The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results

by Gary Keller

You don’t need to be a disciplined person to be successful. In fact, 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.

SELECTED DISCIPLINE WORKS SWIMMINGLY Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps is a case study of selected discipline. When he was diagnosed with ADHD as a child, his kindergarten teacher told his mother, “Michael can’t sit still. Michael can’t be quiet. … He’s not gifted. Your son will never be able to focus on anything.” Bob Bowman, his coach since age 11, reports that Michael spent a lot of time on the side of the pool by the lifeguard stand for disruptive behavior. That same misbehavior has cropped up from time to time in his adult life as well. Yet, he’s set dozens of world records. In 2004 he won six gold and two bronze medals in Athens and then, in 2008, a record eight in Beijing, surpassing the legendary Mark Spitz. His 18 gold medals set a record for Olympians in any sport.

SIXTY-SIX DAYS TO THE SWEET SPOT Discipline and habit. Honestly, most people never really want to talk about these. And who can blame them? I don’t either. The images these words conjure in our heads are of something hard and unpleasant. Just reading the words is exhausting. But there

good news. The right discipline goes a long way, and habits are hard only in the beginning. Over time, the habit you’re after becomes easier and easier to sustain. It’s true. Habits require much less energy and effort to maintain than to begin (see figure 7). Put up with the discipline long enough to turn it into a habit, and the journey feels different. Lock in one habit so it becomes part of your life, and you can effectively ride the routine with less wear and tear on yourself. The hard stuff becomes habit, and habit makes the hard stuff easy. FIG. 7 Once a new behavior becomes a habit, it takes less discipline to maintain.

So, how long do you have to maintain discipline? Researchers at the University College of London have the answer. In 2009, they asked the question: How long does it take to establish a new habit? They were looking for the moment when a new behavior becomes automatic or ingrained. The point of “automaticity” came when participants were 95 percent through the power curve and the effort needed to sustain it was about as low as it would get. They asked students to take on exercise and diet goals for a period of time and monitor their progress. The results suggest that it takes an average of 66 days to acquire a new habit. The full range was 18 to 254 days, but the 66 days represented a sweet spot—with easier behaviors taking fewer days on average and tough ones t...

well. It’s why those with the right habits seem to do better than others. They’re doing the most important thing regularly and, as a result, everything else is easier. BIG IDEAS 1. Don’t be a disciplined person. Be a person of powerful habits and use selected discipline to develop them. 2. Build one habit at a time. Success is

sequential, not simultaneous. No one actually has the discipline to acquire more than one powerful new habit at a time. Super-successful people aren’t superhuman at all; they’ve just used selected discipline to develop a few significant habits. One at a time. Over time. 3. Give each habit enough time. Stick with the discipline long enough for it to become routine. Habits, on average, take 66 days to form. Once a habit is solidly established, you can either build on that habit or, if appropriate, build another one.

7 WILLPOWER IS ALWAYS ON WILL-CALL

Building success around full strength, on-demand willpower proved unsuccessful. My initial thought was, What’s wrong with me? Was I a loser? Apparently so. It seemed I had no grit. No strength of character. No inner fortitude. Consequently, I gutted it up, bore down with determination, doubled my effort, and reached a humbling conclusion: willpower isn’t on will-call.

Willpower is always on will-call is a lie.

Willpower is so important that using it effectively should be a high priority.

RENEWABLE ENERGY Think of willpower like the power bar on your cell phone. Every morning you start out with a full charge. As the day goes on, every time you draw on it you’re using it up. So as your green bar shrinks, so does your resolve, and when it eventually goes red, you’re done. Willpower has a limited battery life but can be recharged with some downtime.

The implications are staggering. The more we use our mind, the less minding power we have. Willpower is like a fast-twitch muscle that gets tired and needs rest.

The researchers analyzed 1,112 parole board hearings assigned to eight judges over a ten-month period (which incidentally amounted to 40 percent of Israel’s total parole requests over that period). The pace is grueling. The judges hear arguments and take about six minutes to render a decision on 14 to 35 parole requests a day, and they get only two

breaks—a morning snack and late lunch—to rest and refuel. The impact of their schedule is as spectacular as it is surprising: In the mornings and after each break, parolees’ chances for being released peak at 65 percent, and then plunge to near zero by the end of each period (see figure 8). The results are most likely tied to the mental toll of repetitive decision making.

And if you’re not careful, your default settings may convict you too.

When our willpower runs out, we all revert to our default settings.

GIVE WILLPOWER THE TIME OF DAY We lose our willpower not because we think about it but because we don

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.

BIG IDEAS 1. Don’t spread your willpower too thin. On any given day, you have a limited supply of willpower, so decide what matters and reserve your willpower for it. 2. Monitor your fuel gauge. Full-strength willpower requires a full tank. Never let what matters most be compromised simply because your brain was under-fueled. Eat right and regularly.

3. Time your task. Do what matters most first each day when your willpower is strongest. Maximum strength willpower means maximum success. Don’t fight your willpower. Build your days around how it works and let it do its part to build your life.

“The truth is, balance is bunk. It is an unattainable pipe dream. … The quest for balance between work and life, as we’ve come to think of it, isn’t just a losing proposition; it’s a hurtful, destructive one.” —Keith H. Hammonds

FIG. 9 The number of times “work-life balance” is mentioned in newspaper and magazine articles has exploded in recent years.

