





Fill out our short questionnaire to see
if we are a good fit!
Time management and productivity is a struggle. Gary Keller, the founder of Keller-Williams Real Estate, has written a book titled “The ONE Thing” and it offers a simple approach to productivity. The premise is to minimize distractions, reduce stress, and be successful at focusing on the priority to get accomplished.
You can figure out your goals with a single question: What is the ONE thing I can do, such that by doing it everything else will become easier or unnecessary? Organize your life around ONE thing! The key to success is figuring out your ONE most important thing in your business, career, or life. Then, once you know what that is, you identify how many steps you need to take to accomplish your ONE thing!
I hope my summary of my favorite parts will give you ideas on how to be more productive, but also encourage you to read the book for yourself!
Multi-tasking is a lie! I loved the story he told of multi-tasking. Back in the 1960’s computers were designed to complete many tasks, but it was deceptive because as humans, we really cannot intently focus on many things at once. Yes, we can walk and talk at the same time (we really don’t focus on doing both activities), but you cannot focus effectively on two things at once. If you chase two rabbits you will catch neither! In the workplace, if you are focusing on a project and you get interrupted, it will take 11 minutes each time you are interrupted to recover and refocus again. This can result in many wasted dollars. So then why do employers feel that multi-tasking is a skill that all employees should have? We really need to rethink this one!
Learning to say no ! Steve Jobs was quoted to say that “You’d think focus means saying yes, but it actually means to say no.” It was then that he cut Apple’s product line from 350 down to 10. Reflecting on what Apple has become, you’ll see that he was right! If you chase two rabbits you will catch neither of them. Focus is something you are not going to do.
It’s about the journey ! Close your eyes…imagine your life as big as it can possibly be. Dare to dream and then some. Can you see it? I love the fact that Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000 year lease before brewing a single drop of beer! Gary Vaynerchuk, despite his colorful language, is right when he says that his goal is to buy the NY Jets, but more important is the journey to him achieving the goal.
This book is a great resource for time management and productivity. Here are a few of my favorite takeaways:
· 20% of the input gives you 80% of the results.
· A small dose of discipline develops into a long-lasting habit.
· You don’t need a to-do list. You need a success list…a list purposely designed around your highest leverage activities.
· Power off your phone when you are working. Close your email. Put up a sign to prevent people from disrupting your focus.
· If you have a goal for “someday”, break out that goal like a row of dominos. Start with the ONE thing you can do right now, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, one-year, five-year so that you can reach your someday goal.
· No regrets = be happy, stay in touch with friends, have the courage to express your feelings, don’t work so hard, live life true to yourself, not what others expect of you.
EntreLeadership All Access has a book club and Alex Judd interviewed Jay Papasan and it was jam packed with nuggets!
· While I feel good when my to-do list gets shorter, it may have been better to do ONE thing on the list really well
· Of all the things I could do, what really matters? If I could get ONE thing done, what is your priority?
· What is a successful day? Identify what matters, block my calendar and live my calendar and my intensions!
· Discipline is training yourself to do something until it becomes a habit. Successful people have rituals they have built. Build a habit to give you the best results for your life! If it takes 66 days to form a habit, you can add 5 new routines to your life each year!
· Willpower actually makes your blood sugar drop and consume energy. Jay told a story of judges making decisions to parole inmates. If you were number 1 in line, you had a 65% chance of getting paroled. After two hours, the percentage dropped to 0%. After a snack of cheese and apples, the next parolee had a 65% chance of being granted parole and then it drops again. Everyone is at their best in the morning! Millionaires get up 3 hours before they go to work.
· Work/life balance is a lie. Balance is not a destination…it is an activity. James Patterson talks about glass balls: work, marriage, family, health, spiritual; the work ball always bounces back. Block time on your calendar when you might want to get away and schedule your work around it; it is a boulder in the stream. Work on ONE thing to improve, other things will start course correcting as well.
· It is difficult to systemize and delegate. While it might take you 30 hours to teach someone in your company what you do, it will save you time in the end of you doing it for an hour each week. We need to delegate to our team in order to focus on the ONE thing we need to do. Invest in today to buy you thousands of hours in the future!