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The ONE Thing - The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results (PDFDrive)
The ONE Thing - The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results (PDFDrive)
RUSSIAN PROVERB
CONTENTS
1. The ONE Thing
2. The Domino Effect
3. Success Leaves Clues
PART 1
THE LIES
THEY MISLEAD AND DERAIL US
4. Everything Matters Equally
5. Multitasking
6. A Disciplined Life
7. Willpower Is Always on Will-Call
8. A Balanced Life
9. Big Is Bad
PART 2
THE TRUTH
THE SIMPLE PATH TO PRODUCTIVITY
10. The Focusing Question
11. The Success Habit
12. The Path to Great Answers
PART 3
EXTRAORDINARY RESULTS
UNLOCKING THE POSSIBILITIES WITHIN YOU
13. Live with Purpose
14. Live by Priority
15. Live for Productivity
16. The Three Commitments
17. The Four Thieves
18. The Journey
GOING SMALL
If everyone has the same number of hours in a day, why do some people seem to
get so much more done than others? How do they do more, achieve more, earn
more, have more? If time is the currency of achievement, then why are some
able to cash in their allotment for more chips than others? The answer is they
make getting to the heart of things the heart of their approach. They go small.
When you want the absolute best chance to succeed at anything you want,
your approach should always be the same. Go small.
“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. It’s a tighter way to connect what you do with what you
want. It’s realizing that extraordinary results are directly determined by how
narrow you can make your focus.
The way to get the most out of your work and your life is to go as small as
possible. Most people think just the opposite. They think big success is time
consuming and complicated. As a result, their calendars and to-do lists become
overloaded and overwhelming. Success starts to feel out of reach, so they settle
for less. Unaware that big success comes when we do a few things well, they get
lost trying to do too much and in the end accomplish too little. Over time they
lower their expectations, abandon their dreams, and allow their life to get small.
This is the wrong thing to make small.
You have only so much time and energy, so when you spread yourself out,
you end up spread thin. You want your achievements to add up, but that actually
takes subtraction, not addition. You need to be doing fewer things for more
effect instead of doing more things with side effects. 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.
Going small is a simple approach to extraordinary results, and it works. It
works all the time, anywhere and on anything. Why? Because it has only one
purpose—to ultimately get you to the point.
When you go as small as possible, you’ll be staring at one thing. And that’s
the point.
2 THE DOMINO EFFECT
In Leeuwarden, The Netherlands, on
“Every great change starts like Domino Day, November 13, 2009,
falling dominoes.” Weijers Domino Productions
— BJ Thornton
coordinated the world record domino
fall by lining up more than 4,491,863
dominoes in a dazzling display In this instance, a single domino set in motion a
domino fall that cumulatively unleashed more than 94,000 joules of energy,
which is as much energy as it takes for an average-sized male to do 545 pushups.
Each standing domino represents a small amount of potential energy; the
more you line up, the more potential energy you’ve accumulated. Line up
enough and, with a simple flick, you can start a chain reaction of surprising
power. And Weijers Domino Productions proved it. When one thing, the right
thing, is set in motion, it can topple many things. And that’s not all.
In 1983, Lorne Whitehead wrote in the American Journal of Physics that
he’d discovered that domino falls could not only topple many things, they could
also topple bigger things. He described how a single domino is capable of
bringing down another domino that is actually 50 percent larger.
FIG. 1 A geometric domino progression.
FIG. 2 A geometric progression is like a long, long train — it starts out too slow to notice until it’s moving
too fast to stop.
Do you see the implication? Not only can one knock over others but also
others that are successively larger. In 2001 a physicist from San Francisco’s
Exploratorium reproduced Whitehead’s experiment by creating eight dominoes
out of plywood, each of which was 50 percent larger than the one before. The
first was a mere two inches, the last almost three feet tall. The resulting domino
fall began with a gentle tick and quickly ended “with a loud SLAM.”
Imagine what would happen if this kept going. If a regular domino fall is a
linear progression, Whitehead’s would be described as a geometric progression.
The result could defy the imagination. The 10th domino would be almost as tall
as NFL quarterback Peyton Manning. By the 18th, you’re looking at a domino
that would rival the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The 23rd domino would tower over
the Eiffel Tower and the 31st domino would loom over Mount Everest by almost
3,000 feet. Number 57 would practically bridge the distance between the earth
and the moon!
ONE LIFE
If I had to choose only one example of someone who has harnessed the ONE
Thing to build an extraordinary life, it would be American businessman Bill
Gates. Bill’s one passion in high school was computers, which led him to
develop one skill, computer programming. While in high school he met one
person, Paul Allen, who gave him his first job and became his partner in forming
Microsoft. This happened as the result of one letter they sent to one person, Ed
Roberts, who changed their lives forever by giving them a shot at writing the
code for one computer, the Altair 8800—and they needed only one shot.
Microsoft began its life to do one thing, develop and sell BASIC interpreters for
the Altair 8800, which eventually made Bill Gates the richest man in the world
for 15 straight years. When he retired from Microsoft, Bill chose one person to
replace him as CEO— Steve Ballmer, whom he met in college. By the way,
Steve was Microsoft’s 30th employee but the first business manager hired by
Bill. And the story doesn’t end there.
Bill and Melinda Gates decided to put their wealth to work making a
difference in the world. Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, they
formed one foundation to do ONE Thing: to tackle “really tough problems” like
health and education. Since its inception, the majority of the foundation’s grants
have gone to one area, Bill and Melinda’s Global Health Program. This
ambitious program’s one goal is to harness advances in science and technology
to save lives in poor countries. To do this they eventually settled on one thing—
stamp out infectious disease as a major cause of death in their lifetime. At some
point in their journey, they made a decision to focus on one thing that would do
this—vaccines. Bill explained the decision by saying, “We had to choose what
the most impactful thing to give would be... . The magic tool of health
intervention is vaccines, because they can be made inexpensively.” A singular
line of questioning led them down this one path when Melinda asked, “Where’s
the place you can have the biggest impact with the money?” Bill and Melinda
Gates are living proof of the power of the ONE Thing.
ONE THING
The doors to the world have been flung wide open, and the view that’s available
is staggering. Through technology and innovation, opportunities abound and
possibilities seem endless. As inspiring as this can be, it can be equally
overwhelming. The unintended consequence of abundance is that we are
bombarded with more information and choices in a day than our ancestors
received in a lifetime. Harried and hurried, a nagging sense that we attempt too
much and accomplish too little haunts our days.
We sense intuitively that the path to more is through less, but the question
is, Where to begin? From all that life has to offer, how do you choose? How do
you make the best decisions possible, experience life at an extraordinary level,
and never look back?
Live the ONE Thing.
What Curly knew, all successful people know. The ONE Thing sits at the
heart of success and is the starting point for achieving extraordinary results.
Based on research and real-life experience, it’s a big idea about success wrapped
in a disarmingly simple package. Explaining it is easy; buying into it can be
tough.
So, before we can have a frank, heart-to-heart discussion about how the
ONE Thing actually works, I want to openly discuss the myths and
misinformation that keep us from accepting it. They are the lies of success.
Once we banish these from our minds, we can take up the ONE Thing with
an open mind and a clear path.
1
THE LIES
THEY MISLEAD AND DERAIL US
“It ain’t what you don’t know that
gets you into trouble. It’s what
you know for sure that just ain’t
so.”
—Mark Twain
The six lies are beliefs that get into our heads and become operational
principles driving us the wrong way. Highways that end as bunny trails. Fool’s
gold that diverts us from the mother lode. If we’re going to maximize our
potential, we’re going to have to make sure we put these lies to bed.
4 EVERYTHING MATTERS EQUALLY
Equality is a worthy ideal pursued in the
“Things which matter most must name of justice and human rights. In the
never be at the mercy of things real world of results, however, things
which matter least.” are never equal. No matter how teachers
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
grade—two students are not equal. No
matter how fair officials try to be—
contests are not equal. No matter how talented people are—no two are ever
equal. A dime equals ten cents and people must absolutely be treated fairly, but
in the world of achievement everything doesn’t matter equally.
Equality is a lie.
Understanding this is the basis of all great decisions.
So, how do you decide? When you have a lot to get done in the day, how do
you decide what to do first? As kids, we mostly did things we needed to do when
it was time to do them. It’s breakfast time. It’s time to go to school, time to do
homework, time to do chores, bath time, bedtime. Then, as we got older, we were
given a measure of discretion. You can go out and play as long as you get your
homework done before dinner. Later, as we became adults, everything became
discretionary. It all became our choice. And when our lives are defined by our
choices, the all-important question becomes, How do we make good ones?
Complicating matters, the older we get, it seems there is more and more
piled on that we believe “simply must get done.” Overbooked, overextended,
and overcommitted. “In the weeds” overwhelmingly becomes our collective
condition.
That’s when the battle for the right of way gets fierce and frantic. Lacking a
clear formula for making decisions, we get reactive and fall back on familiar,
comfortable ways to decide what to do. As a result, we haphazardly select
approaches that undermine our success. Pinballing through our day like a
confused character in a B-horror movie, we end up running up the stairs instead
of out the front door. The best decision gets traded for any decision, and what
should be progress simply becomes a trap.
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.
Activity is often unrelated to productivity, and busyness rarely takes care of
business.
As Henry David Thoreau said, “It’s
“The things which are most not enough to be busy, so are the ants.
important don’t always scream The question is, what are we busy
the loudest.” about?” Knocking out a hundred tasks
—Bob Hawke for whatever the reason is a poor
substitute for doing even one task that’s
meaningful. Not everything matters equally, and success isn’t a game won by
whoever does the most. Yet that is exactly how most play it on a daily basis.
FIG. 3 The 80/20 Principle says the minority of your effort leads to the majority of your results.
Pareto points us in a very clear direction: the majority of what you want
will come from the minority of what you do. Extraordinary results are
disproportionately created by fewer actions than most realize.
Don’t get hung up on the numbers. Pareto’s truth is about inequality, and
though often stated as an 80/20 ratio, it can actually take a variety of proportions.
Depending on the circumstances, it can easily play out as, say, 90/20, where 90
percent of your success comes from 20 percent of your effort. Or 70/10 or 65/5.
But understand that these are all fundamentally working off the same principle.
Juran’s great insight was that not everything matters equally; some things matter
more than others—a lot more. A to-do list becomes a success list when you
apply Pareto’s Principle to it.
FIG. 4 A to-do list becomes a success list when you prioritize it.
The 80/20 Principle has been one of the most important guiding success
rules in my career. It describes the phenomenon which, like Juran, I’ve observed
in my own life over and over again. A few ideas gave me most of my results.
Some clients were far more valuable than others; a small number of people
created most of my business success; and a handful of investments put the most
money in my pocket. Everywhere I turned, the concept of unequal distribution
popped up. The more it showed up, the more I paid attention—and the more I
paid attention, the more it showed up. Finally I quit thinking it was a coincidence
and began to apply it as the absolute principle of success that it is—not only to
my life, but also in working with everyone else, as well. And the results were
extraordinary.
EXTREME PARETO
Pareto proves everything I’m telling you—but there’s a catch. He doesn’t go far
enough. I want you to go further. I want you to take Pareto’s Principle to an
extreme. I want you to go small by identifying the 20 percent, and then I want
you to go even smaller by finding the vital few of the vital few. The 80/20 rule is
the first word, but not the last, about success. What Pareto started, you’ve got to
finish. Success requires that you follow the 80/20 Principle, but you don’t have
to stop there.
FIG. 5 No matter how many to-dos you start with, you can always narrow it to one.
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! (See figure
5.) No matter the task, mission, or goal. Big or small. 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. The
imperative ONE. The ONE Thing.
In 2001, I called a meeting of our key executive team. As fast as we were
growing, we were still not acknowledged by the very top people in our industry.
I challenged our group to brainstorm 100 ways to turn this situation around. It
took us all day to come up with the list. The next morning, we narrowed the list
down to ten ideas, and from there we chose just one big idea. The one that we
decided on was that I would write a book on how to become an elite performer
in our industry. It worked. Eight years later that one book had not only become a
national bestseller, but also had morphed into a series of books with total sales of
over a million copies. In an industry of about a million people, one thing
changed our image forever.
Now, again, stop and do the math. One idea out of 100. That is Pareto to the
extreme. That’s thinking big, but going very small. That’s applying the ONE
Thing to a business challenge in a truly powerful way.
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. And if you apply this principle, it will unlock the success you
seek in anything that matters to you. There will always be just a few things that
matter more than the rest, and out of those, one will matter most. Internalizing
this concept is like being handed a magic compass. Whenever you feel lost or
lacking direction, you can pull it out to remind yourself to discover what matters
most.
BIG IDEAS
1. Go small. Don’t focus on being busy; focus on being
productive. Allow what matters most to drive your day.
2. Go extreme. Once you’ve figured out what actually matters, keep asking
what matters most until there is only one thing left. That core activity goes
at the top of your success list.
3. 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.
4. Don’t get trapped in the “check off” game. If we believe things don’t matter
equally, we must act accordingly. We can’t fall prey to the notion that
everything has to be done, that checking things off our list is what success
is all about. We can’t be trapped in a game of “check off” that never
produces a winner. The truth is that things don’t matter equally and success
is found in doing what matters most.
Sometimes it’s the first thing you do. Sometimes it’s the only thing you do.
Regardless, doing the most important thing is always the most important thing.
5 MULTITASKING
So, if doing the most important thing is
“To do two things at once is to the most important thing, why would
do neither.” you try to do anything else at the same
—Publilius Syrus
time? It’s a great question.
In the summer of 2009, Clifford
Nass set out to answer just that. His mission? To find out how well so-called
multitaskers multitasked. Nass, a professor at Stanford University, told the New
York Times that he had been “in awe” of multitaskers and deemed himself to be
a poor one. So he and his team of researchers gave 262 students questionnaires
to determine how often they multitasked. They divided their test subjects into
two groups of high and low multitaskers and began with the presumption that the
frequent multitaskers would perform better. They were wrong.
“I was sure they had some secret ability” said Nass. “But it turns out that
high multitaskers are suckers for irrelevancy.” They were outperformed on every
measure. Although they’d convinced themselves and the world that they were
great at it, there was just one problem. To quote Nass, “Multitaskers were just
lousy at everything.”
Multitasking is a lie.
It’s a lie because nearly everyone accepts it as an effective thing to do. It’s
become so mainstream that people actually think it’s something they should do,
and do as often as possible. We not only hear talk about doing it, we even hear
talk about getting better at it. More than six million webpages offer answers on
how to do it, and career websites list “multitasking” as a skill for employers to
target and for prospective hires to list as a strength. Some have gone so far as to
be proud of their supposed skill and have adopted it as a way of life. But it’s
actually a “way of lie,” for the truth is multitasking is neither efficient nor
effective. In the world of results, it will fail you every time.
When you try to do two things at
“Multitasking is merely the once, you either can’t or won’t do either
opportunity to screw up more well. If you think multitasking is an
than one thing at a time.” effective way to get more done, you’ve
—Steve Uzzell got it backward. It’s an effective way to
get less done. As Steve Uzzell said,
“Multitasking is merely the opportunity to screw up more than one thing at a
time.”
MONKEY MIND
The concept of humans doing more than one thing at a time has been studied by
psychologists since the 1920s, but the term “multitasking” didn’t arrive on the
scene until the 1960s. It was used to describe computers, not people. Back then,
ten megahertz was apparently so mind-bogglingly fast that a whole new word
was needed to describe a computer’s ability to quickly perform many tasks. In
retrospect, they probably made a poor choice, for the expression “multitasking”
is inherently deceptive. Multitasking is about multiple tasks alternately sharing
one resource (the CPU), but in time the context was flipped and it became
interpreted to mean multiple tasks being done simultaneously by one resource (a
person). It was a clever turn of phrase that’s misleading, for even computers can
process only one piece of code at a time. When they “multitask,” they switch
back and forth, alternating their attention until both tasks are done. The speed
with which computers tackle multiple tasks feeds the illusion that everything
happens at the same time, so comparing computers to humans can be confusing.
