Transcription
How do you cut through the clutter, overcome the feeling of overwhelm, and do your five-year plan in five months? Today, we're going over the best ten ideas from "The One Thing."
All right, Clark here from ClarkDanger.com. Welcome back to our little weekly book show. Again today, "The One Thing: Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results" by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. Great book, kind of in the business personal development world. To set it up before we get into the Big Ideas, you know there's an easy rant you can easily go on, and everyone knows that we're so overstimulated in this digital world. We got notifications on our phone, push notifications popping up from 20 different apps. We roll out of bed, we check Instagram; it's coming up with notifications. Emails are going off when we're at work, or maybe we're just watching TV and playing a game at the same time. Whatever it is, it's an easy rant to go on that we're overstimulated. Right? We get it; it's not the point. We understand that if we're distracted, we're not doing things as well as we could have. But what I liked about this book and why I'd bring that up is because this put the science in the research and the stories behind why focusing on anything is more beneficial than trying to do everything kind of half-assed. In other words, it's not something ambiguous: don't be distracted, or distractions are bad. It's saying, "No, look, you'll get more done, and you'll have time to do everything else you want to do if you use some of the principles in this book." So I'm really excited to get into it. Read it a couple of times now. Let's get into the best ten ideas from "The One Thing."
All right, probably the coolest big idea from this book, the coolest point that sticks out to you from right off the bat, is the concept of dominoes. In the book, it talks about how there is a researcher, I think in the UK, who is studying dominoes, and they realized that a domino, a little two-inch block, can knock over another domino that's up to 50% larger than that two-inch block. So you could stack a four-inch domino, and then a six-inch domino, eight, you know, whatever, go up from there, and it would be able to knock it over. Well, that's really cool because if you do this over and over and over again, by the 23rd domino, you're knocking over the Eiffel Tower. Ah, what is it? By the 31st, it's Mount Everest, and the 57th, you're to the moon. These little two-inch dominoes really add up over time. And so this is kind of like our habits in our life and our choices. Our choices and habits are just like dominoes, and if we get momentum, we can knock over big things and do whatever we want in life. Okay, but we have to start small, and we have to build that momentum.
The second big idea, title number two, is "The One Thing." This is the key concept of the book that if you look at anybody who's achieved success at any level, they all—you can trace it back to focusing on one thing. Examples: Google—what's their one thing? Search. Starbucks—what's their one thing? Coffee. KFC—what's their one thing? Chicken. Apple—what's their one thing? It changes; it goes from iPhone to iPod to iMac, but it still centers around one thing. Star Wars—this is cool—what's their one thing? It's not movies; merchandise. Think they made 10 billion from merchandise, or 30 billion, and one—or ten billion from the movies. I mean, Michael Phelps—swimming. Tiger Woods—golf. You know, Tiger Woods didn't say, "I'm gonna be a swimmer, golfer, and basketball player." He said, "All I'm gonna do from day one is focus on golf," and he's number one in the world. So how do you apply this to your life? Well, I think the take-home message from that is don't feel bad if you're spending all your time focusing on one aspect. Maybe you love soccer; right? Maybe you're 16, you love soccer, and you want to do that full-time. Well, don't feel bad that you're not good at any of the other sports because your one thing is soccer. Yeah, some of them are gonna translate over to basketball because you can run better. Don't try and focus on basketball as well; that's time you're taking away from that you could be practicing on soccer. The quote in the book that goes, "If you try and catch two rabbits, you won't catch either." So the biggest takeaway of this book: focus your energy on one thing; don't try and chase two rabbits. Um, much easier said than done. I mean, you guys who watch this channel know that I spread myself really thin. I do these kind of lifestyle videos; I do keg lifts in the back there; I do drums; uh, I do podcasting. And so this book was bittersweet for me, much like yourself, I'm sure, because you have so many different interests, right? And we hear that success is when you narrow it down and focus on one thing. Well, now you got to choose, and that means saying no to other things, and so it can be a little stressful. I understand. I mean, I'm—you're preaching to the choir here. And there's the other side that says, "Okay, well, if you look at a million-aires in the US, an average majority of them have multiple streams of income," so they're not putting their one thing in income; they're getting it from five or six different places. So there's always, you know, pros and cons to anything. So don't take "The One Thing" as gospel, but the takeaway message is that success leaves clues. Look at the most successful people, the most successful companies, and they had a focus around one thing.
