The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results

It was really just one lesson. In every aspect of life prioritize to one thing that is most important, period. Point made, no need to read the book.

Don't waste your time and money on this. This author actually could have written this in a 2 or 3 paragraph blog. Reading it was a bit like watching Rachel Maddow. The concept was repeated over and over like we, the readers, are stupid and don't quite get the point. This was a best seller? YIKES!

I don't even know how or where to begin. Which is ironic because this book is about the opposite.Ok.Focus.Have you stumbled upon books that changed your life around? Have you ever felt the Universe arranged everything for you to be at the right time on your computer, reading the right article that mentioned the perfect book you were meant to read at that specific point in your life? As if it was written specifically for you?That's how it felt with this book. Now that I'm 2 chapters away from the end, I feel like I don't want it to. It now looks way thicker than when I got it, with almost every few pages dog eared. I've never read any book with so much actionable ideas after each sitting and this just might be the first book I'll consider re-reading. Not because it wasn't understood the first time around, but because I simply want to inundate myself with all its the ideas.Below are some of the highlights that profoundly resonated with me but I invite you to grab a copy and read the whole book. Its simple, direct, honest and immediately actionable.1. Extraordinary results are directly determined by how narrow you can make your focus.2. Achievers always work from a clear sense of priority. Instead of a to do list, you need a success list -- a list that is purposefully created around extraordinary results.3. The majority of what you want will come from the minority of what you do.4. Success is actually a short race -- a sprint fueled by discipline just long enough for habit to kick in and take over.5. It takes an average of 66 days to acquire a new habit.6. You make doing what matters most a priority when your willpower is at its highest. Do your most important work -- your ONE thing -- early.7. How we phrase the questions we ask ourselves determines the answers that eventually become our lives.8. Focusing question: What's the ONE thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?9. Our purpose sets our priority and our priority determines the productivity our actions produce.10. Who we are and where we want to go determine what we do and what we accomplish.

This book is amaaazing. I wasn't going to buy this book at first because at that time I was looking for a book about self-confidence. As I was scrolling through the thousands of books on self-confidence I came across this one book that stood out like a bright light in the dark. I was going to pass right by this book because I didn't think it would help me with my lack of confidence. After reading the great reviews I gave this book a try and I am sooo happy I bought this book. What is funny is that this book IS what I was looking for. This book gave me the confidence that I needed to do some amazing things in my life and it helped me to have a laser like focus on what I love to do. It helped me to focus on my ONE Thing. After reading this book I finally have something that is solid and achievable.I always wanted to be a writer and a designer. I have a blog and I wrote over 75 posts in the last year and a half but I started to feel like I didn't have a clear idea for my writing or my business period. I was starting to lose confidence in what I was doing. After reading this book not only do I have a clear vision for my writing I also created digital art memes for every article I write. I am having sooo much fun creating my blogs and my art. I have put each design up for sale online and I am making passive income from my designs. Soon I will be finished writing my book and I will be making even more passive income.I did each step that was suggested in this book and it really helped me tremendously. I am having soo much fun right now. I feel like the weight of the world is off my shoulders and I have a life purpose because of this book. I have never been more confident about my future than I am right now. I highly recommend this book. Thank you, Gary and Jay, for writing this amazing book. It really changed my life.

If you are on the fence about buying thus book because you think it's just 'another self help' book, think again. This is easily one of the best books I've ever read, with clear and understandable principles concerning what you want out of life. What's your One Thing? Gary works backwards from your answer. What's the one thing you want in 5 years? In one year? In the next 6 months? In a month? This week? Today? What can you do today that will, in essence, get you where you want to be in life?You won't regret the things you do, it will be the things you chose not to do, that will result in regret. Don't let not buying this book become a regret. I personally regret not getting it sooner! It's one of those books you can reread over and over and get something new out of it every time. Don't hesitate! Buy it today and change how you think about life!

Wanted to use this product for my hobby train. Needed to cut product to fit area it was going to be used.Attached it to the area to be used. Set remaining roll on floor upright, and it left a bright green mark on my beige carpeting. Used carpet cleaner and the majority of the green is still there. Hands were also green from using product.the surface around where I placed the product was covered with a a misty flaky remnants of the product.I removed the product from where I placed it and threw out everything I had purchased. This also includeda larger roll of this green mess. Had to wipe down entire area where the product had been the damp cloth Iused had a green tint to it. Extremely disappointed - WOULD NOT EVER BUY IT AGAIN.