People can actually do two or more things at once, such as walk and talk, or
chew gum and read a map; but, like computers, what we can’t do is focus on two
things at once. Our attention bounces back and forth. This is fine for computers,
but it has serious repercussions in humans. Two airliners are cleared to land on
the same runway. A patient is given the wrong medicine. A toddler is left
unattended in the bathtub. What all these potential tragedies share is that people
are trying to do too many things at once and forget to do something they should
do.
It’s strange, but somehow over time the image of the modern human has
become one of a multitasker. We think we can, so we think we should. Kids
studying while texting, listening to music, or watching television. Adults driving
while talking on the phone, eating, applying makeup, or even shaving. Doing
something in one room while talking to someone in the next. Smartphones in
hands before napkins hit laps. 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. So we double and triple up in the hope of getting everything done.
And then there’s work.
The modern office is a carnival of distracting multitasking demands. While
you diligently try to complete a project, someone has a coughing fit in a nearby
cubicle and asks if you have a lozenge. The office paging system continually
calls out messages that anyone within earshot of an intercom hears. You’re
alerted around the clock to new e-mails arriving in your inbox while your social
media newsfeed keeps trying to catch your eye and your cell phone
intermittently vibrates on the desk to the tune of a new text. A stack of unopened
mail and piles of unfinished work sit within sight as people keep swinging by
your desk all day to ask you questions. Distraction, disturbance, disruption.
Staying on task is exhausting. Researchers estimate that workers are interrupted
every 11 minutes and then spend almost a third of their day recovering from
these distractions. And yet amid all of this we still assume we can rise above it
and do what has to be done within our deadlines.
But we’re fooling ourselves. Multitasking is a scam. Poet laureate Billy
Collins summed it up well: “We call it multitasking, which makes it sound like
an ability to do lots of things at the same time. ... A Buddhist would call this
monkey mind.” We think we’re mastering multitasking, but we’re just driving
ourselves bananas.
JUGGLING IS AN ILLUSION
We come by it naturally. With an average of 4,000 thoughts a day flying in and
out of our heads, it’s easy to see why we try to multitask. If a change in thought
every 14 seconds is an invitation to change direction, then it’s rather obvious
we’re continually tempted to try to do too much at once. While doing one thing
we’re only seconds away from thinking of something else we could do.
Moreover, history suggests that our continued existence may have required that
human beings evolve to be able to oversee multiple tasks at the same time. Our
ancestors wouldn’t have lasted long if they couldn’t scan for predators while
gathering berries, tanning hides, or just idling by the fire after a hard day
hunting. The pull to juggle more than one task at a time is not only at the core of
how we’re wired, but was most likely a necessity for survival.
But juggling isn’t multitasking.
Juggling is an illusion. To the casual observer, a juggler is juggling three
balls at once. In reality, the balls are being independently caught and thrown in
rapid succession. Catch, toss, catch, toss, catch, toss. One ball at a time. It’s what
researchers refer to as “task switching.”
When you switch from one task to another, voluntarily or not, two things
happen. The first is nearly instantaneous: you decide to switch. The second is
less predictable: you have to activate the “rules” for whatever you’re about to do
(see figure 6). Switching between two simple tasks—like watching television
and folding clothes—is quick and relatively painless. However, if you’re
working on a spreadsheet and a co-worker pops into your office to discuss a
business problem, the relative complexity of those tasks makes it impossible to
easily jump back and forth. It always takes some time to start a new task and
restart the one you quit, and there’s no guarantee that you’ll ever pick up exactly
where you left off. There is a price for this. “The cost in terms of extra time from
having to task switch depends on how complex or simple the tasks are,” reports
researcher Dr. David Meyer. “It can range from time increases of 25 percent or
less for simple tasks to well over 100 percent or more for very complicated
tasks.” Task switching exacts a cost few realize they’re even paying.
BRAIN CHANNELS
So, what’s happening when we’re actually doing two things at once? It’s simple.
We’ve separated them. Our brain has channels, and as a result we’re able to
process different kinds of data in different parts of our brain. This is why you
can talk and walk at the same time. There is no channel interference. But here’s
the catch: you’re not really focused on both activities. One is happening in the
foreground and the other in the background. If you were trying to talk a
passenger through landing a DC-10, you’d stop walking. Likewise, if you were
walking across a gorge on a rope bridge, you’d likely stop talking. You can do
two things at once, but you can’t focus effectively on two things at once. Even
my dog Max knows this. When I get caught up with a basketball game on TV, he
gives me a good nudge. Apparently, background scratches can be pretty
unsatisfying.
Many think that because their body is functioning without their conscious
direction, they’re multitasking. This is true, but not the way they mean it. A lot
of our physical actions, like breathing, are being directed from a different part of
our brain than where focus comes from. As a result, there’s no channel conflict.
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. When you focus,
it’s like shining a spotlight on what matters. You can actually give attention to
two things, but that is what’s called “divided attention.” And make no mistake.
Take on two things and your attention gets divided. Take on a third and
something gets dropped.
The problem of trying to focus on two things at once shows up when one
task demands more attention or if it crosses into a channel already in use. When
your spouse is describing the way the living room furniture has been rearranged,
you engage your visual cortex to see it in your mind’s eye. If you happen to be
driving at that moment, this channel interference means you are now seeing the
new sofa and love seat combination and are effectively blind to the car braking
in front of you. You simply can’t effectively focus on two important things at the
same time.
Every time we try to do two or more things at once, we’re simply dividing
up our focus and dumbing down all of the outcomes in the process. Here’s the
short list of how multitasking short-circuits us:
1. There is just so much brain capability at any one time. Divide it up as much
as you want, but you’ll pay a price in time and effectiveness.
2. The more time you spend switched to another task, the less likely you are to
get back to your original task. This is how loose ends pile up.
3. Bounce between one activity and another and you lose time as your brain
reorients to the new task. Those milliseconds add up. Researchers estimate
we lose 28 percent of an average workday to multitasking ineffectiveness.
4. Chronic multitaskers develop a distorted sense of how long it takes to do
things. They almost always believe tasks take longer to complete than is
actually required.
5. Multitaskers make more mistakes than non-multitaskers. They often make
poorer decisions because they favor new information over old, even if the
older information is more valuable.
6. Multitaskers experience more life-reducing, happiness-squelching stress.
DRIVEN TO DISTRACTION
In 2009, New York Times reporter Matt Richtel earned a Pulitzer Prize for
National Reporting with a series of articles (“Driven to Distraction”) on the
dangers of driving while texting or using cell phones. He found that distracted
driving is responsible for 16 percent of all traffic fatalities and nearly half a
million injuries annually. Even an idle phone conversation when driving takes a
40 percent bite out of your focus and, surprisingly, can have the same effect as
being drunk. The evidence is so compelling that many states and municipalities
have outlawed cell phone use while driving. This makes sense. Though some of
us at times have been guilty, we’d never condone it for our teenage kids. All it
takes is a text message to turn the family SUV into a deadly, two-ton battering
ram. Multitasking can cause more than one type of wreck.
We know that multitasking can even be fatal when lives are at stake. In fact,
we fully expect pilots and surgeons to focus on their jobs to the exclusion of
everything else. And we expect that anyone in their position who gets caught
doing otherwise will always be taken severely to task. We accept no arguments
and have no tolerance for anything but total concentration from these
professionals. And yet, here the rest of us are—living another standard. Do we
not value our own job or take it as seriously? Why would we ever tolerate
multitasking when we’re doing our most important work? Just because our day
job doesn’t involve bypass surgery shouldn’t make focus any less critical to our
success or the success of others. Your work deserves no less respect. It may not
seem so in the moment, but the connectivity of everything we do ultimately
means that we each not only have a job to do, but a job that deserves to be done
well. Think of it this way. If we really lose almost a third of our workday to
distractions, what is the cumulative loss over a career? What is the loss to other
careers? To businesses? When you think about it, you might just discover that if
you don’t figure out a way to resolve this, you could in fact lose your career or
your business. Or worse, cause others to lose theirs.
On top of work, what sort of toll do our distractions take on our personal
lives? Author Dave Crenshaw put it just right when he wrote, “The people we
live with and work with on a daily basis deserve our full attention. When we
give people segmented attention, piecemeal time, switching back and forth, the
switching cost is higher than just the time involved. We end up damaging
relationships.” Every time I see a couple dining with one partner trying earnestly
to communicate while the other is texting under the table, I’m reminded of the
simple truth of that statement.
BIG IDEAS
1. Distraction is natural. Don’t feel bad when you get distracted.
Everyone gets distracted.
2. Multitasking takes a toll. At home or at work, distractions lead to poor
choices, painful mistakes, and unnecessary stress.
3. Distraction undermines results. When you try to do too much at once, you can
end up doing nothing well. Figure out what matters most in the moment and
give it your undivided attention.
In order to be able to put the principle of The ONE Thing to work, you
can’t buy into the lie that trying to do two things at once is a good idea. Though
multitasking is sometimes possible, it’s never possible to do it effectively.
6 A DISCIPLINED LIFE
There is this pervasive idea that the
“It’s one of the most prevalent successful person is the “disciplined
myths of our culture: self- person” who leads a “disciplined life.”
discipline.” It’s a lie.
—Leo Babauta
The truth is we don’t need any
more discipline than we already have.
We just need to direct and manage it a little better.
Contrary to what most people believe, success is not a marathon of
disciplined action. Achievement doesn’t require you to be a full-time disciplined
person where your every action is trained and where control is the solution to
every situation. Success is actually a short race—a sprint fueled by discipline
just long enough for habit to kick in and take over.
When we know something that needs to be done but isn’t currently getting
done, we often say, “I just need more discipline.” Actually, we need the habit of
doing it. And we need just enough discipline to build the habit.
In any discussion about success, the words “discipline” and “habit”
ultimately intersect. Though separate in meaning, they powerfully connect to
form the foundation for achievement—regularly working at something until it
regularly works for you. When you discipline yourself, you’re essentially
training yourself to act in a specific way. Stay with this long enough and it
becomes routine—in other words, a habit. So when you see people who look like
“disciplined” people, what you’re really seeing is people who’ve trained a
handful of habits into their lives. This makes them seem “disciplined” when
actually they’re not. No one is.
And who would want to be, anyway? The very thought of having your
every behavior molded and maintained by training seems frighteningly
impossible on one hand and utterly boring on the other. Most people ultimately
reach this conclusion but, seeing no alternative, redouble their efforts at the
impossible or quietly quit. Frustration shows up and resignation eventually sets
in.
You don’t need to be a disciplined person to be successful. In fact, 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 trick to success is to choose the right habit and bring just enough
discipline to establish it. That’s it. That’s all the discipline you need. As this
habit becomes part of your life, you’ll start looking like a disciplined person, but
you won’t be one. What you will be is someone who has something regularly
working for you because you regularly worked on it. You’ll be a person who
used selected discipline to build a powerful habit.
FIG. 7 Once a new behavior becomes a habit, it takes less discipline to maintain.
BIG IDEAS
1. Don’t be a disciplined person. Be a person of powerful habits
and use selected discipline to develop them.
2. Build one habit 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. Super-successful people aren’t superhuman at all; they’ve just used
selected discipline to develop a few significant habits. One at a time. Over
time.
3. Give each habit enough time. Stick with the discipline long enough for it to
become routine. Habits, on average, take 66 days to form. Once a habit is
solidly established, you can either build on that habit or, if appropriate,
build another one.
If you are what you repeatedly do, then achievement isn’t an action you
take but a habit you forge into your life. You don’t have to seek out success.
Harness the power of selected discipline to build the right habit, and
extraordinary results will find you.
7 WILLPOWER IS ALWAYS ON
WILLCALL
Why would you ever do something the
“Odysseus understood how hard way? Why would you ever
weak willpower actually is when knowingly get behind the eight ball,
he asked his crew to bind him to deliberately crawl between a rock and a
the mast while sailing by the hard place, or intentionally work with
seductive Sirens.” one hand tied behind your back? You
—Patricia Cohen
wouldn’t. But most people unwittingly
do every day. When we tie our success
to our willpower without understanding what that really means, we set ourselves
up for failure. And we don’t have to.
Often quoted as a statement about sheer determination, the old English
proverb “Where there’s a will, there’s a way” has probably misled as many as
it’s helped. It just rolls off the tongue and passes so quickly through our head
that few stop to hear its full meaning. Widely regarded as the singular source of
personal strength, it gets misinterpreted as a cleverly phrased, one-dimensional
prescription for success. But for will to have its most powerful way, there’s more
to it than that. Construe willpower as just a call for character and you miss its
other equally essential element: timing. It’s a critical piece.
For most of my life I never gave willpower much thought. Once I did, it
captivated me. The ability to control oneself to determine one’s actions is a
pretty powerful idea. Base it on training and it’s called discipline. But do it
because you simply can, that’s raw power. The power of will.
It seemed so straightforward: invoke my will and success was mine. I was
on my way. Sadly, I didn’t need to pack much, for it was a short trip. As I set out
to impose my will against defenseless goals, I quickly discovered something
discouraging: I didn’t always have willpower. One moment I had it, the next—
poof! I didn’t. One day it was AWOL, the next— bang! It was at my beck and
call. My willpower seemed to come and go as if it had a life of its own. Building
success around full strength, on-demand willpower proved unsuccessful. My
initial thought was, What’s wrong with me? Was I a loser? Apparently so. It
seemed I had no grit. No strength of character. No inner fortitude. Consequently,
I gutted it up, bore down with determination, doubled my effort, and reached a
humbling conclusion: willpower isn’t on willcall. As powerful as my motivation
was, my willpower wasn’t just sitting around waiting for my call, ready at any
moment to enforce my will on anything I wanted. I was taken aback. I had
always assumed that it would always be there. That I could simply access it
whenever I wanted, to get whatever I wanted. I was wrong.
Willpower is always on willcall is a lie.
Most people assume willpower matters, but many might not fully
appreciate how critical it is to our success. One highly unusual research project
revealed just how important it really is.
TODDLER TORTURE
In the late ’60s and early ’70s, researcher Walter Mischel began methodically
tormenting four-year-olds at Stanford University’s Bing Nursery School. More
than 500 children were volunteered for the diabolical program by their own
parents, many of whom would later, like millions of others, laugh mercilessly at
videos of the squirming, miserable kids. The devilish experiment was called
“The Marshmallow Test.” It was an interesting way to look at willpower.
Kids were offered one of three treats—a pretzel, a cookie, or the now
infamous marshmallow. The child was told that the researcher had to step away,
and if he could wait 15 minutes until the researcher returned, he’d be awarded a
second treat. One treat now or two later. (Mischel knew they’d designed the test
well when a few of the kids wanted to quit as soon as they explained the ground
rules.)
Left alone with a marshmallow they couldn’t eat, kids engaged in all kinds
of delay strategies, from closing their eyes, pulling their own hair, and turning
away, to hovering over, smelling, and even caressing their treats. On average,
kids held out less than three minutes. And only three out of ten managed to delay
their gratification until the researcher returned. It was pretty apparent most kids
struggled with delayed gratification. Willpower was in short supply.
Initially no one assumed anything about what success or failure in the
marshmallow test might say about a child’s future. That insight came about
organically. Mischel’s three daughters attended Bing Nursery School, and over
the next few years, he slowly began to see a pattern when he’d ask them about
classmates who had participated in the experiment. Children who had
successfully waited for the second treat seemed to be doing better. A lot better.
Starting in 1981, Mischel began systematically tracking down the original
subjects. He requested transcripts, compiled records, and mailed questionnaires
in an attempt to measure their relative academic and social progress. His hunch
was correct—willpower or the ability to delay gratification was a huge indicator
of future success. Over the next 30-plus years, Mischel and his colleagues
published numerous papers on how “high delayers” fared better. Success in the
experiment predicted higher general academic achievement, SAT test scores that
were on average 210 points higher, higher feelings of self-worth, and better
stress management. On the other hand, “low delayers” were 30 percent more
likely to be overweight and later suffered higher rates of drug addiction. When
your mother told you “all good things come to those who wait,” she wasn’t
kidding.
