The ONE Thing
by Gary Keller & Jay Papasan

  • Career
  • Ashto = 8/10
  • Jonesy = 7/10
The ONE Thing

The ONE Thing – by Gary Keller & Jay Papasan

We believe a lot of lies when it comes to work and productivity: multitasking is a lie, work-life balance is a lie, ‘everything matters equally’ is a lie. The ONE Thing helps us break down our big long term goal into a series of dominoes, then forces us to focus on just ONE thing, which is knocking over that very first domino. If you hack away at your one thing every day, eventually it will topple and set off a chain reaction, knocking over more and more dominos, and building up momentum to knock over bigger and bigger ones too.

‘The surprisingly simply truth behind extraordinary results’

 

The ONE Thing Summary

This book harnesses the power of ‘the domino effect’. If you imagine lining up a bunch of dominos, knocking over one domino can mean knocking over a whole string of dominos. 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. One domino can knock over a whole bunch of dominos, and one small domino can build up momentum to knock over subsequently larger and larger dominos. 

By identifying the right ‘lead domino’, you can knock over a lot of things and you can get the energy you need to knock over bigger and bigger things. You to do list right now is probably like a messy pile of dominos, but if you line them up nicely and tackle the one thing first, you’ll find that you can more efficiently achieve more and become more productive. 

 

With so many competing priorities and constant distractions, it can be hard to effectively get things done. This book presents a great approach to productivity and time management: each day, just focus on doing ONE thing. Yes, in most cases you’ll have a whole bunch of stuff you need to get done, but focusing on ONE thing gives you the guidance and direction to get more done. It means saying a lot of small ‘nos’ to a lot of the things you could do so that you can say one big ‘yes’ to the things you should do. It is all about realising that extraordinary results are directly determined by how narrow you can make your focus.

THE FOCUSING QUESTION: “What is the ONE thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary”

If you ask yourself ‘what is my one thing?’ You probably won’t be able to come up with the right answer just by thinking about what your most productive task will be. But if you write down your entire list of everything you need to do, if you list down 50 or 80 or 100 things you feel that you need to do, you one thing will be somewhere on that list. By casting a wide net, you can then do an 80/20 analysis (find the 20% of tasks that will yield 80% of your results) to narrow down the list from 100 items to 20 items. Do that 80/20 anaylsis again to find your core four, then another 80/20 will point to what your ONE thing is. This ONE task is the single most important task – it’s the one that answers the ‘focusing question’ and, if you do it first, the rest of your day becomes easier and more productive.

We should all have a ‘big picture’ ONE thing and a ‘small focus’ ONE thing right now. The big picture is the grand vision, the guiding force, the map that gives an overarching image of your life. The small focus is your immediate next task, that thing you need to do today to move you closer to the big picture. The common phrase is ‘don’t put all your eggs in one basket’, but the authors says the exact opposite: we should put all our eggs in one basket, but then guard that basket with everything we’ve got and fill it with eggs. Rather than going wide and shallow, we’re going narrow and deep on the ONE thing. The big picture is the basket we choose, then the small focus is the next egg we put in that basket. 

There are a bunch of lies about productivity and achievement that get debunked in this book.

LIE: Everything on your to-do list matters equally. 

TRUTH: Ticking off something small at the bottom of the list isn’t really driving you forward. 

SOLUTION: Find the ‘lead domino’ that will make the rest of your to-do list items either easier or unnecessary

 

LIE: You can multi-task to get more done. 

TRUTH: Trying to do many things means you’re not doing anything properly. There is a cost of switching tasks. The average American checks their emails 37 times per hour. Each time you move away from the task at hand, it takes time to re-orient yourself and re-focus on your work. Over the course of a day or a week or a year, the costs of these switches add up to a monumental amount of lost time.

SOLUTION: Focus solely on your ONE thing for the days and get it done before thinking about less important tasks or other distractions. Be like a postage stamp: stick to one thing until you get there“, Josh Billings.

 

LIE: To get things done, you have to be really disciplined throughout the day.

TRUTH: You don’t need to be disciplined all the time. You just need to have enough discipline to complete your ONE thing, then the day has already been a victory and you don’t need to stress abnout being hyper-disciplined for the rest of the day. 

 

LIE: Work/Life balance is the goal.

TRUTH: This is not a good thing to aim for. 

SOLUTION: Leave work at work, keep life for life. Don’t let life pull you from your work, and don’t let work creep into your life. By extremely lop-sided, not balanced. If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one“, Russian Proverb.

 

LIE: Will power is on will call, so you can ‘switch on’ and work hard at any time.

TRUTH: There is such a thing as willpower or decision fatigue. Imagine that you start your day with a full decision fuel tank. Each decision you make takes fuel – if the tank is empty, your willpower is depleted. 

SOLUTION: Use your full tank of willpower at the beginning of the day to get you through the ONE thing you need to achieve that day. Once you’ve done the hardest and most important thing of the day, you don’t need willpower anymore.

Get Your Copy of The ONE Thing by Gary Keller & Jay Papasan