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Goktug Yilmaz's Reviews > The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results
The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results
by
by
3 Keys:
- What’s the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?
- Learning to say no can and will liberate you.
- If you chase two rabbits you will not catch either one. - Russian Proverb
Notes:
- No one knows their ultimate ceiling for achievement, so worrying about it is a waste of time.
- Each one is a foundation for the next: spiritual life > physical health > personal life > key relationships > job > business > financial.
- Mastery is a path you go down instead of a destination you arrive at.
- When you chose to master the right thing, then pursuing mastery of it will make everything else you do either easier or no longer necessary.
- We overthink, overplan, and overanalyze our careers, our businesses, and our lives; that long hours are neither virtuous nor healthy; and that we usually succeed in spite of most of what we do, not because of it.
- Long hours spent checking off a to-do list and ending the day with a full trash can and a clean desk are not virtuous and have nothing to do with success. Instead of a to-do list, you need a success list—a list that is purposefully created around extraordinary results.
- A life worth living might be measured in many ways, but the one way that stands above all others is living a life of no regrets.
- Life is too short to pile up woulda, coulda, shouldas.
The 1 thing:
- Be like a postage stamp— stick to one thing until you get there. - Josh Billing
- Extraordinarily successful companies always have one product or service they’re most known for or that makes them the most money.
- When you try to do too much at once, you can end up doing nothing well. Figure out what matters most in the moment and give it your undivided attention.
- Prime condition of success: Concentrate your energy, thought and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged.
- Buying into too many other things muddle our thinking, misguide our actions, and sidetrack our success.
- Multitasking takes a toll. At home or at work, distractions lead to poor choices, painful mistakes, and unnecessary stress.
- “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” is all wrong. “Put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch that basket.” 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.
- Sticking with something long enough for success to show up is a fundamental requirement for achieving extra-ordinary results.
- Try to put your self in this position: “This is where I’m meant to be right now, doing exactly what I’m doing.”
Go Small:
- When you want the absolute best chance to succeed at anything you want, your approach should always be the same. Go small.
- 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.
Domino Effect:
- Getting extraordinary results is all about creating a domino effect in your life.
- Life doesn’t line everything up for us and say, “Here’s where you should start.” So every day line up your priorities, find the lead domino, and whack away at it until it falls.
- Extraordinary success is sequential. What starts out linear becomes geometric. You do the right thing and then you do the next right thing. Over time it adds up, and the geometric potential of success is unleashed.
- 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.
Decisions:
- Good decisions depend on more than just wisdom and common sense.
- Good decisions are best made after a break: In order of most favorable times: after sleeping, after morning break, after afternoon break
- Efficiency is doing the thing right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing. - Peter Drucker
Discipline and Willpower:
- Success is actually a short race—a sprint fueled by discipline just long enough for habit to kick in and take over.
- You don’t need to be a disciplined. Success is about doing the right thing, not about doing everything right.
- Harness the power of selected discipline to build the right habit, and extraordinary results will find you.
- Willpower can be recharged with downtime.
- You make poor choices after doing a cognitively difficult task.
- 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. It’s incredibly powerful, but it has no endurance.
- While decisions tap our willpower, the food we eat is also a key player in our level of willpower.
- Prefer to eat foods that elevate blood sugar evenly over long periods, like complex carbohydrates and proteins.
- Do you most important work early, before your willpower is drawn down. Then you need enough willpower the rest of the day to support or avoid sabotaging what you’ve done.
WHAT TAXES YOUR WILLPOWER
1. Implementing new behaviors
2. Filtering distractions
3. Resisting temptation
4. Suppressing emotion
5. Restraining aggression
6. Suppressing impulses
7. Taking tests
8. Trying to impress others
9. Coping with fear
10. Doing something you don’t enjoy
11. Selecting long-term over short-term rewards”
Balance:
- We should not be seeking for life balance. Purpose, meaning, significance—these are what make a successful life.
- Out of balance = Some priorities are being underserved. When you focus on the truly important, something will always be underserved. No matter how hard you try, there will always be things left undone at the end of your day, week, month, year, and life. Trying to get them all done is folly. Leaving some things undone is a necessary tradeoff for extraordinary results.
- Idea: You're juggling 5 balls called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. You’re keeping all of them in the air. Work is a rubber ball, if you drop it, it will bounce back. The other 4 balls are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be shattered.
Purpose:
1. Purpose => 2. Priority => 3. Productivity => 4. Profit
- The more productive people are, the more purpose and priority are pushing and driving them.
- All businesspeople want productivity and profit, but too many fail to realize that the best path to attaining them is through purpose-driven 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.
- Financially wealthy people are those who have enough money coming in without having to work to finance their purpose in life. Without purpose, you’ll never know when you have enough money.
- 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.
- Half of knowing what you want is knowing what you must give up before you get it.