Willpower is so important that using it effectively should be a high priority.
Unfortunately, since it’s not on willcall, putting it to its best use requires you to
manage it. Just as with “the early bird gets the worm” and “make hay while the
sun shines,” willpower is a timing issue. When you have your will, you get your
way. Although character is an essential element of willpower, the key to
harnessing it is when you use it.
RENEWABLE ENERGY
Think of willpower like the power bar on your cell phone. Every morning you
start out with a full charge. As the day goes on, every time you draw on it you’re
using it up. So as your green bar shrinks, so does your resolve, and when it
eventually goes red, you’re done. Willpower has a limited battery life but can be
recharged with some downtime. It’s a limited but renewable resource. Because
you have a limited supply, each act of will creates a win-lose scenario where
winning in an immediate situation through willpower makes you more likely to
lose later because you have less of it. Make it through a tough day in the
trenches, and the lure of late-night snacking can become your diet’s downfall.
Everyone accepts that limited resources must be managed, yet we fail to
recognize that willpower is one of them. We act as though our supply of
willpower were endless. As a result, we don’t consider it a personal resource to
be managed, like food or sleep. This repeatedly puts us in a tight spot, for when
we need our willpower the most, it may not be there.
Stanford University professor Baba Shiv’s research shows just how fleeting
our willpower can be. He divided 165 undergraduate students into two groups
and asked them to memorize either a two-digit or a seven-digit number. Both
tasks were well within the average person’s cognitive abilities, and they could
take as much time as they needed. When they were ready, students would then
go to another room where they would recall the number. Along the way, they
were offered a snack for participating in the study. The two choices were
chocolate cake or a bowl of fruit salad—guilty pleasure or healthy treat. Here’s
the kicker: students asked to memorize the seven-digit number were nearly twice
as likely to choose cake. This tiny extra cognitive load was just enough to
prevent a prudent choice.
The implications are staggering. The more we use our mind, the less
minding power we have. Willpower is like a fast-twitch muscle that gets tired
and needs rest. It’s incredibly powerful, but it has no endurance. As Kathleen
Vohs put it in Prevention magazine in 2009, “Willpower is like gas in your
car... . When you resist something tempting, you use some up. The more you
resist, the emptier your tank gets, until you run out of gas.” In fact, a measly five
extra digits is all it takes to drain our willpower dry.
While decisions tap our willpower, the food we eat is also a key player in
our level of willpower.
DEFAULT JUDGMENT
One of the real challenges we have is that when our willpower is low we tend to
fall back on our default settings. Researchers Jonathan Levav of the Stanford
School of Business in California, along with Liora Avnaim-Pesso and Shai
Danziger of Ben Gurion University of the Negev, found a creative way to
investigate this. They took a hard look at the impact of willpower on the Israeli
parole system.
The researchers analyzed 1,112 parole board hearings assigned to eight
judges over a ten-month period (which incidentally amounted to 40 percent of
Israel’s total parole requests over that period). The pace is grueling. The judges
hear arguments and take about six minutes to render a decision on 14 to 35
parole requests a day, and they get only two breaks—a morning snack and late
lunch—to rest and refuel. The impact of their schedule is as spectacular as it is
surprising: In the mornings and after each break, parolees’ chances for being
released peak at 65 percent, and then plunge to near zero by the end of each
period (see figure 8).
The results are most likely tied to the mental toll of repetitive decision
making. These are big decisions for the parolees and the public at large. High
stakes and the assembly-line rhythm demand intense focus throughout the day
As their energy is spent, judges mentally collapse into their “default choice,”
which doesn’t turn out so well for hopeful prisoners. The default decision for a
parole judge is no. When in doubt and willpower is low, the prisoner stays
behind bars.
And if you’re not careful, your default settings may convict you too.
When our willpower runs out, we all revert to our default settings. This
begs the question: What are your default settings? If your willpower is dragging,
will you grab the bag of carrots or the bag of chips? Will you be up for focusing
on the work at hand or down for any distraction that drops in? When your most
important work is done while your willpower wanes, default will define your
level of achievement. Average is often the result.
FIG. 8 Good decisions depend on more than just wisdom and common sense.
Every day, without realizing it, we engage in all manner of activities that
diminish our willpower. Willpower is depleted when we make decisions to focus
our attention, suppress our feelings and impulses, or modify our behavior in
pursuit of goals. It’s like taking an ice pick and gouging a hole in our gas line.
Before long we have willpower leaking everywhere and none left to do our most
important work. So like any other limited but vital resource, willpower must be
managed.
When it comes to willpower, timing is everything. You will need your
willpower at full strength to ensure that when you’re doing the right thing, you
don’t let anything distract you or steer you away from it. Then you need enough
willpower the rest of the day to either support or avoid sabotaging what you’ve
done. That’s all the willpower you need to be successful. 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. Since your self-control will be
sapped throughout the day, use it when it’s at full strength on what matters most.
BIG IDEAS
1. Don’t spread your willpower too thin. On any given day, you
have a limited supply of willpower, so decide what matters
and reserve your willpower for it.
2. Monitor your fuel gauge. Full-strength willpower requires a full tank. Never
let what matters most be compromised simply because your brain was
under-fueled. Eat right and regularly.
3. Time your task. Do what matters most first each day when your willpower is
strongest. Maximum strength willpower means maximum success.
Don’t fight your willpower. Build your days around how it works and let it
do its part to build your life. Willpower may not be on willcall, but when you use
it first on what matters most, you can always count on it.
8 A BALANCED LIFE
Nothing ever achieves absolute balance.
“The truth is, balance is bunk. It is Nothing. No matter how imperceptible it
an unattainable pipe dream... . might be, what appears to be a state of
The quest for balance between balance is something entirely different
work and life, as we’ve come to — an act of balancing. Viewed wistfully
think of it, isn’t just a losing as a noun, balance is lived practically as
proposition; it’s a hurtful, a verb. Seen as something we ultimately
destructive one.” attain, balance is actually something we
—Keith H. Hammonds
constantly do. A “balanced life” is a
myth—a misleading concept most
accept as a worthy and attainable goal without ever stopping to truly consider it.
I want you to consider it. I want you to challenge it. I want you to reject it.
A balanced life is a lie.
The idea of balance is exactly that—an idea. In philosophy “the golden
mean” is the moderate middle between polar extremes, a concept used to
describe a place between two positions that is more desirable than one state or
the other. This is a grand idea, but not a very practical one. Idealistic, but not
realistic. Balance doesn’t exist.
This is tough to conceive, much less believe, mainly because one of the
most frequent laments is “I need more balance,” a common mantra for what’s
missing in most lives. We hear about balance so much we automatically assume
it’s exactly what we should be seeking. It’s not. Purpose, meaning, significance
—these are what make a successful life. Seek them and you will most certainly
live your life out of balance, criss-crossing an invisible middle line as you pursue
your priorities. The act of living a full life by giving time to what matters is a
balancing act. Extraordinary results require focused attention and time. Time on
one thing means time away from another. This makes balance impossible.
FIG. 9 The number of times “work-life balance” is mentioned in newspaper and magazine articles has
exploded in recent years.
MIDDLE MISMANAGEMENT
The desire for balance makes sense. Enough time for everything and everything
done in time. It sounds so appealing that just thinking about it makes us feel
serene and peaceful. This calm is so real that we just know it’s the way life was
meant to be. But it’s not.
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 living at the
extremes. The problem with living in the middle is that it prevents you from
making extraordinary time commitments to anything. In your effort to attend to
all things, everything gets shortchanged and nothing gets its due. Sometimes this
can be okay and sometimes not. Knowing when to pursue the middle and when
to pursue the extremes is in essence the true beginning of wisdom. Extraordinary
results are achieved by this negotiation with your time.
FIG. 10 Pursuing a balanced life means never pursuing anything at the extremes.
The reason we shouldn’t pursue balance is that the magic never happens in
the middle; magic happens at the extremes. The dilemma is that chasing the
extremes presents real challenges. We naturally understand that success lies at
the outer edges, but we don’t know how to manage our lives while we’re out
there.
When we work too long, eventually our personal life suffers. Falling prey to
the belief that long hours are virtuous, we unfairly blame work when we say, “I
have no life.” Often, it’s just the opposite. Even if our work life doesn’t interfere,
our personal life itself can be so full of “have-tos” that we again reach the same
defeated conclusion: “I have no life.” And sometimes we get hit from both sides.
Some of us face so many personal and professional demands that everything
suffers. Breakdown imminent, we once again declare, “I have no life!”
FIG. 11 Pursuing the extremes presents its own set of problems.
Just like playing to the middle, playing to the extremes is the kind of middle
mismanagement that plays out all the time.
There are two types of counterbalancing: the balancing between work and
personal life and the balancing within each. In the world of professional success,
it’s not about how much overtime you put in; the key ingredient is focused time
over time. To achieve an extraordinary result you must choose what matters
most and give it all the time it demands. This requires getting extremely out of
balance in relation to all other work issues, with only infrequent
counterbalancing to address them. In your personal world, awareness is the
essential ingredient. Awareness of your spirit and body, awareness of your
family and friends, awareness of your personal needs—none of these can be
sacrificed if you intend to “have a life,” so you can never forsake them for work
or one for the other. You can move back and forth quickly between these and
often even combine the activities around them, but you can’t neglect any of them
for long. Your personal life requires tight counterbalancing.
Whether or not to go out of balance isn’t really the question. The question
is: “Do you go short or long?” In your personal life, go short and avoid long
periods where you’re out of balance. Going short lets you stay connected to all
the things that matter most and move them along together. In your professional
life, go long and make peace with the idea that the pursuit of extraordinary
results may require you to be out of balance for long periods. Going long allows
you to focus on what matters most, even at the expense of other, lesser priorities.
In your personal life, nothing gets left behind. At work it’s required.
In his novel Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas, James Patterson artfully
highlights where our priorities lie in our personal and professional balancing act:
“Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called
work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And you’re keeping all of them in
the air. But one day you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If
you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls—family, health, friends,
integrity—are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably
scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered.”
BIG IDEAS
1. Think about two balancing buckets. Separate your work life and
personal life into two distinct buckets—not to
compartmentalize them, just for counterbalancing. Each has its own
counterbalancing goals and approaches.
2. Counterbalance your work bucket. View work as involving a skill or
knowledge that must be mastered. This will cause you to give
disproportionate time to your ONE Thing and will throw the rest of your
work day, week, month, and year continually out of balance. Your work life
is divided into two distinct areas—what matters most and everything else.
You will have to take what matters to the extremes and be okay with what
happens to the rest. Professional success requires it.
3. Counterbalance your personal life bucket. Acknowledge that your life
actually has multiple areas and that each requires a minimum of attention
for you to feel that you “have a life.” Drop any one and you will feel the
effects. This requires constant awareness. You must never go too long or
too far without counterbalancing them so that they are all active areas of
your life. Your personal life requires it.
Start leading a counterbalanced life. Let the right things take precedence
when they should and get to the rest when you can.
An extraordinary life is a counterbalancing act.
9 BIG IS BAD
The Big Bad Wolf. Big Bad John. From
“We are kept from our goal, not folktales to folk songs, the suggestion
by obstacles but by a clear path that big and bad go together has been a
to a lesser goal.” common theme across history—so much
—Robert Brault
so that many think they’re synonymous.
They’re not. Big can be bad and bad can
be big, but they’re not one and the same. They aren’t inherently related.
A big opportunity is better than a small one, but a small problem is better
than a big one. Sometimes you want the biggest present under the tree and
sometimes you want the smallest. Often a big laugh or a big cry is just what you
need, and every so often a small chuckle and a few tears will do the trick. Big
and bad are no more tied together than small and good.
Big is bad is a lie.
It’s quite possibly the worst lie of all, for if you fear big success, you’ll
either avoid it or sabotage your efforts to achieve it.
FLAT WRONG
How many ships didn’t sail because of the belief that the earth was flat? How
much progress was impeded because man wasn’t supposed to breathe
underwater, fly through the air, or venture into outer space? Historically, we’ve
done a remarkably poor job of estimating our limits. The good news is that
science isn’t about guessing, but rather the art of progressing.
And so is your life.
None of us knows our limits. Borders and boundaries may be clear on a
map, but when we apply them to our lives, the lines aren’t so apparent. I was
once asked if I thought thinking big was realistic. I paused to reflect on this and
then said, “Let me ask you a question first: Do you know what your limits are?”
“No,” was the reply. So I said that it seemed the question was irrelevant. No one
knows their ultimate ceiling for achievement, so worrying about it is a waste of
time. What if someone told you that you could never achieve above a certain
level? That you were required to pick an upper limit which you could never
exceed? What would you pick? A low one or a high one? I think we know the
answer. Put in this situation, we would all do the same thing—go big. Why?
Because you wouldn’t want to limit yourself.
When you allow yourself to accept that big is about who you can become,
you look at it differently.
In this context, big is a placeholder for what you might call a leap of
possibility. It’s the office intern visualizing the boardroom or a penniless
immigrant imagining a business revolution. It’s about bold ideas that might
threaten your comfort zones but simultaneously reflect your greatest
opportunities. Believing in big frees you to ask different questions, follow
different paths, and try new things. This opens the doors to possibilities that until
now only lived inside you.
Sabeer Bhatia arrived in America with only $250 in his pocket, but he
wasn’t alone. Sabeer came with big plans and the belief that he could grow a
business faster than any business in history. And he did. He created Hotmail.
Microsoft, a witness to Hotmail’s meteoric rise, eventually bought it for $400
million.
According to his mentor, Farouk Arjani, Sabeer’s success was directly
related to his ability to think big. “What set Sabeer apart from the hundreds of
entrepreneurs I’ve met is the gargantuan size of his dream. Even before he had a
product, before he had any money behind him, he was completely convinced that
he was going to build a major company that would be worth hundreds of
millions of dollars. He had an unrelenting conviction that he was not just going
to build a run-of-the-mill Silicon Valley company. But over time I realized, by
golly, he was probably going to pull it off.”
As of 2011, Hotmail ranked as one of the most successful webmail service
providers in the world, with more than 360 million active users.
GOING BIG
Thinking big is essential to extraordinary results. Success requires action, and
action requires thought. But here’s the catch—the only actions that become
springboards to succeeding big are those informed by big thinking to begin with.
Make this connection, and the importance of how big you think begins to sink in.
FIG. 13 Thinking informs actions and actions determine outcomes.
Everyone has the same amount of time, and hard work is simply hard work.
As a result, what you do in the time you work determines what you achieve. And
since what you do is determined by what you think, how big you think becomes
the launching pad for how high you achieve.
Think of it this way. Every level of achievement requires its own
combination of what you do, how you do it, and who you do it with. The trouble
is that the combination of what, how, and who that gets you to one level of
success won’t naturally evolve to a better combination that leads to the next
level of success. Doing something one way doesn’t always lay the foundation for
doing something better, nor does a relationship with one person automatically set
the stage for a more successful relationship with another. It’s unfortunate, but
these things don’t build on each other. If you learn to do something one way, and
with one set of relationships, that may work fine until you want to achieve more.
It’s then that you’ll discover you’ve created an artificial ceiling of achievement
for yourself that may be too hard to break through. In effect, you’ve boxed
yourself in when there is a simple way to avoid it. Think as big as you possibly
can and base what you do, how you do it, and who you do it with on succeeding
at that level. It just might take you more than your lifetime to run into the walls
of a box this big.
When people talk about “reinventing” their career or their business, small
boxes are often the root cause. What you build today will either empower or
restrict you tomorrow. It will either serve as a platform for the next level of your
success or as a box, trapping you where you are.
FIG. 14 Choose your box—choose your outcome.
