15 Truths for Business & Life: Inbox Zero, Hustle Culture & More

The ONE Thing

Jay Papasan presents 15 personal 'hills to die on,' which are mental models derived from his professional and personal experiences. He explo

Key takeaways

• Treat employees as career builders rather than mere contractors to maximize long-term ROI.
• Prioritize human Executive Assistants (EAs) over AI to maintain empathy and strategic partnership in leadership.

Main topics

• Mental Models
• Leadership & Team Management

Notable quotes

The ones that make you angry... are probably the ones that you need to think about.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a practical guide for building a personal librar

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Winners quit, inbox zero is a complete waste of time. And if you're financing luxury right now, we're probably not gonna agree on this podcast. Today, I'm gonna share 15 hills I'm prepared to die on, most of them hard won, not just through reading, but by making lots and lots of mistakes. And by the end of this podcast, you'll probably agree with some of them, disagree with some of them. My hope is you'll start thinking about what are your hills to die on so that you don't have to learn the hard mistakes again and again. I'm Jay Papasan, and this is The One Thing, your weekly guide to the simple steps that lead to extraordinary results. Speaker 1 (0:50) A long time ago, I stumbled upon Charlie Munger. This is Warren Buffett's partner at Berkshire Hathaway. He gave a speech at USC's business school. And in it, he shared his latest work of mental models. And he talked about, and this was one of the first times that they shared, how much of their investing acumen came from just reading books. He and Warren Buffett were a collector of frameworks on how people behave. and how they think. And they believed if they had these frameworks, these models for how we approach problems and challenges and our own biases, they could make better decisions for their investors, hopefully better than their competitors over time. And that proved to be incredibly true for Buffett and Munker. And that weird latticework, I can't remember how many were in there, but it was from every discipline, science, biology, you name it. But they were basically, these are the ground truths about how life works. And if you don't try to fight that, you'll have a better life. And so I learned some from there. And I eventually looked up and thought, you know what? Maybe I should start writing these down, not just his, but what are the things that I kind of believe to be true as a business person, as a father, as an investor, so that... I'm a lot less likely to keep repeating the same mistakes. And I created a list right now. I think there's 88 on that list. It's a little notes document that I carry around. And when I find myself in that situation where, wait, I've thought about this before. What did I decide last time? I can go quickly search it and think about things a little bit more deeply because I'm logging in to my past self who just made a horrible mistake and then wrote down my learning from it. And I can apply that wisdom in the moment to whatever is new. And so that's my hope for you by the end of this is that maybe you'll write down your own mental models, create your own little list. What are the things that are true for me as a business person, as a parent, as a spouse, whatever the categories that are important to you. So today I'm going to roll through 15 of these. Some of them are kind of big thinking. Some of them are contrarian thinking, and some of them are pretty conventional, but the truth that we just need to be reminded of. My encouragement to you is don't treat them as commandments for you. Ask the question, do I agree with Jay? Do I not agree with him? Why? And then that becomes your ground truth. The ones that make you angry or you're like, no freaking way are probably the ones that you need to think about. Because when we are anchored in a truth that may not be true is when we are most likely to do ourselves some harm. I think a few of these will actually may even be controversial because my take is not the conventional take. If you disagree, feel free to say something in the comments and we'll pick up the conversation there. I'm always open to changing my mind and that's often how these came about. So I'm going to dive in, starting with some that are grouped around the people we get to work with, the people that are in the room. All right, so the first one we'll call careers versus contractors. I've worked in a lot of different businesses. My wife and I have run a bunch of businesses. And we've had to get clear about when are we hiring someone to be an employee? And when are we actually going to bring someone on to be a contractor? And in my experience as a teacher and coach, I see a lot of people get confused. They hire people to be employees, but then they treat them like contractors. They're not building a career. They're not helping them see a career and a path forward. They're not trying to help them learn how to think. so that they can grow in the job. And don't get me wrong, if you're going to hire people in a lot of businesses, there is a time and a place to bring contractors. I don't have anything against it. But if you're going to bring someone on as an employee, I think you have a little bit of an