Get Help:
- No one succeeds alone. No one is self made.
- Written goals are 39% more likely to succeed. Written goals + sending progress reports to friends are 76% more likely to succeed.
- Most important difference between amateurs and elite is that the future elite seek out teachers and coaches to engage in supervised training.
- People lived before you. You’re not the first person to dream big, so you’d be wise to study what others have learned first, and then build your actions on the back of their lessons.
- The people we see tend to set our standard for what’s appropriate.
Time blocks:
- Block time as early as you can. Give yourself 30-60 mins to take care of morning priorities, then move to your ONE Thing. For minimum 4 hours.
- If you can have a productive day until noon, the rest of the day falls into place. That’s positive energy creating positive momentum.
- Maker’s Schedule vs Manager’s Schedule (do or create) vs (oversee or direct)
- Maker time, requires large blocks half-day increments to write code, develop ideas, generate leads, recruit people, produce products, or execute on projects and plans.
- Manager time, gets divided into hours. Has one moving from meeting to meeting creating a conflict with those who need maker time.
Processes:
- Goal Setting to the Now: Set a future goal and then methodically drill down to what you should be doing right now.
- Train your mind how to think, how to connect one goal with the next over time until you know the most important thing you must do right NOW.
- People who visualize the process perform better across than those who simply visualize the outcome.
- Ask big & specific questions to yourself. Then you will figure out the right answer.
- Quality of any answer is directly determined by the quality of the question. Ask the most powerful question possible, and the answer can be life altering.
- Stretch what you believe is possible and look outside the standard toolbox of solutions.
- Resting is as important as working.
THE FOUR THIEVES OF PRODUCTIVITY
1. Inability to Say “No”
2. Fear of Chaos
3. Poor Health Habits
4. Environment Doesn’t Support Your Goals
THE HIGHLY PRODUCTIVE PERSON’S DAILY ENERGY PLAN
1. Meditate and pray for spiritual energy.
2. Eat right, exercise, and sleep sufficiently for physical energy.
3. Hug, kiss, and laugh with loved ones for emotional energy.
4. Set goals, plan, and calendar for mental energy.
5. Time block your ONE Thing for business energy.
THE SIX LIES BETWEEN YOU AND SUCCESS
1. Everything Matters Equally
2. Multitasking
3. A Disciplined Life
4. Willpower Is Always on Will-Call
5. A Balanced Life
6. Big Is Bad
https://prnt.sc/krd54w
https://prnt.sc/krdf64
- What’s the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?
- Learning to say no can and will liberate you.
- If you chase two rabbits you will not catch either one. - Russian Proverb
Notes:
- No one knows their ultimate ceiling for achievement, so worrying about it is a waste of time.
- Each one is a foundation for the next: spiritual life > physical health > personal life > key relationships > job > business > financial.
- Mastery is a path you go down instead of a destination you arrive at.
- When you chose to master the right thing, then pursuing mastery of it will make everything else you do either easier or no longer necessary.
- We overthink, overplan, and overanalyze our careers, our businesses, and our lives; that long hours are neither virtuous nor healthy; and that we usually succeed in spite of most of what we do, not because of it.
- Long hours spent checking off a to-do list and ending the day with a full trash can and a clean desk are not virtuous and have nothing to do with success. Instead of a to-do list, you need a success list—a list that is purposefully created around extraordinary results.
- A life worth living might be measured in many ways, but the one way that stands above all others is living a life of no regrets.
- Life is too short to pile up woulda, coulda, shouldas.
The 1 thing:
- Be like a postage stamp— stick to one thing until you get there. - Josh Billing
- Extraordinarily successful companies always have one product or service they’re most known for or that makes them the most money.
- When you try to do too much at once, you can end up doing nothing well. Figure out what matters most in the moment and give it your undivided attention.
- Prime condition of success: Concentrate your energy, thought and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged.
- Buying into too many other things muddle our thinking, misguide our actions, and sidetrack our success.
- Multitasking takes a toll. At home or at work, distractions lead to poor choices, painful mistakes, and unnecessary stress.
- “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” is all wrong. “Put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch that basket.” 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.
- Sticking with something long enough for success to show up is a fundamental requirement for achieving extra-ordinary results.
- Try to put your self in this position: “This is where I’m meant to be right now, doing exactly what I’m doing.”
Go Small:
- When you want the absolute best chance to succeed at anything you want, your approach should always be the same. Go small.
- 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.
Domino Effect:
- Getting extraordinary results is all about creating a domino effect in your life.
- Life doesn’t line everything up for us and say, “Here’s where you should start.” So every day line up your priorities, find the lead domino, and whack away at it until it falls.
- Extraordinary success is sequential. What starts out linear becomes geometric. You do the right thing and then you do the next right thing. Over time it adds up, and the geometric potential of success is unleashed.
- 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.