BIG IDEAS
1. Think big. Avoid incremental thinking that simply asks, “What
do I do next?” This is at best the slow lane to success and, at
worst, the off ramp. Ask bigger questions. A good rule of thumb is to
double down everywhere in your life. If your goal is ten, ask the question:
“How can I reach 20?” Set a goal so far above what you want that you’ll be
building a plan that practically guarantees your original goal.
2. Don’t order from the menu. Apple’s celebrated 1997 “Think Different” ad
campaign featured icons like Ali, Dylan, Einstein, Hitchcock, Picasso,
Gandhi, and others who “saw things differently” and who went on to
transform the world we know. The point was that they didn’t choose from
the available options; they imagined outcomes that no one else had. They
ignored the menu and ordered their own creations. As the ad reminds us,
“People who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the
only ones who do.”
3. Act bold. Big thoughts go nowhere without bold action. Once you’ve asked
a big question, pause to imagine what life looks like with the answer. If you
still can’t imagine it, go study people who have already achieved it. What
are the models, systems, habits, and relationships of other people who have
found the answer? As much as we’d like to believe we’re all different, what
consistently works for others will almost always work for us.
4. Don’t fear failure. It’s as much a part of your journey to extraordinary results
as success. Adopt a growth mindset, and don’t be afraid of where it can take
you. Extraordinary results aren’t built solely on extraordinary results.
They’re built on failure too. In fact, it would be accurate to say that we fail
our way to success. When we fail, we stop, ask what we need to do to
succeed, learn from our mistakes, and grow. Don’t be afraid to fail. See it as
part of your learning process and keep striving for your true potential.
Don’t let small thinking cut your life down to size. Think big, aim high, act
bold. And see just how big you can blow up your life.
2
THE TRUTH
THE SIMPLE PATH TO PRODUCTIVITY
“Be careful how you interpret the
world; it is like that.”
—Erich Heller
UNCLENCHED
For many years, I suffered from trying to live the lies of success.
I began my career assuming everything mattered equally, so in an effort to
cram it all in, I attempted too much at once. Frustrated, I eventually began to
doubt I had the discipline or will to achieve success at all. As my life continually
fell out of balance, I started to consider that trying to live a big life might be a
bad thing. When you try to live up to something that isn’t possible, you can get
pretty down.
I was pretty down.
In an attempt to make it all work, I began to bear down even harder. You
might say that I started to clench my way to success. I really did. I thought that
this might be the way you went through life—with your jaw clenched, your fist
clenched, your stomach clenched, and your butt clenched. Leaning forward,
breath held and body taut, tight and totally tense. I just assumed that was the
feeling of focus and intensity as I struggled to live with the lies. That approach
actually worked, but it also put me in the hospital.
I also began to think you had to talk like a success, walk like a success, and
even dress for success. It wasn’t me, but I was open to any way to make things
work, so I took seriously the suggestion that you are supposed to project the way
you want to be. That approach worked as well, but after a while, I simply got
tired of “playing” success.
I bought into getting up before the crack of dawn, getting revved up playing
inspirational theme songs, and getting going before anyone else. In fact, I
became so full of this thinking that I would drive to the office while the rest of
the city slept and then crash at my desk just to make sure that I beat everyone
else to work. I started to accept the notion that maybe this is what ambition and
achievement looked like as I fought the good fight. I would hold staff meetings
at 7:30 in the morning and, at 7:31, would actually shut the door and lock out
anyone who showed up late. I was going overboard, but I was beginning to
believe this was the only way you could succeed, and the way you pushed others
to succeed as well. This approach also worked, but in the end it also pushed me
too hard, others too far, and my world over the edge.
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.
And what did all of this get me? It got me success, and it got me sick.
Eventually, it got me sick of success.
So what did I do? I ditched the lies and went in the opposite direction. I
joined overachievers anonymous and went antiestablishment on all the success
“tactics” that supposedly build success.
First off, I got unclenched. I actually started listening to my body, slowed
down, and chilled out. Next, I started wearing T-shirts and jeans to work and
defied anyone to make a comment. I dropped the language and the attitude and
went back to just being me. I had breakfast with my family. I got in shape
physically and spiritually and stayed there. And last, I started doing less. Yes,
less. Intentionally, purposefully less. I was looser than ever, way laid back for
me, and breathing. I challenged the axioms of success, and guess what? I became
more successful than I ever dreamed possible and felt better than I’d ever felt in
my life.
Here’s what I found out: We overthink, overplan, and overanalyze 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. I discovered that we can’t manage time, and that the key to success isn’t in
all the things we do but in the handful of things we do well.
I learned that success comes down to this: being appropriate in the moments
of your life. 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.
Most of all, I learned that the ONE Thing is the surprisingly simple truth
behind extraordinary results.
10 THE FOCUSING QUESTION
On June 23, 1885, in the town of
“There is an art to clearing away Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Andrew
the clutter and focusing on what Carnegie addressed the students of the
matters most. It is simple and it is Curry Commercial College. At the
transferable. It just requires the height of his business success, the
courage to take a different Carnegie Steel Company was the largest
approach.” and most profitable industrial enterprise
—George Anders
in the world. Carnegie would later
become the second-richest man in
history, after John D. Rockefeller. In Carnegie’s talk, entitled “The Road to
Business Success,” he discussed his life as a successful businessperson and gave
this advice:
So, how do you know which basket to pick? The Focusing Question.
Mark Twain agreed with Carnegie and described it this way:
The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret to getting started is
breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks
and then starting on the first one.
So, how do you know what the first one should be? The Focusing Question.
Did you notice that both of these great men considered their advice a
“secret”? I don’t think it’s so much a secret as something people know but don’t
give proper weight or importance. Most people are familiar with the Chinese
proverb “A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” They just
never stop to fully appreciate that if this is true, then the wrong first step begins a
journey that could end as far as two thousand miles from where they want to be.
The Focusing Question helps keep your first step from being a misstep.
LIFE IS A QUESTION
You may be asking, “Why focus on a question when what we really crave is an
answer?” It’s simple. Answers come from questions, and the quality of any
answer is directly determined by the quality of the question. Ask the wrong
question, get the wrong answer. Ask the right question, get the right answer. Ask
the most powerful question possible, and the answer can be life altering.
Voltaire once wrote, “Judge a man by his questions rather than his
answers.” Sir Francis Bacon added, “A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.”
Indira Gandhi concluded that “the power to question is the basis of all human
progress.” Great questions are clearly the quickest path to great answers. Every
discoverer and inventor begins his quest with a transformative question. The
scientific method asks questions of the universe in hypothesis form. The more
than 2,000-year-old Socratic Method, teaching through questions, is still
embraced by educators from the heights of Harvard Law School to the local
kindergarten class. Questions engage our critical thinking. Research shows that
asking questions improves learning and performance by as much as 150 percent.
In the end, it’s hard to argue with author Nancy Willard, who wrote, “Sometimes
questions are more important than answers.”
I first became aware of the power of questions as a young man. I read a
poem that affected me profoundly and I’ve carried it with me ever since.
MY WAGE
By J. B. Rittenhouse
Extraordinary results are rarely happenstance. They come from the choices
we make and the actions we take. 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. But not just any decision—it drives you to make the best decision. It
ignores what is doable and drills down to what is necessary, to what matters.
It leads you to the first domino.
To stay on track for the best possible day month, year, or career, you must
keep asking the Focusing Question. Ask it again and again, and it forces you to
line up tasks in their levered order of importance. Then, each time you ask it,
you see your next priority. The power of this approach is that you’re setting
yourself up to accomplish one task on top of another. When you do the right task
first, you also build the right mindset first, the right skill first, and the right
relationship first. Powered by the Focusing Question, your actions become a
natural progression of building one right thing on top of the previous right thing.
When this happens, you’re in position to experience the power of the domino
effect.
The Focusing Question asks you to find the first domino and focus on it
exclusively until you knock it over. Once you’ve done that, you’ll discover a line
of dominoes behind it either ready to fall or already down.
BIG IDEAS
1. Great questions are the path to great answers. The Focusing
Question is a great question designed to find a great answer. It will help you
find the first domino for your job, your business, or any other area in which
you want to achieve extraordinary results.
2. The Focusing Question is a double-duty question. It comes in two forms: big
picture and small focus. One is about finding the right direction in life and
the other is about finding the right action.
3. The Big-Picture Question: “What’s my ONE Thing?” Use it to develop a vision
for your life and the direction for your career or company; it is your
strategic compass. It also works when considering what you want to master,
what you want to give to others and your community, and how you want to
be remembered. It keeps your relationships with friends, family, and
colleagues in perspective and your daily actions on track.
4. The Small-Focus Question: “What’s my ONE Thing right now?” Use this when
you first wake up and throughout the day. It keeps you focused on your
most important work and, whenever you need it, helps you find the “levered
action” or first domino in any activity. The small-focus question prepares
you for the most productive workweek possible. It’s effective in your
personal life too, keeping you attentive to your most important immediate
needs, as well as those of the most important people in your life.
Extraordinary results come from asking the Focusing Question. It’s how
you’ll plot your course through life and business, and how you’ll make the best
progress on your most important work.
Whether you seek answers big or small, asking the Focusing Question is the
ultimate success habit for your life.
11 THE SUCCESS HABIT
You know about habits. They can be
“Success is simple. Do what’s hard to break—and hard to create. But
right, the right way, at the right we are unknowingly acquiring new ones
time.” all the time. When we start and continue
—Arnold H. Glasow
a way of thinking or a way of acting
over a long enough period, we’ve
created a new habit. The choice we face is whether or not we want to form habits
that get us what we want from life. If we do, then the Focusing Question is the
most powerful success habit we can have.
For me, the Focusing Question is a way of life. I use it to find my most
leveraged priority, make the most out of my time, and get the biggest bang for
my buck. Whenever the outcome absolutely matters, I ask it. I ask it when I
wake up and start my day. I ask it when I get to work, and again when I get
home. What’s the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will
be easier or unnecessary? And when I know the answer, I continue to ask it until
I can see the connections and all my dominoes are lined up.
Obviously, you can drive yourself nuts analyzing every little aspect of
everything you might do. I don’t do that, and you shouldn’t either. Start with the
big stuff and see where it takes you. Over time, you’ll develop your own sense
of when to use the big-picture question and when to use the small-focus
question.
The Focusing Question is the foundational habit I use to achieve
extraordinary results and lead a big life. I use it for some things and not at all for
others. I apply it to the important areas of my life: my spiritual life, physical
health, personal life, key relationships, job, business, and financial life. And I
address them in that order—each one is a foundation for the next.
Because I want my life to matter, I approach each area by doing what
matters most in it. I view these as the cornerstones of my life and have found
that when I’m doing what’s most important in each area, my life feels like it’s
running on all cylinders.
The Focusing Question can direct you to your ONE Thing in the different
areas of your life. Simply reframe the Focusing Question by inserting your area
of focus. 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.
FIG. 16 My life and the areas that matter most in it.
Here are some Focusing Questions to ask yourself. 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?”
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... ?
BIG IDEAS
So how do you make The ONE Thing part of your daily routine?
How do you make it strong enough to get extraordinary results at
work and in the other areas of your life? Here’s a starter list drawn from our
experience and our work with others.
1. Understand and believe it. The first step is to understand the concept of the
ONE Thing, then to believe that it can make a difference in your life. If you
don’t understand and believe, you won’t take action.
2. Use it. Ask yourself the Focusing Question. Start each day by asking,
“What’s the ONE Thing I can do today for [whatever you want] such that
by doing it everything else will be easier or even unnecessary?” When you
do this, your direction will become clear. Your work will be more
productive and your personal life more rewarding.
3. Make it a habit. When you make asking the Focusing Question a habit, you
fully engage its power to get the extraordinary results you want. It’s a
difference maker. Research says this will take about 66 days. Whether it
takes you a few weeks or a few months, stick with it until it becomes your
routine. If you’re not serious about learning the Success Habit, you’re not
serious about getting extraordinary results.
4. Leverage reminders. Set up ways to remind yourself to use the Focusing
Question. One of the best ways to do this is to put up a sign at work that
says, “Until my ONE Thing is done—everything else is a distraction.” We
designed the back cover of this book to be a trigger —set it on the corner of
your desk so that it’s the first thing you see when you get to work. Use
notes, screen savers, and calendar cues to keep making the connection
between the Success Habit and the results you seek. Put up reminders like,
“The ONE Thing = Extraordinary Results” or “The Success Habit Will Get
Me to My Goal.”
5. Recruit support. Research shows that those around you can influence you
tremendously. Starting a success support group with some of your work
colleagues can help inspire all of you to practice the Success Habit every
day. Get your family involved. Share your ONE Thing. Get them on board.
Use the Focusing Question around them to show them how the Success
Habit can make a difference in their school work, their personal
achievements, or any other part of their lives.
This one habit can become the foundation for many more, so keep your
Success Habit working as powerfully as possible. Use the strategies outlined in
Part 3: Extraordinary Results, for goal setting and time blocking to experience
extraordinary results every day of your life.
12 THE PATH TO GREAT ANSWERS
The Focusing Question helps you
“People do not decide their identify your ONE Thing in any
futures, they decide their habits situation. It will clarify what you want
and their habits decide their in the big areas of your life and then
futures.” drill down to what you must do to get
—F. M. Alexander
them. It’s really a simple process: You
ask a great question, then you seek out a
great answer. As simple as two steps, it’s the ultimate Success Habit.
Look at the “Great Question” matrix (figure 18) to see the power of the
Focusing Question.
Let’s take increasing sales as a way to break down each of the quadrants,
using “What can I do to double sales in six months?” as a placeholder for Big
& Specific (figure 19).
Now, let’s examine the pros and cons of each question quadrant, ending
with where you want to be—Big & Specific.
This is how big problems are solved and big challenges are overcome, for
the best answers rarely come from an ordinary process. Whether it’s figuring out
how to leapfrog the competition, finding a cure for a disease, or coming up with
an action step for a personal goal, benchmarking and trending is your best
option. Because your answer will be original, you’ll probably have to reinvent
yourself in some way to implement it. A new answer usually requires new
behavior, so don’t be surprised if along the way to sizable success you change in
the process. But don’t let that stop you.
This is where the magic happens and possibilities are unlimited. As
challenging as it can be, trailblazing up the path of possibilities is always worth
it—for when we maximize our reach, we maximize our life.
BIG IDEAS
1. Think big and specific. Setting a goal you intend to achieve is
like asking a question. It’s a simple step from “I’d like to do
that” to “How do I achieve that?” The best question—and by
default, the best goal—is big and specific: big, because you’re after
extraordinary results; specific, to give you something to aim at and to leave
no wiggle room about whether you hit the mark. A big and specific
question, especially in the form of the Focusing Question, helps you zero in
on the best possible answer.
2. Think possibilities. Setting a doable goal is almost like creating a task to
check off your list. A stretch goal is more challenging. It aims you at the
edge of your current abilities; you have to stretch to reach it. The best goal
explores what’s possible. When you see people and businesses that have
undergone transformations, this is where they live.
3. Benchmark and trend for the best answer. No one has a crystal ball, but with
practice you can become surprisingly good at anticipating where things are
heading. The people and businesses who get there first often enjoy the
lion’s share of the rewards with few, if any, competitors. Benchmark and
trend to find the extraordinary answer you need for extraordinary results.
3
EXTRAORDINARY RESULTS
UNLOCKING THE POSSIBILITIES WITHIN YOU
“Even if you’re on the right track,
you’ll get run over if you just sit
there.”
— Will Rogers
EXTRAORDINARY RESULTS
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. Bound together, these three are forever connected and
continually confirming each other’s existence in our lives. Their link leads to the
two areas where you’ll apply the ONE Thing—one big and one small.
Your big ONE Thing is your purpose and your small ONE Thing is the
priority you take action on to achieve it. 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.
Think of purpose, priority, and productivity as three parts of an iceberg.
With typically only 1/9 of an iceberg above water, whatever you see is just
the tip of everything that is there. This is exactly how productivity, priority, and
purpose are related. What you see is determined by what you don’t.
