The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results

The One Thing is a game-changer for anyone seeking focus, productivity, and success. Gary Keller’s simple yet powerful concept—focusing on the one thing that matters most—can transform how you approach goals and daily tasks. The book debunks multitasking myths and teaches you to prioritize effectively using the focusing question: “What’s the one thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”Clear, practical, and actionable, this book is a must-read for entrepreneurs, goal-setters, and high achievers. If you want to achieve more by doing less, The One Thing is the key.

No words to describe how good and relevant this book is. I love it, I love the style of writing, I love the way of bringing across concept and principles with figures. If you are looking for strategies to excel in everything you do, there you go. you have found one. Gary emphasises on Living with Purpose, by Priorities and for productivities. Hence what is your One thing? Yeah to you reading this comment? What is your One thing? You will dive in this book and understand more about all this. Great book

This REVIEW HAS BEEN UPDATED. I'm leaving my original review because it was truth for me. The book made me very angry on first reading (hearing - I used the audio addition). If you look in the comments you can see that:1st) one of the authors responded to my 1 star review2nd) I responded to him a number of times and while doing that I realized that I had come to the book with very high expectations and these were disappointed. But I respected the fact that the author got back to me so I decided to give the book another try - but this time I did not relisten to the part that lit my hair on fire. Instead I listened to the last third of the book again. This is the useful part - and it is actually very useful. So I changed my rating. It would be a better book if there was less of the eye roll inducing introduction of the concepts and more of the "how to." I hope the book will be edited to be less of a drag and more of a tool. (More on the eye rolls in my response comment.)Here's my original review - it came with 1 star___________________________________________________Amazon sells this as a business book which is appropriate. But I kept seeing quotes from the book in places where I go for help organizing and prioritizing all aspects of my home, work and personal life. The quotes looked good and I kept reading that the book taught a great method that could be used in all those areas of life. Well don’t you believe it!Do not buy this book if you are a mom, or even a pet owner. Do not buy this book unless you have someone else to clean your home, do your laundry, shop for food, prepare your meals, or even answer the damned phone. In other words, do not buy this book, unless you have a um... unit. Well you can buy it, but certainly don’t *read* it because it will make you mad as hell. All of those things I listed above are ignored as parts of real life.This book is about how to set priorities in your business life and NOTHING else. Nothing. That’s the one thing. That’s it.One of the things I did before buying the book was purchase one of those little book summaries that people have begun publishing for kindle and I listened to the audio of it. That was a much better purchase. It got the idea across in a few minutes – and it’s not actually a new idea: Find the gating task and focus on that. Do the most important thing first.There, I saved you $15 or whatever and some high blood pressure medication.(I realize that what I've said here is sexist... My husband does the shopping and cooks, but he would also be totally fine with no housework ever getting done and wading through dirty underwear and accidental dog puddles to go to work and focus on "one thing" all day so... Look, this book really pissed me off, ok!?!)