Decisions:
- Good decisions depend on more than just wisdom and common sense.
- Good decisions are best made after a break: In order of most favorable times: after sleeping, after morning break, after afternoon break
- Efficiency is doing the thing right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing. - Peter Drucker
Discipline and Willpower:
- Success is actually a short race—a sprint fueled by discipline just long enough for habit to kick in and take over.
- You don’t need to be a disciplined. Success is about doing the right thing, not about doing everything right.
- Harness the power of selected discipline to build the right habit, and extraordinary results will find you.
- Willpower can be recharged with downtime.
- You make poor choices after doing a cognitively difficult task.
- 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. It’s incredibly powerful, but it has no endurance.
- While decisions tap our willpower, the food we eat is also a key player in our level of willpower.
- Prefer to eat foods that elevate blood sugar evenly over long periods, like complex carbohydrates and proteins.
- Do you most important work early, before your willpower is drawn down. Then you need enough willpower the rest of the day to support or avoid sabotaging what you’ve done.
WHAT TAXES YOUR WILLPOWER
1. Implementing new behaviors
2. Filtering distractions
3. Resisting temptation
4. Suppressing emotion
5. Restraining aggression
6. Suppressing impulses
7. Taking tests
8. Trying to impress others
9. Coping with fear
10. Doing something you don’t enjoy
11. Selecting long-term over short-term rewards”
Balance:
- We should not be seeking for life balance. Purpose, meaning, significance—these are what make a successful life.
- Out of balance = Some priorities are being underserved. When you focus on the truly important, something will always be underserved. No matter how hard you try, there will always be things left undone at the end of your day, week, month, year, and life. Trying to get them all done is folly. Leaving some things undone is a necessary tradeoff for extraordinary results.
- Idea: You're juggling 5 balls called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. You’re keeping all of them in the air. Work is a rubber ball, if you drop it, it will bounce back. The other 4 balls are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be shattered.
Purpose:
1. Purpose => 2. Priority => 3. Productivity => 4. Profit
- The more productive people are, the more purpose and priority are pushing and driving them.
- All businesspeople want productivity and profit, but too many fail to realize that the best path to attaining them is through purpose-driven 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.
- Financially wealthy people are those who have enough money coming in without having to work to finance their purpose in life. Without purpose, you’ll never know when you have enough money.
- 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.
- Half of knowing what you want is knowing what you must give up before you get it.
Get Help:
- No one succeeds alone. No one is self made.
- Written goals are 39% more likely to succeed. Written goals + sending progress reports to friends are 76% more likely to succeed.
- Most important difference between amateurs and elite is that the future elite seek out teachers and coaches to engage in supervised training.
- People lived before you. You’re not the first person to dream big, so you’d be wise to study what others have learned first, and then build your actions on the back of their lessons.
- The people we see tend to set our standard for what’s appropriate.
Time blocks:
- Block time as early as you can. Give yourself 30-60 mins to take care of morning priorities, then move to your ONE Thing. For minimum 4 hours.
- If you can have a productive day until noon, the rest of the day falls into place. That’s positive energy creating positive momentum.
- Maker’s Schedule vs Manager’s Schedule (do or create) vs (oversee or direct)
- Maker time, requires large blocks half-day increments to write code, develop ideas, generate leads, recruit people, produce products, or execute on projects and plans.
- Manager time, gets divided into hours. Has one moving from meeting to meeting creating a conflict with those who need maker time.
Processes:
- Goal Setting to the Now: Set a future goal and then methodically drill down to what you should be doing right now.
- Train your mind how to think, how to connect one goal with the next over time until you know the most important thing you must do right NOW.
- People who visualize the process perform better across than those who simply visualize the outcome.
- Ask big & specific questions to yourself. Then you will figure out the right answer.
- Quality of any answer is directly determined by the quality of the question. Ask the most powerful question possible, and the answer can be life altering.
- Stretch what you believe is possible and look outside the standard toolbox of solutions.
- Resting is as important as working.
THE FOUR THIEVES OF PRODUCTIVITY
1. Inability to Say “No”
2. Fear of Chaos
3. Poor Health Habits
4. Environment Doesn’t Support Your Goals
THE HIGHLY PRODUCTIVE PERSON’S DAILY ENERGY PLAN
1. Meditate and pray for spiritual energy.
2. Eat right, exercise, and sleep sufficiently for physical energy.
3. Hug, kiss, and laugh with loved ones for emotional energy.
4. Set goals, plan, and calendar for mental energy.
5. Time block your ONE Thing for business energy.
THE SIX LIES BETWEEN YOU AND SUCCESS
1. Everything Matters Equally
2. Multitasking
3. A Disciplined Life
4. Willpower Is Always on Will-Call
5. A Balanced Life
6. Big Is Bad
https://prnt.sc/krd54w
https://prnt.sc/krdf64
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