FIG. 22 Productivity is driven by purpose and priority.
The more productive people are, the more purpose and priority are pushing
and driving them. With the additional outcome of profit, it’s the same for
business. What’s visible to the public—productivity and profit—is always
buoyed by the substance that serves as the company’s foundation— purpose and
priority. All businesspeople want productivity and profit, but too many fail to
realize that the best path to attaining them is through purpose-driven priority.
FIG. 23 In business, profit and productivity are also driven by priority and purpose.
Personal productivity is the building block of all business profit. The two
are inseparable. A business can’t have unproductive people yet magically still
have an immensely profitable business. Great businesses are built one productive
person at a time. And not surprisingly, the most productive people receive the
greatest rewards from their businesses.
Connecting purpose, priority, and productivity determines how high above
the rest successful individuals and profitable businesses rise. Understanding this
is at the core of producing extraordinary results.
13 LIVE WITH PURPOSE
So, how do you use purpose to create an
“Life isn’t about finding yourself. extraordinary life? Ebenezer Scrooge
Life is about creating yourself.” shows us how.
—George Bernard Shaw
Cold-hearted, penny-pinching, and
greedy, a man who despised Christmas
and all things that give people happiness, his last name a byword for miserliness
and meanness—Ebenezer Scrooge might have been the least likely candidate to
teach us anything about how to live. Yet, in Charles Dickens’s 1843 classic A
Christmas Carol, he does.
The redemptive tale of Scrooge’s transformation from stingy, callous, and
unloved to considerate, caring, and beloved is one of the best examples of how
our destinies are determined by our decisions, our lives shaped by our choices.
Once again, fiction provides us a formula we can all follow to build an
extraordinary life with extraordinary results. I’d like to beg your forgiveness,
take a little literary license, and quickly retell this timeless tale to show you.
One Christmas Eve, Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by the deceased spirit of
Jacob Marley, his former business partner. We do not know if this is a dream or
if it’s real. Marley wails, “I am here tonight to warn you, that you have yet a
chance and a hope of escaping my fate. You will be haunted by three spirits”—
from the past, present, and future, as it turns out. “Remember what has passed
between us!”
Now, let’s stop for a second and bear in mind who Scrooge is. Dickens
describes him as a man whose old features are frozen by the cold within him.
Tight-fisted, with head down and hand to the grindstone, Scrooge pays as little
as possible and keeps as much as he can. He is secretive and solitary. No one
ever stops him in the streets to say hello. No one cares, for he cares for no one.
He is a bitter, mean, covetous old sinner—cold to the sight, cold to the touch,
and cold of heart, with no thaw in sight. His life is a lonely existence, and the
world is worse off for it.
Over the course of the evening, the three spirits visit Scrooge to show him
his past, present, and future. Through these visits he sees how he became the
man he is, how his life is currently going, and what will ultimately happen to
him and those around him. It’s a terrifying experience that leaves him visibly
shaken when he wakes the next morning. Not knowing whether it was real or a
dream, but giddy upon discovering no time has passed, Scrooge realizes there is
still time to alter his fate. In a joyous blur, he rushes into the street and instructs
the first boy he sees to go buy the biggest turkey at the market and send it
anonymously to the home of his sole employee, Bob Cratchit. Upon seeing a
gentleman he’d once rebuffed for pleading charity for the needy, he prays for
forgiveness and promises to donate huge sums of money to the poor.
Ebenezer eventually ends up at the home of his nephew, where he begs
forgiveness for being such a fool for far too long and accepts an invitation to
stay for holiday dinner. His nephew’s wife and guests, shocked at his heartfelt
bliss, can barely believe this is Scrooge.
The next morning, Bob Cratchit, upon arriving noticeably late to work, is
confronted by Scrooge: “What do you mean coming here at this time of day? I
am not going to stand for this sort of thing any longer!” Before this wretched
news can sink in, the incredulous Cratchit hears him say, “And therefore I am
about to raise your salary!”
Scrooge goes on to become the Cratchit family’s benefactor. He finds a
doctor for Tiny Tim, Cratchit’s invalid son, and becomes like a second father to
him. Scrooge lives out the rest of his days spending his time and money doing
everything he can for others.
Through this simple story, Charles Dickens shows us a simple formula for
creating an extraordinary life: Live with purpose. Live by priority. Live for
productivity.
As I reflect on this story, I believe Dickens reveals purpose as a
combination of where we’re going and what’s important to us. He implies that
our priority is what we place the greatest importance on and our productivity
comes from the actions we take. He lays out life as a series of connected choices,
where our purpose sets our priority and our priority determines the productivity
our actions produce.
To Dickens, our purpose determines who we are.
Scrooge is transparent and easy to understand, so let’s revisit A Christmas
Carol through the lens of Dickens’s formula. At the place we enter his life,
Scrooge’s purpose is clearly about money. He pursues a life either working for it
or being alone with it. He cares for money more than for people and believes that
money is the end by which any means are justified. Based on his purpose, his
priority is straightforward: making as much money for himself as he can.
Collecting coin is what matters to Scrooge. As a result, his productivity is
always aimed at making money. When he takes a break from making it, for fun,
he counts it. Earning, netting, lending, receiving, tallying—these are the actions
that fill his days, for he is greedy, selfish, and unmoved by the human condition
of those around him.
By Scrooge’s own standards, he’s highly productive in accomplishing his
purpose. By anyone else’s, it’s simply a miserable life.
This would be the end of the story, were it not for the perspective provided
to Ebenezer by his former partner. Jacob Marley didn’t want Scrooge to reach
the same dead end he had. So, after the haunting, what happened to Scrooge? By
Dickens’s account, his purpose changed, which changed his most important
priority, which changed where he focused his productivity. After Marley’s
intervention, Scrooge experienced the transformative power of a new purpose.
So, who did he become? Well, let’s look.
As the narrative ends, Scrooge’s purpose is no longer money, but people.
He now cares about people. He cares about their financial circumstances and
their physical condition. He sees himself happily in relationships with others,
lending a hand any way he can. He values helping people more than hoarding
money and believes money is good for the good it can do.
What is his priority? Where he once saved money and used people, he now
uses money to save people. His overriding priority is to make as much money as
he can so he can help as many as he can. His actions? He is productive
throughout his days putting every penny he can toward others.
The transformation is remarkable, the message unmistakable. Who we are
and where we want to go determine what we do and what we accomplish.
A life lived on purpose is the most powerful of all—and the happiest.
HAPPINESS ON PURPOSE
Ask enough people what they want in life and you’ll hear happiness as the
overwhelming response. Although we all have a wide variety of specific
answers, happiness is what we most want—yet, it’s what most of us understand
the least. No matter our motivations, most of what we do in life is ultimately
meant to make us happy. And yet we get it wrong. Happiness doesn’t happen the
way we think.
To explain, I want to share an ancient tale with you.
Upon coming out of his palace one morning and encountering a beggar, a king
asks, “What do you want?” The beggar laughingly says, “You ask as though you
can fulfill my desire!” Offended, the king replies, “Of course I can. What is it?”
The beggar warns, “Think twice before you promise anything.”
Now, the beggar was no ordinary beggar but the king’s past-life master, who had
promised in their former life, “I will come to try and wake you in our next life.
This life you have missed, but I will come again to help you.”
The king, not recognizing his old friend, insisted, “I will fulfill anything you ask,
for I am a very powerful king who can fulfill any desire.” The beggar said, “It is
a very simple desire. Can you fill this begging bowl?” “Of course!” said the
king, and he instructed his vizier to “fill the man’s begging bowl with money.”
The vizier did, but when the money was poured into the bowl, it disappeared. So
he poured more and more, but the moment he did, it would disappear.
Word spread throughout the kingdom, and a huge crowd gathered. The prestige
and power of the king were at stake, so he told his vizier, “If my kingdom is to
be lost, I am ready to lose it, but I cannot be defeated by this beggar.” He
continued to empty his wealth into the bowl. Diamonds, pearls, emeralds. His
treasury was becoming empty.
And yet the begging bowl seemed bottomless. Everything put into it
immediately disappeared!
Finally, as the crowd stood in utter silence, the king dropped at the beggars feet
and admitted defeat. “You are victorious, but before you go, fulfill my curiosity.
What is the secret of this begging bowl?”
The beggar humbly replied, “There is no secret. It is simply made up of human
desire.”
One of our biggest challenges is making sure our life’s purpose doesn’t
become a beggar’s bowl, a bottomless pit of desire continually searching for the
next thing that will make us happy. That’s a losing proposition.
Acquiring money and obtaining things are pretty much all done for the
pleasure we expect them to bring. On one hand, this actually works. Securing
money or something we want can spike our happiness meter—for a moment.
Then it goes back down. Over the ages, our greatest minds have pondered
happiness, and their conclusions are much the same: having money and things
won’t automatically lead to lasting happiness.
How circumstances affect us depends on how we interpret them as they
relate to our life. If we lack a “big picture” view, we can easily fall into serial
success seeking. Why? Once we get what we want, our happiness sooner or later
wanes because we quickly become accustomed to what we acquire. This
happens to everyone and eventually leaves us bored, seeking something new to
get or do. Worse, we may not even stop or slow down to enjoy what we’ve got
because we automatically get up and go for something else. If we’re not careful,
we wind up ricocheting from achieving and acquiring to acquiring and achieving
without ever taking time to fully enjoy any of it. This is a good way to remain a
beggar, and the day we realize this is the day our life changes forever. So how do
we find enduring happiness?
Happiness happens on the way to fulfillment.
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. Of these, he believes engagement and meaning are the most important.
Becoming more engaged in what we do by finding ways to make our life more
meaningful is the surest way to finding lasting happiness. When our daily
actions fulfill a bigger purpose, the most powerful and enduring happiness can
happen.
Take money, for instance. Since money represents both getting something
and the potential to get more, it makes for a great example. Many people not
only misunderstand how to make money but also how it makes us happy. I’ve
taught wealth building to everyone from seasoned entrepreneurs to high school
students, and whenever I ask, “How much money do you want to earn?” I get all
kinds of answers, but usually the number is quite high. When I ask, “How did
you pick this number?” I frequently get the familiar answer: “Don’t know.” I
then ask, “Can you tell me your definition of a financially wealthy person?”
Invariably, I get numbers that start at a million dollars and go up from there.
When I ask how they arrived at this, they often say, “It sounds like a lot.” My
response is, “It is, and it isn’t. It all depends on what you’d do with it.”
I believe that financially wealthy people are those who have enough money
coming in without having to work to finance their purpose in life. Now, please
realize that this definition presents a challenge to anyone who accepts it. To be
financially wealthy you must have a purpose for your life. In other words,
without purpose, you’ll never know when you have enough money, and you can
never be financially wealthy.
It isn’t that having more money won’t make you happy. To a point, it
certainly can. But then it stops. For more money to continue to motivate you will
depend on why you want more. It’s been said that the end shouldn’t justify the
means, but be careful—when achieving happiness, any end you seek will only
create happiness for you through the means it takes to achieve it. Wanting more
money just for the sake of getting it won’t bring the happiness you seek from it.
Happiness happens when you have a bigger purpose than having more fulfills,
which is why we say happiness happens on the way to fulfillment.
BIG IDEAS
1. Happiness happens on the way to fulfillment. We all want to be
happy, but seeking it isn’t the best way to find it. The surest
path to achieving lasting happiness happens when you make your life about
something bigger, when you bring meaning and purpose to your everyday
actions.
2. Discover your Big Why. Discover your purpose by asking yourself what
drives you. What’s the thing that gets you up in the morning and keeps you
going when you’re tired and worn down? I sometimes refer to this as your
“Big Why.” It’s why you’re excited with your life. It’s why you’re doing
what you’re doing.
3. Absent an answer, pick a direction. “Purpose” may sound heavy but it
doesn’t have to be. Think of it as simply the ONE Thing you want your life
to be about more than any other. Try writing down something you’d like to
accomplish and then describe how you’d do it.
For me, it looks like this: “My purpose is to help people live their
greatest life possible through my teaching, coaching, and writing.” So, then
what does my life look like?
Teaching is my ONE Thing and has been for almost 30 years. At first
it was teaching clients about the market and how to make great decisions.
Next, it was teaching salespeople in the classroom, during sales meetings,
and one-on-one. Later it was teaching business classes. Then it became
teaching high performers models and strategies for high achievement, and
the last ten years it has been teaching seminars on specific life-building
principles. What I teach is what I then coach and is supported by what I
write.
Pick a direction, start marching down that path, and see how you like
it. Time brings clarity and if you find you don’t like it, you can always
change your mind. It’s your life.
14 LIVE BY PRIORITY
“Would you tell me, please, which way I
“Planning is bringing the future ought to go from here?”
into the present so that you can “That depends a good deal on
do something about it now.” where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
—Alan Lakein
“I don’t much care where—” said
Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
Alice’s classic encounter with the Cheshire Cat in Lewis Carroll’s Alices
Adventures in Wonderland reveals the close connection between purpose and
priority. Live with purpose and you know where you want to go. Live by priority
and you’ll know what to do to get there.
When each day begins, we each have a choice. We can ask, “What shall I
do?” or “What should I do?” Without direction, without purpose, whatever you
“shall do” will always get you somewhere. But when you’re going somewhere
on purpose, there will always be something you “should do” that will get you
where you must go. When your life is on purpose, living by priority takes
precedence.
To understand how Goal Setting to the Now will guide your thinking and
determine your most important priority, read this out loud to yourself:
Based on my someday goal, what’s the ONE Thing I can do in the next five
years to be on track to achieve it? Now, based on my five-year goal, what’s
the ONE Thing I can do this year to be on track to achieve my five-year
goal, so that I’m on track to achieve my someday goal? Now, based on my
goal this year, what’s the ONE Thing I can do this month so I’m on track to
achieve my goal this year, so I’m on track to achieve my five-year goal, so
I’m on track to achieve my someday goal? Now, based on my goal this
month, what’s the ONE Thing I can do this week so I’m on track to achieve
my goal this month, so I’m on track to achieve my goal this year, so I’m on
track to achieve my five-year goal, so I’m on track to achieve my someday
goal? Now, based on my goal this week, what’s the ONE Thing I can do
today so I’m on track to achieve my goal this week, so I’m on track to
achieve my goal this month, so I’m on track to achieve my goal this year,
so I’m on track to achieve my five-year goal, so I’m on track to achieve my
someday goal? So, based on my goal today, what’s the ONE Thing I can do
right NOW so I’m on track to achieve my goal today, so I’m on track to
achieve my goal this week, so I’m on track to achieve my goal this month,
so I’m on track to achieve my goal this year, so I’m on track to achieve my
five-year goal, so I’m on track to achieve my someday goal?
I hope you hung in there and read the entire thing. Why? Because you’re
training your mind how to think, how to connect one goal with the next over
time until you know the most important thing you must do right NOW. You’re
learning how to think big—but go small.
To prove its value, just skip the steps by asking yourself, “What’s the ONE
Thing I can do right now so I’m on track to achieve my someday goal?” Doesn’t
work. The moment is too far from the future for you to clearly see your key
priority In fact, you can keep adding back in today, this week, and so on, but you
won’t see the powerful priority you seek until you’ve added back in all the steps.
It’s why most people never get close to their goals. They haven’t connected
today to all the tomorrows it will take to get there.
Connect today to all your tomorrows. It matters.
Research backs this up. In three separate studies, psychologists observed
262 students to see the impact of visualization on outcomes. The students were
asked to visualize in one of two ways: Those in one group were told to visualize
the outcome (like getting an “A” on an exam) and the others were asked to
visualize the process needed to achieve a desired outcome (like all of the study
sessions needed to earn that “A” on the exam). In the end, students who
visualized the process performed better across the board—they studied earlier
and more frequently and earned higher grades than those who simply visualized
the outcome.
People tend to be overly optimistic about what they can accomplish, and
therefore most don’t think things all the way through. Researchers call this the
“planning fallacy” 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. This is why Goal Setting to the Now really
works.