Never done this before! Right there—on page 117—was a stunner-of-a-statement that went immediately from the book to my brain, to my laptop, to my printer, and now it’s big and bold on my office door:"Until my ONE Thing is done—everything everything else is a distraction."I’ve just read a powerful book, The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results, by Gary Keller with Jay Papasan. This bestseller will certainly be on my Top-10 book list for 2016, and is already a contender for my 2016 book-of-the-year.But first—an apology. The ONE Thing waited patiently on my overflowing “books-to-read” shelves for three years. Then recently, it popped back onto The Wall Street Journal business bestsellers list. (OK. OK. I’ll read it!) But I apologize because you (and I) could have been much more productive over these last three years. So sorry—but better late than never.Gary Keller, chairman of the board and cofounder of Keller Williams Realty, Inc., the largest real estate company in the U.S., has seen his share of failures and successes—and that’s how he discovered The ONE Thing.He writes, “Where I’d had huge success, I had narrowed my concentration to one thing, and where my success varied, my focus had too.” Here’s Keller’s big idea:"What's the ONE Thing you can do this week such that by doing it everything else would be easier or unnecessary?"Read his chapter titles and you’re hooked. The first section highlights six lies that mislead and derail us:• Lie #1: Everything Matters Equally• Lie #2: Multitasking• Lie #3: A Disciplined Life• Lie #4: Willpower Is Always on Will-Call• Lie #5: A Balanced Life• Lie #6: Big Is BadThe second section addresses the focusing question, the success habit (66 days), and the path to great answers. The final section motivates with unusual clarity on the four thieves of productivity:• Thief #1: Inability to Say “No”• Thief #2: Fear of Chaos• Thief #3: Poor Health Habits• Thief #4: Environment Doesn’t Support Your GoalsWell…I promised you 10 tweetable quotations. (I know—somewhat ironic that I have over 20 quotations in a book review about The ONE Thing.) On a short plane ride, I winnowed hundreds of PowerPoint-worthy insights down to just 35—just before I landed. I’ve given you three already—and here are 20 more (but who’s counting?). Tweet your 10 favorite!On rabbits, to-do lists, and irrelevancy:• "If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one." (Russian proverb)• "Instead of a to-do list, you need a success list—a list that is purposefully created around extraordinary results."• "...it turns out that high multitaskers are suckers for irrelevancy."On a “balanced life” and productivity:• "A 'balanced life' is a myth—a misleading concept most accept as a worthy and attainable goal without ever stopping to truly consider it."• "'Don't put all your eggs in one basket is all wrong.' I tell you ‘put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch that basket.'" (Dale Carnegie)• "Productivity isn’t about being a workhorse, keeping busy or burning the midnight oil. ... It's more about priorities, planning, and fiercely protecting your time." (Margarita Tartakovsky)On goal-setting, accountability, and coaching:• "Accountable people receive results only others dream of."• "When Arthur Guinness set up his first brewery, he signed a 9,000-year lease."• "Earlier I discussed Dr. Gail Matthew's research that individuals with written goals were 39.5 percent more likely to succeed. But there's more to the story. Individuals who wrote their goals and sent progress reports to friends were 76.7 percent more likely to achieve them."• “Ericsson’s research on expert performance confirms the same relationship between elite performance and coaching. He observed that ‘the single most important difference between these amateurs and the three groups of elite performers is that the future elite performers seek out teachers and coaches and engage in supervised training, whereas the amateurs rarely engage in similar types of practice.’”On saying no:• “Someone once told me that one ‘yes’ must be defended over time by 1,000 no’s.”• In the two years after Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, “he took the company from 350 products to ten. That’s 340 no’s, not counting anything else proposed during that period.”On time-blocking and buckets to focus on The ONE Thing:• "Build a bunker. Turn off your phone, shut down your email, and exit your Internet browser. Your most important work deserves 100 percent of your attention."• "My recommendation is to block four hours a day. This isn't a typo. I repeat: four hours a day. Honestly, that’s the minimum. If you can do more, then do it."• "If your time-blocking were on trial, would your calendar contain enough evidence to convict you?"• "The people who achieve extraordinary results don't achieve them by working more hours. They achieve them by getting more done in the hours they work."• "Paul Graham's 2009 essay, 'Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule,' underscores the need for large time blocks."• "Graham divides all work into two buckets: maker (do or create) and manager (oversee or direct)."•"To experience extraordinary results, be a maker in the morning and a manager in the afternoon. Your goal is 'ONE and done.’ But if you don't block each day to do your ONE Thing, your ONE Thing won't become a done thing."On books:"One of the reasons I've amassed a large library of books over the years is because books are a great go-to resource. Short of having a conversation with someone who has accomplished what you hope to achieve, in my experience books and published works offer the most in terms of documented research and role models for success."Warning!Keller: “After my wife, Mary, read this book, I asked her to do something. She turned to me and you know what she said? ‘Gary, that’s not my ONE Thing right now!’ We laughed, high-fived, and I got to do it myself!”Ready, set, TWEET!