The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results (Gary Keller): Review

A lot of readers of this book have said the theme is Caption Obvious. I hope to elaborate beyond the "ONE Thing" central theme, and describe the 'how' more than the 'what.'

My initial thoughts:

The main point Gary Keller tries to convey is that in business, in your job, in the home, you are getting paid to perform at this ONE thing. If you are trying to make a living or a career from your ONE thing, you need to protect your practicing time to this ONE thing.

This is where time blocking comes in. Time blocking is critical to achieving great success, happiness and triumphant fulfillment. it comes from being useful and productive in our ONE thing.

Prioritization is key here. One of the ways to figure out what you should be prioritizing is to always ask yourself the Focusing Question, “What’s the ONE thing I should be doing right now so that once completed everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” When you continue to ask yourself this question all throughout the day, you’ll see yourself doing the thing you should be doing to make your life a little easier.

He starts the book off by debunking success myths such as, you need to be in a hurry always busily doing something, you need to have multiple priorities on your plate etc. one of the pieces of advice I love that he gave was the idea that we should be working to have less tasks on our plate, not more.

The book goes deeper than just simply doing one thing at a time. He talks about MASTERY. At the end of the day, the people who earn the big bucks are the people who are masters at their craft. And when you are a master at your craft, people seek you out and pay you whatever price you ask to do your ONE thing. Nobody else can do it because you are the best at it. And guess what? The key to achieving the level of mastery is practicing your craft, your ONE thing. It’s that simple.

It’s critical to your success to time block first thing in morning so that you can give your ONE thing your undivided attention! It’s your job to set aside that time and block it with your life. No excuses. He suggests we block 4 hours in the morning to totally and completely dedicate ourselves to our ONE thing. The minimum of a 4 hour time block is not random, and he goes over that math.

Another cool tip Gary gives us here is on time blocking vacation. He talks about successful people and how they plan their work around their vacation vs others who plan their vacation around their work. The idea is that the people who take the latter approach end up stressing even while on vacation. The former group will work tirelessly around their vacation to make sure they can enjoy the time off. I never thought about vacation that way, and it is definitely a wise way to view your work. Time blocking your time off is a requirement, and since you’re a top performer, you need your time off. Block it out and then take that time off.

In essence, the overall theme of the book is to make sure you’re productive at your ONE thing (whatever that may be). The debunking of certain myths around productivity (everything matters equally, extreme will-power, multitasking etc). At the end of the day, we all have the same 8 hour work day, same 24 hours in a day, same weeks and months in a year. How in the world can anyone get anything done if we are consistently distracted “multitasking” taking on more than we can handle, foregoing lunch to practice will-power, and so on. If we live by priority, purpose and poise, we’ll be more productive than we think.

So, relax, keep asking yourself the Focusing Question, and get your work done.

Done.