Book – The One Thing (Review)
Author – Gary Keller & Jay Papasan
Genre – Self-help
First Published – 2013
I am sure you must you have found yourself in situation at some time in your life with too many things seeking your attention and you feel overwhelmed. As a result instead of focusing on your work you got distracted in trivial things or social media.
Then this is the Book to read. One full of insight and will help you step by step filtering task and reaching to one such that by doing that one thing everything else will fall in place, as Author calls it “Domino Effect”
About the Authors –
Gary Keller – is an American best-selling author and entrepreneur. He founded Keller Williams Real estate franchise. He found these techniques while training agents at his company and letter put it in the book The One Thing and also written two more books about real estate investment and real estate sales.
Jay Papasan – is an American writer and business executive. and best known for co-authoring two books with Gary Keller “the Millionaire Real Estate Investor” & “the one thing”.
About the Book –
The one thing is about narrowing our focus and finding out which activity will matter most for achieving desired results and then giving that one thing not only our undivided attention but also blocking time for it.
The book is divided in Three Parts 1) clarify myths of productivity, 2) simple path to productivity, 3) unlocking the possibilities within you for extraordinary results.
PART I
The Lies We Believe Are Truth–
- Everything Matters equally – When everything feels urgent and important, everything seems equal. As Henry David Thoreau said ‘it’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are you busy about?’
- Multitasking – It is rightly said by Steve Uzzell “Multitasking is merely the opportunity to screw up more than one thing at a time. We can certainly multi-task but we can never multi-focus.
- A disciplined life – One don’t have to be a disciplined person. Discipline is only required to build habit. Build one good habit at a time. Success is sequential not simultaneous.
- Willpower is always on will-call – Will-power is like battery in phone. We only have it much and hence we must use it on activities that matters most and keep recharging time to time.
- A balanced life – extraordinary results needs focusing attention and time and time on one thing means time away from another. This makes balance impossible and one needs to make peace with it.
- Big is bad – we often set limitations to our own thinking and believe thinking too big or targeting too big will lead to disappointment. The fact is one will never know one’s limit unless one keep pushing the limits.
Part II
The Truth – Simple Path to productivity –
This part deals with focus questions as to what matters most, how to plan for it and how to begin with one thing at a time. Author explains quality of any answer is directly determined by the quality of the question.
- Ask big & specific questions which leads to challenge our comfort zone and makes us think out of the box solutions. If you want most from your answer, you must realize that it lives outside your comfort zone.
- As, quoted By Mart Twain – The secret to getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks and then starting on the first one.
- Ask this question when setting goals and action-plan for key areas in your life like spiritual, personal, health, job, business, and finances – What’s the one thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?
Part III
Extraordinary Results – Unlocking the possibilities within you –
In this section author explains a technique of putting THE ONE THING in practice. Purpose – Priority – Productivity. Live with purpose. Live by priority. Live for productivity.
- Purpose on a bigger scale can be put as what we seek in life. For some it is clear from early stage and some takes it bit longer. However, this equally applies to Goals we set be it for days, weeks, years and life. Our purpose sets our priority and our priority drives our productivity.
- Priority can be set simply once we clearly know what we want to accomplish and it also makes saying yes or no pretty comfortable. Goal setting from Some-day Goal to Right Now has been explained well.
- Productivity is often mistaken by business. As Henry David Thoreau said “It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is what are busy about?” So we must make sure that everything we do aligns with our goal.
I have also created video of few quotes from the book – Hope you like it. Please do subscribe to my You tube channel – Myread4change