FIG. 25 Living a domino run.
I have this dialogue with people every day. It’s particularly effective when
they ask me what they should do. I turn it around and say, “Before I answer your
question, let me ask you something: Where are you going, and where do you
want to be someday?” Without fail, as I walk them through Goal Setting to the
Now, they catch on quickly and come up with their own answers, and by the
time they tell me the ONE Thing they should be doing right now, I laughingly
ask, “So why are you still talking to me?”
Your last step is to write down your answers. Much has been written about
writing down goals and for a very good reason—it works.
In 2008, Dr. Gail Matthews of the Dominican University of California,
recruited 267 participants from a wide range of professions (lawyers,
accountants, nonprofit employees, marketers, etc.) and a variety of countries.
Those who wrote down their goals were 39.5 percent more likely to accomplish
them. Writing down your goals and your most important priority is your final
step to living by priority.
BIG IDEAS
1. There can only be ONE. Your most important priority is the
ONE Thing you can do right now that will help you achieve
what matters most to you. You may have many “priorities,” but dig deep
and you’ll discover there is always one that matters most, your top priority
—your ONE Thing.
2. Goal Set to the Now. Knowing your future goal is how you begin.
Identifying the steps you need to accomplish along the way keeps your
thinking clear while you uncover the right priority you need to accomplish
right now
3. Put pen to paper. Write your goals down and keep them close.
Pull your purpose through to a single priority built by Goal Setting to the
Now, and that priority—that ONE Thing you can do such that by doing it
everything else will be easier or unnecessary—will show you the way to
extraordinary results.
And once you know what to do, the only thing left is to go from knowing to
doing.
15 LIVE FOR PRODUCTIVITY
Ebenezer Scrooge’s story might have
“Productivity isn’t about being a been a footnote in literary history except
workhorse, keeping busy or for this—he acted. Passionate about his
burning the midnight oil... . It’s new purpose and empowered by a
more about priorities, planning, priority that fulfilled it, he got up and
and fiercely protecting your got going.
time.” Productive action transforms lives.
—Margarita Tartakovsky
“Let’s go be productive!” will
never be heard in the movies as the
cavalry takes the hill. It’s not the first choice a coach, manager, or general uses
as a rallying cry to arouse deep emotion and inspire the troops. It’s not what you
say to yourself as you take a deep breath and dive into a challenge or face
competition. And Dickens never had Scrooge utter these words as he took
command of his transformed life. Yet productive is exactly what Scrooge was,
and there’s no better word than productivity to describe what you want from
what you do when the outcome matters.
We are always doing something—working, playing, eating, sleeping,
standing, sitting, breathing. If we’re alive, we’re doing something. Even if we’re
doing nothing, that’s something. Every minute of every day, the question is
never will we be doing something, but rather what that something is we’ll be
doing. Sometimes what we do doesn’t matter, but sometimes it does. And when
it does, what we do defines our life more than anything else. 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.
Living for productivity produces extraordinary results.
Whenever I teach productivity I always start by asking, “What type of time-
managing system do you use?” The answers are as varied as the number of
people in the room: paper calendar, electronic calendar, Day-Timer, At-A-
Glance weekly planner... you name it and I hear it. I then ask, “So how did you
choose yours?” The reasons cited come in every shape, size, color, price, and
criteria imaginable. But the students invariably describe the format, not the
function—what they are, not how they work. So when I say, “That’s great, but
what kind of system do you use?” the answer is always the same: “What do you
mean?”
“Well, if everyone has the same amount of time and yet some earn more
than others,” I ask, “can we then say that it’s how we use our time that
determines the money we make?” Everyone always agrees, so I continue: “If this
is true, that time is money, then the best way to describe a time-managing system
might just be by the money it makes. So, do you think you’re using the $10,000-
a-year system? The $20,000-a-year system? The $50,000-, $100,000-, or
$500,000-a-year system? Are you using the $1,000,000-plus system?”
Silence.
Until inevitably someone asks, “How do we know?”
To which I reply, “How much do you make?”
If money is a metaphor for producing results, then it’s clear—a time-
managing system’s success can be judged by the productivity it produces.
The strange thing about my life is that I’ve never worked for anyone who
wasn’t a millionaire or didn’t become one. I didn’t set out for this to happen. It
just did. And the most important thing I learned from these experiences is that
the most successful people are the most productive people.
Productive people get more done, achieve better results, and earn far more
in their hours than the rest. They do so
because they devote maximum time to
“My goal is no longer to get being productive on their top priority,
more done, but rather to have their ONE Thing. They time block their
less to do.” ONE Thing and then protect their time
—Francine Jay
blocks with a vengeance. They’ve
connected the dots between working
their time blocks consistently and the extraordinary results they seek.
TIME BLOCKING
I often say that I come from a “long line of lethargic people.” This is usually
good for a laugh, but it’s also true. It seems at times that my genes just might
have more in common with the tortoise than the hare. On the other hand, some
of the people I work with are so blessed with energy they actually vibrate.
Amazingly, they’re able to work long hours over extended periods and never
wear down. When I try to follow suit, in less than a week my body simply falls
apart. I’ve discovered that, no matter how hard I try, I can’t use more time as my
main means of doing more. It’s just not physically possible for me. So, given my
constraints, I’ve had to find a way to be highly productive in the hours I can put
in.
The solution? Time blocking.
Most people think there’s never enough time to be successful, but there is
when you block it. Time blocking is a very results-oriented way of viewing and
using time. It’s a way of making sure that what has to be done gets done.
Alexander Graham Bell said, “Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at
hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.” 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.
Unfortunately, if you’re like most individuals, your typical day might look
something like figure 27, when you find yourself with less and less time to focus
on what matters most.
The most productive people’s day is dramatically different (figure 28).
FIG. 27 Everything Else dominates your day!
If disproportionate results come from one activity, then you must give that
one activity disproportionate time. Each and every day, ask this Focusing
Question for your blocked time: “Today, what’s the ONE Thing I can do for my
ONE Thing such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”
When you find the answer, you’ll be doing the most leveraged activity for your
most leveraged work.
This is how results become extraordinary.
FIG. 28 Your ONE Thing gets the time of day it deserves!
Those who do this, in my experience, are the ones who not only become the
most accomplished, but who also have the most career opportunities. Slowly but
surely they become known in their organization for their ONE Thing and
become “irreplaceable.” Ultimately, no one can imagine or tolerate the cost of
losing them. (The opposite is equally true, by the way, for those lost in the land
of “Everything Else.”)
Once you’ve done your ONE Thing for the day, you can devote the rest of
it to everything else. Just use the Focusing Question to identify your next priority
and give that task the time it deserves. Repeat this approach until your workday
is done. Getting “everything else” done may help you sleep better at night, but
it’s unlikely to earn you a promotion.
1. Build a bunker. Find somewhere to work that takes you out of the path of
disruption and interruption. If you have an office, get a “Do Not Disturb”
sign. If it has glass walls, install shades. If you work in a cubicle, get
permission to put up a folding screen. If necessary, go elsewhere. The
immortal Ernest Hemingway kept a strict writing schedule starting at seven
every morning in his bedroom. The mortal but still immensely talented
business author Dan Heath “bought an old laptop, deleted all its browsers,
and, for good measure, deleted its wireless network drivers” and would take
his “way-back machine” to a coffee shop to avoid distractions. Between the
two extremes, you could just find a vacant room and simply close the door.
2. Store provisions. Have any supplies, materials, snacks, or beverages you
need on hand and, other than for a bathroom break, avoid leaving your
bunker. A simple trip to the coffee machine can derail your day should you
encounter someone seeking to make you a part of theirs.
3. Sweep for mines. Turn off your phone, shut down your e-mail, and exit your
Internet browser. Your most important work deserves 100 percent of your
attention.
4. Enlist support. Tell those most likely to seek you out what you’re doing and
when you’ll be available. It’s amazing how accommodating others are
when they see the big picture and know when they can access you.
If, ultimately, you continue a tug-of-war to make time blocking take place,
then use the Focusing Question to ask: What’s the ONE Thing I can do to protect
my time block every day such by doing it everything else I might do will be
easier or unnecessary?
BIG IDEAS
1. Connect the dots. Extraordinary results become possible when
where you want to go is completely aligned with what you do
today. Tap into your purpose and allow that clarity to dictate your priorities.
With your priorities clear, the only logical course is to go to work.
2. Time block your ONE Thing. The best way to make your ONE Thing happen
is to make regular appointments with yourself. Block time early in the day,
and block big chunks of it—no less than four hours! Think of it this way: If
your time blocking were on trial, would your calendar contain enough
evidence to convict you?
3. Protect your time block at all costs. Time blocking works only when your
mantra is “Nothing and no one has permission to distract me from my ONE
Thing.” Unfortunately, your resolve won’t keep the world from trying, so
be creative when you can be and firm when you must. Your time block is
the most important meeting of your day, so whatever it takes to protect it is
what you have to do.
You can’t put limits on what you’ll do. You have to be open to new ideas
and new ways of doing things if you want breakthroughs in your life. As you
travel the path of mastery you’ll find yourself continually challenged to do new
things. The Purposeful person follows the simple rule that “a different result
requires doing something different.” Make this your mantra and breakthroughs
become possible.
Too many people reach a level where their performance is “good enough”
and then stop working on getting better. People on the path to mastery avoid this
by continually upping their goal, challenging themselves to break through their
current ceiling, and staying the forever apprentice. It’s what writer and memory
champion Joshua Foer dubbed the “OK Plateau.” He illustrated it with typing. If
practice time were all that mattered, over the course of our professional careers,
with the millions of memos and e-mails we type, we’d all progress from the
lowly chicken peck to 100 words a minute. But that doesn’t happen. We reach a
level of skill we deem to be acceptable and then simply switch off the learning.
We go on automatic pilot and hit one of the most common ceilings of
achievement: we hit the OK Plateau.
When you’re in search of extraordinary results, accepting an OK Plateau or
any other ceiling of achievement isn’t okay when it applies to your ONE Thing.
When you want to break through plateaus and ceilings, there is only one
approach—“P.”
In business and in life, we all start off entrepreneurially. We go after
something with our current level of abilities, energy, knowledge, and effort—in
short, everything that comes easily. Approaching things with “E” is comfortable
because it feels natural. It’s who we currently are and how we currently like to
do things.
It’s also limiting.
When “E” is our only approach, we create artificial limits to what we can
achieve and who we can become. If we tackle something with all “E” and then
hit a ceiling of achievement, we simply bounce up against it, over and over and
over. This continues until we just can’t take the disappointment anymore,
become resigned to this being the only outcome we can ever have, and
eventually seek out greener pastures elsewhere. When we think we’ve maxed out
our potential in a situation, starting over is how we think we’ll get ahead. The
problem is this becomes a vicious cycle of taking on the next new thing with
renewed enthusiasm, energy, natural ability, and effort, until another ceiling is
hit and disappointment and resignation set in once again. And then it’s on to—
you guessed it—the next greener pasture.
Bring “P” to the same ceiling and things look different. The Purposeful
approach says, “I’m still committed to growing, so what are my options?” You
then use the Focusing Question to narrow those choices down to the next thing
you should do. It could be to follow a new model, get a new system, or both. But
be prepared. Implementing these may require new thinking, new skills, and even
new relationships. Probably none of this will feel natural at first. That’s okay.
Being Purposeful is often about doing what comes “unnaturally,” but when
you’re committed to achieving extraordinary results, you simply do whatever it
takes anyway.
When you’ve done the best you can do but are certain the results aren’t the
best they can be, get out of “E” and into “P.” Look for the better models and
systems, the ways that can take you farther. Then adopt new thinking, new skills,
and new relationships to help you put them into action. Become Purposeful
during your time block, and unlock your potential.
BIG IDEAS
1. Commit to be your best. Extraordinary results happen only
when you give the best you have to become the best you can
be at your most important work. This is, in essence, the path to mastery—
and because mastery takes time, it takes a commitment to achieve it.
2. Be purposeful about your ONE Thing. Move from “E” to “P.” Go on a quest
for the models and systems that can take you the farthest. Don’t just settle
for what comes naturally—be open to new thinking, new skills, and new
relationships. If the path of mastery is a commitment to be your best, being
purposeful is a commitment to adopt the best possible approach.
3. Take ownership of your outcomes. If extraordinary results are what you want,
being a victim won’t work. Change occurs only when you’re accountable.
So stay out of the passenger seat and always choose the driver’s side.
4. Find a coach. You’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone who achieves
extraordinary results without one.
Remember, we’re not talking about ordinary results— extraordinary is what
we’re after. That kind of productivity eludes most, but it doesn’t have to. When
you time block your most important priority, protect your time block, and then
work your time block as effectively as possible, you’ll be as productive as you
can be. You’ll be living the power of The ONE Thing.
Now you just have to avoid getting hijacked.
17 THE FOUR THIEVES
In 1973, a group of seminary students
“Focus is a matter of deciding unknowingly participated in a grand
what things you’re not going to study known as “The Good Samaritan
do.” Experiment.” These students were
—John Carmack
recruited and divided into two groups to
see what factors influenced whether or
not they would help a stranger in distress. Some were told they were going to
prepare a talk about seminary jobs; the others, that they were going to give a talk
about the Parable of the Good Samaritan, a Biblical story about helping people
in need. Within each group, some were told they were late and had to hurry to
their destination, while others were told they could take their time. What the
students didn’t know was that researchers had planted a man along the way—
slumped on the ground, coughing, apparently in distress.
In the end, fewer than half the students stopped to help. But the deciding
factor wasn’t the task—it was time. Ninety percent of the students who were
rushed failed to stop and render aid to the stranger. Some actually stepped over
him in their hurry to get where they were supposed to go. It didn’t seem to
matter that half of them were on their way to deliver a talk on helping others!
Now, if seminary students can so easily lose focus on their real priority, do
the rest of us even have a prayer?
Clearly, our best intentions can easily be undone. Just as there are the Six
Lies that will deceive and mislead you, there are Four Thieves that can hold you
up and rob you of your productivity. And since there’s no one standing by to
protect you, it’s up to you to stop these thieves in their tracks.
2. FEAR OF CHAOS
A not-so-funny thing happens along the way to extraordinary results. Untidiness.
Unrest. Disarray. Disorder. When we tirelessly work our time block, clutter
automatically takes up residence around us.
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. Unfortunately, there’s no pause or stop button. You can’t run
life in slow motion. Wishing you could will just make you miserable and
disappointed.
One of the greatest thieves of productivity is the unwillingness to allow for
chaos or the lack of creativity in dealing with it.
Focusing on ONE Thing has a guaranteed consequence: other things don’t
get done. Although that’s exactly the point, it doesn’t automatically make us feel
any better about it. There will always be people and projects that simply aren’t a
part of your biggest single priority but still matter. You will feel them pressing
for your attention. There will always be unfinished work and loose ends lying
around to snare your focus. Your time block can feel like a submersible, where
the deeper you commit to your ONE Thing, the more the pressure mounts for
you to come up for air and address everything you’ve put on hold. Eventually it
can feel like even the tiniest leak might trigger an all-out implosion.
When this happens, when you give in to the pressure of any chaos being left
unattended, it can be a total relief. But not when it comes to productivity.
It’s a thief!
The truth is, it’s a package deal. When you strive for greatness, chaos is
guaranteed to show up. In fact, other areas of your life may experience chaos in
direct proportion to the time you put in on your ONE Thing. It’s important for
you to accept this instead of fighting it. Oscar-winning filmmaker Francis Ford
Coppola warns us that “anything you build on a large scale or with intense
passion invites chaos.” In other words, get used to it and get over it.
Now, in anybody’s life or work there are some things that just can’t be
ignored: family, friends, pets, personal commitments, or critical job projects. At
any given time, you may have some or all of these tugging at your time block.
You can’t forgo your power hours, that’s a given. So, what do you do?
