The One Thing by Jay Papasan and Gary Keller-Book Summary and Notes

The point: We need to focus on one thing at a time to make everything else easier or unnecessary.

Who is the book for: Those who are firm believers in multi-tasking or would like to hear a different perspective on multi-tasking and it’s effect on our achievement.

Key points: 

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

You should ask yourself: “What’s the ONE Thing I can do this week such that by doing it everything else would be easier or unnecessary?”

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

Notes:

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 extraordinary results are directly determined by how narrow you can make your focus. 

Most people 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 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.

The Domino Effect is the idea that 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.

The challenge is that life doesn’t line everything up for us and say, “Here’s where you should start.” Highly successful people know this. So every day they line up their priorities anew, find the lead domino, and whack away at it until it falls.

Why does this approach work? Because extraordinary success is sequential, no simultaneous.

When you see someone who has a lot of knowledge, they learned it over time. When you see someone who has a lot of skills, they developed them over time. When you see someone who has done a lot, they accomplished it over time. When you see someone who has a lot of money, they earned it over time. The key is over time. Success is built sequentially. It’s one thing at a time.

The ONE Thing is a dominant theme that shows up in different ways. Take the concept and apply it to people, and you’ll see where one person makes all the difference.

Everyone has one person who either means the most to them or was the first to influence, train, or manage them. Success isn’t something that happens without the one person.

Passion for something leads to disproportionate time practicing or working at it. That time spent eventually translates to skill, and when skill improves, results improve. Better results generally lead to more enjoyment, and more passion and more time is invested. It can be a virtuous cycle all the way to extraordinary results.

The six lies between you and success: 1) Everything matters equally 2) Multitasking 3) a disciplined life 4) willpower is always on will-call 5) a balanced life 6) big is bad

“Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least,” -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

As Henry David Thoreau said, “It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?” Knocking out a hundred tasks for whatever reason is a poor substitute for doing even one task that’s meaningful, Not everything matters equally, and success isn’t a game one by whoever does the most. Yet that is exactly how most play it on a daily basis. 

Achievers operate differently. They have an eye for the essential. They pause just long enough to decide what matters and then allow what matters to drive their day. Achievers do sooner what others plan to do later and defer, perhaps indefinitely, what others do sooner. The difference isn’t in intent, but in right of way. Achievers always work from a clear sense of priority. 

Instead of a to-do list you need a success list -a list that is purposefully created around extraordinary results. 

Joseph Juran, a pioneer of quality-control management, noticed that a handful of flaws would usually produce a majority of the defects. The 80/20 Principle asserts that a minority of causes, inputs, or effort usually lead to a majority of the results, outputs or rewards. In other words, in the world of success, things aren’t equal. A small amount of causes creates most of the results. Just the right input creates most of the output.

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

Go small. Don’t focus on being busy, focus on being productive. Allow what matters most to drive your day.

Go extreme. Once you’ve figured out what actually matters, keep asking what matters most until there is nothing left. That core activity goes at the top of your success list. Don’t do anything else until your most important work is done.

Things don’t matter equally and success is found in doing what matters most. Doing the most important thing is always the most important thing.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Multitaskers experience more life-reducing, happiness-squelching stress. 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.

Success is actually a short race -a sprint fueled by discipline just long enough for habit to kick in and take over.  We need the habit of doing it. And we need just enough discipline to build the habit.

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. Establishing the right habit simplifies your life. Your life gets clearer and less complicated because you know what you have to do well and you know what you don’t. The fact of the matter is that aiming discipline at the right habit gives you license to be less disciplined in other areas. When you do the right thing, it can liberate you from having to monitor everything. 

 Researchers at the University College of London found it takes an average of 66 days to acquire a new habit. The full range was 18 to 254 days but the 66 days represented a sweet spot -with easier behaviors taking fewer days on average and tough ones taking longer.

Don’t be a disciplined person. Be a person of powerful habits and use selected discipline to develop them.

Build one habit at a time. 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.

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 built on that habit, or if appropriate, build another one.

If you are what your repeatedly do, then achievement isn’t an action you take but a habit you forge into your life. You don’t have to seek success, Harness the power of selected discipline to build the right habit, and extraordinary results will find you. 

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. 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. When our willpower runs out, we all revert to our default settings. This begs the question: What are your default settings?

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.

“The truth is, balance is bunk. It is an unattainable pipe dream… the quest for balance between work and life, as we’ve come to think of it, isn’t just a losing proposition; it’s a hurtful, destructive one.”

