No matter how success is measured, personal or professional, only the ability to dismiss distractions and concentrate on your ONE Thing stands between you and your goals. There are so many lessons and golden nuggets about life, work, and finding purpose. The ONE Thing sits at the heart of success and is the starting point for achieving extraordinary results. When you know what matters most, everything makes sense. So what are those handful of things that you can extract from your to-do list that would have the BIGGEST impact on your results? My journey is built on making the aforementioned dream a reality. Bill’s company, Microsoft focussed on ONE thing -- the development and sale of BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800. which eventually made Bill the ONE richest man in the world for 15 years in a row. You can become successful with less discipline than you think, for one simple reason: success is about doing the right thing, not about doing everything right. The must-read summary of Gary Keller and Jay Papasan's book “The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results”.This complete summary of the ideas in Gary Keller and Jay Papasan’s book “The One Thing” explains that, surprisingly enough, the best way to achieve incredible results is to do less. Once you’ve figured that out, you need to identify how many dominoes you need to line up - and then knock down - in order to achieve it. Dr. Martin Seligman, past president of the American Psychological Association, believes there are five factors that contribute to our happiness: positive emotion and pleasure, achievement, relationships, engagement, and meaning. Whatever you can see, you have the capacity to move toward. It worked. It takes an average of 66 days to acquire a new habit. Those two P’s It is. When we tie our success to our willpower without understanding what that really means, we set ourselves up for failure. Set goals, plan, and calendar for mental energy. Some things matter a lot more than others. First, you must adopt the mindset of someone seeking mastery. It’s simple. Success is found in prioritizing everything and then sequentially doing the ONE Thing that is most important. What target should I aim for?) Habits build on habit. organizations haven’t got a clue that there are two additional P’s that Happiness happens on the way to fulfillment. And once certain you know it, you’ll have the personal power necessary to push you through any hesitancy to do it. Apparently, background scratches can be pretty unsatisfying. As Keller explains “going small” means focusing purely on what you should be doing, not simply what you could do. I can wait…, When I did the little exercise above, I saw myself hosting an internationally syndicated talk show (sort of like Oprah) but with an empowering twist (sort of like a Tony Robbins seminar)... My vision for the show is that it enables viewers to watch and learn from my guests -- who are the most inspiring, passionate,  purpose-driven people on the planet (authors/entrepreneurs/entertainers/philanthropists/etc.) The best way to protect your time blocks is to adopt the mindset that they can’t be moved. If you want the most from your answer, you must realize that it lives outside your comfort zone. Think about that — one of the most accomplished martial artists of his time and beyond, asks to be buried with a white belt to symbolize his new journey in his next life and beyond. What about yours? Figure out those high-leverage activities, and you’ve just turned your to-do list into a success list. I’m glad you asked…, Listen to the full 20-minute Audio Summary Here >>, “By thinking through the filter of Goal Setting to the Now, you set a future goal and then methodically drill down to what you should be doing right now. The book discusses the value of simplifying one's workload by focusing on the one … Go small. Extraordinary results are determined by how narrow you can make your focus Posted by twominutebooks June 29, 2020 2 Min Read Ready to learn the most important takeaways from The ONE Thing in less than two minutes? Which led to him eventually starting ONE company - Microsoft. Quick Summary Keller’s The One Thing is probably in our Top 3 books. Environmental factors can limit productivity and output. Answering “no” puts you in charge. Stay with this long enough and it becomes routine — in other words, a HABIT.”. Personal energy mismanagement is a silent thief of productivity. Chaos is natural. Let’s take a super simple example: let’s say you’re at work and and now that you have read these notes, and you have decided that you’re going to time block your most important one thing for any given day, and you get it all setup and you start getting to work and then all the sudden - somebody comes down the hallway lingers over your desk starts asking you questions that don’t really matter or requesting that you go out on a break with them - - what do you do? “One-half of knowing what you want is knowing what you must give up before you get it.”