Okay, point number three, let's get into the six myths. So we don't have time to go over all six, so I identified the most important three. The first one is multitasking; it doesn't exist. You know, people say, "I'm a good multitasker." They put it on the resumes; they say, "Oh, I can multitask, no problem." Well, research shows—I wrote it down—that a negative 28% of the day is due—is lost due to multitasking. So corporations who study their employees found that the ones that were multitasking, on average, lost in a verdict 'iv than the ones who would focus on a task, complete it, and then move on. It reminds me of when I was in college, and I was trying to figure—I have this assignment to figure out juggling for a motor skills class. And so I'd never juggled before, and I had to learn it. Flash-forward, I was watching a bunch of YouTube videos on juggling, and the guy on the YouTube video was saying, "Hey, it's an illusion that you're juggling three balls; you're only juggling one ball, and then you're passing it." And so if you watch pro jugglers, they're catching a ball, passing it, catching a ball, passing it, and juggling that way. And I think that, as corny as that is for an analogy, I think that that's kind of multitasking versus focusing on one thing and then moving on, whatever that looks like for you. Maybe it's having 15 different tabs open, which, again, myself, right there with you guys. That's a big theme in this day and age. It's mindfulness, you know, and I think it's the opposite of multitasking. You got multitasking on one end—we're focusing on too many things, not giving enough attention—but on the other end, you have mindfulness where you're putting all your energy into one task, whether that be meditating or, you know, in an orange robe, sweeping the front porch with a broom. Mindfulness—bring it awareness—whatever. Um, little rants on multitasking for you.
The next myth is that willpower is always on. We'll call—we got to think of willpower like a muscle, and just like any muscle, the more we use it, the less we have at the end of the day. You need a heavy leg workout first thing in the morning; your legs are gonna kind of feel weak by 9:00 p.m., right? Going up and down stairs is terrible on leg day. Well, it's the same thing with willpower. If you exert all your energy first thing in the morning responding to emails or stressing out in traffic or paying the bills, then when you get to the end of the day, you feel beat, and you look at the tasks you were supposed to do, the really important things—maybe it was a project you had to do, or school, maybe it was a paper you had to write, maybe it was exercising, getting yourself to the gym, maybe it was hanging out with a friend—and you decide to say, "No, man, I'm tired; I'm staying in." Well, the reason we do that is because we've exhausted our energy by the end of the day. So that's kind of obvious, but some research to back that up was really cool. A Stanford study they did on undergrads, and they had them memorize a two-digit number in one group versus a seven-digit number in the other group, and they told these students, "Okay, walk down the hall and recite your number to a person at the end," and on the way, they offered him a treat; they could choose between a healthy snack or the cake for participating in the study. Now, what was fascinating is that the group that memorized the seven-digit number was twice as likely to choose the cake option as the two-digit number group. And researchers concluded that that mental energy they were exerting to memorizing the extra five digits—you know, one eight seven two five four three is a lot harder than twenty-three—and so they had to really concentrate on that, and by the end of the study, they were beat, so they just said, "You know what? Willpower, I deserve the cake." And so this is really cool because if we know that willpower is not on call, well, how do we apply that? We do our most important tasks when we have the most willpower. So if your most important task—whatever it is for you—could be exercising, right? Maybe it's a good idea to try and work out in the morning. If that's something you want to get into, your most important task could be working on a business that you're starting. For me, that's what I do first thing in the morning before everything else gets in the way. I make these videos; I do this content; I do my most important tasks. For you, it could be in the office; you have project deadlines. All right, focus on those things first, and then you avoid the willpower burnout at the end of the day. And the third one is the 80/20 principle, which we're going to talk about later. I'm not going to spend too much time on this; we went over that last week in "4-Hour Workweek," and it's pretty common knowledge, but basically, a British economist—of studying the wealth distribution in England—and he noticed that 80% of the wealth was held by 20% of the people. Other people took this 80/20 distribution and found that 20% of your clothes get 80% of the wear; 80% of the traffic occurs on 20% of the streets; 20% of your friends give you 80% of your happiness. All right, the list goes on and on and on. So 80/20—focus on that 20% to get 80% of the results, and it's a cool way you can kind of hack what's most important.
