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The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results

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The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results

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Highlights & Notes

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

week. … Finally, out of desperation, I went as small as I could possibly go and asked: “What’s the ONE Thing you can do this week such that by doing it everything else would be easier or unnecessary?”

  • Tim Ferriss

Where I’d had huge success, I had narrowed my concentration to one thing, and where my success varied, my focus had too.

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

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

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

“Every great change starts like falling dominoes.” — BJ Thornton

So when you think about success, shoot for the moon. The moon is reachable if you prioritize everything and put all of your energy into accomplishing the most important thing. Getting extraordinary results is all about creating a domino effect in your life.

find the lead domino, and whack away at it until it falls. Why does this approach work? 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. The domino effect applies to the big picture, like your work or your business, and it applies to the smallest moment in each day when you’re trying to decide what to do next. Success builds on success, and as this happens, over and over, you move toward the highest success possible.

The key is over time. Success is built sequentially. It’s one thing at a time.

“It is those who concentrate on but one thing at a time who advance in this world.” — Og Mandino

“There can only be one most important thing. Many things may be important, but only one can be the most important.” —Ross Garber

Everyone has one person who either means the most to them or was the first to influence, train, or manage them. No one succeeds alone. No one.

“You must be single-minded. Drive for the one thing on which you have decided.” —General George S. Patton

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.

“Success demands singleness of purpose.” — Vince Lombardi

The ONE Thing shows up time and again in the lives of the successful because it’s a fundamental truth. It showed up for me, and if you let it, it will show up for you. Applying the ONE Thing to your work—and in your life—is the simplest and smartest thing you can do to propel yourself toward the success you want.

The ONE Thing sits at the heart of success and is the starting point for achieving extraordinary results.

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” —Mark Twain

THE SIX LIES BETWEEN YOU AND SUCCESS Everything Matters Equally Multitasking A Disciplined Life Willpower Is Always on Will-Call A Balanced Life Big Is Bad

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

Equality is a lie. Understanding this is the basis of all great decisions.

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.

“The things which are most important don’t always scream the loudest.” —Bob Hawke

As Henry David Thoreau said, “It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?”

While to-dos serve as a useful collection of our best intentions, they also tyrannize us with trivial, unimportant stuff that we feel obligated to get done—because it’s on our list. Which is why most of us have a love-hate relationship with our to-dos.

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 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.

To-do lists tend to be long; success lists are short. One pulls you in all directions; the other aims you in a specific direction. One is a disorganized directory and the other is an organized directive. If a list isn’t built around success, then that’s not where it takes you. If your to-do list contains everything, then it’s probably taking you everywhere but where you really want to go.

“The 80/20 Principle asserts that a minority of causes, inputs, or effort usually lead to a majority of the results, outputs, or rewards.”

the majority of what you want will come from the minority of what you do. Extraordinary results are disproportionately created by fewer actions than most realize.

A to-do list becomes a success list when you apply Pareto’s Principle to it.

BIG IDEAS 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 only one thing left. That core activity goes at the top of your success list. Say no. 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. Don’t get trapped in the “check off” game. If we believe things don’t matter equally, we must act accordingly. We can’t fall prey to the notion that everything has to be done, that checking things off our list is what success is all about. We can’t be trapped in a game of “check off” that never produces a winner. The truth is that things don’t matter equally and success is found in doing what matters most.

  • Success list

doing the most important thing is always the most important thing.

“To do two things at once is to do neither.” —Publilius Syrus

Multitasking is a lie.

“Multitasking is merely the opportunity to screw up more than one thing at a time.” —Steve Uzzell

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.

But we’re fooling ourselves. Multitasking is a scam. Poet laureate Billy Collins summed it up well: “We call it multitasking, which makes it sound like an ability to do lots of things at the same time. … A Buddhist would call this monkey mind.” We think we’re mastering multitasking, but we’re just driving ourselves bananas.

“The cost in terms of extra time from having to task switch depends on how complex or simple the tasks are,”

“It can range from time increases of 25 percent or less for simple tasks to well over 100 percent or more for very complicated tasks.”

Task switching exacts a cost few realize they’re even paying.

Here’s the short list of how multitasking short-circuits us: 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.

living another standard. Do we not value our own job or take it as seriously? Why would we ever tolerate multitasking when we’re doing our most important work? Just because our day job doesn’t involve bypass surgery shouldn’t make focus any less critical to our success or the success of others. Your work deserves no less respect.

BIG IDEAS Distraction is natural. Don’t feel bad when you get distracted. Everyone gets distracted. Multitasking takes a toll. At home or at work, distractions lead to poor choices, painful mistakes, and unnecessary 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.