. In other words, when you see people that seem like they’re super DISCIPLINED, what you’re really observing is people who conditioned a handful of HABITS into their lives. We can’t manage time. It can be a little like a Russian matryoshka doll in that your ONE Thing “right now” is nested inside your ONE Thing TODAY, which is nested inside your ONE Thing this WEEK, which is nested inside your ONE Thing this MONTH… it’s how a small thing can actually build up to a big one… You’re lining up your dominoes.“. Now, open your eyes and listen to me. Task switching exacts a cost few realize they’re even paying. Crazy, eh? Willpower is always on will-call is a lie. Self-improvement + business book summaries you can read or listen to in under 20 minutes. Short Summary Focus on what is most important. --Brett Silo, get notified when we publish new episodes, 10 Things to Remember if You Want to Do What You Love for a Living, 7 Life-Changing Benefits of Weight Lifting, Habit Ramps: Secret To Starting Successful Habits That Stick, Use Outcome Thinking To Get What You Want, More popular articles on self-improvement >, HOME // BLOG // ABOUT // PODCAST // ITUNES // GRATITUDE, © 2020 MEANINGFUL, LLC | MeaningfulHQ.com, Irvine, CA. When you want the absolute best chance to succeed at anything you want, your approach should always be the same. Putting together a life of extraordinary results simply comes down to getting the most out of what you do, when what you do matters. Get hundreds of business book summaries for just $1, Michelangelo once said, “if the people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn’t seem wonderful at all.”. Answers come in three categories: doable, stretch, and possibility. Because when we do that, we put ourselves in control. I first heard about the book The One Thing on the Tim Ferriss Podcast. The Focusing Question collapses all possible questions into one: Eat right, exercise, and sleep sufficiently for physical energy, Hug, kiss, and laugh with loved ones for emotional energy, Set goals, plan, and calendar for mental energy, Time block your ONE Thing for business energy. Your own need to do other things instead of your ONE Thing may be your biggest challenge to overcome. Or have you gotten down to the business of deliberately creating the life you deserve? — is that it puts you in a position to take control. Most people struggle to comprehend how many things don’t need to be done if they would just start by doing the right thing. … everything else will be easier or unnecessary? As a result, there’s no channel conflict. The Focusing Question collapses all possible questions into one: “What’s the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”. When coaching top performers, Keller often ask, “Are you doing this to simply do the best you can do, or are you doing this to do it the best it can be done?”. You need to be doing fewer things for more effect instead of doing more things with side effects. Success is built sequentially, one thing at a time. Researchers estimate that workers are interrupted every 11 minutes and then spend almost a third of their day recovering from these distractions. You can do two things at once, but you can’t focus effectively on two things at once. You can become successful with less discipline than you think, for one simple reason: This requires getting extremely out of balance in relation to all other work issues, with only infrequent counterbalancing to address them. In high school, he got ONE job in the computer programing field. Living large is that simple.”, Did you do what Keller said above?If not -- what are you waiting for? come first, and serve as foundation for the second two. The ONE Thing is the best approach to getting what you want. Take a look at this drawing of an iceberg: Purpose comes first because that’s what the best people and organizations are made of. Ask the right question, get the right answer. Diggin this? They come from the choices we make and the actions we take. They’re doing the most important thing regularly and, as a result, everything else is easier. As a rule of thumb, Keller recommends that we avoid saying yes to most things unless they’re connect to our ONE Thing. The One Thing Book Summary A book by Gary Keller 2. This requires getting extremely out of balance in relation to all other work issues, with only infrequent counterbalancing to address them. Wives (and husbands)  get angry. As big as you have ever dared to dream , and then some. Happiness happens when you have a bigger purpose than having more fulfills, which is why we say happiness happens on the way to fulfillment. And when what you go for is as vast as you can possibly envision, you’ll be living the biggest life you can possibly live. When life happens, you can be either the author of your life or the victim of it. No one knows their ultimate ceiling for achievement, so worrying about it is a waste of time. The Highly Productive Person’s Daily Energy Plan. The majority of what you want will come from the minority of what you do. The book has appeared on the best seller lists of The New York