9 Thoughts on The ONE Thing by Gary Keller
If you haven’t read it yet, click here: https://the1thing.com
- The Domino Effect
“The problem is, we tend to act on what we believe even when what we believe isn’t anything we should. As a result, buying into the ONE thing becomes difficult because you’ve unfortunately bought into too many others, and more often than not those other things muddle our thinking, misguide our actions, and side-track our success.”
This means that if you accomplish your ONE Thing today, you have the capacity to knock down your ONE Thing tomorrow, even if it is 50% larger. To put this into perspective, let’s say the first domino is 2 inches tall. By the time you reach the 18th domino, it would be as tall as the leaning tower of Pisa. Go a little bit further to the 23rd domino, and it would be as tall as the Eiffel Tower. The 31st domino would reach Mount Everest’s peak, and the 57th domino would be just about the distance to the moon.
What is your first domino?
2. What’s Going to Be Your ONE Thing?
“The problem is, we tend to act on what we believe even when what we believe isn’t anything we should. As a result, buying into the ONE thing becomes difficult because you’ve unfortunately bought into too many others, and more often than not those other things muddle our thinking, misguide our actions, and side-track our success.”
The point is to figure out what your ONE Thing is, and then go for it. We all want to do so many things. For example, I have a podcast, I am writing articles, I produce #NextLevel Webinars, I work for both Asym Capital and Liberty Real Estate Fund, and I am also a Co-Founder of the Next Level Mastermind.
I am working on so many things, but I’ve also identified my ONE Thing. In defining it and setting that goal, I actually feel less stressed.
What is my ONE Thing? My goal for 2021 is to produce 52 webinars and become the best in the commercial real estate sector at webinar production — I want people to know me as the “Next Level Webinar Guy”.
What is your ONE Thing?
3. The BIG ONE Thing and the SMALL ONE Thing
“Your BIG ONE Thing is your purpose, and your SMALL ONE Thing is the priority you take action on to achieve it.”
Read that again: Your BIG ONE Thing is your purpose.
Your BIG ONE Thing is the bigger picture. It’s your calling. It is the entire reason you pushed over the first domino. Mine is to build a financial foundation for the next 90 generations of Carswells. Yes, that is BIG.
The small ONE Thing is the immediate task or goal that you have set in order to eventually knock over that last domino. My small ONE Thing is to become “The Next Level Webinar Guy”, and to serve my fellow Next Levelers while doing so.
4. Find Your Balance
“The desire for balance makes sense. Enough for time for everything, and everything dONE in time. The problem with living in the middle is that it prevents you from making extraordinary time commitments to anything. In your effort to attend to all things, everything else gets short-changed and nothing gets dONE.”
If you’re not absolutely certain about your ONE Thing, other areas of your life will become short-changed. Everything cannot be your ONE Thing — if you try to prioritize everything, your true ONE Thing won’t get the attention it needs to flourish.
The best way to create a healthy balance, I’ve found, is to perfect the skill of outsourcing your tasks.
How do you know which tasks to outsource? Do a time audit — for ONE week, take a record of what you’re doing every 30-minutes. At the end of the week, you’ll have a list of everything you did. Mark the things that aren’t your strengths and find someone else to do those tasks for you.
My absolute strength is speaking, so my time is best spent speaking and having someone else convert it to written word.
This is the big secret; focus on your strengths.
5. Set Goals to the Now
“Goalsetting to the now will get you there. By thinking through the filter of goalsetting to the now, you set a future goal and then suddenly you drill down to what you should be doing right now. It can be a little bit like a Russian Matryoshka doll, in that your ONE Thing right now is nestled inside your ONE Thing this week, which is nestled inside your ONE Thing this month, and it’s how a small thing can actually build to become a big ONE.”
This is similar to the domino effect. The Matryoshka doll (aka the Russian nesting doll) represents your small ONE Thing nestled inside a slightly larger ONE Thing.
Setting your goals daily will eventually manifest into a big goal.
What are you going to do every day, starting right now, to get to your goal? Define it. Go after it.
6. Waking Up at 4am Is Not the Secret to Success
“I bought into getting up before the crack of dawn, getting ramped up and playing inspirational theme songs, and getting going before everyONE else. I was going overboard, but I was beginning to believe this was the only way you could succeed, and the way you pushed others to succeed as well. This is an approach that worked, but in the end, it also pushed me to work too hard, and it forced me to push others to work too far, and my world over the edge.”
Sorry to bust your bubble. If you didn’t already know, Gary Keller is insanely successful, and even he says that waking up at 4am is not the secret to success. The reason it might seem like it works for some people is because they’ve bought into thinking that it’s the only way to achieve massive levels of success.
The true secret to success is defining and going after your ONE Thing.
7. Self-Discipline Doesn’t Necessarily Equal Success
ONE of the most prevalent myths of our culture: self-discipline will bring about success.
You actually hear this quite often, “You need to have strong self-discipline to achieve success.” This is not the case. In fact, you don’t even need to be a disciplined person to become successful. It is much less complicated than people think.
“Success is about doing the right thing, not about doing everything right.”
You could check all the boxes and still not be successful. In order to achieve meaningful levels of success, you need to fine-tune and zone-in on your ONE Thing.
What is the ONE thing you need to do every day to move the needle forward? This should be tied to the ONE Thing that you are known for and becoming a master of. Mine is Next Level Webinars — I am the Webinar Guy.
8. Priorities produce extraordinary results
“Extraordinary results become possible when where you want to go is completely aligned what you do today. Tap into your purpose and allow that clarity to dictate your priorities. With your priorities clear, the only logical course is to go to work. Time-block your ONE thing. The best way to make sure ONE thing happens is to make regular appointments with yourself. When you can, block time in the day in big chunks — no less than 4 hours. If your time-blocking were on trial, would your calendar contain enough evidence to convict you?”
If your ONE Thing gets the amount of attention that it needs, there’s a guarantee that you will get extraordinary results. Once you have set your priorities to align with your ONE Thing, then success in that ONE Thing is the only possible outcome. The only way to keep on track is to hold yourself accountable.
9. It’s YOU
“Always remember that you are the first domino.”
You have to be the ONE to make up your mind.
You have to be the ONE to take action.
You have to be the ONE to do your ONE Thing first.
If everyone waited for someone else to do something, nothing would ever get done.
