The ONE Thing
- Steve
- Jun 6, 2023
- 5 min read
Updated: Sep 22, 2023
by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan
One of my favourite books. Highly recommend.
Singleness of purpose; multitasking is a lie
Most modern research shows that when you try to multitask, you are just splitting your mental resources across multiple different things. You can't drive and talk on the phone as effective as you could do either on their own, as much as you'd like to believe otherwise.
Multitasking is merely the opportunity to screw up more than one thing at a time.
You need to narrow your focus.
"Whats the one thing you could do this week such that by doing it everything else would be easier or unnecessary?"
Doing this brings clarity. Your life gets clearer and less complicated.
Everything does not matter equally
When you're a child, your routine and what you do is largely dictated by your parents: It's time for breakfast; It's time to go to school; it's time for dinner; It's time for bed.
As you get older, you are afforded more discretion. You now have choices to make, and your life depends on these choices. People are generally rather poor at making choices, and as a result they are in a state of permanent "busy-ness." Being busy doesn't always mean you've got a lot done, however.
By saying "yes" to too many things, you effectively say "no" to doing your most important thing. Achievers operate differently. They have an eye for the essential. They relentlessly prioritize, and say no to a lot of things. You should be setting clear priorities.
When you focus, it's like shining a spotlight on what matters. Start to be picky with how you spend your time.
The 80/20 Rule
Also known as the Pareto principle, and very common in self-help books: 80% of the output comes from 20% of the input. The majority of what you want comes form the minority of what you do. This concept has been around for a long time, but crops up again and again through nature and in life.
Example:
The top 10 companies are responsible for the majority of the performance of the S&P500.
You wear 20% of your clothes 80% of the time
At the gym; Very few exercises (squat, bench, dead-lift) are responsible for the majority of your gains.
and so on...
The point is, you should be spending the vast majority of your time on a very few, carefully chosen actions/behaviours/tasks.
You need to spend time thinking about what matters most.
If you have a goal for the end of the year, break it down further. Where would you need to be at the end of the month to get to that goal by the end of the year? Ok, then what would you need to get done TODAY to get there by the end of the month? What is the MOST important thing?
Building habits and discipline
When we start and continue a way of thinking or a way of acting over a long enough period, we've created a new habit.
We may be deluded into thinking that because it will be hard to start, or because you are finding it hard in the beginning, that it will always be that difficult. We should know from experience that this is untrue.
Success is actually a short race - a sprint fueled by discipline just long enough for habit to kick in and take over.
This is profound. It may be difficult for you to start implementing a new routine; waking up early; going for a jog; eating less; starting a reading habit.
When a deliberate action is performed long enough to become a habit, it gets stored in a different part of the brain - it becomes second nature.
The aim is to train a handful of valuable habits into your life. Bring just enough discipline to establish them. Do this for one habit at a time, and over time, you will become a person of powerful habits.
A 'Balanced life' is a scam sold to the ambitious by the lazy.
The truth is, balance is bunk. It is an unattainable pipe dream... The quest for balance between work and life, as we've come to think of it, isn't just a losing proposition; it's a hurtful destructive one.
Purpose, meaning, and significance - those are the things that make a successful life.
Extraordinary results require focused attention and time.
Time on one thing means time away from another. This makes balance impossible.
The term "work-life balance" came into use in the 1980's when women started entering the workforce.
We went from family units with one breadwinner and one homemaker to families with two breadwinners and no homemakers.
If you think of balance as the middle, then out of balance is when you're away from it. Get too far away from the middle and you're at the extremes. The problem with living in the middle is that it prevents you from making extraordinary time commitments to anything - from being extraordinary at anything.
The magic happens at the extremes
When you focus on what's important, some things will always be underserved.
In your personal life, nothing gets left behind. In your professional life, you must leave things undone and focus on the important.
Anyone who dreams of an uncommon life eventually discovers there is no choice but to seek an uncommon approach to living it.
The Focusing Question
Find the right direction in life and then find the right action.
2 parts - Big Picture, Small picture.
What is my ONE thing?
What is my ONE thing right now?
In other words, identify where you want to be in the long term, and then identify what the next step is to get there. Simple, but effective.
You need to be relentless at attacking the main bottleneck to you achieve your goal right now, and continue on this path until you get to where you want to be.
What one thing can you do today, such that by doing it, everything will be easier?
Make this a way of live. Ask it all the time. Every morning
"What is the ONE thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?
Willpower is a fallacy; strategies for improvement
We are constantly making decisions today that we want to be better people tomorrow. The problem is that it's always today. When the time comes, we once again sell ourselves short. The pattern of decision making can continue indefinitely, and this is where pre-commitment comes in. You want your rational self to be in control of your impulsive self.
Pre-commitment is a great technique to develop and maintain habits and preserve willpower. My favourite analog of this is Homer strapping himself to the mast in The Odyssey to not succumb to the sirens. Think of it as putting your alarm clock at the other side of the room so you have to get up to switch it off.
Timeblocking
If disproportionate results come from one activity, we must give that activity disproportionate time.
Block time as early in your day as you possible can.
Try to dedicate 4 hours a day to your most productive thing.
Then dedicate 1 hour per week to your monthly and annual goals.
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