I get asked this a lot. I’ll be
“If a cluttered desk is a sign of a teaching and know that, as soon as I
cluttered mind, of what, then, is finish, hands are going to shoot up.
an empty desk a sign?” “What do I do if I’m a single parent with
—Albert Einstein kids?” “What if I have elderly parents
who constantly depend on me?” “I have
absolute obligations I must take care of, so what do I do?” These are obviously
fair questions. Here’s what I tell them.
Depending on your situation, your time block might initially look different
from others’. Each of our situations is unique. Depending on where you are in
your life, you may not be able to immediately block off every morning to be by
yourself. You may have a kid or a parent in tow. You may be doing your time
block at a day care, nursing home, or some other place you have to be. Your
alone time may have to be at a different time of day for a while. You may have
to trade off time with others so they protect your time block and you in turn
protect theirs. You may even have your kids or parents help you during your
time block because they simply must be with you or you actually need the
support.
If you have to beg, then beg. If you have to barter, then barter. If you have
to be creative, then be creative. Just don’t be a victim of your circumstances.
Don’t sacrifice your time block on the altar of “I just can’t make it work.” My
mom used to say, “When you argue for your limitations, you get to keep them,”
but this is one you can’t afford. Figure it out. Find a way. Make it happen.
When you commit to your ONE
“The art of being wise is the art Thing each day, extraordinary results
of knowing what to overlook.” ultimately occur. In time, this creates the
— William James income or opportunity to manage the
chaos. So, don’t let this thief pickpocket
your productivity. Move past your fear of chaos, learn to deal with it, and trust
that your work on your ONE Thing will come through for you.
Here’s the productivity secret of this plan: when you spend the early hours
energizing yourself, you get pulled through the rest of the day with little
additional effort. You’re not focused on having a perfect day all day, but on
having an energized start to each day. If you can have a highly productive day
until noon, the rest of the day falls easily into place. That’s positive energy
creating positive momentum. Structuring the early hours of each day is the
simplest way to extraordinary results.
Who you hang out with also has serious implications for your health habits.
Harvard professor Dr. Nicholas A. Christakis and University of California, San
Diego associate professor James H. Fowler wrote the book on how our social
networks unmistakably impact our well-being. Their book, Connected: The
Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives,
connects the dots between our relationships and drug use, sleeplessness,
smoking, drinking, eating, and even happiness. For instance, their 2007 study on
obesity revealed that if one of your close friends becomes obese, you’re 57
percent more likely to do the same. Why? The people we see tend to set our
standard for what’s appropriate.
In time, you begin to think, act, and even look a little like those you hang
out with. But not only do their attitudes and health habits influence you, their
relative success does too. If the people you spend your time with are high
achievers, their achievements can influence your own. A study featured in the
psychology journal Social Development shows that out of nearly 500 school-age
participants with reciprocal “best friend” relationships, “children who establish
and maintain relationships with high-achieving students experience gains in their
report card grades.” Further, those who have high-achieving friends appear “to
benefit with regard to their motivational beliefs and academic performance.”
Hanging out with people who seek success will strengthen your motivation and
positively push your performance.
Your mother was right when she cautioned you to be careful of the
company you keep. The wrong people in your environment can most certainly
dissuade, deter, and distract you from the productivity course you’ve set out on.
But the opposite is also true. No one succeeds alone and no one fails alone. Pay
attention to the people around you. Seek out those who will support your goals,
and show the door to anyone who won’t. The individuals in your life will
influence you and impact you—probably more than you give them credit for.
Give them their due and make sure that the sway they have on you sends you in
the direction you want to go.
If people are the first priority in creating a supportive environment, place
isn’t far behind. When your physical environment isn’t in step with your goals, it
can also keep you from ever getting started on them in the first place.
I know this sounds oversimplified,
“Surround yourself only with but to succeed at doing your ONE Thing
people who are going to lift you you have to be able to get to it, and your
higher.” physical environment plays a vital role
—Oprah Winfrey in whether you do or not. The wrong
surroundings may never let you get
there. If your environment is so full of distractions and diversions that before
you can help yourself you’ve gotten caught doing something you shouldn’t, you
won’t get where you need to go. Think of it as having to walk down an aisle of
candy every day when you’re trying to lose weight. Some may be able to handle
this easily, but most of us are going to sample some sweets along the way.
What is around you will either aim you toward your time block or pull you
away. This starts from the time you wake up and continues until you get to your
time-block bunker. What you see and hear from the time your alarm rings to
when your time block begins ultimately determines if you get there, when you
get there, and whether you’re ready to be productive when you do. So, do a trial
run. Walk through the path you’ll take each day, and eradicate all the sight and
sound thieves that you find. For me, at home it’s simple things like e-mail, the
morning paper, the morning TV news shows, the neighbors out walking their
dogs. All wonderful things, but not wonderful when I have an appointment with
myself to accomplish my ONE Thing. So, I check off e-mail quickly, I never see
the paper, I keep the TV cabinet closed, and I choose my driving route carefully
At work, I avoid the community coffee pot and the information boards. They can
come later in the day. What I’ve learned is that when you clear the path to
success— that’s when you consistently get there.
Don’t let your environment lead you astray. Your physical surroundings
matter and the people around you matter. Having an environment that doesn’t
support your goals is all too common, and unfortunately an all-too-common thief
of productivity. As actor and comedian Lily Tomlin once said, “The road to
success is always under construction.” So don’t allow yourself to be detoured
from getting to your ONE Thing. Pave your way with the right people and place.
BIG IDEAS
1. Start saying “no.” Always remember that when you say yes to
something, you’re saying no to everything else. It’s the
essence of keeping a commitment. Start turning down other requests
outright or saying, “No, for now” to distractions so that nothing detracts
you from getting to your top priority. Learning to say no can and will
liberate you. It’s how you’ll find the time for your ONE Thing.
2. Accept chaos. Recognize that pursuing your ONE Thing moves other things
to the back burner. Loose ends can feel like snares, creating tangles in your
path. This kind of chaos is unavoidable. Make peace with it. Learn to deal
with it. The success you have accomplishing your ONE Thing will
continually prove you made the right decision.
3. Manage your energy. Don’t sacrifice your health by trying to take on too
much. Your body is an amazing machine, but it doesn’t come with a
warranty, you can’t trade it in, and repairs can be costly. It’s important to
manage your energy so you can do what you must do, achieve what you
want to achieve, and live the life you want to live.
4. Take ownership of your environment. Make sure that the people around you
and your physical surroundings support your goals. The right people in your
life and the right physical environment on your daily path will support your
efforts to get to your ONE Thing. When both are in alignment with your
ONE Thing, they will supply the optimism and physical lift you need to
make your ONE Thing happen.
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... ?
Again, these are merely examples to get you thinking about the
possibilities. And, just as in your personal life, once you’ve decided what
matters most, professional time blocking becomes your way of making sure it
gets done. At work, this is usually about either a short-term project you must
complete or an ongoing long-term activity you’re committed to doing
repeatedly. No matter, an appointment with yourself is the surest path to
ensuring you achieve extraordinary results.
Casual open discussions or short in-house workshops around key concepts
in the book might really help everyone at work find their own understanding and
get on the same page.
If implementing the ONE Thing in an area requires you to involve others,
consider getting them their own copy of the book. Sharing your ahas is a great
start and you may be happily surprised with the insights you get back when
others have a chance to read the book on their own.
Keep in mind that it takes more than reading the book and a few
conversations or mentions in a meeting to make The ONE Thing a new habit in
your life or in the lives of those around you. You know from reading the book
that it takes on average 66 days to create a new habit, so approach this
accordingly. To ignite your life you must focus on ONE Thing long enough for
it to catch fire.
Let’s look at a few other areas where The ONE Thing might make a real
difference.
YOUR NON-PROFIT
What’s the ONE Thing we can do to fund our annual financial needs... ? Serve
twice as many people... ? Double our number of volunteers... ?
YOUR SCHOOL
What’s the ONE Thing we can do to decrease our dropout rate to zero... ? Raise
our test scores by 20 percent... ? Increase our graduation rate to 100 percent... ?
Double our parent participation... ?
YOUR COMMUNITY
What’s the ONE Thing we can do to improve our sense of community... ? Help
the homebound... ? Double our volunteerism... ? Double voter turnout... ?
After my wife Mary read this book, I asked her to do something. She turned
to me and you know what she said? “Gary, that’s not my ONE Thing right
now!” We laughed, high-fived, and I got to do it myself!
The ONE Thing forces you to think big, work things through to create a list,
prioritize that list so that a geometric progression can happen, and then hammer
away on the first thing—the ONE Thing that starts your domino run.
So be prepared to live a new life! And remember that the secret to
extraordinary results is to ask a very big and specific question that leads you to
one very small and tightly focused answer.
If you try to do everything, you could wind up with nothing. If you try to do
just ONE Thing, the right ONE Thing, you could wind up with everything you
ever wanted.
The ONE Thing is real. If you put it to work, it will work.
So don’t delay. Ask yourself the question, “What’s the ONE Thing I can do
right now to start using The ONE Thing in my life such that by doing it
everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”
And make doing the answer your first ONE Thing!
Onward...
Gary Keller
ON THE RESEARCH
Although I’ve lived the lessons of this book for some time, we began researching
The ONE Thing in earnest in 2008. Since then, we’ve archived a collection of
well over a thousand scholarly articles, scientific studies, and academic papers;
hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles; and a large library of books
written by the foremost experts in their fields. Binder after binder of discoveries,
facts, and anecdotes literally covered every inch of our writing space.
If you want to dive deeper into what you’ve learned from this book, you
can find an extensive list of our references organized by topic and by chapter at
ThelThing.com. This website is a gateway into our minds—we mention the
authors who have inspired us, provide links to articles that are available online,
and list those white papers that educated our thinking. We’ve also thrown in
some additional interesting factoids and even a fun video here and there. Enjoy
the journey.
INDEX
A | B | C | D | E
F | G | H | I | J
K | L | M | N | O
P | Q | R | S | T | V
A
Accountability Cycle, 176, 183–189, 185
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll), 146–147
Allen, Paul, 23
Amorico, Angelo, 21
Attention, 51–53. See also multitasking
Avnaim-Pesso, Liora, 68
B
Balance
balancing versus, 72, 82–83
counterbalancing versus, 79–83
genesis of myth of, 73–75
golden mean and, 73
lie of, 72–83
life as balancing act, 82
middle mismanagement and, 75–77, 76, 77, 79
prioritizing versus balancing, 82
time and, 77–79
work-life balance, 74–75, 75, 214–216
Balancing versus balance, 72, 82–83. See also counterbalancing
Begging Bowl, 140–142
Being Together, Working Apart (Gomory), 74
Bhatia, Sabeer, 87
Big
bold actions and, 93
and ceiling for achievement, 86
and fear of failure, 93–94
going big, 87–93, 208–209
growth mindset versus fixed mindset, 91–94
lie of big as bad, 84–94
living big for greatness, 92, 93, 208–209
negative associations with, 84–85
as placeholder for leap of possibility, 86–87
research on thinking big, 91–92
thinking big and acting big, 87–93
Big & Broad questions, 122
Big & Specific questions, 122, 127–128
Big-picture question, 106, 107, 110, 113. See also Focusing Question
Big Why, 144–145. See also purpose
Business. See also ONE Thing; Priority; Productivity; Purpose; Success
Focusing Question on, 116
reinventing of, 89–90
C
Calendaring, 163, 169–170, 169, 200, 201
Carnegie, Andrew, 102–103
Carroll, Lewis, 146–147
Chaos, fear of, 195–198, 206
Cheng, Ken, 59
Christakis, Nicholas A., 203–204
Christmas Carol (Dickens), 135–139, 147, 156, 157
Coaching, 7–9, 188, 189
Colbert, Stephen, 29
Collins, Billy, 46–47
Connected (Christakis and Fowler), 203–204
Counterbalancing, 79–83. See also balance
Crenshaw, Dave, 52
D
Danziger, Shai, 68
Diamond, Jared, 73–74
Dickens, Charles, 135–139, 147, 156, 157
Discipline
definition of, 55
lie of, 54–60
relationship of habit to, 55–60
selected discipline, 56–57
Disney, Roy, 19
Disney, Walt, 19
Distraction, 51–53. See also multitasking
Domino effect
extraordinary results and, 16
Focusing Question and, 108–110
geometric domino progression, 13–16
priority and, 16
and success built sequentially over time, 16, 210–211
time-blocking and, 170
Dweck, Carol S., 91–92
E
80/20 Principle
definition of, 37–38
extreme Pareto, 39–41
to-do lists and, 38, 41–42
80/20 Principle (Koch), 37
Einstein, Albert, 19, 197
Elite performers, 176–179, 188
Entrepreneurial (“E”) approach, 175–176, 179–183, 189
Ericsson, K. Anders, 177, 188
Expert performance, 176–179, 188
Extraordinary results. See ONE Thing; Priority; Productivity; Purpose; Success
F
Fear
of chaos, 195–198, 206
of failure, 93–94
Finances
definition of financially wealthy people, 142–143
Focus Questions on, 116
happiness and money, 142–143
and living large, 209
Focusing Question
anatomy of, 108–110
big-picture question, 106, 110, 113
on business, 116
Carnegie on, 102–103
criterion for answer to, 109
definition and statement of, 106, 110
domino effect and, 108–110
on finances, 116
focused action and, 108
Great Answers to Great Question, 119–128, 120, 121
on job, 114, 116
on key relationships, 115–116, 219
leverage test and, 109
life as question, 104–108
on personal life, 115, 219
possible action and, 108–109
and power of questions, 104–106
priority and, 108
reminders for using, 117–118
revision of Great Question to form, 123
small-focus question, 106–107, 110
as Success Habit, 112–118
as way of life, 113–118
Foer, Joshua, 182
Forstall, Scott, 92
Fowler, James H., 203–204
G
Gates, Bill, 22–24
Gates, Melinda, 23–24
Geography of Time, A (Levine), 165
Goal Setting to the Now, 147–155, 150, 153. See also ONE Thing
Godin, Seth, 193
Going big, 87–93, 88, 89, 208–209
Going small, 9–11, 41, 209–210. See also ONE Thing
Golden mean, 73. See also balance
Gomory, Ralph E., 74
Good Samaritan Experiment, 190–191
Graham, Paul, 167–168
Great Answers. See also Focusing Question; Great Question
benchmark and, 126–128
doable answers, 123, 124, 128
path to, 119–128, 120, 121
possibility answers, 123–128, 126–127
stretch answers, 123, 125, 126, 128
Great Question. See also Focusing Question
Big & Broad questions, 122
Big & Specific questions, 122, 127–128
options for asking, 120–123, 121
and path to Great Answers, 119–128, 120, 121
revision of, to form Focusing Question, 123
Small & Broad questions, 122
Small & Specific questions, 121–122
Growth mindset, 91–94
Guns, Germs, and Steel (Diamond), 73–74
H
Habits
building one habit at a time, 59
definition of, 55
