The ONE Thing

“Be like a postage stamp— stick to one thing until you get there.” —Josh Billings

Where I’d had huge success, I had narrowed my concentration to one thing, and where my success varied, my focus had too.

“Going small” is ignoring all the things you could do and doing what you should do. It’s recognizing that not all things matter equally and finding the things that matter most.

You need to be doing fewer things for more effect instead of doing more things with side effects.

adding more to your work and your life without cutting anything brings a lot of bad with it: Note:If you’re gonna add, you should consider cutting.

Getting extraordinary results is all about creating a domino effect in your life. Toppling dominoes is pretty straightforward. You line them up and tip over the first one. In the real world, though, it’s a bit more complicated. The challenge is that life doesn’t line everything up for us and say, “Here’s where you should start.” Highly successful people know this. So every day they line up their priorities anew, find the lead domino, and whack away at it until it falls.

ONE PRODUCT, ONE SERVICE Extraordinarily successful companies always have one product or service they’re most known for or that makes them the most money.

“There can only be one most important thing. Many things may be important, but only one can be the most important.” —Ross Garber

No one succeeds alone. No one.

Equality is a lie.

Activity is often unrelated to productivity,

Achievers always work from a clear sense of priority.

Instead of a to-do list, you need a success list—a list that is purposefully created around extraordinary results. To-do lists tend to be long; success lists are short.

the majority of what you want will come from the minority of what you do.

The 80/20 Principle has been one of the most important guiding success rules in my career.

Keep going. You can actually take 20 percent of the 20 percent of the 20 percent and continue until you get to the single most important thing!

But this doesn’t just apply to business. On my 40th birthday, I started taking guitar lessons and quickly discovered I could give only 20 minutes a day to practice. This wasn’t much, so I knew I had to narrow down what I learned. I asked my friend Eric Johnson (one of the greatest guitarists ever) for advice. Eric said that if I could do only one thing, then I should practice my scales. So, I took his advice and chose the minor blues scale. What I discovered was that if I learned that scale, then I could play many of the solos of great classic rock guitarists from Eric Clapton to Billy Gibbons and, maybe someday, even Eric Johnson. That scale became my ONE Thing for the guitar, and it unlocked the world of rock ’n’ roll for me.

The inequality of effort for results is everywhere in your life if you will simply look for it.

Whenever you feel lost or lacking direction, you can pull it out to remind yourself to discover what matters most.

Say no. Whether you say “later” or “never,” the point is to say “not now” to anything else you could do until your most important work is done.

Don’t get trapped in the “check off” game. If we believe things don’t matter equally, we must act accordingly.

doing the most important thing is always the most important thing.

“To do two things at once is to do neither.” —Publilius Syrus

“Multitaskers were just lousy at everything.” Multitasking is a lie.

“Multitasking is merely the opportunity to screw up more than one thing at a time.” —Steve Uzzell

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.

it takes an average of 66 days to acquire a new habit.

Willpower has a limited battery life but can be recharged with some downtime.

The more we use our mind, the less minding power we have.

do your most important work—your ONE Thing—early, before your willpower is drawn down.

“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” is all wrong. I tell you “put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch that basket.”

quality of any answer is directly determined by the quality of the question.

Voltaire once wrote, “Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.”

Indira Gandhi concluded that “the power to question is the basis of all human progress.”

MY WAGE By J. B. Rittenhouse I bargained with Life for a penny, And Life would pay no more, However I begged at evening When I counted my scanty store. For Life is a just employer, He gives you what you ask, But once you have set the wages, Why, you must bear the task. I worked for a menials hire, Only to learn, dismayed, That any wage I had asked of Life, Life would have willingly paid.

The last two lines deserve repeating: “... any wage I had asked of Life, Life would have willingly paid.”

How we phrase the questions we ask ourselves determines the answers that eventually become our life.

Anyone who dreams of an uncommon life eventually discovers there is no choice but to seek an uncommon approach to living it.

Archimedes said, “Give me a lever long enough and I could move the world,”

FOR MY SPIRITUAL LIFE... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to help others... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my relationship with God... ? FOR MY PHYSICAL HEALTH... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to achieve my diet goals... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to ensure that I exercise... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to relieve my stress... ? FOR MY PERSONAL LIFE... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my skill at ________... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to find time for myself... ?

FOR MY KEY RELATIONSHIPS... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my relationship with my spouse/partner... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my children’s school performance... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to show my appreciation to my parents... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to make my family stronger... ? FOR MY JOB... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to ensure that I hit my goals... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my skills... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to help my team succeed... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to further my career... ?

FOR MY BUSINESS... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to make us more competitive... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to make our product the best... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to make us more profitable... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve our customer experience... ? FOR MY FINANCES... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to increase my net worth... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my investment cash flow... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to eliminate my credit card debt...

“What can I do to double sales in six months?” Now you have all the elements of a Great Question. It’s a big goal and it’s specific.

So if “What can I do to double sales in six months?” is a Great Question, how do you make it more powerful? Convert it to the Focusing Question: “What’s the ONE Thing I can do to double sales in six months such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”

Extraordinary results require a Great Answer.