“It’s one of the most prevalent myths of our culture: self-discipline.” —Leo Babauta

Success is actually a short race—a sprint fueled by discipline just long enough for habit to kick in and take over.

regularly working at something until it regularly works for you. When you discipline yourself, you’re essentially training yourself to act in a specific way. Stay with this long enough and it becomes routine—in other words, a habit. 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.

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.

The hard stuff becomes habit, and habit makes the hard stuff easy.

The results suggest that it takes an average of 66 days to acquire a new habit.

BIG IDEAS 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. Success is sequential, not simultaneous. 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 build on that habit or, if appropriate, build another one.

“Odysseus understood how weak willpower actually is when he asked his crew to bind him to the mast while sailing by the seductive Sirens.” —Patricia Cohen

When we tie our success to our willpower without understanding what that really means, we set ourselves up for failure. And we don’t have to.

the worm” and “make hay while the sun shines,” willpower is a timing issue. When you have your will, you get your way. Although character is an essential element of willpower, the key to harnessing it is when you use it.

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. Make it through a tough day in the trenches, and the lure of late-night snacking can become your diet’s downfall.

The more we use our mind, the less minding power we have. Willpower is like a fast-twitch muscle that gets tired and needs rest. It’s incredibly powerful, but it has no endurance.

The brain makes up l/50th of our body mass but consumes a staggering 1/5th of the calories we burn for energy.

Foods that elevate blood sugar evenly over long periods, like complex carbohydrates and proteins, become the fuel of choice for high-achievers—literal proof that “you are what you eat.”

One of the real challenges we have is that when our willpower is low we tend to fall back on our default settings.

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.

So how do you put your willpower to work? You think about it. Pay attention to it. Respect it. You make doing what matters most a priority when your willpower is its highest. In other words, you give it the time of day it deserves.

WHAT TAXES YOUR WILLPOWER Implementing new behaviors Filtering distractions Resisting temptation Suppressing emotion Restraining aggression Suppressing impulses Taking tests Trying to impress others Coping with fear Doing something you don’t enjoy Selecting long-term over short-term rewards

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.

do your most important work—your ONE Thing—early, before your willpower is drawn down.

BIG IDEAS Don’t spread your willpower too thin. On any given day, you have a limited supply of willpower, so decide what matters and reserve your willpower for it. Monitor your fuel gauge. Full-strength willpower requires a full tank. Never let what matters most be compromised simply because your brain was under-fueled. Eat right and regularly. Time your task. Do what matters most first each day when your willpower is strongest. Maximum strength willpower means maximum success.

“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.” —Keith H. Hammonds

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

In your effort to attend to all things, everything gets shortchanged and nothing gets its due. Sometimes this can be okay and sometimes not. Knowing when to pursue the middle and when to pursue the extremes is in essence the true beginning of wisdom. Extraordinary results are achieved by this negotiation with your time.

Time waits for no one. Push something to an extreme and postponement can become permanent.

Do you really think you can ever get back a child’s bedtime story or birthday? Is a party for a five-year-old with imaginary pals the same as dinner with a teenager with high-school friends? Is an adult attending a young child’s soccer game on par with attending a soccer game with an adult child? Do you think you can cut a deal with God that time stands still for you, holding off on anything important until you’re ready to participate again?

When you gamble with your time, you may be placing a bet you can’t cover.

Counterbalancing done well gives the illusion of balance.

Counterbalancing is not only about your sense of well-being, it’s essential to your being well.

achieve an extraordinary result you must choose what matters most and give it all the time it demands. This requires getting extremely out of balance in relation to all other work issues,

In his novel Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas, James Patterson artfully highlights where our priorities lie in our personal and professional balancing act: “Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And you’re keeping all of them in the air. But one day you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls—family, health, friends, integrity—are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered.”

When you change your language from balancing to prioritizing, you see your choices more clearly and open the door to changing your destiny. Extraordinary results demand that you set a priority and act on it. When you act on your priority, you’ll automatically go out of balance, giving more time to one thing over another.

When you’re supposed to be working, work, and when you’re supposed to be playing, play. It’s a weird tightrope you’re walking, but it’s only when you get your priorities mixed up that things fall apart.

Think about two balancing buckets. Separate your work life and personal life into two distinct buckets—not to compartmentalize them, just for counterbalancing. Each has its own counterbalancing goals and approaches.

Counterbalance your work bucket. View work as involving a skill or knowledge that must be mastered. This will cause you to give disproportionate time to your ONE Thing and will throw the rest of your work day, week, month, and year continually out of balance. Your work life is divided into two distinct areas—what matters most and everything else. You will have to take what matters to the extremes and be okay with what happens to the rest. Professional success requires it.

Counterbalance your personal life bucket. 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. Your personal life requires it.

Start leading a counterbalanced life. Let the right things take precedence when they should and get to the rest when you can. An extraordinary life is a counterbalancing act.

“We are kept from our goal, not by obstacles but by a clear path to a lesser goal.” —Robert Brault

When we connect big with bad, we trigger shrinking thinking. Lowering our trajectory feels safe. Staying where we are feels prudent. But the opposite is true: When big is believed to be bad, small thinking rules the day and big never sees the light of it.

None of us knows our limits. Borders and boundaries may be clear on a map, but when we apply them to our lives, the lines aren’t so apparent.

When you allow yourself to accept that big is about who you can become, you look at it differently.

Thinking big is essential to extraordinary results. Success requires action, and action requires thought. But here’s the catch—the only actions that become springboards to succeeding big are those informed by big thinking 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.

When people talk about “reinventing” their career or their business, small boxes are often the root cause. What you build today will either empower or restrict you tomorrow. It will either serve as a platform for the next level of your success or as a box, trapping you where you are.

“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

Asking big questions can be daunting. Big goals can seem unattainable at first. Yet how many times have you set out to do something that seemed like a real stretch at the time, only to discover it was much easier than you thought? Sometimes things are easier than we imagine, and truthfully sometimes they’re a lot harder. 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! What seemed an insurmountable mountain from a distance is just a small hill when you arrive—at least in proportion to the person you’ve become. Your thinking, your skills, your relationships, your sense of what is possible and what it takes all grow on the journey to big. As you experience big, you become big.

Don’t fear big. Fear mediocrity. Fear waste. Fear the lack of living to your fullest. When we fear big, we either consciously or subconsciously work against it. We either run toward lesser outcomes and opportunities or we simply run away from the big ones. If courage isn’t the absence of fear, but moving past it, then thinking big isn’t the absence of doubts, but moving past them. Only living big will let you experience your true life and work potential.

Think big. Avoid incremental thinking that simply asks, “What do I do next?” This is at best the slow lane to success and, at worst, the off ramp. Ask bigger questions. A good rule of thumb is to double down everywhere in your life. If your goal is ten, ask the question: “How can I reach 20?” Set a goal so far above what you want that you’ll be building a plan that practically guarantees your original goal.

Don’t order from the menu. Apple’s celebrated 1997 “Think Different” ad campaign featured icons like Ali, Dylan, Einstein, Hitchcock, Picasso, Gandhi, and others who “saw things differently” and who went on to transform the world we know. The point was that they didn’t choose from the available options; they imagined outcomes that no one else had. They ignored the menu and ordered their own creations. As the ad reminds us, “People who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the only ones who do.”

Act bold. Big thoughts go nowhere without bold action. Once you’ve asked a big question, pause to imagine what life looks like with the answer. If you still can’t imagine it, go study people who have already achieved it. What are the models, systems, habits, and relationships of other people who have found the answer? As much as we’d like to believe we’re all different, what consistently works for others will almost always work for us.

Don’t fear failure. It’s as much a part of your journey to extraordinary results as success. Adopt a growth mindset, and don’t be afraid of where it can take you. Extraordinary results aren’t built solely on extraordinary results. They’re built on failure too. In fact, it would be accurate to say that we fail our way to success. When we fail, we stop, ask what we need to do to succeed, learn from our mistakes, and grow. Don’t be afraid to fail. See it as part of your learning process and keep striving for your true potential.

Don’t let small thinking cut your life down to size. Think big, aim high, act bold. And see just how big you can blow up your life.

“Be careful how you interpret the world; it is like that.” —Erich Heller

life. Here’s what I found out: We overthink, overplan, and overanalyze our careers, our businesses, and our lives; that long hours are neither virtuous nor healthy; and that we usually succeed in spite of most of what we do, not because of it. I discovered that we can’t manage time, and that the key to success isn’t in all the things we do but in the handful of things we do well. I learned that success comes down to this: being appropriate in the moments of your life. If you can honestly say, “This is where I’m meant to be right now, doing exactly what I’m doing,” then all the amazing possibilities for your life become possible.

“There is an art to clearing away the clutter and focusing on what matters most. It is simple and it is transferable. It just requires the courage to take a different approach.” —George Anders

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.

You may be asking, “Why focus on a question when what we really crave is an answer?” It’s simple. Answers come from questions, and the quality of any answer is directly determined by the quality of the question. Ask the wrong question, get the wrong answer. Ask the right question, get the right answer. Ask the most powerful question possible, and the answer can be life altering.

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. The Focusing Question is that uncommon approach. In a world of no instructions, it becomes the simple formula for finding exceptional answers that lead to extraordinary results.

ANATOMY OF THE QUESTION The Focusing Question collapses all possible questions into one: “What’s the ONE Thing I can do / such that by doing it / everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”

“But those Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas all ran away and hid from one little Did.” —Shel Silverstein

Great questions are the path to great answers. 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.

The Focusing Question is a double-duty question. 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.

Extraordinary results come from asking the Focusing Question. It’s how you’ll plot your course through life and business, and how you’ll make the best progress on your most important work. Whether you seek answers big or small, asking the Focusing Question is the ultimate success habit for your life.

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

The choice we face is whether or not we want to form habits that get us what we want from life. If we do, then the Focusing Question is the most powerful success habit we can have.

Start with the big stuff and see where it takes you.

Understand and believe it. The first step is to understand the concept of the ONE Thing, then to believe that it can make a difference in your life. If you don’t understand and believe, you won’t take action.

Use it. Ask yourself the Focusing Question. Start each day by asking, “What’s the ONE Thing I can do today for [whatever you want] such that by doing it everything else will be easier or even unnecessary?” When you do this, your direction will become clear. Your work will be more productive and your personal life more rewarding.

Make it a habit. When you make asking the Focusing Question a habit, you fully engage its power to get the extraordinary results you want. It’s a difference maker. Research says this will take about 66 days. Whether it takes you a few weeks or a few months, stick with it until it becomes your routine. If you’re not serious about learning the Success Habit, you’re not serious about getting extraordinary results.

Leverage reminders. Set up ways to remind yourself to use the Focusing Question. One of the best ways to do this is to put up a sign at work that says, “Until my ONE Thing is done—everything else is a distraction.” We designed the back cover of this book to be a trigger —set it on the corner of your desk so that it’s the first thing you see when you get to work. Use notes, screen savers, and calendar cues to keep making the connection between the Success Habit and the results you seek. Put up reminders like, “The ONE Thing = Extraordinary Results” or “The Success Habit Will Get Me to My Goal.”

Recruit support. Research shows that those around you can influence you tremendously. Starting a success support group with some of your work colleagues can help inspire all of you to practice the Success Habit every day. Get your family involved. Share your ONE Thing. Get them on board. Use the Focusing Question around them to show them how the Success Habit can make a difference in their school work, their personal achievements, or any other part of their lives.

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

  1. ASK A GREAT QUESTION The Focusing Question helps you ask a great question. 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.

Quadrant 1. Big & Specific: “What can I do to double sales in six months?” Now you have all the elements of a Great Question. It’s a big goal and it’s specific. You’re doubling sales, and that’s not easy. You also have a time frame of six months, which will be a challenge. You’ll need a big answer. You’ll have to stretch what you believe is possible and look outside the standard toolbox of solutions. See the difference? When you ask a Great Question, you’re in essence pursuing a great goal. And whenever you do this, you’ll see the same pattern—Big & Specific. A big, specific question leads to a big, specific answer, which is absolutely necessary for achieving a big goal. So if “What can I do to double sales in six months?” is a Great Question, how do you make it more powerful? Convert it to the Focusing Question: “What’s the ONE Thing I can do to double sales in six months such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” Turning it into the Focusing Question goes to the heart of success by forcing you to identify what absolutely matters most and start there. Why? Because that’s where big success starts too.

If you want the most from your answer, you must realize that it lives outside your comfort zone. This is rare air. A big answer is never in plain view, nor is the path to finding one laid out for you. A possibility answer exists beyond what is already known and being done. As with a stretch goal, you can start out by doing research and studying the lives of other high achievers. But you can’t stop there. In fact, your search has just begun. Whatever you learn, you’ll use it to do what only the greatest achievers do: benchmark and trend.

“Has anyone else studied or accomplished this or something like it?” The answer is almost always yes, so your investigation begins by finding out what others have learned.

The research and experience of others is the best place to start when looking for your answer.

Think big and specific. Setting a goal you intend to achieve is like asking a question. It’s a simple step from “I’d like to do that” to “How do I achieve that?” The best question—and by default, the best goal—is big and specific: big, because you’re after extraordinary results; specific, to give you something to aim at and to leave no wiggle room about whether you hit the mark. A big and specific question, especially in the form of the Focusing Question, helps you zero in on the best possible answer.

Think possibilities. Setting a doable goal is almost like creating a task to check off your list. A stretch goal is more challenging. It aims you at the edge of your current abilities; you have to stretch to reach it. The best goal explores what’s possible. When you see people and businesses that have undergone transformations, this is where they live.

Benchmark and trend for the best answer. No one has a crystal ball, but with practice you can become surprisingly good at anticipating where things are heading. The people and businesses who get there first often enjoy the lion’s share of the rewards with few, if any, competitors. Benchmark and trend to find the extraordinary answer you need for extraordinary results.

“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” — Will Rogers

Your big ONE Thing is your purpose and your small ONE Thing is the priority you take action on to achieve it. The most productive people start with purpose and use it like a compass. They allow purpose to be the guiding force in determining the priority that drives their actions. This is the straightest path to extraordinary results.

Great businesses are built one productive person at a time.

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

“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” —George Bernard Shaw

Through this simple story, Charles Dickens shows us a simple formula for creating an extraordinary life: Live with purpose. Live by priority. Live for productivity.

our purpose sets our priority and our priority determines the productivity our actions produce.

Who we are and where we want to go determine what we do and what we accomplish. A life lived on purpose is the most powerful of all—and the happiest.

One of our biggest challenges is making sure our life’s purpose doesn’t become a beggar’s bowl, a bottomless pit of desire continually searching for the next thing that will make us happy. That’s a losing proposition.

Happiness happens on the way to fulfillment.

Becoming more engaged in what we do by finding ways to make our life more meaningful is the surest way to finding lasting happiness. When our daily actions fulfill a bigger purpose, the most powerful and enduring happiness can happen.

financially wealthy people are those who have enough money coming in without having to work to finance their purpose in life.

  • Quote importante

Purpose is the straightest path to power and the ultimate source of personal strength—strength of conviction and strength to persevere. The prescription for extraordinary results is knowing what matters to you and taking daily doses of actions in alignment with it.

When you ask yourself, “What’s the ONE Thing I can do in my life that would mean the most to me and the world, such that by doing it everything else would be easier or unnecessary?” you’re using the power of The ONE Thing to bring purpose to your life.

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Happiness happens on the way to fulfillment. We all want to be happy, but seeking it isn’t the best way to find it. The surest path to achieving lasting happiness happens when you make your life about something bigger, when you bring meaning and purpose to your everyday actions.

Discover your Big Why. Discover your purpose by asking yourself what drives you. What’s the thing that gets you up in the morning and keeps you going when you’re tired and worn down? I sometimes refer to this as your “Big Why.” It’s why you’re excited with your life. It’s why you’re doing what you’re doing.

Absent an answer, pick a direction. “Purpose” may sound heavy but it doesn’t have to be. Think of it as simply the ONE Thing you want your life to be about more than any other. Try writing down something you’d like to accomplish and then describe how you’d do it. For me, it looks like this: “My purpose is to help people live their greatest life possible through my teaching, coaching, and writing.” So, then what does my life look like?

“Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.” —Alan Lakein

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat. “I don’t much care where—” said Alice. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

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

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.

Economists have long known that even though people prefer big rewards over small ones, they have an even stronger preference for present rewards over future ones—even when the future rewards are MUCH BIGGER.

the further away a reward is in the future, the smaller the immediate motivation to achieve it.

Connect today to all your tomorrows. It matters.

students who visualized the process performed better across the board—they

There can only be ONE. Your most important priority is the ONE Thing you can do right now that will help you achieve what matters most to you. You may have many “priorities,” but dig deep and you’ll discover there is always one that matters most, your top priority—your ONE Thing.

Goal Set to the Now. Knowing your future goal is how you begin. Identifying the steps you need to accomplish along the way keeps your thinking clear while you uncover the right priority you need to accomplish right now

Put pen to paper. Write your goals down and keep them close.

“Productivity isn’t about being a workhorse, keeping busy or burning the midnight oil… . It’s more about priorities, planning, and fiercely protecting your time.” —Margarita Tartakovsky

putting together a life of extraordinary results simply comes down to getting the most out of what you do, when what you do matters.

“My goal is no longer to get more done, but rather to have less to do.” —Francine Jay

Most people think there’s 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.

If disproportionate results come from one activity, then you must give that one activity disproportionate time.

Time block your time off. Time block your ONE Thing. Time block your planning time.

Take time off. Block out long weekends and long vacations, then take them. You’ll be more rested, more relaxed, and more productive afterward. Everything needs rest to function better, and you’re no different. Resting is as important as working. There are a few examples of successful people who violate this, but they are not our role models. They succeed in spite of how they rest and renew—not because of it.

“Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.” —Ambrose Bierce

My recommendation is to block four hours a day. This isn’t a typo. I repeat: four hours a day. Honestly, that’s the minimum. If you can do more, then do it.

“Efficiency is doing the thing right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing.” —Peter Drucker

normal business culture gets in the way of the very productivity it seeks because of the way people traditionally schedule their time

To experience extraordinary results, be a maker in the morning and a manager in the afternoon. Your goal is “ONE and done.” But if you don’t time block each day to do your ONE Thing, your ONE Thing won’t become a done thing.

Block an hour each week to review your annual and monthly goals.

Walter Elliot said, “Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another.” As you complete these short races and get a chain going, it gets easier and easier. Momentum and motivation start to take over. There is magic in knocking down your most important domino day after day. All you have to do is avoid breaking the chain, one day at a time, until you generate a powerful new habit in your life—the time-blocking habit.*

Build a bunker. Find somewhere to work that takes you out of the path of disruption and interruption. If you have an office, get a “Do Not Disturb” sign. If it has glass walls, install shades. If you work in a cubicle, get permission to put up a folding screen. If necessary, go elsewhere. The immortal Ernest Hemingway kept a strict writing schedule starting at seven every morning in his bedroom. The mortal but still immensely talented business author Dan Heath “bought an old laptop, deleted all its browsers, and, for good measure, deleted its wireless network drivers” and would take his “way-back machine” to a coffee shop to avoid distractions. Between the two extremes, you could just find a vacant room and simply close the door. Store provisions. Have any supplies, materials, snacks, or beverages you need on hand and, other than for a bathroom break, avoid leaving your bunker. A simple trip to the coffee machine can derail your day should you encounter someone seeking to make you a part of theirs. 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. It’s amazing how accommodating others are when they see the big picture and know when they can access you.

What’s the ONE Thing I can do to protect my time block every day such by doing it everything else I might do will be easier or unnecessary?

Connect the dots. Extraordinary results become possible when where you want to go is completely aligned with what you do today. Tap into your purpose and allow that clarity to dictate your priorities. With your…

Time block your ONE Thing. The best way to make your ONE Thing happen is to make regular appointments with yourself. Block time early in the day, and block big chunks of it—no less than four hours! Think of it this way: If your time blocking were on…

Protect your time block at all costs. Time blocking works only when your mantra is “Nothing and no one has permission to distract me from my ONE Thing.” Unfortunately, your resolve won’t keep the world from trying, so be creative when you can be and firm when you must. Your time block is the most important…

The people who achieve extraordinary results don’t achieve them by working more hours. They achieve them by getting…

“Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it.”…

First, you must adopt the mindset of someone seeking mastery. Mastery is a commitment to becoming your best, so to achieve extraordinary results you must embrace the extraordinary effort it represents. Second, you must continually seek the very best ways of doing things. Nothing is more futile than doing your best using an approach that can’t deliver results equal to your effort. And last…

THE THREE COMMITMENTS TO YOUR ONE THING Follow the Path of Mastery Move from “E” to “P” Live…

when you can see mastery as a path you go down instead of a destination you arrive at, it starts to feel…

I believe the healthy view of mastery means giving the best you have to become the best you can be at your most important work. The path is one of an apprentice learning and relearning the basics on a…

More than anything else, expertise tracks with hours invested.

Time blocking is essential to mastery, and mastery is essential to time blocking. They go hand in hand—when you do one, you do the other.

The path of mastering something is the combination of not only doing the best you can do at it, but also doing it the best it can be done.

When you’re in search of extraordinary results, accepting an OK Plateau or any other ceiling of achievement isn’t okay when it applies to your ONE Thing.* When you want to break through plateaus and ceilings, there is only one approach—“P.”

Being Purposeful is often about doing what comes “unnaturally,” but when you’re committed to achieving extraordinary results, you simply do whatever it takes anyway.

When you’ve done the best you can do but are certain the results aren’t the best they can be, get out of “E” and into “P.” 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.

There is an undeniable connection between what you do and what you get. Actions determine outcomes, and outcomes inform actions. Be accountable and this feedback loop is how you discover the things you must do to achieve extraordinary results. That’s why your final commitment is to live the accountability cycle of results.

Taking complete ownership of your outcomes by holding no one but yourself responsible for them is the most powerful thing you can do to drive your success. As such, accountability is most likely the most important of the three commitments.

When life happens, you can be either the author of your life or the victim of it. Those are your only two choices— accountable or unaccountable.

Told in this way, the difference is pretty stark, isn’t it? One is actively trying to author her destiny. The other is simply along for the ride. One is acting accountable; the other is being a victim. One will change the outcome. One won’t.

Highly successful people are clear about their role in the events of their life. They don’t fear reality. They seek it, acknowledge it, and own it. They know this is the only way to uncover new solutions, apply them, and experience a different reality, so they take responsibility and run with it. They see outcomes as information they can use to frame better actions to get better outcomes. It’s a cycle they understand and use to achieve extraordinary results.

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One of the fastest ways to bring accountability to your life is to find an accountability partner. Accountability can come from a mentor, a peer or, in its highest form, a coach. Whatever the case, it’s critical that you acquire an accountability relationship and give your partner license to lay out the honest truth. An accountability partner isn’t a cheerleader, although he can lift you up. An accountability partner provides frank, objective feedback on your performance, creates an ongoing expectation for productive progress, and can provide critical brainstorming or even expertise when needed. As for me, a coach or a mentor is the best choice for an accountability partner. Although a peer or a friend can absolutely help you see things you may not see, ongoing accountability is best provided by someone to whom you agree to be truly accountable. When that’s the nature of the relationship, the best results occur. Earlier, I discussed Dr. Gail Matthews’s research that individuals with written goals were 39.5 percent more likely to succeed. But there’s more to the story. 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. Accountability works.

Commit to be your best. Extraordinary results happen only when you give the best you have to become the best you can be at your most important work. This is, in essence, the path to mastery—and because mastery takes time, it takes a commitment to achieve it.

Be purposeful about your ONE Thing. Move from “E” to “P.” Go on a quest for the models and systems that can take you the farthest. Don’t just settle for what comes naturally—be open to new thinking, new skills, and new relationships. If the path of mastery is a commitment to be your best, being purposeful is a commitment to adopt the best possible approach.

Take ownership of your outcomes. If extraordinary results are what you want, being a victim won’t work. Change occurs only when you’re accountable. So stay out of the passenger seat and always choose the driver’s side.

Find a coach. You’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone who achieves extraordinary results without one.

“Focus is a matter of deciding what things you’re not going to do.” —John Carmack

THE FOUR THIEVES OF PRODUCTIVITY Inability to Say “No” Fear of Chaos Poor Health Habits Environment Doesn’t Support Your Goals

It’s one thing to be distracted when you’re trying to focus, it’s another entirely to be hijacked before you even get to. The way to protect what you’ve said yes to and stay productive is to say no to anyone or anything that could derail you.

When you say yes to something, it’s imperative that you understand what you’re saying no to.

“One-half of knowing what you want is knowing what you must give up before you get it.” In the end, the best way to succeed big is to go small. And when you go small, you say no—a lot. A lot more than you might have ever considered before.

No one knew how to go small better than Steve Jobs. He was famously as proud of the products he didn’t pursue as he was of the transformative products Apple created. In the two years after his return in 1997, he took the company from 350 products to ten. That’s 340 nos, not counting anything else proposed during that period. At the 1997 MacWorld Developers Conference, he explained, “When you think about focusing, you think, ‘Well, focusing is saying yes.’ No! Focusing is about saying no.” Jobs was after extraordinary results and he knew there was only one way to get there. Jobs was a “no” man.

Master marketer 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.” Godin gets it. You can keep your yes and say no in a way that works for you and for others.

A request must be connected to my ONE Thing for me to consider it.

Your talent and abilities are limited resources. Your time is finite. If you don’t make your life about what you say yes to, then it will almost certainly become what you intended to say no to.

“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”

When you give your ONE Thing your most emphatic “Yes!” and vigorously say “No!” to the rest, extraordinary results become possible.

Focusing on ONE Thing has a guaranteed consequence: other things don’t get done. Although that’s exactly the point, it doesn’t automatically make us feel any better about it.

When you strive for greatness, chaos is guaranteed to show up.

“anything you build on a large scale or with intense passion invites chaos.”

“If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” —Albert Einstein

“When you argue for your limitations, you get to keep them,” but this is one you can’t afford. Figure it out. Find a way. Make it happen.

“The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.” — William James

“If you don’t take care of your body, where will you live?”

Personal energy mismanagement is a silent thief of productivity. When we keep borrowing against our future by poorly protecting our energy, there is a predictable outcome of either slowly running out of gas or prematurely crashing and burning.

THE HIGHLY PRODUCTIVE PERSON’S DAILY ENERGY PLAN Meditate and pray for spiritual energy. Eat right, exercise, and sleep sufficiently for physical energy. Hug, kiss, and laugh with loved ones for emotional energy. Set goals, plan, and calendar for mental energy. Time block your ONE Thing for business energy.

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when you spend the early hours energizing yourself, you get pulled through the rest of the day with little additional effort. You’re not focused on having a perfect day all day, but on having an energized start to each day. If you can have a highly productive day until noon, the rest of the day falls easily into place. That’s positive energy creating positive momentum. Structuring the early hours of each day is the simplest way to extraordinary results.

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Your environment must support your goals.

For you to achieve extraordinary results, the people surrounding you and your physical surroundings must support your goals.

As strong as you think you are, no one is strong enough to avoid the influence of negativity forever. So, surrounding yourself with the right people is the right thing to do.

For instance, their 2007 study on obesity revealed that if one of your close friends becomes obese, you’re 57 percent more likely to do the same. Why? The people we see tend to set our standard for what’s appropriate.

Hanging out with people who seek success will strengthen your motivation and positively push your performance.

No one succeeds alone and no one fails alone. Pay attention to the people around you. Seek out those who will support your goals, and show the door to anyone who won’t.

“Surround yourself only with people who are going to lift you higher.” —Oprah Winfrey

when you clear the path to success— that’s when you consistently get there.

Don’t let your environment lead you astray. Your physical surroundings matter and the people around you matter. Having an environment that doesn’t support your goals is all too common, and unfortunately an all-too-common thief of productivity.

Start saying “no.” Always remember that when you say yes to something, you’re saying no to everything else. It’s the essence of keeping a commitment. Start turning down other requests outright or saying, “No, for now” to distractions so that nothing detracts you from getting to your top priority. Learning to say no can and will liberate you. It’s how you’ll find the time for your ONE Thing.

Accept chaos. Recognize that pursuing your ONE Thing moves other things to the back burner. Loose ends can feel like snares, creating tangles in your path. This kind of chaos is unavoidable. Make peace with it. Learn to deal with it. The success you have accomplishing your ONE Thing will continually prove you made the right decision.

Manage your energy. Don’t sacrifice your health by trying to take on too much. Your body is an amazing machine, but it doesn’t come with a warranty, you can’t trade it in, and repairs can be costly. It’s important to manage your energy so you can do what you must do, achieve what you want to achieve, and live the life you want to live.

Take ownership of your environment. Make sure that the people around you and your physical surroundings support your goals. The right people in your life and the right physical environment on your daily path will support your efforts to get to your ONE Thing. When both are in alignment with your ONE Thing, they will supply the optimism and physical lift you need to make your ONE Thing happen.

“I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate. It is, above all, to matter, to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all.” Live with Purpose, Live by Priority, and Live for Productivity.

You want your life to matter.

“To get through the hardest journey we need take only one step at a time, but we must keep on stepping.” —Chinese Proverb

I want you to do something. I want you to close your eyes and imagine your life as big as it can possibly be. As big as you have ever dared to dream, and then some. Can you see it? Now, open your eyes and listen to me. Whatever you can see, you have the capacity to move toward. And when what you go for is as vast as you can possibly envision, you’ll be living the biggest life you can possibly live. Living large is that simple.

Your life is like this. You don’t get a fully mature one. You get a small one and the opportunity to grow it—if you want to. Think small and your life’s likely to stay small. Think big and your life has a chance to grow big. The choice is yours. When you choose a big life, by default, you’ll have to go small to get there. You must survey your choices, narrow your options, line up your priorities, and do what matters most. You must go small. You must find your ONE Thing.

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” — T. S. Eliot

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.”

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” —Mark Twain

So what would an older, wiser you say? “Go live your life. Live it fully, without fear. Live with purpose, give it your all, and never give up.” Effort is important, for without it you will never succeed at your highest level. Achievement is important, for without it you will never experience your true potential. Pursuing purpose is important, for unless you do, you may never find lasting happiness. Step out on faith that these things are true. Go live a life worth living where, in the end, you’ll be able to say, “I’m glad I did,” not “I wish I had.”

I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself not the life others expected of me. Half-filled dreams and unfulfilled hopes: this was the number-one regret expressed by the dying. As Ware put it, “Most people had not honored even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.”

So make sure every day you do what matters most. When you know what matters most, everything makes sense. When you don’t know what matters most, anything makes sense. The best lives aren’t led this way.

Put yourself together, and your world falls into place. When you bring purpose to your life, know your priorities, and achieve high productivity on the priority that matters most every day, your life makes sense and the extraordinary becomes possible. All success in life starts within you. You know what to do. You know how to do it. Your next step is simple. You are the first domino.

“In delay there lies no plenty.” -William Shakespeare

YOUR PERSONAL LIFE Let the ONE Thing bring clarity to the key areas of your life. Here’s a short sampling. What’s the ONE Thing I can do this week to discover or affirm my life’s purpose… ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do in 90 days to get in the physical shape I want… ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do today to strengthen my spiritual faith… ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to find time to practice the guitar 20 minutes a day… ? Knock five strokes off my golf game in 90 days… ? Learn to paint in six months… ?

What’s the ONE Thing we can do this week to improve our marriage… ? What’s the ONE Thing we can do every week to spend more quality family time together… ? What’s the ONE Thing we can do tonight to support our kid’s schoolwork… ? What’s the ONE Thing we can do to make our next vacation the best ever… ? Our next Christmas the best ever… ? Thanksgiving the best ever…

Put the ONE Thing to work taking your professional life to the next level. Here’s a few ways to get started. What’s the ONE Thing I can do today to complete my current project ahead of schedule… ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do this month to produce better work… ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do before my next review to get the raise I want… ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do everyday to finish my work and still get home on time… ?

In any meeting ask, What’s the ONE Thing we can accomplish in this meeting and end early… ? In building your team ask, What’s the ONE Thing I can do in the next six months to find and develop incredible talent… ? In planning for the next month, year, or five years ask, What’s the ONE Thing we can do right now to accomplish our goals ahead of schedule and under budget… ? In your department or at the highest company level ask, What’s the ONE Thing we can do in the next 90 days to create a ONE Thing culture… ?

If you try to do everything, you could wind up with nothing. If you try to do just ONE Thing, the right ONE Thing, you could wind up with everything you ever wanted. The ONE Thing is real. If you put it to work, it will work.

“teaching people how to think the way they need to think so they can do what they need to do when they need to do it, so they can get what they want when they want it.”

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