The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan

the ONE thing
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What one thing can you do that would make everything else either easier or irrelevant?

That question is the crux of this book, and the rest of the book is only there to convince you that it’s in your best interest to focus on that one thing.

It sounds incredibly obvious, but it is actually quite counter to how we behave. If we have gaps in our skills, we try and fill those. We often double down and try and become a bit more rounded.

Peter Drucker, in his book Managing Oneself, says that we can’t build on our weaknesses, and only on our strengths.

So when we try and spread our focus on everything all that we can hope to achieve is to bring up our deficiencies to be on par. All that time, effort, and self discipline spent just to become mediocre and well rounded out seems like a bit of crime.

Why not spend that focus on one thing that would either make everything else easier, or eliminate everything else?

Because it’s hard. It’s hard to stop and think about what it is that we want and focus only on that.

What’s your ONE thing?