt today. I really enjoyed that.” You start to recognize where you do and you do well and where you do and do well and love it.
Jen Davis:
It’s your energy source, right? If we can look back and say, this is what went well today and here’s where I got off. track, one of the things that I have found in coaching is that I love patterns, right? I love patterns of winning. If you’re in a winning season, I want to document it, so that next time you get into a rough spot, I can be like, “Hey, let’s go back and look at these patterns.”
But I also, as a coach, really want to know what are the patterns that get us off track, right? So, if I said two, four, six, you’re likely going to say eight. When we get to the third time, something becomes a pattern. And if I can start to look at patterns at the end of my day, what really went well? What got me off track? What could I do different? What happens is, is I start to be able to coach myself a little bit in a season of, “Hey, I’ve got to shake up this pattern. It’s no longer serving me,” or “I love today. I kicked butt today. Now, how do I replicate this on more days?”
Jay Papasan:
What I love is when we talk about the first domino and The ONE Thing, it’s usually, like, it’s literally a two-inch domino that can grow. You’re asking people, inviting people to take 15 minutes. There is no one listening to this who can’t find 15 minutes. You can set the alarm 15 minutes early, right? There’s always an opportunity to make 15 minutes.
And what I’ve seen when people do these sorts of activities is that little island that they now control, it gives them a sense of agency. And after a week, maybe two weeks, they start to believe, “Okay, I may feel like I’m out of control 99% of the time. But I do have this place where I’ve figured it out.” And then, it kind of becomes an addiction, “Can I make that 15 minutes 30? Can I make that 30 minutes an hour?” And it can be like a beachhead in an invasion. Like, I’ve got the beach. Now we’re going to invade the country. And the country is your calendar. And so, it gives us the confidence to start taking control of other things. There is a halo effect around this small act.
Jen Davis:
It’s exactly right. And one of the things that Jordan Freed teaches us is, like, the keeping the promise to yourself, right? It’s living in integrity. And that 15 minutes is an easy promise to keep to yourself. It’s an easy one to win at, right out of the gate. I’ve kept a promise to myself. It’s 15 minutes.
And I think the thing, when I look at the halo effect that you’re describing, what I like to say is like when I went from 15 minutes to 30 to an hour, eventually what happens is you start planning days in advance. You start being prepared for meetings before you log into the meeting. And that was one of the most powerful things that I learned in that season of pause of when I have time to prepare, when I have time to think, people get a way better version of me than what they were getting before, which was just the watered down, I’m stressed out, five minutes late version.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah, and that’s not just a work meeting. That’s when you show up at your kid’s classroom, right? When you show up, yeah, for all the things, not just work things.
I could keep going on this, right? Because like now I’m like, everybody should have vacation on the calendar. And the one thing we teach them, put it on there first and then make work go around it. But I can’t tell you, like at least once a month, someone shows up for a coaching discovery call or a training discovery and they’ll share, “Oh, I haven’t taken more than two days of vacation since 2017.” Like, I literally had a fellow tell me that he’d been working 60 to 80 hours for seven years straight, every day. And you’re like, no vacation time that he could remember. And like, there’s a point at which everybody runs out of steam.
I mean, to me, the fact that he had lasted that long, it was insane. But I know some people, like, they start with this store of energy and they think that’s superpower. So, they lean into giving work more and more time versus approaching it the way you’re describing it. It’s amazing when we’re more thoughtful. Like, we choose the right things to do, which often means we have less things to do. Like, it’s crazy.
Jen Davis:
It is crazy. I can remember the first vacation I went on after the pause, and I was like, “Huh.” I texted Jordan, and I was like, ‘Have you ever been on a vacation that you weren’t, like, desperate for? That you didn’t get to the vacation, like, in a face plant?” It the first time where I thought, I understand what people say is like, build the life that you don’t need a vacation from. And I was like, I hadn’t ever lived in a season, right? Because I always had a vacation. I did, always, block off time to travel and to do things. But the first couple of days of my vacation were wasted on, “I just need to nap.”
Jay Papasan:
Well, I’m going to tell you this. I know that you asked the question, would I rather be special or happy? And you realized that you were chasing special, thinking that that would yield happiness. And now, you’ve found happiness. But I’ll tell you that this is pretty special.
Jen Davis:
Thanks, Jay.
Jay Papasan:
So, you may not have intended it, but in focusing on finding yourself in happiness, you’re also displaying a kind of specialness we all need to hear. So, thank you for sharing. I love hearing about your journey. And I know there’s a lot, so many people who need to hear it, and they need to give themselves a little bit of permission to pause, maybe just for 15 minutes at the beginning and end of the day, and see where that takes them. Can I ask you to maybe give our listeners a challenge-
Jen Davis:
Sure.
Jay Papasan:
-that they can take into this next week, some small place if not there to start?
Jen Davis:
And so, the challenge would be, how do you spend 15 minutes by yourself with your thoughts?
Jay Papasan:
Yes.
Jen Davis:
Without scrolling, without reading a book, without attempting to go into a meditation. This isn’t meditation time. This is, hey, we’re really – like, we’re thinking about this. You can have a notepad. I’m okay if people write notes and questions to themselves, but you’re not creating a to -do list in the 15 minutes. It would be, for me, the challenge would be the 15 minutes of doing a deep dive and just thinking to myself, I know that in one minute, I can nail, probably, the thing that I need to do today. Why is that? Why is that the thing? Is this a repeating thing? What is it? But spend some time with your thoughts instead of saying surface level.
In coaching, we’ll talk about lots and lots of times we want to snorkel. We want to stay on the surface level. And what we want in this 15 minutes is let’s start to snorkel. Let’s start to-
Jay Papasan:
Scuba dive.
Jen Davis:
Let’s start to scuba dive. Let’s start to go from a snorkel to a scuba dive. And that would be the challenge for the week is let’s spend those 15 minutes actually thinking about what you want for the day to be.
Jay Papasan:
I love it. Everybody, you’ve now been given permission to pause, and the requirement, it has to be for 15 minutes. That’s the start. But I promise you, as someone who’s done some of this work themselves, it is so uncomfortable in the beginning, but it is so liberating later on. Jen, thank you for sharing with us today.
Jen Davis:
Thanks, Jay. It was good to see you.
Jay Papasan:
Always fabulous to see you. Folks, we’ll see you next week. I can’t wait to share another great episode of The ONE Thing Podcast.
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