obligation. They have an obligation to help you build your business, and you have an obligation to help them build their career. And the payoff may not be immediate. I might be into that weird, shaky realm of karma here. But in my experience, that when you invest in your people, there is no greater return on investment. Not everyone pays off, but the ones who do, who see you as a path to getting their dreams fulfilled, because you're open to letting the business expand to include their dreams. Those are the employees, and there's not a million of them. They're always in the minority that will absolutely help your company become a rocket ship. But it requires a different state of mind. They're not there to just serve your needs. It's a mutual conversation. It's a contract that goes both ways. They are building your wealth and you should be helping them build their career. So my challenge to you is when you look at your staff, who are the ones that truly stand out, that are actually employees? And have I been a good leader to them in helping them build a career within my business? Am I willing for it to expand to include their dreams? I think that when we are open to that kind of thinking, Yeah, sometimes we'll get burned, but the payoff is the 10X, 100X kind of people that end up treating your business like it's their own, and there is no greater ROI in business than that. All right, hill number two, this is EAs versus AIs. I'm seeing a lot of people leverage AI, and the first place that they're going to eliminate cost is they're cutting their operational staff, and I get it. AI is really good at doing repetitive tasks again and again. But kind of dovetailing off the last one, you have to ask the question, if I go all in on AI, I get some predictability, I get some scale that I may not be able to get from humans, but what am I also giving up? I've come to believe, and I mean firmly, that the best leaders often have a number two, an EA, a chief of staff, an executive business partner, you name it, that is their kind of perfect pairing. They compliment them. They are also helping them with strategic thinking. They're not just a tasker, not a personal assistant or an administrative assistant. They're an operational leader. And that pairing becomes a superpower for that leader. We've seen it. You've seen it. That certain duos out there are kind of dynamic. And their ability to do things together is greater than the sum of their parts. I've had nine different EAs in my career, and a handful of them have been truly extraordinary. They have taken my career to the next level because they understood what my priorities were, what my values were, and they helped become an extension of them in the business. And they helped get the 80 % off my plate to think about one thing language so that I could focus on the things where I bring the most value. And frankly, this is a personal thing. I like them to be just a little bit bossy. Hey, let me do that. Take your hands off of that. That's my job. I want them to own that part of the job so thoroughly that they will literally shoo me away. Because let's be frank, a lot of us go to the busy work as a place to hide. Feels productive. We're doing something, but we're really avoiding the more important work. And having a partner, a witness that's there, that understands everything, they're in your calendar, they're in your email, there's something incredible about that. Now, some of you are going, but Jay, I can do that with an amazingly trained AI bot, right? I'll use a lot of tokens and they will be just like that behind the scenes. True, it's amazing what you can accomplish with some of the AM models out there today, but they don't bring the human warp to your business. Having someone who's a part of their job, is to bring empathy to the work, I think that's actually going to distinguish the people going forward. You'll notice the executives that have 100 % AI assistance, and you'll notice those that have a human element to it. And I think that human touch is only going to become more valuable and therefore worth the investment. So when it comes to EAs and AI, the end of the day, I want an EA, a human in my corner, and I hope that they will be empowered by AI, but I want that human by my side. One more kind of lens to look at the EA AI equation is, is like, how much of a control freak are you? Right? I mean, I think if you're leading, you've got a little of that in you, like you want things to be a certain way. Maybe you've got a very high standard is how you put it, but there's a certain level that all of us can show up and really kind of demand that the work be a certain way. AI is an extension of that, right? Once we dial it in, we can get things exactly and perfectly the way we want them on repeat. Now, again, there's this thing that we're missing there and it's called agency. One of my very first jobs, I worked at a steakhouse and I remember they had zero marketing budget. And I was like, how in the heck do you run a steakhouse with no advertising, no marketing? And they said they wanted 100 % word of mouth. And what they empowered us to do was to solve problems at our own table. A very human thing to realize, oh, the food was late. So I have the power as a waiter, right? Making less than minimum wage back then to comp them a dessert or a free round of drinks. The goal was fix whatever problem it was in the moment,