LEADERSHIP LIBRARY
The ONE Thing
Gary Keller
IN BRIEF
“What’s the ONE Thing I can do, such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” By continually asking and answering that question, and by focusing on just one thing at a time, Gary Keller suggests that people can create a domino effect that leads to huge results. The hard edge of that strategy: blocking 8am until noon each day to focus on that ONE thing, and having faith in the tradeoffs that entails.
Key Concepts
The Focusing Question
“What’s the ONE Thing I can do, such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”
One thing at a time
“Success is sequential, not simultaneous. No one actually has the discipline to acquire more than one powerful new habit at a time.” (p. 59)
Don’t fight willpower
“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.” (p. 70)
“Balance” is not the right concept
“When you change your language from balancing to prioritizing, you see your choices more clearly and open the door to changing your destiny.” (p. 82)
Be guided by purpose
“The most productive people start with purpose and use it like a compass. They allow purpose to be the guiding force in determining the priority that drives their actions. This is the straightest path to extraordinary results.” (p. 132)
Block time for your ONE Thing
“If it’s a onetime ONE Thing, block off the appropriate hours and days. If it’s a regular thing, block off the appropriate time every day so it becomes a habit. Everything else—other projects, paperwork, e-mail, calls, correspondence, meetings, and all the other stuff— must wait.” (pp. 159-60)
“My recommendation is to block four hours a day. This isn’t a typo. I repeat: four hours a day. Honestly, that’s the minimum. If you can do more, then do it.” (p. 165)
“Depending on your situation, your time block might initially look different from others’. Each of our situations is unique.” (p. 197)
Go for mastery
“Achieving extraordinary results through time blocking requires three commitments. First, you must adopt the mindset of someone seeking mastery. ...Second, you must continually seek the very best ways of doing things. Nothing is more futile than doing your best using an approach that can’t deliver results equal to your effort. And last, you must be willing to be held accountable to doing everything you can to achieve your ONE Thing.” (p. 175)
Quotables
“Finally, out of desperation, I went as small as I could possibly go and asked: ‘What’s the ONE Thing you can do this week such that by doing it everything else would be easier or unnecessary?’ And the most awesome thing happened. Results went through the roof.” (p. 9)
“The problem with trying to do too much is that even if it works, adding more to your work and your life without cutting anything brings a lot of bad with it: missed deadlines, disappointing results, high stress, long hours, lost sleep, poor diet, no exercise, and missed moments with family and friends— all in the name of going after something that is easier to get than you might imagine.” (p. 10)
“When you see someone who has a lot of knowledge, they learned it over time. When you see someone who has a lot of skills, they developed them over time. When you see someone who has done a lot, they accomplished it over time. When you see someone who has a lot of money, they earned it over time.” (p. 16)
“When everything feels urgent and important, everything seems equal. We become active and busy, but this doesn’t actually move us any closer to success.” (p. 33)
“...[D]oing the most important thing is always the most important thing.” (p. 42)
“The payoff from developing the right habit is pretty obvious. It gets you the success you’re searching for. What sometimes gets overlooked, however, is an amazing windfall: it also simplifies your life.” (p. 57)
“Willpower has a limited battery life but can be recharged with some downtime. It’s a limited but renewable resource.” (p. 65)
“Seen as something we ultimately attain, balance is actually something we constantly do.” (p. 72)
“Leaving some things undone is a necessary tradeoff for extraordinary results.” (p. 80)
“Whether you seek answers big or small, asking the Focusing Question is the ultimate success habit for your life.” (p. 110)
“If you’re not serious about learning the Success Habit, you’re not serious about getting extraordinary results.”
“This is how big problems are solved and big challenges are overcome, for the best answers rarely come from an ordinary process. ...Because your answer will be original, you’ll probably have to reinvent yourself in some way to implement it.” (p. 126)
“I believe that financially wealthy people are those who have enough money coming in without having to work to finance their purpose in life.” (p. 142)
“The prescription for extraordinary results is knowing what matters to you and taking daily doses of actions in alignment with it. When you have a definite purpose for your life, clarity comes faster, which leads to more conviction in your direction, which usually leads to faster decisions. When you make faster decisions, you’ll often be the one who makes the first decisions and winds up with the best choices.” (p. 143)
“When your life is on purpose, living by priority takes precedence.” (p. 147)
“In the end, putting together a life of extraordinary results simply comes down to getting the most out of what you do, when what you do matters.” (p. 156)
“If disproportionate results come from one activity, then you must give that one activity disproportionate time.” (p. 161)
“By planning your time off in advance, you are, in effect, managing your work time around your downtime instead of the other way around.” (p. 164)
“To experience extraordinary results, be a maker in the morning and a manager in the afternoon.” (p.168)
“The path of mastering something is the combination of not only doing the best you can do at it, but also doing it the best it can be done.” (p. 179)
“Taking complete ownership of your outcomes by holding no one but yourself responsible for them is the most powerful thing you can do to drive your success. As such, accountability is most likely the most important of the three commitments.” (p. 183)
“When you say yes to something, it’s imperative that you understand what you’re saying no to.” (p. 192)
“Messes are inevitable when you focus on just one thing. While you whittle away on your most important work, the world doesn’t sit and wait. It stays on fast forward and things just rack up and stack up while you bear down on a singular priority.” (p. 195)
“Ultimately I stumbled on a simple point of view: A life worth living might be measured in many ways, but the one way that stands above all others is living a life of no regrets.” (p. 212)
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