Times, The Wall Street … Shut down your phone or put it on silent — not vibrate — when you’re working.Turn off the notifications from your email app when you’re working.Put up a sign of some sort (more on this later) on your desk to prevent people from disrupting your focus. American businessman Bill Gates is a great example of The ONE Thing lifestyle in action. You’ll want to write that down… because the whole entire book is based around that single question, and the power of organizing every area of your life around ONE Thing (per area). This is because the people we see and spend time with most tend to set our standards (see: The Law of Averages). It says that when you do this ONE Thing, everything else you could do to accomplish your goal will now be either doable with less effort or no longer even necessary. The ONE Thing Summary Chapter 1: The ONE Thing. When everything feels urgent and important, everything seems equal. Ask the most powerful question possible, and the answer can be life altering.”. We’re right when we say something is “front and center” or “top of mind,” because that’s where focus occurs--in the prefrontal cortex. The key to success is figuring out your ONE most important thing in your business/career/life over the long-run. There is magic in knocking down your most important domino day after day. Then you'll love the full version of this book summary: Audio, Kindle + PDF. And develop the right disciplines today, so you can turn them into habits tomorrow…, “In any discussion about success, the words “discipline” and “habit” ultimately intersect. And in my mind, it already is. Your Journey toward extraordinary results will be built above all else on faith, “It’s only when you have faith in your purpose and priorities that you’ll seek out your ONE Thing. Eventually, it got me sick of success.”. Go for it! “You may be asking, “Why focus on a question when what we really crave is an answer?” It’s simple. Trying to get them all done is folly. Success is actually a short race—a sprint fueled by discipline just long enough for habit to kick in and take over. Let’s take responsibility for our outcomes. To achieve this, you need to answer this question. Do you tell them “yes” or do you tell them “no”? The more we use our mind, the less minding power we have. waiting for. And when you Prioritize based on what’s most important to you — then you’re driven by Purpose. It is. If you’re afraid of saying no to someone because it might hurt their feelings, come up with a way to say it that you’re comfortable with. Ask the wrong question, get the wrong answer. This is true, but not the way they mean it. Always approach a “go small” strategy to succeed at anything you want.The author emphasizes on the fact that extraordinary results are directly determined by how narrow you can make your […] How circumstances affect us depends on how we interpret them as they relate to our life. The One Thing summary here will give you a taste of what to expect in the book and some of the priceless teachings presented by the authors. 3. Block an hour each week to review your annual and monthly goals. Ask the wrong question, get the wrong answer. In their book The One Thing, Gary Keller and Jay Papasan describe the power of focus when you want to be productive. Do not multi-task. , you may also enjoy the following books: Get My Searchable Collection of 100+ Book Notes. Optimism. No matter how hard you try, there will always be things left undone at the end of your day, week, month, year, and life. When you spend the early hours energizing yourself, you get pulled through the rest of the day with little additional effort. (To learn more about asking quality questions, One of the most empowering moments of Keller’s life came when he realized that. You see the One Thing at work in all aspects of business and life, for example: We can’t manage time. That’s okay. When you strive for greatness, chaos is guaranteed to show up. There is no channel interference. But keep at it. When you want the absolute best chance to succeed at anything you want, your approach should always be the same. There is a natural rhythm to our lives that becomes a simple formula for implementing the ONE Thing and achieving extraordinary results: purpose, priority, and productivity. LIVE LIKE YOU GIVE A DAMN, DEAN BOKHARI //  Join 563,778 members of the Meaningful Movement », Connect with Dean: Subscribe to blog (it's free) | Twitter: @deanbokhari | Facebook | LinkedIn, If you find my podcast helpful, please rate + review it on Apple Podcasts », Got a Self-Improvement question you'd like me to cover in an article or podcast? For maximum energy management and productivity, plan your days include the following: Did you know that if one of your close friends becomes obese, you’re 57% more likely to do the same? You can actually give attention to two things, but that is what’s called “divided attention.” And make no mistake. Print | Audiobook | Get My Searchable Collection of 100+ Book Notes. You should only have ONE at a time. Equality is great, but when