The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results

by Gary Keller

Personal productivity is the building block of all business profit.

Great businesses are built one productive person at a time. And not surprisingly, the most productive people receive the greatest rewards from their businesses.

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

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. Take money, for instance. Since money represents both getting something and the potential to get more, it makes for a great example. Many people not only misunderstand how to make money but also how it makes us happy. I’ve taught wealth building to everyone from seasoned entrepreneurs to high school students, and whenever I ask, “How much money do you want to earn?” I get all kinds of answers, but usually the number is quite high. When I ask, “How did you pick this number?” I frequently get the familiar answer: “Don’t know.” I then ask, “Can you tell me your definition of a financially wealthy person?” Invariably, I get numbers that start at a million dollars and go up from there. When I ask how they arrived at this, they often say, “It sounds like a lot.” My response is, “It is, and it isn’t. It all depends on what you’d do with it.”

“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. Alice’s classic encounter with the Cheshire Cat in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland reveals the close connection between purpose and priority. Live with purpose and you know where you want to go. Live by priority and you’ll know what to do to get there.

be precise, the word is priority—not priorities—and it originated in the 14th century from the Latin prior, meaning “first.”

watch your language. You may have many ways to talk about priority, but no matter the words you choose, to achieve extraordinary results your meaning must be the same—ONE Thing.

BIG IDEAS 1. 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. 2. 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. 3. Put pen to paper. Write your goals down and keep them close. Pull your purpose through to a single priority built by Goal Setting to the Now, and that priority—that ONE Thing you can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary—will show you the way to extraordinary results. And once you know what to do, the only thing left is to go from knowing to doing.

“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

“Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it.” —George Halas

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

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

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