Every Friday, I share concise, actionable insights for growing your business, optimizing your time, and expanding your mindset. Co-author of multiple million-copy bestsellers.
25 First Downs (2 Min Read) | Vol. 222
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PSA: If you missed my announcement about changes to The ONE Thing, click here. September 25, 2026 | Read Online “The score takes care of itself.” – Bill Walsh 25 First Downs Last week I had Coach Jordan Freed on the podcast, and he hit me with a pop quiz. Me: "Eight." Jordan: "That's a touchdown and the two-point conversion, right? So how many possessions is he down?" Me: "Three. No — four." I did the math out loud and still got it wrong on the first try. Four possessions. Not 25 points. Four possessions. Here's the point Jordan was making. Twenty-five points is a feeling. Four possessions is a plan. One of them you marinate in. The other one you can actually run. Brady took it one possession at a time. He drove the ball down the field and scored. Then he got the ball back and did it again. That's a strange way to coach a team. It's a great way to run a business. In The ONE Thing, we call this thinking “Goal Setting to the Now.” To take effective action, we have to break down the big goals into manageable milestones. A possession is too big to manage on a Tuesday morning. A first down isn't. A first down is the small, repeatable thing you can actually count this week. In real estate, it's listings. Jordan has never coached an agent who hit their listing number every single month and missed the rest of their goals. You have a version of that. Demos booked. Proposals sent. Chapters drafted. Conversations had. It's the one number that makes everything downstream predictable. So the work isn't figuring out how to score 25 points before December 31st. The work is naming your first down. Then getting one. Then getting another. Thirteen weeks left. That's your quarter. One question to ponder in your thinking time: If I'm behind, how many possessions is it really? Make an Impact! Not subscribed? Become a Twenty Percenter here. |
Jay Papasan
Every Friday, I share concise, actionable insights for growing your business, optimizing your time, and expanding your mindset. Co-author of multiple million-copy bestsellers.
PSA – Our final ONE Thing Summit & Goal Setting Retreat is one week away. Join Wendy and me online November 13–14 from 1–4 p.m. CT and get our complete 40+ page goal-setting guide. True to today’s theme, we’ve built a 1-hour masterclass on wealth-building into the Summit! Reserve your spot here. November 6, 2026 | Read Online “To teach is to learn twice.” – Joseph Joubert Teach What You Want to Keep In 2018, Wendy and I started an investment club. Wendy refused to call it that. Too boring....
October 30, 2026 | Read Online “Trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback.” – Dutch Proverb The Recipe for Trust My friend Ron Friedman’s first book, The Best Place to Work, didn’t cover trust. “I took trust for granted for a really long time,” he confessed. Writing about trust felt like saying honesty or integrity was important. Duh. Too obvious. Then he spent five years researching his new book, Superteams. He came away convinced he’d been wrong. Trust isn’t a given. It’s a skill. And...
PSA – If you’d like to do your goal-setting retreat with us, Wendy and I are hosting our final The ONE Thing Summit & Goal Setting Retreat virtually on November 13–14. It’s two half days, so you can book a hotel nearby, enjoy your mornings, and join us for the sessions. Every attendee gets our 40+ page workbook walking you through the process. It’s arguably worth the ticket price alone. Learn more here. October 23, 2026 | Read Online “Unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments.” –...