The reason we shouldn’t pursue balance is that the magic never happens in the middle; magic happens at the extremes. The dilemma is that chasing the extremes presents real challenges. We naturally understand that success lies at the outer edges, but we don’t know how to manage our lives while we’re out there.

FIG. 12 Extraordinary results at work require longer periods between counterbalancing.

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.

BIG IDEAS 1. Think about two balancing buckets. Separate your work life and personal life into two distinct buckets—not to compartmentalize them, just for

counterbalancing. Each has its own counterbalancing goals and approaches. 2. Counterbalance your work bucket. View work as involving a skill or knowledge that must be mastered. This will cause you to give disproportionate time to your ONE Thing and will throw the rest of your work day, week, month, and year continually out of balance. Your work life is divided into two distinct areas—what matters most and everything else. You will have to take what matters to the extremes and be okay with what happens to the rest. Professional success requires it. 3. Counterbalance your personal life bucket. Acknowledge that your life actually has multiple areas and that each requires a minimum of attention for you to feel that you “have a life.” Drop any one and you will feel the effects. This requires constant awareness. You must never go too long or too far without counterbalancing them so that they are all active areas of your life. Your personal life requires it.

Start leading a counterbalanced life. Let the right things take precedence when they should and get to the rest when you can. An extraor...

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

Big is bad is a lie.

Sabeer Bhatia arrived in America with only $250 in his pocket, but he wasn’t alone. Sabeer came with big plans and the belief that he could grow a business faster than any business in history. And he did. He created Hotmail. Microsoft, a witness to Hotmail’s meteoric rise, eventually bought it for $400 million.

GOING BIG Thinking big is essential to extraordinary results. Success requires action, and action requires thought. But here’s the catch—the only actions that become springboards to succeeding big are those informed by big thinking to begin with.

FIG. 13 Thinking informs actions and actions determine outcomes.

FIG. 14 Choose your box—choose your outcome.

“The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man’s foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher.” —Thomas Henry Huxley

THE BIG DEAL For more than four decades, Stanford psychologist Carol S. Dweck has studied the science of how our self-conceptions influence our actions. Her work offers great insight into why thinking big is such a big deal. Dweck’s work with children revealed two mindsets in action—a “growth” mindset that generally thinks big and seeks

growth and a “fixed” mindset that places artificial limits and avoids failure. Growth-minded students, as she calls them, employ better learning strategies, experience less helplessness, exhibit more positive effort, and achieve more in the classroom than their fixed-minded peers. They are less likely to place limits on their lives and more likely to reach for their potential. Dweck points out that mindsets can and do change. Like any other habit, you set your mind to it until the right mindset becomes routine.

BIG IDEAS 1. Think big. Avoid incremental thinking that simply asks, “What do I do next?” This is at best the slow lane to success and, at worst, the off ramp. Ask bigger questions. A good rule of thumb is to double down everywhere in your life. If your goal is ten, ask the question: “How can I reach 20?” Set a goal so far above what you want that you’ll be building a plan that practically guarantees your original goal. 2. Don’t order from the menu. Apple’s celebrated 1997 “Think Different” ad campaign featured icons like Ali, Dylan, Einstein, Hitchcock, Picasso, Gandhi, and others who “saw things differently” and who went on to transform the world we know. The point was that they didn’t choose from the available options; they imagined outcomes that no one else had. They ignored the menu and ordered their

own creations. As the ad reminds us, “People who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the only ones who do.” 3. Act bold. Big thoughts go nowhere without bold action. Once you’ve asked a big question, pause to imagine what life looks like with the answer. If you still can’t imagine it, go study people who have already achieved it. What are the models, systems, habits, and relationships of other people who have found the answer? As much as we’d like to believe we’re all different, what consistently works for others will almost always work for us. 4. Don’t fear failure. It’s as much a part of your journey to extraordinary results as success. Adopt a growth mindset, and don’t be afraid of where it can take you. Extraordinary results aren’t built solely on extraordinary results. They’re built on failure too. In fact, 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 strivin...

In Carnegie’s talk, entitled “The Road to Business Success,” he discussed his life as a successful businessperson and gave this advice: And here is the prime condition of success, the great secret—concentrate your energy, thought and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged. Having begun on one line, resolve to fight it out on that line, to lead in it, adopt every improvement, have the best machinery, and know the most about it. The concerns which fail are those which have scattered their capital, which means that they have scattered their brains also. They have investments in this, or that, or the other, here, there and everywhere. “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.” Look round you and take notice; men who do that do not often fail. It is easy to watch and carry the one basket. It is trying to carry too

many baskets that breaks most eggs in this country.

So, how do you know which basket to pick? The Focusing Question. Mark Twain agreed with Carnegie and described it this way: The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret to getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming task...

So, how do you know what the first one should be? The ...

Did you notice that both of these great men considere...

The Focusing Question is so deceptively simple that its power is easily dismissed by anyone who doesn’t closely examine it. But that would be a mistake.

The Focusing Question can lead you to answer not only “big picture” questions (Where am I going? What target should I aim for?) but also “small focus” ones as well (What must I do right now to be on the path to getting the big picture? Where’s the bull’s-eye?). It tells you not only what your basket should be, but also the first step toward getting it. It shows you how big your life can be and just how small you must go to get there. It’s both a map for the big picture and a compass for your smallest next move.