The latest book I read is a huge Wall Street Journal bestseller called The One Thing by Gary Keller. It actually overlaps somewhat in the message behind Essentialism and the book I’m reading right now, The Slight Edge.
Let’s dive into what this book is about and what I learned. My goal is to cement the lessons in my brain by writing them down, but I’m also hoping you’ll pick up a thing or two! That being said, I encourage you to read the book as well because what I got out of it will likely be different from what you get out of it.
OK, so the core idea behind the book is finding your one thing in various areas of your life that will make the biggest impact and get you the best results.
Areas including:
- Spiritual Life
- Physical Health
- Personal Life
- Key Relationships
- Your Job
- Your Business
- Your Finances
The specific verbiage Gary Keller uses is:
What’s the one thing you can do such that by doing it everything else would be easier or unnecessary.
Key Takeaways
This book’s main focus is on the “one thing” and how it applies to improving your life or business, but the various chapters actually spring out to other nuggets of wisdom. Here’s what I personally took away from reading this book in no particular order:
- When you’re trying to reach a goal, there’s usually one thing you can focus on that will give you the biggest results. I guess it’s like the 80/20 principle but on a larger scale.
- Having work/life balance is not possible (this is something I struggle with almost daily). What Gary says you need to do is counter-balance. Meaning, go heavy on work for a bit, but then stop and focus on family or relationships to counter-balance. And then vice versa.
- When you’re planning out your goals, you need to think big. Thinking big in your goals equals big results. But you also have to break down that big goal into smaller, more manageable goals.
- I always thought will power was a “muscle” that you could train and build. But Gary says you only have a certain amount of will power every day and you use up your supply as you do things that require hard decisions, concentration, etc. So basically your will power diminishes throughout the day as you use it. I guess this is why you always read about how it’s best to do the hard things first.
Applying What I Learned
One Thing
The big key benefit I got from reading this book is honestly being conscious of the idea behind The One Thing. Meaning, now when I’m doing a task at work, or in my side business, or in my personal life, I find myself thinking about what’s my “one thing” in this situation.
My overall “one thing” right now is keeping up with my morning routine of exercise, reading and writing. It sets the tone of my day which benefits everything including family, work and my side business. Do you have a morning ritual? It’s really great and I find myself looking forward to it.
Work/Life Balance
Balancing my work and life is something I struggle with and this book introduced me to the concept of counter-balancing. I guess the concept is pretty simple, but I hadn’t thought of it this way before so this was a key lesson for me. It’s OK to go hard on your work because you need to in order to get results, but then remember that you need to take a step back after a bit and focus more on your life (whether that means family, personal time or relationships). It seems to me that this would also prevent burnout so overall it’s a great idea whether you’re concerned about balance or not.
Goals
I’ll try to think bigger with my goals. I think for my full-time job, that means going after bigger clients…clients that I might have a mental roadblock are too big for us, but I know that’s not true. And for my side business, I need to keep pushing the envelope and thinking bigger on what I can accomplish with it. Keep fine-tuning and improving my service…keep setting up systems so it runs like a machine…keep the gas on finding new clients…etc.
Will Power
This was interesting because I just assumed will power is something you build up and then have as needed. But now that I know it’s a resource that diminishes as the day goes on, it’s obviously really important to tackle the important/hard stuff first. If you leave the important/hard tasks until later on in the day, they might not get done!
So that’s my take on The One Thing. I hope my recap has sparked some ideas for you. And if you read the book and have additional insight, please comment below, thanks!