This product is exactly as advertised and exactly what I was expecting. Thank you! Highly recommended! We're using it for my son's army guys so that he can have "grass" for him to set up his battles!UPDATE:So I guess I shouldn't have written a review until I literally opened up the packaging around the grass mat roll...it looked like exactly what we wanted, and it would have been if it wasn't for all the GREEN that fell off ALL over my entire floor! As soon as we unrolled it, green dust and shedding fell onto the floor everywhere and immediately my son was totally turned off and wanted nothing to do with it...as did I. It was not easy at all to unroll, which is to be expected - sort of like unrolling a new poster...however trying to lay it out on the floor to flatten it out made the green dust just fall off all over even more.I'm not a hobbiest, which I'm assuming this is what it's actually made for, but even if I was and planned on using it for that purpose, I wouldn't want this because it would despense green all over my models!Since it didn't cost that much and my shipping was next to free, I won't be returning it. It's not worth the hassle of having to bring it to the mail carrier. Into the garbage it went!

Quality of the mat is fine. However it comes in a roll ( not supported by any type of internal cardboard tube) thus it arrives with several creases on it that take forever to work out. External packaging is fine. Highly recommend putting in on a tube in the future.

Nice and easy to install.

If you plan on using this for a slot car track DON’T small green particles go everywhere and destroy your cars motors

Love it

Yes The mat met my expectations. I really didn't check to see how big or small the mat really was. That was my fault not yours. I really looks great with the small set up I put on my dining room table. Next time I will measure better and get a larger piece of mat.

I found the description did not fully explain the quality I guess if you're a novice builder this would be great for start-up. But not for the high end model folks. May be It would make great book covers ...I guess.

I'll keep this simple.If you feel the need in your life for a coach who will keep you focused on the secret of acheiving your goals, here it is.I am listeniing to my Audible recording of "The One Thing" for the third time.Initially I was leery of the book, thinking it was riding a wave of hype.It isn't.It is down to earth, practical advice about staying focused on the one thing.Yes, it's a common message, but the authors here are intent on getting you, the reader, to make the belief a part of your daily life.I personally find it to be like having a coach reminding me to concentrate my attention on that one thing, my main goal, and not to be distracted by all the other things clamoring for my attention.I intend to listen to this book often for daily reminders to focus on that one thing.Jerry

If you are on the fence about buying thus book because you think it's just 'another self help' book, think again. This is easily one of the best books I've ever read, with clear and understandable principles concerning what you want out of life. What's your One Thing? Gary works backwards from your answer. What's the one thing you want in 5 years? In one year? In the next 6 months? In a month? This week? Today? What can you do today that will, in essence, get you where you want to be in life?You won't regret the things you do, it will be the things you chose not to do, that will result in regret. Don't let not buying this book become a regret. I personally regret not getting it sooner! It's one of those books you can reread over and over and get something new out of it every time. Don't hesitate! Buy it today and change how you think about life!