Big idea number four: This is rubber or glass. And this is a quote from the book by a guy—I think the Coca-Cola CEO—I'll read it for you; I just really love that; it stood out. "Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them: work, family, health, friends, and spirit. And you're keeping all these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball; if you drop it, it'll bounce back up. But the other four balls—family, health, friends, and spirit—are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irreversibly scuffed, marked, nicked, or damaged, even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand and strive for balance in your life." Just love that—all about prioritizing. Love the image of rubber balls versus glass balls and that there's some things that if we don't prioritize, we'll never get back.
Number five: Parkinson's Law. Went over this again for our work week—similar—all about, you know, time management, efficiency. Parkinson's Law states that tasks expand to the time allotted. You know, the term paper that was due Thursday night? Well, I was doing it at eleven o'clock Wednesday night, right? The day before because there was a deadline that day, and I knew I had to get it done. Or bridezillas—why do they turn into bridezillas before the wedding? Well, because they know that's the deadline; that's the magic day. So everything has to be in order; their stress, they're crazy. And you know what? There's a reason weddings happen because they have deadlines. So all the most important dates have deadlines attached to them. So if you're wondering, "How do I be more productive?" Shorten the time for a given task. So if you gave yourself two hours to do laundry and run errands, well, maybe experiment with shortening that to one hour and see what happens; see if you can get laundry done in an hour and then go do the errands or what have you. If you gave yourself two hours to edit a video or respond to emails, give yourself one hour and then experiment with that. I'm shortening deadlines and setting deadlines; that's big idea number five.
Number six is the success list. In here, Gary Keller goes over the fact that we make to-do lists, and they fill up with a bunch of arbitrary things. Um, you know, why do you need a box for "Call David" or "Email David" when that takes 20 seconds? So basically, he says on your to-do list, it's okay to write everything out that you need to do, but then 80/20 that—say, "Okay, what's the most important thing on this to-do list?" And you're left with like five or six items, and then you look at that, and you say, "What's the one thing on this list that's the most important thing to do?" And you focus on that; you do it first, and that's how you create a success list. That leads into point number seven: the focusing question. The focusing question is the key concept of the book. It says and reads like this: "What's the one thing you can do this week such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?" So what's the one thing you can do that has the most impact on whatever it is you want? I know I use this over and over again, but I think it's a really important analogy, but if you're trying to get fit in shape, well, the one thing you could do would probably be go to the gym three times a week. Boom, prioritize that. Or if you're trying—for me, you know, I'm trying to grow this channel; I'm trying to put out the best videos possible. Monday, I'm filming this video; this is the most important task; this is the most important thing; everything else kind of doesn't matter—responding to the comments, responding to messages, emails; it's important, but it's not the most important thing. So if you ever feel kind of off task or lost, that's a really good question you can use to bring you back and focus.
Number eight: Live by priority. Good image; big picture with a small focus. Big picture means what do you—what do you want to do in your life? What are your life dreams? Who do you want to serve? What do you want to create? Right? That's the big picture. But then the small focus is, "What do I need to do today to make that happen eventually?" And so you kind of stack your dominoes up, right? Those are the small focus, but the big picture is where do you want to go? So I've shown you this over and over and over again, but I think this is a really cool way to visualize it. You got your someday goal, your five-year goal, your one-year goal, your one-month goal, your one-week goal, your one-day goal, and then your now goal. So if you look at all those, and they all add up, they all are a trajectory of where you want to go. Key concept: it's all about living with priority, keeping that big focus, but not losing sight of the small picture.
