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Most people struggle to comprehend how many things don’t need to be done, if they would just sta...
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to declutter your life by asking you to put on blinders. This elevates the answer’s potential to change your life by doing the lever...
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the first domino and focus on it exclusively until you knock it over. Once you’ve done that, you’ll discover a line of dominoes behind it either ready to fall or already down.
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.
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.
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.
“such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”
What’s the ONE Thing I can do to achieve my diet goals... ?
What’s the ONE Thing I can do to ensure that I exercise... ?
What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my relationship with my spouse/partner... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my children’s school performance... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to show my appreciation to my parents... ?
What’s the ONE Thing I can do to ensure that I hit my goals... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my skills... ?
What’s the ONE Thing I can do to make our product the best... ?
What’s the ONE Thing I can do to make us more profitable... ?
What’s the ONE Thing I can do to increase my net worth... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my investment cash flow... ?
Understand and believe it.
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?”
“Until my ONE Thing is done—everything else is a distraction.”
“People do not decide their futures, they decide their habits and their habits decide their futures.”
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.
How much will sales increase? By what date? Unfortunately, this is the kind of average question most people ask and then wonder why their answers don’t deliver extraordinary results.
without specifics you won’t know where to start.
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.
“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?”
your first ONE Thing is to search for clues and role models to point you in the right direction. The first thing to do is ask, “Has anyone else studied or accomplished this or something like it?”
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.
The more productive people are, the more purpose and priority are pushing and driving them.
Personal productivity is the building block of all business profit.
us a simple formula for creating an extraordinary life:
Live with purpose. Live by priority. Live for productivity.
our priority is what we place the greatest importance on and our productivity comes from the actions we take.
productivity our actions produce.
our purpose determines who we are.
Who we are and where we want to go determine what we do and what we accomplish.
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.
those who have enough money coming in without having to work to finance their purpose in life.
any end you seek will only create happiness for you through the means it takes to achieve it.
happiness happens on the way to fulfillment.
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 have a definite purpose for your life,*
clarity comes faster, which leads to more conviction in your direction, which usually leads to faster decisions. 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. This is how knowing where y...
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Purpose provides the ultimate glue that can help you stick to the path you’ve set. When what you do matches your purpose, your life just feels in rhythm, and the path you beat with your feet seems to match the sound in your head and heart.
Discover your purpose by asking yourself what drives you.
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?
the truth is we have goals and plans for only one reason—to be appropriate in the moments of our lives that matter.
Your “present now” and all “future nows” are undeniably determined by the priority you live in the moment. The deciding factor in determining how you set that priority is who wins the battle between your present and future selves.
By thinking through the filter of Goal Setting to the Now, you set a future goal and then methodically drill down to what you should be doing right now.
