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IF YOU CHASE TWO RABBITS...
... YOU WILL NOT CATCH EITHER ONE. RUSSIAN PROVERB
Where I’d had huge success, I had narrowed my concentration to one thing, and where my success varied, my focus had too.
“Going small” is ignoring all the things you could do and doing what you should do.
want. It’s realizing that extraordinary results are directly determined by how narrow you can make your focus. The way to get the most out of
You need to be doing fewer things for more effect instead of doing more things with
side effects.
Getting extraordinary results is all about creating a domino effect in your life.
extraordinary success is sequential, not simultaneous. What starts out linear becomes geometric.
If today your company doesn’t know what its ONE Thing is, then the company’s ONE Thing is to find out.
“You must be single-minded. Drive for the one thing on which you have decided.” —General George S. Patton
“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 ONE Thing becomes difficult because we’ve unfortunately bought into too many others—and more often than not those “other things” muddle our thinking, misguide our actions, and sidetrack our 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.
The difference isn’t in intent, but in right of way. Achievers always work from a clear sense of priority.
the “vital few and trivial many.”
A small amount of causes creates most of the results. Just the right input creates most of the output. Selected effort creates almost all of the rewards.
the majority of what you want will come from the minority of what you do.
Start with as large a list as you want, but develop the mindset that you will whittle your way from there to the critical few and not stop until you end with the essential ONE. The imperative ONE. The ONE Thing.
Go extreme.
When you focus, it’s like shining a spotlight on what matters.
Take on two things and your attention gets divided. Take on a third and something gets dropped.
Success is actually a short race—a sprint fueled by discipline just long enough for habit to kick in and take over. When we know something that needs to be
done but isn’t currently getting done, we often say, “I just need more discipline.” Actually, we need the habit of doing it. And we need just enough discipline to build the habit.
the foundation for achievement—regularly working at something until it regularly works for you.
it also simplifies your life. Your life gets clearer and less complicated because you know what you have to do well and you know what you don’t. The fact of the matter is that aiming discipline at the right habit gives you license to be less disciplined in other areas. When you do the right thing, it can liberate you from having to monitor everything.
sweet spot—with easier behaviors taking fewer days on average and tough ones taking longer. Self-help circles tend to preach that it takes 21 days to make a change, but modern science doesn’t back that up. It takes time to develop the right habit, so don’t give up too soon. Decide what the right one is, then give yourself all the time you need and apply all the discipline you can summon to develop it. Australian researchers Megan Oaten and Ken Cheng have even found some evidence of a halo effect around habit creation. In their studies, students who successfully acquired one positive habit
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So, if you want to get the most out of your day, do your most important work—your ONE Thing—early, before your willpower is drawn down.
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.
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.
What you build today will either empower or restrict you tomorrow.
Big stands for greatness—extraordinary results. Pursue a big life and you’re pursuing the greatest life you can possibly live. To live great, you have to think big. You must be open to the possibility that your life and what you accomplish can become great.
Don’t fear big. Fear mediocrity. Fear waste. Fear the lack of living to your fullest.
Only living big will let you experience your true life and work potential.
Act bold. Big thoughts go nowhere without
bold action. Once you’ve asked a big
question, pause to imagine what life looks like ...
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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.
“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.”
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.
the quality of any answer is directly determined by the quality of the question.
MY WAGE By J. B. Rittenhouse I bargained with Life for a penny, And Life would pay no more, However I begged at evening When I counted my scanty store. For Life is a just employer, He gives you what you ask, But once you have set the wages, Why, you must bear the task. I worked for a menials hire, Only to learn, dismayed, That 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.
do. Action you “can do” beats intention every time.
It’s the bridge between just doing something and doing something for a specific purpose.
you when you’ve found the first domino.
that when you do this ONE Thing,
everything else you could do to accomplish your goal will now be either doable with less effort ...
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