Number nine: These are the four thieves that robbed you of time. Going over them real quick: the first one is the inability to say no—saying no to things that pop up. Don't just say yes to everything. If you say yes to everyone, you know, soon we'll realize we don't have time for ourselves; we don't have time to create our one thing; we don't have time to do what we want to do in life. Derek Sivers has a really cool thing that gets thrown around called "Hell yes or no." Basically, if an opportunity comes his way, it either has to be a "Hell yes! I want to do that," or a "no," even if it's a good option, you know, it's a good opportunity. If he's not super, super gung-ho, excited, 100%, bouncing off the walls, he says no so he can focus on what are hell yeses in his life. The best application of this is with people. I think if there's people in your life that aren't a "hell yes," aren't like—you want to be around them all the time—it's okay to minimize your time with those people, and that's not a bad thing at all because now you can give that time to the people who are a "hell yes," and you're able to go deeper with a few people rather than kind of shallow with many. So we're not going to focus on the other three, but to cover them: the second is that your environment is unsupportive; the third is poor health practices—losing time due to poor health; and the fourth is fear of chaos. So you can check out the book if you want those to go over those.
All right, and then the last thing: let's apply "The One Thing," putting it to work. So a couple of questions then: how do we apply everything we just talked about in this 15-minute video and put this one thing to work? So four of these for you: the first question I really love is, "What would this look like if it were easy?" All right, if you're struggling with resistance around anything, ask yourself, "Hey, what would this look like if it were easy?" So for me, example: I was struggling to make content on my videos, right? I was struggling to come up with these ideas, or I felt dry; it felt forced; it felt contrived. And then I was like, "Hey, Clark, what would this look like if it were easy?" I said, "Hey, well, I'd probably sit down and talk to a camera for 20 minutes about a book that I really loved; all the information's in here; I just regurgitate it out, put a little stories, put a little secret sauce on it, and boom, we got a video." And so here I am and doing these weekly videos. Second question you can ask yourself from this video that really helps is the focusing question: "What's the one thing you could do this week such that by doing it everything else would be easier or unnecessary?" Okay, we went over that. And the third question: "What's the one thing I can do that would have the biggest impact on my health, relationships, family, financial?" Just getting clarity on—on each one of those is gonna have a different one thing, right? One thing you need to focus on. So what is it? You know, for your relationships, is it a date night once a week? Okay, schedule that in; just focus on that; don't worry about the other stuff; just—just try and get that on the map. For your finances, maybe it's saving 10% of every single paycheck. All right, automatically deduct it; boom. Good. For your health, maybe it's going to the gym; just showing up and doing 20 minutes. Okay, three times a week, I'm just gonna show up, do 20 minutes; boom. So you get the point. And the last one: "What are my one-year goals?" This is a great place—you can do it in the back of your journal and revisit these one-year goals over and over again. Again, small focus, big picture; revisiting them.
All right, guys, that's it. Thanks for tuning back into this week's book review. Again, that's "The One Thing." There's a link in the description if you want to pick it up. "11 Questions Change Your Life" is the free ebook I put out; has a bunch of these focusing questions. If you like journaling, if you like asking questions in your car, wherever, download the "11 Questions Change Your Life," 100% free, and it'll get emailed right to you. Liked this video? Please give it a big thumbs up. Comment in the description below; let me know what was your favorite one point from this video, or one thing you agree with or disagree with on this video. That's it. Next week we are going over—ready, announcement, drum roll— "The Happiness Hypothesis," Jonathan Haidt. One of my all-time favorites—all about finding modern truth in ancient wisdom. Really good book. I will see you then. Until next week, stop settling, start living. I love you guys; see ya.