it comes to tasks and priorities, they don’t all matter equally. Actions build on action. When you focus, it’s like shining a spotlight on what matters. When you gamble with your time, you may be placing a bet you can’t cover. Shit happens. This led him to develop ONE skill, computer programming. When I get caught up with a basketball game on TV, he gives me a good nudge. We overthink, overplan, and over-analyze our careers, our businesses, and our lives; that long hours are neither virtuous nor healthy; and that we usually succeed in spite of most of what we do, not because of it. In other words, without purpose, you’ll never know when you have enough money, and you can never be financially wealthy. Simple right? After Purpose, comes Priority. Big or small. How often do we allow the buzz, the bing, the flash from our cell phone sitting on our desk DIVIDE our attention from what matters most? Activity is often unrelated to productivity, and busyness rarely takes care of business. © 2020 MEANINGFUL, LLC | MeaningfulHQ.com, DEAN BOKHARI'S MEANINGFULHQ.com Self-Development and Motivation, Skin in the Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 25 Most Powerful Leadership Books of All-Time, Get hundreds of business book summaries for just $1, Join 563,778 members of the Meaningful Movement », Nugget of wisdom to repeat to self: “I am the author of my destiny.”. Take on two things and your attention gets divided. So, are you looking in every direction trying to. The only requirements are that they’re willing to talk about why they do what they do, and how they went from being  “ordinary” people to “extraordinary [insert profession here]”. The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan, is a life-improvement masterpiece. So here’s the trick if you want to create a habit — you’ll need to use your will-power/discipline juice in the beginning. Likewise, if you were walking across a gorge on a rope bridge, you’d likely stop talking..", Keller continues, "You can do two things at once, but you can’t focus effectively on two things at once. The ONE thing is a dominant theme that shows up in different ways. The one that we decided on was that I would write a book on how to become an elite performer in our industry. organization wants the two P’s - Productivity and Profit, but most Saying yes to everyone is the same as saying yes to nothing. Put up a sign of some sort (more on this later) on your desk to prevent people from disrupting your focus. Answers come from questions, and the quality of any answer is directly determined by the quality of the question. When you try to do two things at once, you either can’t or won’t do either well. o Walt Disney took night courses at the Chicago Art Institute and became the cartoonist for his school newspaper. Without further ado, here they are: “I wish that I’d let myself be happier”“I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends”“I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings”“I wish I hadn’t worked so hard”“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”. Many think that because their body is functioning without their conscious direction, they’re multitasking. 20% of your habits usually result in 80% of your success. Those are your only two choices—accountable or unaccountable.”. Let’s not be that. Think of this as your “someday” goal. Success is built sequentially. Ask the most powerful question possible, and the answer can be life-altering. A lot of our physical actions, like breathing, are being directed from a different part of our brain than where focus comes from. Great businesses are built one productive person at a time. Start with the big stuff and see where it takes you. The One Thing summary Youtube: Role of environment. Though seperate in meaning, they powerfully connect to form the foundation for achievement — regularly working at something until it regularly works for you. So how do you do all this without killing yourself? And the quote above is an example of how he dug into the 80/20 Principle to take Keller-Williams to the top of their industry. Doing the most important thing is always the most important thing. Key Insights. As the authors put it, “You want fewer distractions and less on your plate. To experience extraordinary results, be a maker in the morning and a manager in the afternoon. If you were trying to talk a passenger through landing a DC-10, you’d stop walking. Time block your ONE Thing for business energy. This is true, but not the way they mean it. Add whatever else you need to add to ensure they know not to screw with you while you’re working. Researchers estimate we lose 28 percent of an average workday to multitasking ineffectiveness. Leaving some things undone is a necessary tradeoff for extraordinary results. The Focusing Question is so deceptively simple that its power is easily dismissed by anyone who doesn’t closely examine it. For you to achieve extraordinary results, the people surrounding you and your physical surroundings must support your goals. Keller tells us we don’t need a To-Do