THE ONE THING

When we see someone successful and content with their lives, we tend to say that they got ‘lucky’. Many of us work harder than our peers and still end up lagging behind them in the workplace! ‘Life is not fair!’, we complain to those around us and use this as an excuse to accept our failure. However, this ‘failure’ is not our failure at work but our failure to understand what goes into making them successful with half the work and time! You are working hard, yes, but are you working ‘right’? Are you focusing on that ‘one thing’? To understand the concept of this ‘one thing’ we need to do some soul- searching and then focus 20% of our daily efforts on that thing. This has been explained well by Gary Keller in his famous book ‘THE ONE THING’!

Doing Fewer Things with More Effect

The key to achieving success in life is to stop doing everything that comes your way and to focus on the ‘one thing’. What is that ‘one thing’ you may ask? How do you find your ‘one thing’? These are questions you need to ask your inner self before you start the race to success! Meditate if required, press the pause button for a day and just reflect on what your calling is! You will realise that you have always known your ‘one thing’ but life kept getting in the way of your acknowledgement of it!

Once you know what to focus on, put in most of your efforts towards doing just that ‘one thing’. You will discover that doing fewer things with more effect achieves better results in a shorter span of time than trying to do everything with equal effort!

The Domino Effect

The Domino Effect is another brilliant concept explained by Gary in his book. Once you start doing the one thing regularly and narrow your focus to what is truly important, you create a domino effect over time! If you have ever seen a game of dominos, it is a stack of sequentially kept items carefully balanced in tandem. Once the first item is set in motion, the rest of the stack falls without adding any extra effort from your end!

This is what happens in life as well, whether it is a bad habit or a good one. It creates a domino effect that eventually defines your success or failure in life! Success is the result of a sequential set of habits that you cultivate over time!

The Six Myths About Achieving Success

1. Everything is equally important: No, they are not! If you treat everything equally you will do a lot of work without achieving much success in anything! Focus on your one thing and give it topmost priority in your life! Make this a daily habit in order to see results.
2. You need a lot of discipline to be successful: You do need discipline for success but not the kind of discipline you are meant to believe by traditionalists! Choose the one habit that helps you improve on your ‘one thing’ and inculcate enough discipline into your daily life to achieve that. It can be just one hour of complete concentration in your entire day!
3. Multi-tasking is the key to success: Multi-tasking is the biggest vice of the modern lifestyle! Not only is it bad for your mental health, it is detrimental to achieving any amount of lasting success in life. The more number of things you do at once, the less you focus on any one thing!
4. Balancing everything is your job: Well, it is not! You cannot balance everything and expecting that from yourself is the worst mistake you can make. You need to let go of certain things and allow others to adjust around you.
5. The more your will-power the better: Will power is very limited and this is true for the most successful people on earth! It is important to complete your most important tasks early on in the day before you run out of will power. Expecting that you will have more will-power tomorrow is foolishness and the sooner you accept this the better!
6. Dreams should be realistic: Dreaming big is crucial to achieving great things in life. Those who match their dreams to their current reality end up thinking small and achieve only that much in life! Every successful person will tell you that big is never bad. In fact, the bigger you dream the better!

Priority and Productivity

Prioritize your ‘one thing’ and you will see the difference it makes in your daily life! Having a purpose in life without prioritizing your actions accordingly will lead you nowhere. Connect your ‘today’ to that distant ‘tomorrow’ when your ultimate vision of success is achieved. Your priorities will define your ‘tomorrow’ and it is important to remind yourself of this each morning before you start your day! Write down your goals and number them based on priority. Those who write their goals down are 39.5 % more likely to achieve them!

The most successful people are also the most productive people! Productivity is how much you improve upon your ‘one thing’ on any given day. The more you procrastinate on doing your ‘one thing’ daily, the further you slip away from achieving the success you deserve. According to Gary Keller, 80% results come from just 20% of our daily efforts!

Thieves of Productivity

1. SAYING ‘YES’ TO EVERYONE: Stop saying ‘yes’ to everyone and everything. Even if it seems difficult to do this at first, you will soon get used to it and so will others around you!
2. FEARING CHAOS: Do not fear chaos. There is bound to be some chaos when you want to achieve some amount of greatness in life!
3. UNHEALTHY LIFESTYLE: Maintain a healthy lifestyle in order to have energy for the important things! The more energy you spend on drinking or smoking, the lesser energy you will have for doing your ‘one thing’. You cannot blame your luck later on!
4. UNSUPPORTIVE ENVIRONMENT: Nobody succeeds alone and nobody fails alone either. Your environment should be conducive to your dreams and aspirations. If they are not, try to bring them around by explaining to them why it is important for you to have their support. Change your environment if your environment does not change for you!

Commitment to your ‘ONE THING’

Finally, commitment to mastering your ‘one thing’ and setting up a mindset to improve your skills in that thing is the first step towards success. Once you commit to it, you will have to hold yourself accountable for doing everything in your power to achieve your goals. The more accountable you are to yourself, the more success you are likely to achieve in your chosen field! Believe in your vision and pursue excellence consistently in that ‘one thing’ which you choose today. Remind yourself every morning that a bit of consistency today will go a long way in helping you realize your dreams tomorrow!