In the following videos, learn about using this simple, powerful concept to focus on what matters most in your personal and work life
The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results
People are using this simple, powerful concept to focus on what matters most in their personal and work lives.
BetterThanYesterday Video Summary
Key Takeaways
If you chase two rabbits… you will not catch either one. We all have some sort of goals in life. Some have less of them, some have more of them. Extraordinary results are determined by how narrow you make your focus.
Every successful person has their own “one thing”.
- Look at Tiger Woods for example. His “one thing” is golf. Does he play the piano and read every day? I don’t think so. He made golfing his priority and he became a master of it by focusing on it every single day.
That doesn’t mean you should drop all the activities completely and do just one thing in your life. That would be a mistake.
Find out what your “one thing” is and make sure you focus on it every single day, so you too can achieve extraordinary results.
3 Tips
1. Myth of a Disciplined Life
There is this idea that a successful person is a disciplined person, who leads a disciplined life. It’s a lie. The truth is we don’t need any more discipline than we already have. We just need to direct and manage it a little better.
Success is actually a short race – a sprint fueled by discipline just long enough for habit to kick in and take over. When we know something that needs to be done, but isn’t currently getting done we say: “if only I had more discipline!”
Actually, we need the habit of doing it and we need just enough discipline to build the habit. Research says it takes about 66 days, but remember success is sequential, not simultaneous. No one actually has the discipline to aquire more than one powerful new habit at a time.
Super successful people aren’t superhuman by the way, they’ve just used selected discipline to develop a few significant habits. One at a time. Over time.
2. Multitasking
There are kids studying while eating and adults driving while texting. They probably think they are saving time this way, but when you try to do two things at once, you can’t do either task well.
The problem of trying to focus on two things at once shows up when one task demands more attention.
- When your wife is describing the way the living room furniture has been rearranged, you engage your visual cortex to see it in your mind’s eye. If you happen to be driving at that moment, this channel interference means you are now seeing the new sofa and are blind to the car breaking in front of you.
You simply can’t effectively focus on two important things at the same time. Multitasking is merely the opportunity to screw up more than one thing.
3. Time Blocking
Most people think there’s not enough time to become successful, but there is when you block it. It’s a very results oriented way of viewing and using time. It’s making sure that what has to be done, gets done.
So go to your calendar right now and block off all the time you need to accomplish your “one thing”. Everything else – other projects, paperwork, unimportant meetings and calls all must wait.
When you block time like this you’re creating the most productive day possible in a way that’s repeatable every day for the rest of your life.
- For example I have a specific time blocked out every single day for reading. During that time all the distractions are removed and I do nothing but read.
- That also means if a friend asks me if I want to go for a coffee during my blocked time, I will decline it and schedule it for another time.
- But don’t forget resting is as important as working, so make sure to time block your time off as well.
Productivity Game Video Summary
Key Takeaways
Gary is the founder of the largest real estate agency in the United States, Keller Williams. He is also a best-selling author and a successful business coach. Over the years he’s learned to achieve success in a rather unconventional way.
After college Gary got into the real estate industry and was hell-bent on being the best in his field. He bought into the philosophy that if you’re going to succeed, you need to juggle many things and take on many responsibilities.
Each morning he would listen to an inspirational theme song just to pump himself up to get ready for the torrent of demands that would come his way. Gary ended up dissipating his energy so far and stretching his attention so thin that he eventually burned out.
Gary says it got me success and it got me sick. Eventually it got me sick of success.
At that point in his career he decided to try a different approach, he intentionally started focusing on fewer things. He challenged the axioms of success — became more successful than ever dreamed possible and felt better than he had ever felt in his life.
He realized that people achieve success in spite of doing many things, not because they do many things.
1. Context Switching
Here is a simple exercise to help you understand the side effects of context switching.
- See how fast you can count from 1 to 5 1 2 3 4 5. Ok that was just under one second.
- Now lists the letters in the alphabet from A to B ABCDE it took about the same time.
- Now try to alternate between counting numbers and sequencing letters 1 a 2 B 3 C 4 D 5 e
- Alternating my focus to complete both tasks took me twice as long as doing each task independently.
Why is it that? Both tasks are super easy, yet there is such a significant drop in performance.
- The extra time needed to switch your focus adds up because we need time to make the decision to switch and we need to remember where we left off before we switched.
- We also need to recall the rules of executing a particular task.
Whenever we have more than one priority at any given time or are asked to manage more than one project throughout the day, we experience the energy depleting, productivity destroying effects of switching our focus.
2. The Power of Questions
To minimize switching costs throughout the day, we need to get good at asking a question when we are tempted to focus on more than one priority at a time. Why a question?
- Questions direct our focus. They engage our critical thinking.
- When we ask a question, our brain will always try to answer it. Asking better questions allows our brain to come up with better answers.
The question that stands at the heart of this book and at the heart of your moment-by-moment effectiveness is:
What ONE thing can I do, such that by doing it, makes everything else easier or unnecessary?
- Ask this question when you feel anxious, or overwhelmed.
- Ask this question when you feel yourself getting distracted.
- Ask yourself this question over and over again until you develop laser-like focus.
This question shapes our thinking two ways:
1. It reminds us that if we want to be a peak performer, there is no such thing as having priorities.
There is only one priority. One most important thing in this moment in time.
- Oftentimes we think things are equally important because we have so many requests coming our way. A feeling of overwhelm makes everything seem urgent and we mistake that urgency for importance.
- When you ask the question: what one thing can I do, such that by doing it, everything else will become easier or unnecessary causes you to pause and break the illusion that just because something feels urgent, doesn’t mean it’s equally as important as everything else.
- When you ask the question enough, inevitably, one thing will rise to the surface allowing everything else to fade away. The one thing that rises to the top is often the thing that most contributes to your purpose.
Gary says your purpose is simply the one thing you want your life to be about more than any other. It’s what you want to be remembered for at the end of your career and at the end of your life.
2. The second way that this question adjusts your focus is by making you think of the future impact of your actions.
It turns out that when you knock over a single Domino, it has the ability to knock over a subsequent Domino—that is 50% greater in size.
You want the completion of your one thing to have the same domino effect on future things. You want to take the smallest action right now, so that future actions that seem daunting are either easier or unnecessary.
- For example, let’s say your priority is acquiring a new client for your business. Although there are many things that you can do to do this, the first small thing that you can do is two minutes of research on that client.
- That research will enable the eventual meeting to go smoothly, allow you to build rapport with that client, and make acquiring that client much much easier.
To paraphrase Gary Keller: the key to success isn’t doing more, it’s doing a few things really well. So stop paying switching costs and start asking the focusing question throughout the day to stay focused on one thing.
At any given moment your goal is to ask the question enough times so you can confidently say this is where I’m meant to be right now doing exactly what I’m doing.
Fight Mediocrity Video Summary
Key Takeaways
Focusing on less helps you achieve more.
Humans only have so much willpower, it’s like a battery. It gets drained. By focusing on a whole bunch of the things, the best case scenario is you’ll be average in all of those things.
One thing highly successful people have in common: they focus on ONE THING. Every person that we view as successful has the one thing that they focus on.
With high levels of success, there is almost no balance.
- Lebron James focuses on basketball.
- Mozart focuses on the piano.
- Mark Zuckerberg focus is on Facebook.
What is your ONE THING? What do you want? That is the most important question. Understand what your One Thing is and then Completely focus on that!
What One Thing can I do, such by doing it, makes everything else easier or unnecessary?