List, we need a Success List -- a list purposely designed around your highest leverage activities… how do you find your highest leverage activities? These things happen. And when what you go for is as vast as you can possibly envision, you’ll be living the biggest life you can possibly live. As we close out this GetFlashNotes book summary, I'm going to leave you with one final insight to keep in mind and remember. “The One Thing” by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan (Book Summary) The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan is a productivity book based on a simple premise: If you want more – more productivity, income, satisfaction, time – you need to go small and want less. Success comes down to being appropriate in the moments of your life. It’s not necessarily about the exact numbers (80%; 20%) as much as it’s about the simple truth behind them, which is this: a SMALL percentage of what you do accounts for  a LARGE percentage of the results you experience. But it is possible. One Paragraph Book Summary Learn how to find the number one priority in your life and how to work towards it by protecting your limited resources like willpower and time.. YOU control the chaos… by focusing on your ONE Thing. The Focusing Question always aims you at the absolute best of both by forcing you to do what is essential to success—make a decision. We become active and busy, but this doesn’t actually move us any closer to success. The One Thing—The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary A book by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. The ONE Thing summary will teach you the focusing question from the book, why focus means saying no, and how to juggle work & personal life. One Passion, One Skill. And no one succeeds alone. This microbook is a summary/original review based on the book: The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results Available for: Read online, read in our mobile apps for iPhone/Android and send in PDF/EPUB/MOBI to Amazon Kindle. I was watching the hit comedy City Slickers, and the audience’s laughter rattled and rocked the theater. And the only way to produce real and consistent value in the marketplace, is to Prioritize your activities based around your most important goals (yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily). In time, you’ll learn to deal with the chaos in your own unique way. Coupled with my love for teaching, coaching, and connecting with people -- the biggest life I can possibly imagine (global talk show) brings all of these elements together in a way that allows me to bring massive value to the world and have the greatest impact on the highest number of people possible…. Achievement and abundance show up because they’re the natural outcomes of doing the right things with no limits attached. Even my dog Max knows this. The book discusses the value of simplifying one's workload by focusing on the one most important task in any given project. The ONE Thing Summary This book harnesses the power of ‘the domino effect’. But here’s the catch: you’re not really focused on both activities. The ONE Thing shows up time and again in the lives of the successful because it’s a fundamental truth. Say the category first, then state the question, add a time frame, and end by adding “such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” For example: “For my job, what’s the ONE Thing I can do to ensure I hit my goals this week such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”. are Purpose and Priority. Ask the wrong question, get the wrong answer. The ONE Thing In Action. When moving toward a goal, the first thing to do is ask, “Has anyone else studied or accomplished this or something like it?”. Your environment must support your goals. “Success is sequential, not simultaneous”, “Focus is a matter of deciding what things you’re NOT going to do.”, “If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one.”, Summary-in-a-Sentence: Think BIG, but focus on ONE SPECIFIC thing at a time. Can you see it? Cha-ching! Even my dog Max knows this. Normal business culture gets in the way of the very productivity it seeks because of the way people traditionally schedule their time. “Maker” time requires large blocks of the clock to write code, develop ideas, generate leads, recruit people, produce products, or execute on projects and plans. So, if you want to get the most out of your day, do your most important work—your ONE Thing—early, before your willpower is drawn down. Keep reading! The truth about success is that our ability to achieve extraordinary results in the future lies in stringing together powerful moments, one after the other. By using the good ol’ 80/20 principle. The word “can” implies action, as opposed to others, which imply intention. Book, THE ONE THING wants to explain to you what is the power of one thing. When the things that matter most get done, you’ll still be left with a sense of things being undone—a sense of imbalance. Many think that because their body is functioning without their