This straightforward yet effective idea is being used by people to concentrate on the most important aspects of their personal and professional lives. Employers are using coaching, training, and study groups to assist their staff members in being more productive. Sales are being increased by sales staff. Churches are offering their members advice and holding workshops.
People are leading more fulfilling lives by concentrating on one item at a time, which helps them advance their professions, improve their financial situation, get in shape and lose weight, grow in their faith, and develop deeper personal bonds and marriages.
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About the Author
Gary Keller serves as executive chairman of Keller Williams Realty, Inc. and kwx, a holding company that combines all of Keller Williams’ affiliates and subsidiaries. His novels have been on the Wall Street Journal and New York Times lists and have become blockbusters. Over 5.4 million copies of his books have been sold globally.
Jay Papasan was an editor at HarperCollins Publishers before he and Gary Keller co-authored the best-selling Millionaire Real Estate series. There, he contributed to best-selling novels including Mia Hamm’s Go for the Goal and Bill Phillips’ Body-for-Life.
In addition to being a keynote speaker, Jay and his wife, Wendy, co-own a prosperous Austin, Texas, real estate company connected to Keller Williams Realty.
Review
According to Keller, finding your “One Thing” is the path to amazing achievement. During our childhood, we had to do certain tasks at specific times, such as breakfast, school, homework, bath, and bedtime.
As we grew older, we were granted the freedom to decide when to do tasks, but not whether to complete them—for example, schoolwork before bed. However, as we get older, everything becomes a decision, and our lives are defined by these decisions. The topic of how to make wise decisions is covered in this book.
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Everything feels significant and urgent when there is no precise method for decision-making. One such formula is the “One Thing. What’s the One Thing you can do this week (day/month/year) such that by doing it, everything else would be easier or unnecessary?” is how Keller succinctly sums up the quest for the “One Thing.” He claims that every instance in which he has achieved great success has involved focusing on just one item, and the opposite was also true.
There are likely a lot of items on your to-do list, including some that may have received a “A.” This suggests that you may be concentrating on all of your “A’s” today rather than the “One Thing” that will enable you to accomplish your main “One Thing” in your personal or professional life.
The emphasis on the “One Thing”—success—is frequently absent from to-do lists. “The majority of to-do lists are really just survival lists,” says Keller. Success lists are brief, but survival lists are lengthy.
This idea is used by Keller to explain why some people appear to succeed while others fail. Why do some people thrive and others fail when the same amount of time is available? Every day, the successful applied the “One Thing” approach to the “One Thing” that they truly desired to accomplish.
This extends beyond employment to include one’s marriage, income, health (i.e., what is the one thing I should do to improve my fitness), and so on. This is the understanding that not everything is equally important and that concentrating on too many things prevents you from giving your “One Thing” the time and attention it requires.
The second part of the formula, “”What’s the ONE Thing you can do this week such that by doing it everything else would be easier or unnecessary?” must be the main emphasis in order to fully understand the criteria for a real “One Thing””.
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Keller uses the “domino effect” to highlight the significance of this realisation. Similar to a line of dominoes that fall when only the first one is pushed over, this effect is the result of one action having an impact on all related entities. Lorne Whitehead explained in a 1983 paper published in the esteemed American Journal of Physics how one domino might topple another that is actually 50% bigger.
Using the “One Thing” method to create a cascade of changes in your life is the key to achieving exceptional outcomes. The only difference between the “One Thing” and the overused Pareto Principle, sometimes known as the “80-20” rule, is that Kelly takes it too far.
He suggests that you find the “One Thing” from the 20% of your actions that will provide 80% of your benefits. This process should be repeated until you reach the crucial One Thing. Not every attempt is the same; some may yield noticeably more.
Saying “yes” to the “One Thing” necessitates saying “no” to everything else. Keller suggests saying “not now” to anything else you could accomplish until your most essential task is finished, regardless of whether you choose to say “later” or “never”.
It is absurd to imply that humans are capable of multitasking. After doing enough trials, Stanford University professor Clifford Nass came to the conclusion that “multitaskers were just lousy at everything.
The phrase was created to refer to computers rather than humans, and the computers could only execute one piece of code at a time, processing it quickly enough to give the impression that they were multitasking.
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You won’t need to become a very disciplined person to accomplish your goals after you’ve found the “One Thing” that your work or present issue requires. Naturally, we already possess more discipline than we require; we just need to control and guide it a bit more effectively. According to Keller, “people who appear to be disciplined are actually just people who have ingrained a few habits into their lives.
Doing the right thing, not everything, is what makes you successful. Michael Phelps was the most decorated Olympian in any sport with 22 medals prior to his retirement. Although others claimed he would “never be able to focus on anything”, his coach since the age of eleven, Bob Bowman, cited his capacity for concentration as his strongest quality. It’s safe to say that Phelps focused all of his attention on swimming every day, which became his one discipline and habit.
The outcomes of forming the correct habit are unavoidable; they bring about the accomplishment you seek and significantly ease your life. Keller observes, “We feel the need to do too many things in the time we have, not that we have too little time to do all the things we need to do.
Anyone who has ever heard the 30-minute motivating speech at the business conference knows that the “one thing” is not a novel concept. However, internalising the lesson differs greatly from hearing it.
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Summary
Gary Keller and Jay Papasan’s productivity book, The ONE Thing, makes the case that we may accomplish remarkable outcomes and gain momentum toward our long-term objectives by setting priorities and concentrating on one crucial job at a time.