Focusing Question as, 112–118
formation versus maintenance of, 57–59
halo effect in formation of, 59
relationship of discipline to, 55–60
research on, 58–59, 117
Success Habit, 112–118
time needed for formation of, 58–60
Hreljac, Ryan, 90
Hyperbolic discounting, 149
I
Isaac, Brad, 169–170
J
Jobs, Steve, 192
Johnson, Eric, 40–41
Juggling, 47–48, 48. See also multitasking
Juran, Joseph M., 36–39
K
Kano, Jigoro, 178
Kayongo, Derreck, 90
Keller, Gary, 236–238, 237
King, Stephen, 166
Koch, Richard, 37
L
Leonard, George, 178
Levav, Jonathan, 68
Levine, Robert, 165
Lies about success
balance, 72–83
big as bad, 84–94
clenching as way to success, 98–100
discipline, 54–60
equality, 32–42
multitasking, 43–53
willpower, 61–71
Lightner, Candace, 90
M
Maker (do or create) time, 167–168
“Makers Schedule, Manager’s Schedule” (Graham), 167–168
Manager time, 167–168
Marshmallow Test with toddlers, 63–64
Martin, George, 20
Mastery, 175, 176–179, 188–189
Mastery (Leonard), 178
Matthews, Gail, 154, 187–188
Matthews, Pat, 21
Megaphobia, 85
Mentoring. See Coaching
Meyer, David, 48
Microsoft, 23, 87
Mischel, Walter, 63–64
Monkey mind, 45–47. See also multitasking
Moving from “E” (Entrepreneurial) to “P” (Purposeful), 175–176, 179–183, 189
Multitasking
automobile accidents and, 51
brain channels and, 48–51
by computers, 45
cost of, 48, 50, 53
distraction and, 51–53
dopamine release and, 51
juggling as illusion, 47–48
lie of, 44–53
media multitaskers, 51
mistakes and, 50
monkey mind, 45–47
research on, 43–44, 50
sense of time and, 50
stress and, 50
in workplace, 46
N
Narrowing of focus. See ONE Thing
Nass, Clifford, 43–44
No regrets, 211–216
No saying, 41, 171, 191–195, 206
O
Oaten, Megan, 59
OK Plateau, 182
On Writing (King), 166
ONE Thing. See also Lies about success; Priority; Productivity; Purpose;
Success attention and, 51–53
clues of success, 17–24
counterbalancing and, 79–83
domino effect and, 12–16
Focusing Question and, 102–128, 219–222
going big and, 87–93, 208–209
going small and, 9–11, 41, 209–210
and Great Answers to Focusing Questions, 119–128
Great Question and, 120–123, 127–128
habits and, 55–60
implementation of, 218–223
inequality of efforts for results, 32–42
lies getting in the way of, 29–31
one life, 22–24
one passion, one skill, 20–22
one person, 19–20
one product, one service, 17–19
as secret of success, 6–11, 24
Success Habit and, 112–118
time blocking of, 160–163, 165–168, 173–174, 178, 200, 201
website on, 224–225, 239
willpower and, 61–71
P
Papasan, Jay, 238–239
Pareto, Vilfredo, 36–37
Pareto’s Principle, 37–39
Path of Mastery, 175, 176–179, 188–189
Personal life. See also Physical health; Relationships
as balancing act, 82–83
daily energy plan for highly productive person, 201
Focusing Questions on, 115, 118, 219
and going small, 209–210
living big for greatness, 92, 93, 208–209
and no regrets, 211–216
and regrets of the dying, 213–214
support for ONE Thing in, 202–204
and support for time blocking, 173
work-life balance, 74–75, 214–216
work-life counterbalancing, 79–83
Phelps, Michael, 56–57
Physical health
daily energy plan for highly productive person, 201
exercise and, 199, 201
Focusing Questions on, 115
nutrition and, 66–67, 71, 199, 201
productivity and, 198–201, 203–204, 207
sleep and, 200–201
social networks and, 203–204
willpower and, 66–67, 71
Planning fallacy, 152
Planning time, 168–170
Possibility answers, 123–128, 124. See also Great Answers
Priority. See also ONE Thing
balancing versus prioritizing, 82
counterbalancing and, 81–82
Dickens’ Christmas Carol on., 138–139, 147, 156
domino effect and, 16, 153
extraordinary results and, 132–134
Focusing Question and, 108
future purpose connecting to present priority, 149–154
Goal Setting to the Now, 147–155
hyperbolic discounting and, 149
meaning of, 147
present bias and, 149
relationship of purpose, productivity and, 132–134, 146–147, 173
to-do lists and, 41–42
written goals and, 154, 155, 187–188
Productivity. See also ONE Thing and acceptance of chaos, 195–198, 206
extraordinary results and, 132–134
Good Samaritan Experiment on, 190–191
and ONE Thing, 165–168
perseverance and, 169–170
physical environment and, 205–206
physical health and, 198–201, 203–204, 207
relationship of purpose, priority and, 132–134, 173
and saying no, 191–195, 206
social networks and, 202–204
supportive environment and, 202–207, 203
thieves of, 190–207
time blocking and, 159–189
and time management generally, 157–158
Purpose. See also ONE Thing
Begging Bowl tale, 140–142
Big Why and, 144–145
Dickens’ Christmas Carol on., 138–139, 147, 156
extraordinary results and, 132–134
future purpose connecting to present priority, 149–154
happiness and, 139–144, 207
moving from “E” (Entrepreneurial) to “P” (Purposeful), 175–176, 179–183,
189
power of, 143–144
relationship of priority, productivity and, 132–134, 146–147, 173
Purposeful (“P”) approach, 175–176, 179–183, 189
Q
Quality Control Handbook (Juran), 37
R
Relationships. See also Personal life
emotional energy from, 200, 201
Focusing Questions and, 115–116, 118, 219
regrets about, 213
and support for ONE Thing, 202–204
Richtel, Matt, 51
Rowling, J. K., 90
S
Sanders, Colonel, 17
Saying yes, 191–195
Seinfeld, Jerry, 169–170
Seligman, Martin, 142
Shiv, Baba, 65–66
Small & Broad questions, 122
Small & Specific questions, 121–122
Small-focus question, 106–107, 110. See also Focusing Question
Stretch answers, 123, 125, 126, 128. See also Great Answers
Success. See also Lies about success; Priority; Productivity; Purpose
attention and, 51–53
as built sequentially over time, 16, 210–211
Carnegie on, 102–103
and ceiling for achievement, 86
clenching versus unclenching as way to, 98–101
clues of, 17–24
counterbalancing and, 79–83
domino effect and, 16
extremes and, 76–77
failure as part of, 93–94
Focusing Question and, 102–128
and going big, 87–93, 208–209
going small for, 9–11, 41, 209–210
and Great Answers to Focusing Questions, 119–128
habits and, 55–60
and inequality of efforts for results, 32–42
as inside job, 214–216
leap of possibility and, 86–87
lies getting in the way of, 29–31
ONE Thing as secret of, 6–11, 24
productivity of successful people, 158
as short race fueled by discipline, 55
willpower and, 61–71
Suzannes Diary for Nicholas (Patterson), 81–82
T
Thieves of productivity
environment as not supportive of goals, 202–207
fear of chaos, 195–198, 206
Good Samaritan Experiment, 190–191
inability to say no, 191–195, 206
poor health habits, 198–201, 207
Three-Foot Rule, 194–195
Time. See also Time blocking; Time management
balance and, 77–79
for habit formation, 58–59, 60
multitasking and sense of, 50
success built sequentially over time, 16, 210–211
willpower and timing, 62–65, 69–71
Time blocking
Accountability Cycle and, 176, 183–189
calendar for, 163, 169–170, 200, 201
commitments needed for, 175–189
domino effect and, 170
mastery and, 175, 176–179, 188–189
and moving from “E” (Entrepreneurial) to “P” (Purposeful), 175–176, 179–
183, 189
of ONE Thing, 160–163, 165–168, 173–174, 178, 200, 201
of planning time, 168–170
in productive day, 160–162
protection of time block from distractions, 170–174
purpose of, 159
reminders for, 171–172
support for, 172, 173
of time off, 164
in typical day, 160
Time management. See also Time blocking
and productivity generally, 157–158
to-do lists, 34–36, 38, 41–42
To-do lists, 34–36, 41–42
Top Five Regrets of the Dying, The (Ware), 213–214
Truthiness, 28–30
Tuhabonye, Gilbert, 21–22
Twain, Mark, 28, 103, 212
V
Van Halen, Eddie, 177
Victim role, 184–186
Visualization of outcome and process, 152
W
Walton, Sam, 19, 90
Ware, Bronnie, 213–214
Whitehead, Lorne, 13–15
Willard, Nancy, 104
Willpower
brain and, 66–67
default judgment and low willpower, 68–69
lie of, 61–71
as limited but renewable resource, 65–66, 71
Marshmallow Test with toddlers, 63–64
nutrition and, 66–67, 71
research on, 63–68
timing and, 62–65, 69–71
“won’t” power versus, 69–70
Winfrey, Oprah, 20, 205
Work. See also ONE Thing; Priority; Productivity; Purpose; Success
Focusing Questions on, 116, 220–221
reinventing careers, 89–90
Work-life balance, 74–75, 75, 214–216. See also balance
Work-life counterbalancing, 79–83
Written goals, 154, 155, 187–188
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
When we were putting this book together, we agreed to do our best to organize it
using the principles of The ONE Thing. Most books follow the Chicago Manual
of Style’s traditional guidelines and have a half-title, title, copyright,
endorsements, author bio, foreword, acknowledgments, dedication, and epigraph
pages all before you ever get to the table of contents and the actual text. Really?
It all got tossed out the window. In terms of advocating for you, the reader,
we felt this was the ONE “design” Thing we could do to improve your
experience. As a result, the acknowledgments ended up in the back of the book.
In reality, if you were to reorder the book in terms of what’s most important to
the authors, this section may well have fallen just inside the front cover.
We began outlining this book in the summer of 2008 and submitted the first
full draft to our publisher on June 1, 2012—a four-year journey we certainly
couldn’t have navigated without help. Lots of it.
Family comes first. Without the love and support of my wife Mary and son
John, this book wouldn’t be what it is. My writing partner, Jay, is equally
thankful for the love and encouragement from Wendy and his kids, Gus and
Veronica. Spouses, especially wise, literate ones like ours, get the largely
thankless job of reading all the rough drafts rife with flaws and riddled with
errors that eventually become a finished book.
We also benefited from a great support team. Vickie Lukachik and Kylah
Magee loaded us up with so much research it took us close to half a year to
digest it. Valerie Vogler-Stipe and Sarah Zimmerman did their ONE Thing and
kept our plates and calendars free so we could stay focused on the book. The rest
of our team, Allison Odom, Barbara Sagnes, Mindy Hager, Liz Krakow, Lisa
Weathers, Denice Neason, and Mitch Johnson, also stayed on their ONE Thing
so we could do ours.
My Keller Williams Realty partners and senior leaders each lent their ideas
and support along the way: Mo Anderson, Mark Willis, Mary Tennant, Chris
Heller, John Davis, Tony Dicello, Dianna and Shon Kokoszka, and Jim Talbot.
Thanks guys! You rock! Our marketing team, led by Ellen Marks, worked
extensively on the design of the book, including all the ways you likely heard
about it: Annie Switt, Hiliary Kolb, Stephanie Van Hoek, Laura Price, the super-
talented designers Michael Balistreri and Caitlin McIntosh, as well as Tamara
Hurwitz, Jeff Ryder, and Owen Gibbs on our production team, and the web team
of Hunter Frazier and Veronica Diaz. Cary Sylvester, Mike Malinowski, and
Ben Herndon coordinated our IT work inside and outside the building with
partners like Feed Magnet and NVNTD. Anthony Azar, Tom Freireich, and
Danny Thompson worked with our vendor partners as well as with our partners
in the field to make sure we got the book in as many hands as possible. Special
thanks to Kaitlin Merchant of KW Research and Mona Covey, Julie Fantechi,
and Dawn Sroka of KWU for their work pre-and post-publication.
We also had the benefit of working with a publisher that truly gets The
ONE Thing and lives it, Ray Bard of Bard Press. He assembled an excellent
team that advised, supported, and encouraged us when we were writing and
later, during the editing, pushed us to the edge to make it as good as it could be.
Our extended publishing team includes managing editor Sherry Sprague, editor
Jeff Morris, copy/ production editor Deborah Costenbader, Randy Miyake and
Gary Hespenheide of Hespenheide Design, proofreader Luke Torn, and indexer
Linda Webster.
Publicist Barbara Henricks of Cave Henricks Communications and social
media pro Rusty Shelton of Shelton Interactive provided early feedback and led
the media campaign. We also had a group of veteran readers who, with some
select members of our team, provided feedback on our early draft: Jennifer
Driscoll-Hollis, Spencer Gale, David Hathaway, Robert M. Hooper, Ph.D., Scott
Provence, Cynthia Robbins, Robert Todd, and Todd Sattersten.
Thanks to the super-responsive researchers, professors, and authors who
answered our questions on a variety of topics: Dr. Roy Baumeister, a Francis
Eppes Eminent Scholar at Florida State University and Social Psychology Area
Director; Dr. Myron P. Gutmann, Directorate for the Social, Behavioral, and
Economic Sciences at the National Science Foundation; Dr. Eric Klinger,
Professor of Psychology Emeritus at the University of Minnesota, Morris; Dr.
Jonathan Levav, Associate Professor of Marketing at Stanford University; Paul
McFedries, author of the unique website wordspy.com; Dr. David E. Meyer,
Professor of Psychology in the Cognition and Perception Program at the
University of Michigan and director of the University of Michigan’s Brain,
Cognition, and Action Laboratory; Dr. Phyllis Moen, McKnight Presidential
Chair in Sociology at the University of Minnesota; Erica Mosner at Historical
Studies-Social Science Library at the Institute for Advanced Study; the super-
helpful Rachel from Bronnie Ware’s website; Valoise Armstrong at the Dwight
D. Eisenhower Library; Dr. Ed Deiner, author and Professor Emeritus in the
Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois; and James Cathcart,
Senior Leadership Consultant at Franklin Covey. We’re also grateful to The
Keller Center in the Hankamer School of Business at Baylor University and
Casey Blaine for her research on multitasking early on in our journey. And last,
I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank my business coach Bayne Henyon for his insights
all those years ago that changed the way I looked at things and reshaped the way
I worked.
Thank you everyone for everything!
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
GARY KELLER
Professionally, Gary’s ONE Thing is teaching. He excelled as a real estate
salesperson by teaching clients how to make great home buying-and-selling
decisions. As a real estate sales manager, he recruited agents through training
and helped them build their careers the same way. As cofounder and chairman of
the board, he built Keller Williams Realty International from a single office in
Austin, Texas, to the largest real estate company in North America by using his
skills as a teacher, trainer, and coach. Gary defines leadership as “teaching
people how to think the way they need to think so they can do what they need to
do when they need to do it, so they can get what they want when they want it.”
An Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year and finalist for Inc.
magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Keller is recognized as one of the most
influential leaders in the real estate industry. He has also helped many small
business owners and entrepreneurs find success through three nationally
bestselling books: The Millionaire Real Estate Agent, The Millionaire Real
Estate Investor, and SHIFT: How Top Real Estate Agents Tackle Tough Times.
A book, after all, is just another way to teach, but one with an infinitely large
classroom. As a business coach and national trainer, Gary has helped countless
others realize extraordinary results by narrowing their focus to their own ONE
Thing.
Unsurprising to those who know him, Gary believes that his single greatest
achievement is the life he’s built with his wife Mary and their son John.
JAY PAPASAN
Jay is the executive editor and vice president of publishing at Keller Williams
Realty and president of Rellek Publishing. Professionally, his ONE Thing is
writing. He attempted to write his first book on an electric typewriter in junior
high and was hooked. At least one high school teacher thought his writing had
promise and circulated one of his essays to the entire staff. Jay paid the bills in
college by working in a bookstore. He got his undergraduate degree in writing
and later, his Master’s. After graduation, Jay took a job in publishing. During his
years at HarperCollins in New York he worked on bestselling titles like Body for
Life by Bill Phillips and Go for the Goal by Mia Hamm. More recently, in the
ten years he’s worked with Gary, Jay has coauthored numerous award-winning
or bestselling titles, including the Millionaire Real Estate series.
Jay is passionate about sharing the ideas in his books and regularly speaks
at conventions and training events. He is a member of the Keller Williams
University International Master Faculty.
Outside of work, Jay co-owns a successful real estate investment business
and sales team with his wife Wendy. They enjoy life in Austin, Texas, with their
children Gus and Veronica.
Now that you understand the concept, it’s time to put The ONE Thing into
action in your life. Visit The1Thing.com to start thinking big by going small and
focusing on your ONE Thing today! Find up-to-date information on our
seminars and coaching programs, as well as exclusive ONE Thing tools. See
real-time updates from others joining the worldwide movement and share your
ONE Thing. Experience your ONE Thing today.