conscious direction, they’re multitasking. In case you’re not familiar with Gary Keller (author of this book), he’s the founder of Keller-Williams Real Estate. Those with the right habits seem to do better than others. stick to one thing until you get there.” —Josh Billings 1 THE ONE THING On June 7, 1991, the earth moved for 112 minutes. Here’s a 3-part break-down of The Focusing Question: “What’s the ONE Thing I can do / such that by doing it / everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”, Crucial Quote: “How we phrase the questions we ask ourselves determines the answers that eventually become our life.”, Diggin this? This time tends to be viewed in half-day increments. This is hard. Where Keller has had huge success, he had narrowed his concentration to one thing, and where his success varied, his focus had too. So, are you looking in every direction trying to find things to do in your life? Keller mentions an excerpt from a book written by Bronnie Ware titled “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying”. Some activities can add more value to your life than others. … actually, yeah. And when you have a strong Purpose, you can become clear about your highest Priority. Can you see it? If you imagine lining up a bunch of dominos, knocking over one domino can mean knocking over a whole string of dominos. Start with as large a list as you want, but develop the mindset that you will whittle your way from there to the critical few and not stop until you end with the essential ONE. Think of this as your “someday” goal. “How we phrase the questions we ask ourselves determines the answers that eventually become our life.”. We’re right when we say something is “front and center” or “top of mind,” because that’s where focus occurs--in the prefrontal cortex. but also “small focus” ones as well (What must I do right now to be on the path to getting the big picture? Take on a third and something gets dropped.”. Why would we ever tolerate multitasking when we’re doing our most important work? Answers come from questions, and the quality of any answer is directly determined by the quality of the question. Anders Ericsson observed that “the single most important difference between these amateurs and the three groups of elite performers is that the future elite performers seek out teachers and coaches and engage in supervised training, whereas the amateurs rarely engage in similar types of practice.”. Here, the book THE ONE THING book online has been explained to you in a short story form or you can say, it is a THE ONE THING BOOK CHAPTER SUMMARY explained to you. Visualizing the process—breaking a big goal down into the steps needed to achieve it—helps engage the strategic thinking you need to plan for and achieve extraordinary results. 20% of your investments usually account for 80% of your returns. Chapter 1: THE ONE THING – this chapter introduces the one thing approach and how you can carry it out. Accountable people achieve results others only dream of. Most to-do lists are survival lists—getting you through your day and your life, but not making each day a stepping-stone for the next so that you sequentially build a successful life. Believing in big frees you to ask different questions, follow different paths, and try new things. The process of doing one thing is to remove the clutter and ignoring all the other activities. “The things which are most important don’t always scream the loudest.” — Bob Hawke. Extraordinary results are disproportionately created by fewer actions than most realize. … And by-golly, when you’ve got this pattern down-pat, you do indeed, begin generating Profit. “Life isn’t about finding yourself. The One Thing Summary: Learn the key lessons from the most important productivity book of all time with this five-minute summary. But just saying yes because you can’t bear the short-term pain of saying no is not going to help you do the work.” Love it. And once you turn a discipline into a habit, you become better at it AND it becomes easier to execute. With the quotes of THE ONE THING book is, "The surprisingly simple truth behind extraordinary results." Take on a third and something gets dropped.”. Answers come from questions, and the QUALITY OF ANY ANSWER IS DIRECTLY DETERMINED BY THE QUALITY OF THE QUESTION. At any moment in time there can be only ONE Thing, and when that ONE Thing is in line with your purpose and sits atop your priorities, it will be the most productive thing you can do to launch you toward the best you can be. The power of Keller’s Focusing Question —. Block time as early in your day as you possibly can. I want you to close your eyes and imagine your life as big as it can possible be. The ONE solution they came up with was vaccination. The One thing Book Summary 1. When big is believed to be bad, small thinking rules the day and big never sees the light of it. Only living big will let you experience your true life and work potential. After Bill retired from Microsoft, he and his wife Melinda formed ONE foundation that focused on ONE Thing: to tackle