A Joosr Guide to The One Thing by Gary Keller

If you turn your thinking around, however, and view mastery as part of the journey, not just the destination, you will realize that you can utilize mastery as a tool to help you reach your ambitions. Instead of trying to become the best, give your best. When you give your best with each step you take on your journey, achieving success will become much more achievable. Mastery, therefore, never ends—it is an ongoing practice

The same is true of our goals. We have to figure out what ONE thing will serve as our lead domino. Focusing on that will eventually result in an opportunity to do another right thing, and then another and another. Eventually, we experience the domino effect with our goals. All of those small successes build upon each other and lead to bigger, even extraordinary success

Remember—when you’re at work, you work. When you’re taking time to play, then play. Setting the right priorities will ensure you achieve success without the rest of your life falling apart

To properly counterbalance, you need to have awareness of the needs of your body, mind, spirit, family, and friends. You’ll never have a happy life if you don’t learn how to counterbalance and prioritize. Set your own personal priority and act on it, but realize that different areas of your life will have different priorities. Your work should not interfere with your personal and family life. When at work, prioritize your tasks and focus on the most important thing to get done. But when you get home, be clear about what your priorities are there

Asking ourselves the Focusing Question on a regular basis is vital to creating habits that will lead to our success. The Focusing Question is this: “What is the ONE thing I can do this day, this week; the one thing that will make everything else in my life easier or even unnecessary?”

Remember that your ONE thing is your top priority. Also remember that you’ll never be able to please everyone. Therefore, trying to accommodate everyone else and their needs will only result in you becoming frazzled and giving less than your best to everyone, including yourself

Focusing on the ONE thing on your success list will result in a far more productive day than crossing off a multitude of items from your to-do list

The thing is, we need to put that power to good use. We can choose to create a healthy, positive, successful life, or we can choose to create a miserly, selfish, callous existence. One will make us extraordinarily happy, while the other will surely make us miserable. So, what kind of life do you want to lead? What is your life’s purpose? Only once you’re able to figure that out can the creative process begin. Discovering your purpose will help you set your priorities so that you can use your creative energy in the most efficient manner

If you’re trying to figure out what your ONE thing is, think about what your one passion or skill is, what one product or service your company should offer, or that one person who has the most impact upon you. Finding your ONE thing, person or passion will help you hone in on what should be a priority in your life

Think of companies like Kentucky Fried Chicken (fried chicken), Intel (computer processors), or Nike (running shoes). They found their ONE thing and put all of their focus and effort into it to achieve a level of success that eludes most of their competitors