Extraordinary results require focused attention and time. Time on one thing means time away from another. This makes balance impossible.

The reason we shouldn’t pursue balance is that the magic never happens in the middle; magic happens at the extremes. 

Leaving some things undone is a necessary tradeoff for extraordinary results. 

The idea of counterbalancing is that you never go so far that you can’t find your way back or stay so long that there is nothing waiting for you when you return. 

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.

The only actions that become springboards to succeeding big are those informed by thinking big to begin with. Make this connection, and the importance of how big you think begins to sink in. 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. 

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

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. 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.

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.

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.

Throughout your day, ask: What’s the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?

For my own personal needs these are the phrased questions that I focus on:

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 increase my net worth?

What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my investment cash flow?

Great questions, like great goals, are big and specific. They push you, stretch you, and aim you at big, specific answers. And because they’re framed to be measurable, there’s no wiggle room about what the results will look like. 

Think about small and specific questions? Small and broad questions? Big and Broad and Big and Specific. Answers come in three categories: doable, stretch, and possibility. The easiest answer you can seek is the one that’s already within reach of your knowledge, skills and experience. This is a doable and the most likely to be achieved.

The next level is a “stretch” answer. While this is still within your reach, it can be the farthest end of your range. Think of this at potentially achievable and probable, depending on your effort. Extraordinary results require a Great Answer. The research and experience of others is the best place to start when looking for your answer. Armed with this knowledge, you can establish a benchmark, the current high-water mark for all that is known and being done .

Connecting purpose, priority, and productivity determines now high above the rest successful individuals and profitable businesses rise. Understanding this is the core of producing extraordinary results. 

Who we are and where we want to go determine what we do and what we accomplish.  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. Purpose has the power to shape our lives only in direct proportion to the power of the priority we connect it to. Purpose without priority is powerless. The truth about success is that our ability to achieve extraordinary results in the future lies in stringing together powerful moments, one after the other. What you do in any given moment determines what you experience in the next. Your “present now” and all “future nows” are undeniably determined by the priority you live in the moment. 

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?

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.

Most people think there is 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. Go to your calendar and block off all the time you need to accomplish your ONE Thing.

If disproportionate results come from one activity, then you must give that one activity disproportionate time. Each and every day, ask the 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?”

To achieve extraordinary results and experience greatness, time block these three things in the following order:

Time block your time off.

Time block your ONE Thing.

Time block your planning time.

It’s best to block four hours a day off for your ONE Thing. That’s the minimum. If you can do more, then do it.

Block an hour each week to review your annual and monthly goals. First ask what needs to happen that month for you to be on target for your annual goals. Then ask what must happen that week to be on course for your monthly goals. You’re essentially asking, “Based on where I am right now, what’s the ONE Thing I need to do this week to stay on track for my monthly goal and for my monthly goal to be on track for my annual goal?”

In order to focus take these steps when engaging in your four hour block.

Build a bunker. Find somewhere to work that takes you out of the path of disruption and interruption.

Store provisions. Have any supplies, materials, snacks or beverages you need on hand and other than for a bathroom break, avoid leaving your bunker.

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.

Enlist support. Tell those most likely to seek you out what you’re doing and when you’ll be available.

When you see mastery as a path you go down instead of a destination you arrive at, it starts to feel accessible and attainable. If you’re having trouble sticking to it you can ask yourself “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. 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.

Individuals with written goals were 39.5 percent more likely to succeed. Individuals who wrote their goals and sent progress reports to friends were 76.7 percent more likely to achieve them. As effective as writing down your goals can be, simply sharing your progress toward your goals with someone regularly even just a friend, makes you almost twice as effective.

To succeed at doing your ONE Thing you have to be able to get to it, and your physical environment plays a vital role in whether you do or not. The wrong surroundings may never let you get there. What I’ve learned is that when you clear the path to success -that’s when you consistently get there.

Related Readings:

Atomic Habits by James Clear. This book makes the case that it’s the systems we put in place that allow us to change our habits and many small steps lead up to bigger changes.

Hyperfocus by Chris Bailey. Simple Summary: Your ability to focus isn’t limitless and you need to consciously decide and set yourself up to tap into focusing when doing tasks that you cannot do out of habit. Hyperfocusing on our most complex, productive tasks lets us activate the most productive mode of our brains and get a large amount accomplished in a short amount of time.

Read my Book Notes on Hyperfocus.

Read my Book Notes on Atomic Habits.