The research and experience of others is the best place to start when looking for your answer.

When you ask yourself, “What’s the ONE Thing I can do in my life that would mean the most to me and the world, such that by doing it everything else would be easier or unnecessary?” you’re using the power of The ONE Thing to bring purpose to your life.

the further away a reward is in the future, the smaller the immediate motivation to achieve it.

Connect today to all your tomorrows. It matters.

students who visualized the process performed better across the board—they

Time blocking is a very results-oriented way of viewing and using time.

Time blocking harnesses your energy and centers it on your most important work. It’s productivity’s greatest power tool.

So, go to your calendar and block off all the time you need to accomplish 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. When you time block like this, you’re creating the most productive day possible in a way that’s repeatable every day for the rest of your life.

If disproportionate results come from one activity, then you must give that one activity disproportionate time.

To achieve extraordinary results and experience greatness, time block these three things in the following order: Time block your time off. Time block your ONE Thing. Time block your planning time.

most people work on “clock” time—“It’s five o’clock, I’ll see you tomorrow”— while others work on “event” time— “My work is done when it’s done.”

The most productive people work on event time. They don’t quit until their ONE Thing is done.

The key to making this work is to block time as early in your day as you possibly can. Give yourself 30 minutes to an hour to take care of morning priorities, then move to your ONE Thing. My recommendation is to block four hours a day. This isn’t a typo. I repeat: four hours a day.

In On Writing, Stephen King describes his work flow: “My own schedule is pretty clear-cut. Mornings belong to whatever is new—the current composition. Afternoons are for naps and letters. Evenings are for reading, family, Red Sox games on TV, and any revisions that just cannot wait. Basically, mornings are my prime writing time.” Four hours a day may scare you more than King’s novels, but you can’t argue with his results. Stephen King is one of the most successful and prolific writers of our time. Whenever I tell this story, there is always one person who says to me, “Well, sure, it’s easy for Stephen King—he’s Stephen King!” To that I simply say, “I think the question you must ask yourself is this: Does he get to do this because he is Stephen King, or is he Stephen King because he does this?”

To experience extraordinary results, be a maker in the morning and a manager in the afternoon.

Block an hour each week to review your annual and monthly goals.

There is magic in knocking down your most important domino day after day. All you have to do is avoid breaking the chain, one day at a time, until you generate a powerful new habit in your life—the time-blocking habit.*

Accountable people achieve results others only dream of.

When life happens, you can be either the author of your life or the victim of it. Those are your only two choices— accountable or unaccountable.

One of the fastest ways to bring accountability to your life is to find an accountability partner. Accountability can come from a mentor, a peer or, in its highest form, a coach. Whatever the case, it’s critical that you acquire an accountability relationship and give your partner license to lay out the honest truth.

“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.”

THE FOUR THIEVES OF PRODUCTIVITY Inability to Say “No” Fear of Chaos Poor Health Habits Environment Doesn’t Support Your Goals

When you say yes to something, it’s imperative that you understand what you’re saying no to.

You can’t please everyone, so don’t try.

“If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” —Albert Einstein

No one succeeds alone and no one fails alone. Pay attention to the people around you.

YOUR PERSONAL LIFE Let the ONE Thing bring clarity to the key areas of your life. Here’s a short sampling. What’s the ONE Thing I can do this week to discover or affirm my life’s purpose... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do in 90 days to get in the physical shape I want... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do today to strengthen my spiritual faith... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to find time to practice the guitar 20 minutes a day... ? Knock five strokes off my golf game in 90 days... ? Learn to paint in six months... ? YOUR FAMILY Use the ONE Thing with your family for fun and rewarding experiences. Here are some options.

What’s the ONE Thing we can do this week to improve our marriage... ? What’s the ONE Thing we can do every week to spend more quality family time together... ? What’s the ONE Thing we can do tonight to support our kid’s schoolwork... ? What’s the ONE Thing we can do to make our next vacation the best ever... ? Our next Christmas the best ever... ? Thanksgiving the best ever...

Now, let’s go to work and see how you might take the power of the ONE Thing with you. YOUR JOB Put the ONE Thing to work taking your professional life to the next level. Here’s a few ways to get started. What’s the ONE Thing I can do today to complete my current project ahead of schedule... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do this month to produce better work... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do before my next review to get the raise I want... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do everyday to finish my work and still get home on time... ? YOUR WORK TEAM Pull the ONE Thing into your work with others. Whether you’re a manager, executive, or even a business owner, bring ONE Thing thinking into your everyday work situations to drive productivity upward. Here are some scenarios to consider. In any meeting ask, What’s the ONE Thing we can accomplish in this meeting and end early... ? In building your team ask, What’s the ONE Thing I can do in the next six months to find and develop incredible talent... ? In planning for the next month, year, or five years ask, What’s the ONE Thing we can do right now to accomplish our goals ahead of schedule and under budget... ? In your department or at the highest company level ask, What’s the ONE Thing we can do in the next 90 days to create a ONE Thing culture... ?