The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results

1. The ONE Thing

Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is? Mitch: No. What? Curly: This. He holds up one finger. Mitch: Your finger? Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don’t mean shit. Mitch: That’s great, but what’s the “one thing”? Curly: That’s what you’ve got to figure out.

When you want the absolute best chance to succeed at anything you want, your approach should always be the same. Go small.

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

2. The Domino Effect

Because extraordinary success is sequential, not simultaneous. What starts out linear becomes geometric. You do the right thing and then you do the next right thing. Over time it adds up, and the geometric potential of success is unleashed.

3. Success Leaves Clues

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.

Part 1: The Lies

4. Everything Matters Equally

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.

Knocking out a hundred tasks 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.

Selected effort creates almost all of the rewards.

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.

5. Multitasking

Researchers estimate that workers are interrupted every 11 minutes and then spend almost a third of their day recovering from these distractions.

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.

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.

Workers who use computers during the day change windows or check e-mail or other programs nearly 37 times an hour. Being in a distractible setting sets us up to be more distractible. Or maybe it’s the high. Media multitaskers actually experience a thrill with switching—a burst of dopamine—that can be addictive. Without it, they can feel bored. For whatever the reason, the results are unambiguous: multitasking slows us down and makes us slower witted.

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.

6. A Disciplined Life

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.

7. Willpower Is Always on Will-Call

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.

8. A Balanced Life

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.

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.

9. Big Is Bad

“The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man’s foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher.” Thomas Henry Huxley

That’s when it’s important to realize that on the journey to achieving big, you get bigger. Big requires growth, and by the time you arrive, you’re big too!

Achievement and abundance show up because they’re the natural outcomes of doing the right things with no limits attached.

Part 2: The Truth

10. The Focusing Question

And here is the prime condition of success, the great secret—concentrate your energy, thought and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged. Having begun on one line, resolve to fight it out on that line, to lead in it, adopt every improvement, have the best machinery, and know the most about it. The concerns which fail are those which have scattered their capital, which means that they have scattered their brains also. They have investments in this, or that, or the other, here, there and everywhere. “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.” Look round you and take notice; men who do that do not often fail. It is easy to watch and carry the one basket. It is trying to carry too many baskets that breaks most eggs in this country.

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.

Answers come from questions, and the quality of any answer is directly determined by the quality of the question.

The last two lines deserve repeating: “… any wage I had asked of Life, Life would have willingly paid.” One of the most empowering moments of my life came when I realized that life is a question and how we live it is our answer. How we phrase the questions we ask ourselves determines the answers that eventually become our life.

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

“What’s the ONE Thing I can do / such that by doing it / everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”

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

11. The Success Habit

“Success is simple. Do what’s right, the right way, at the right time.” Arnold H. Glasow

12. The Path to Great Answers

“People do not decide their futures, they decide their habits and their habits decide their futures.” F. M. Alexander

Low goals don’t require extraordinary actions so they rarely lead to extraordinary results.

A college professor once told me, “Gary, you’re smart, but people have lived before you. You’re not the first person to dream big, so you’d be wise to study what others have learned first, and then build your actions on the back of their lessons.”

Part 3: Extraordinary Results

13. Live with Purpose

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

Live with purpose and you know where you want to go. Live by priority and you’ll know what to do to get there.

15. Live for Productivity

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

16. The Three Commitments

Highly productive people don’t accept the limitations of their natural approach as the final word on their success. When they hit a ceiling of achievement, they look for new models and systems, better ways to do things to push them through. They pause just long enough to examine their options, they pick the best one, and then they’re right back at it.

Accountable people are results oriented and never defend actions, skill levels, models, systems, or relationships that just aren’t getting the job done. They bring their best to whatever it takes, without reservation.

17. The Four Thieves

THE FOUR THIEVES OF PRODUCTIVITY

1. Inability to Say “No”
2. Fear of Chaos
3. Poor Health Habits
4. Environment Doesn’t Support Your Goals

Seth Godin says, “You can say no with respect, you can say no promptly, and you can say no with a lead to someone who might say yes. But just saying yes because you can’t bear the short-term pain of saying no is not going to help you do the work.”

18. The Journey

One evening an elder Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside all people. He said, “My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us. One is Fear. It carries anxiety, concern, uncertainty, hesitancy, indecision and inaction. The other is Faith. It brings calm, conviction, confidence, enthusiasm, decisiveness, excitement and action.” The grandson thought about it for a moment and then meekly asked his grandfather: “Which wolf wins?” The old Cherokee replied, “The one you feed.”

Bronnie Ware’s 2012 book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying