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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Gary Keller
Read between
January 2 - February 2, 2024
Anyone who dreams of an uncommon life eventually discovers there is no choice but to seek an uncommon approach to living it.
People often want to change this to “should do,” “could do,” or “would do,” but those choices all miss the point. There are many things we should, could, or would do but never do.
Start with the big stuff and see where it takes you. Over time, you’ll develop your own sense of when to use the big-picture question and when to use the small-focus question.
The Focusing Question can direct you to your ONE Thing in the different areas of your life. Simply reframe the Focusing Question by inserting your area of focus. You can also include a time frame—such as “right now” or “this year”—to give your answer the appropriate level of immediacy, or “in five years” or “someday” to find a big-picture answer that points you at outcomes to aim for.
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?”
put up a sign at work that says, “Until my ONE Thing is done—everything else is a distraction.”
“Until my ONE Thing is done—everything else is a distraction.”
Put up reminders like, “The ONE Thing = Extraordinary Results” or “The Success Habit Will Get Me to My Goal.”
Low goals don’t require extraordinary actions so they rarely lead to extraordinary results.
Turning it into the Focusing Question goes to the heart of success by forcing you to identify what absolutely matters most and start there.
Answers come in three categories: doable, stretch, and possibility.
Highly successful people choose to live at the outer limits of achievement. They not only dream of but deeply crave what is beyond their natural grasp.
your first ONE Thing is to search for clues and role models to point you in the right direction.
books are a great go-to resource. Short of having a conversation with someone who has accomplished what you hope to achieve, in my experience books and published works offer the most in terms of documented research and role models for success.
The research and experience of others is the best place to start when looking for your answer.
A new answer usually requires new behavior,
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.
Live with purpose. Live by priority. Live for productivity.
our purpose sets our priority and our priority determines the productivity our actions produce.
financially wealthy people are those who have enough money coming in without having to work to finance their purpose in life.
When you make faster decisions, you’ll often be the one who makes the first decisions and winds up with the best choices. And when you have the best choices, you have the opportunity for the best experiences.
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.
Try writing down something you’d like to accomplish and then describe how you’d do it.
Live with purpose and you know where you want to go. Live by priority and you’ll know what to do to get there.
Productive action transforms lives.
the most successful people are the most productive people.
Productive people get more done, achieve better results, and earn far more in their hours than the rest. They do so because they devote maximum time to being productive on their top priority, their ONE Thing.
Time blocking harnesses your energy and centers it on your most important work. It’s productivity’s greatest power tool.
what’s the ONE Thing I can do for my ONE Thing such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”
By planning your time off in advance, you are, in effect, managing your work time around your downtime instead of the other way around.
The most productive people work on event time. They don’t quit until their ONE Thing is done.
No matter who you are, large time blocks work.
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.
Sometimes the request is real, needs to be done now, and you must drop what you’re doing and do it. In this situation, follow the rule “If you erase, you must replace” and immediately reschedule your time block.
“Until My ONE Thing Is Done—Everything Else Is A Distraction!”
The people who achieve extraordinary results don’t achieve them by working more hours. They achieve them by getting more done in the hours they work.
we become masters of what is behind us and apprentices for what is ahead.
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.
Continually improving how you do something is critical to getting the most from time blocking.
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.
When life happens, you can be either the author of your life or the victim of it.
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.
“When you think about focusing, you think, ‘Well, focusing is saying yes.’ No! Focusing is about saying no.”
“anything you build on a large scale or with intense passion invites chaos.” In other words, get used to it and get over it.
The people we see tend to set our standard for what’s appropriate.
when you clear the path to success— that’s when you consistently get there.
When you lift the limits of your thinking, you expand the limits of your life. It’s only when you can imagine a bigger life that you can ever hope to have one.
The challenge is that living the largest life possible requires you not only to think big, but also to take the necessary actions to get there.