some of the world’s “really tough problems” like, The majority of the foundation’s money went to ONE area, their Global Health Program -- which had ONE goal: the use science and technology to save lives in poor countries…. *Note: checkout the FlashNotes for The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch for a deeper dive on this rule, “...what’s happening when we’re actually doing two things at once? Keller says that most people have an Entrepreneurial “E” mindset, and that in order to be more productive and effective at what we do, we should adopt a Purposeful “P” mindset. Turn off the notifications from your email app when you’re working. Not really, but it felt that way. The one thing. The next morning, we narrowed the list down to ten ideas, and from there we chose just one big idea. Here’s how you want to “line up your dominoes” within the context of your professional life (by the way, it’s the same thing for your personal life or any other area of improvement): Now all you need to do is knock each domino down until you’ve hit your Someday Goal. Bill’s ONE passion in high school was computers. Not everything is equally important. No one. You can actually give attention to two things, but that is what’s called “divided attention.” And make no mistake. The second is less predictable: you have to activate the “rules” for whatever you’re about to do. I challenged our group to brainstorm 100 ways to turn this situation around. “Manager time,” on the other hand, gets divided into hours. I can wait…. But just because it’s. When you don’t know what matters most, anything makes sense. Faith ultimately leads to action, and when we take action we avoid the very thing that could undermine or undo everything we’ve worked for--regret.”. But just because it’s simple doesn’t mean it’s easy. Success builds on success.”“I want you to do something. Highly successful people are clear about their role in the events of their life. The ONE Thing introduces a counterintuitive philosophy about succeeding in life – going small and focusing one doing only ONE thing. To achieve an extraordinary result you must choose what matters most and give it all the time it demands. The amount of dominos you knock over will depend on how nicely the others are lined up, the size of the dominos, and which one you knock over first. The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results is a non-fiction, self-help book written by authors and real estate entrepreneurs, Gary W. Keller and Jay Papasan. We overthink, overplan, and over-analyze our careers, our businesses, and our lives; that long hours are neither virtuous nor healthy; and that we usually succeed in spite of most of what we do, not because of it. It’s not that we have too little time to do all the things we need to do, it’s that we feel the need to do too many things in the time we have. Decide what the right one is, then give yourself all the time you need and apply all the discipline you can summon to develop it. Connect today to all your tomorrows. ), Voltaire once wrote, “Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.”. There are no boundaries as to who can come on my show and who cannot. Habits build on habit. When I get caught up with a basketball game on TV, he gives me a good nudge. The most successful people are the most productive people. Shut down your phone or put it on silent — not vibrate — when you’re working. That’s the power of geometric progression or the domino effect. This summary teaches you that not all activities matter equally. It took us all day to come up with the list. this part of the question lets you know you’re about to get specific. Protect your precious time blocks and remain productive. Cutting through clutter is … Second, you must continually seek the very best ways of doing things. The trick to success is to choose the right habit and bring just enough discipline to establish it. In high school, he got ONE job in the computer programing field. The ONE Thing is the best approach to getting what you want. Whatever you can see, you have the capacity to move toward. Thus, success is not achieved by doing more. I know a lot of folks that are great at blaming others but terrible at taking ownership of their lives. A new answer usually requires new behavior. If your to-do list contains everything, then it’s probably taking you everywhere but where you really want to go. Messes occur. Work with a purpose, priority, and productivity, to gain profit 3. The key to success isn’t in all the things we do but in the handful of things we do well. Here’s Seth Godin on saying no: “you can say no with respect, you can say no promptly, and you can say no with a lead to someone who might say yes. Raise your standards and listen to Oprah’s advice: “Surround yourself only with people who are going to lift you higher.”, “...at any moment in time there can be only ONE Thing, and when that ONE Thing is in line with your purpose and sits atop your priorities, it ill be the most productive thing you can do to launch you toward the best you can