The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results

by Gary Keller

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. 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. The problem with trying to do too much is that even if it works, adding more to your work and your life without cutting anything brings a lot of bad with it: missed deadlines, disappointing results, high stress, long hours, lost sleep, poor diet, no exercise, and missed moments with family and friends— all in the name of going after something that is easier to get than you might imagine.

Success builds on success, and as this happens, over and over, you move toward the highest success possible.

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

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.

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.

“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

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.

Achievers always work from a clear sense of priority.

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 majority of what you want will come from the minority of what you do.

Don’t focus on being busy; focus on being productive. Allow what matters most to drive your day.

“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.

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

You simply can’t effectively focus on two important things at the same time.

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.

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

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. That’s it.

The more we use our mind, the less minding power we have.

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.

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

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

The problem with living in the middle is that it prevents you from making extraordinary time commitments to anything. In your effort to attend to all things, everything gets shortchanged and nothing gets its due.

When you gamble with your time, you may be placing a bet you can’t cover. Even if you’re sure you can win, be careful that you can live with what you lose.

To 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, with only infrequent counterbalancing to address them.

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. The challenge then doesn’t become one of not going out of balance, for in fact you must.

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

It’s about bold ideas that might threaten your comfort zones but simultaneously reflect your greatest opportunities. Believing in big frees you to ask different questions, follow different paths, and try new things. This opens the doors to possibilities that until now only lived inside you.

Every level of achievement requires its own combination of what you do, how you do it, and who you do it with. The trouble is that the combination of what, how, and who that gets you to one level of success won’t naturally evolve to a better combination that leads to the next level of success.

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.

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.

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 put all your eggs in one basket” is all wrong. I tell you “put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch that basket.”

Andrew Carnegie

Action you “can do” beats intention every time.

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

What’s the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?

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

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?” 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. Armed with this knowledge, you can establish a benchmark, the current high-water mark for all that is known and being done. With a stretch approach this was your maximum, but now it is your minimum.

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

A business can’t have unproductive people yet magically still have an immensely profitable business. Great businesses are built one productive person at a time.

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.

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

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.

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

Purpose has the power to shape our lives only in direct proportion to the power of the priority we connect it to. Purpose without priority is powerless.

Your “present now” and all “future nows” are undeniably determined by the priority you live in the moment.