The One Thing – Gary Keller
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Date Consumed: February 2021, October 2021
Who Should Read It: Everyone who feels they are constantly bouncing from one task to another without making any real progress.
ISBN: 978-1848549258
Out of all the books, I have read this one has changed my life the most. The strangest part is I did not realize how impactful it would be when I read it. The big idea of this book is that there is always one thing you should be focusing on most and you need to spend your time identifying that one most important thing, and letting go of the rest.
In today’s world of “productivity hacks” and the culture of always having to be busy we end up spending more time just spinning our wheels and looking like we are getting a lot done. But are we actually doing anything of value? This book, and my own experience, point to the fact that we are getting far less impactful work done than what we want to, and what we are capable of. This leaves us feeling stressed and behind those in life that are focusing on The ONE Thing.
Summary:
There are more opportunities for our attention than we could ever pursue in one lifetime. This means that the inputs will always be greater than the output; your calendar and to-do list will always fill up faster with the new items than the finished items will be crossed off. The way to get around this is to control what you are working on and say no to the majority of the items.
You have surely heard the expressions “work smart, not hard” and “hard work pays off”, these seem to be at odds with each other so which one is it? It’s actually both of them. To truly get ahead and have the life you desire with the least amount of unnecessary stress you need to “work hard on the most important tasks and forget the rest.” ( this is not a real quote from the book, I just made it up).
The difficulty is identifying what the most important and impactful tasks are. In the book, the author explains it as finding which one task(s) would have the greatest impact and make the rest of the tasks either easier to do or not necessary to do at all.
A personal example of this is sleep. All through university and early in my career I would sacrifice sleep to get more assignments done or to get more experiences in a day. This was the opposite of The ONE thing. If I focused on going to bed on time I would have been well rested and able to focus better in class, therefore making my assignments take less time and allowing me to go to bed on time the following night. Instead, I would be tired the next day from being up so late, not able to focus during class, and then my assignments would take forever. This is continually perpetuated making each day harder.
The ONE Thing works in all areas of life, both huge areas, and small areas. Here are some of my own examples:
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Building a system at work to reduce future repetitive tasks
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Going to sleep on time instead of trying to get another hour of productivity done
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Eating enough protein
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Single-tasking
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Writing this book review instead of playing a video game (update: I ended up playing a video game instead of editing and publishing this)
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Learning a skill to level up your work
Key Take Away:
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Spend time figuring out what The ONE Thing is for every day, quarter, year, and life.
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Focus on The ONE Thing before you do anything else
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By using The ONE Thing you can get far more out of life with less stress and energy
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