be. “I was truly beginning to think that the secret to success was to get as tightly wound up as possible each morning, set myself on fire, and then open the door and fly through the day, unwinding on the world, until I literally burnt out. — is that it puts you in a position to take control. If yo… Suggestion: make a sign that says “until I’m done with my ONE Thing, nothing else matters” and post it up so that it’s visible to any potential interrupters. The ONE Thing Book Summary (PDF) by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. If you can honestly say, “This is where I’m meant to be right now, doing exactly what I’m doing,” then all the amazing possibilities for your life become possible. by Richard Koch for a deeper dive on this rule, "You can do two things at once, but you can’t focus effectively on two things at once. The path of mastering something is the combination of not only doing the best you can do, but also doing it the best it can be done. How we phrase the questions we ask ourselves determines the answers that eventually become our life. One is happening in the foreground and the other in the background. Our brain has channels, and as a result we’re able to process different kinds of data in different parts of our brain. 20% of your customers usually account for 80% of your profits. In fact, the more you focus on your ONE Thing, the more of it you might get. Answering “ yes” when you know you should be focusing on your ONE Thing, puts your co-worker in control. Simple right? The Focusing Question can direct you to your ONE Thing in the different areas of your life. Actions build on action. The way to protect what you’ve said yes to and stay productive is to say no to anyone or anything that could derail you. It’s realizing that extraordinary results are directly determined by how narrow you can make your focus. This first part of the Focusing Question is about taking action… it’s not the ONE thing you “should do”, or “could do”, or “would do” — but the ONE Thing you CAN do. It means that you’re about to take action on something that actually has a purpose.\. You can also include a time frame—such as “right now” or “this year”—to give your answer the appropriate level of immediacy, or “in five years” or “someday” to find a big-picture answer that points you at outcomes to aim for. Achievers always work from a clear sense of priority. Check it out here >>. For more on Mastery, checkout the book summary on Leonard’s book. And the quote above is an example of how he dug into the 80/20 Principle to take Keller-Williams to the top of their industry. No matter the task, mission, or goal. … actually, yeah. {click to tweet}, “What’s the ONE Thing you can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”. According to research, it takes, on average, 66 days to develop a discipline into a habit. It got me success, and it got me sick. And once you’re done doing that, Keller recommends that you take your success list and whittle that down even further - taking the 20% of the 20% of the 20% until you’ve gotten it down to the vital few. Therefore, it is necessary to take good care of environmental factors in business. THAT’s Mastery. The ONE Thing : The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results - Book Summary | Read this book summary by FlashNotes this final part of the Focusing Question is about LEVERAGE. “Accountable people achieve results others can only dream of. Our purpose sets our priority and our priority determines the productivity our actions produce. Extraordinary results are rarely happenstance. And what did all of this get me? Actually, to get rid of your to-do list and make it do-only-one-thing list. Figure out what's most important + give it your undivided attention, A small dose of discipline develops into a long-lasting, Time blocking, mastery, and being accountable, You’ll want to write that down… because the whole entire book is based around that single question, and the, The key to success is figuring out your ONE most important thing in your business/career/life over the long-run. This number might vary for you depending on your situation, but remember that it’s not something that you can do over-night. This time typically has one moving from meeting to meeting, and because those who oversee or direct tend to have power and authority, “they are in a position to make everyone resonate at their frequency.”. The Focusing Question is the foundational habit Keller uses to achieve extraordinary results and lead a big life. The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results is a non-fiction, self-help book written by authors and real estate entrepreneurs, Gary W. Keller and Jay Papasan. Your big ONE Thing is your purpose and your small ONE Thing is the priority you take action on to achieve it. Stay with this long enough and it becomes routine—in other words, a habit. No one is self-made. And once you’re done doing that, Keller recommends that you take your success list and whittle that down even. This is why you can walk and talk at the same time.