This book by Gary Keller was a number 1, Wall Street Journal bestseller. The author’s credibility derives from his being the founder of Keller Williams Realty International, which is the largest real estate company in the world, by agent count.The book opens with a dialogue between Curly and Mitch from the comedy/drama, “City Slickers”.Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is?Mitch: No. What?Curly: This. [He holds up one finger.]Mitch: Your finger?Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don’t mean sh*t.Mitch: That’s great, but what’s the “one thing”?Curly: That’s what you’ve got to figure out.The route to extraordinary success, according to Keller, is the discovery of what your ‘One Thing’ is.As children, we were required to do things when the time came: breakfast time, time to go to school, time to do homework, bath time, and bedtime. As we got older, we were given the discretion to choose when to do things, but not whether – homework before bed. But as adults, everything becomes a choices, and it is these choices that define our lives. This book addresses the question of how to make good choices.Without a clear formula for making decisions, everything feels urgent and important. The ‘One Thing’ is such a formula.Keller describes the search for the ‘One Thing’ tightly: “What’s the One Thing you can do this week (day/month or year) such that by doing it, everything else would be easier or unnecessary?” He reports that where he has had huge success, it was always a function of narrowing his concentration down to one thing - and the converse was true too.Your to-do list probably contains many entries and possibly a few rated ‘A’. What this indicates is that you could be focusing attention on all your ‘A’s today, as opposed to the ‘One Thing’ that will help you achieve your major ‘One Thing’ in your business or private life. To-do lists commonly lack the focus on the ‘One Thing’ - success. “In fact,” notes Keller, “most to-do lists are actually just survival lists.” Survival lists are long, success lists are short.Keller uses this principle to explain why some people seem to get ahead where others don’t. Why, with the same number of hours available, do some succeed and others don’t? The successful identified the ‘One Thing’ that they really wanted to achieve, and applied the ‘One Thing’ principle to it, daily. This is not limited to work, but to one’s health – (What is the one thing I should do to increase my fitness?), marriage, income, and so on.This is the realization that not everything matters equally and that focusing on many things precludes giving your ‘One Thing’ the time and effort it deserves.To grasp the full intent of the criteria for a true ‘One Thing’, focus needs to be on the second half of the formula: “What’s the ONE Thing you can do this week such that by doing it everything else would be easier or unnecessary?”To illustrate the power of this insight, Keller cites the ‘domino effect’. This effect is the repercus sions of an act on every associated entity, like a row of standing dominos that falls when just the first one is pushed over. In an article in the prestigious American Journal of Physics in 1983, Lorne Whitehead described how a single domino can bring down another domino that is actually 50 percent larger.Getting extraordinary results is all about creating a domino effect in your life through the ‘One Thing’ principle.The ‘One Thing’ bears a striking resemblance to the over-used Pareto Principle, or the ‘80-20’rule, and differs only in that Kelly takes it to the extreme. His call it to take the 20% of your activities which will give you 80% of your benefit, and identify the ‘One Thing’ from that - the vital few of the vital few, until you get to the essential One Thing. All efforts are not equal, some will produce significantly more.To be able to say “yes” to the ‘One Thing’ requires saying no to all else. “Whether you say ‘later’ or ‘never’, the point is to say, ‘not now’ to anything else you could do until your most important work is done,” Keller advises.The suggestion that human beings can multitask is nonsense. Professor Clifford Nass of Stanford University, conducted enough experiments to conclude that “multitaskers were just lousy at everything.” The term was developed to describe computers not people, and the computers only processed only one piece of code at a time, just fast enough to appear as multitasking.Once the ‘One Thing’ of your work or current concern is identified, you won’t have to become a extremely disciplined human being to achieve. We already, naturally, have more discipline than we need: we simply need to direct and manage it a little better. “When you see people who look like disciplined people, what you’re really seeing is people who’ve trained a handful of habits into their lives,” Keller observes.Success is about doing the right thing, not about doing everything right.Before retiring, Michael Phelps had won 22 medals, making him the most-decorated Olympian in any sport. His coach since age 11, Bob Bowman, talked of his ability to focus as his greatest attribute, despite the fact that others said he would “never be able to focus on anything”. It would be fair to say that Phelps channelled all of his energy into one discipline, the One Thing, that developed into one habit—swimming daily.The results from developing the right habit are inevitable, they produce both the success you are searching for which greatly simplifies your life.“It’s not that we have too little time to do all the things we need to do,” Keller notes, “it’s that we feel the need to do too many things in the time we have.”The ‘One Thing’ is hardly a new notion, anyone who ever attended the 30-minute motivational speech at the company conference, has heard it. But hearing the message is quite different from internalizing it. Reading this very accessible book will ensure the message is internalized.And you will be very pleased you did.Readability Light -+--- SeriousInsights High -+--- LowPractical High ---+- Low*Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy, and is the author of the recently released ‘Executive Update.

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!

I was not impressed with the first part of the book but it got really good towards the end! It was impressive at the end of the book for sure!

This is my extensive review on a oil filter.... It filters my oil, it spun on as it should, its black as pictured..... DONE. I cant rate the Ease of Installation because this filter fits different vehicles so, and I cant rate the Mileage because its not like a tire, a oil filter doesn't exactly wear out prematurely. Now I will update if the filter does malfunction and explode but that's pretty rare or if the bypass fails.

used these before--all have worked well

Top quality stuff. Straight 5 stars overall.

Easy to use

Clear, practical and straight to the point. Filled with passion for life as productive as it can be. It really is.

This book really hits the nail on the head with what we need for living a productive life. Hopefully you find the same motivation to live better that it gave me. Wish you well. Evan

This book shows you how getting one thing right in your business (or any other part of your life) will seem help to ensure that everything else falls into place. Great read full of gold. Simple process that anyone can apply to their business or industry.

This books offers amazingly practical advise and steps that if and when followed can really help transform any area of your life.

This book has changed me and many organizations that I have led. It’s a life and work philosophy that is ever so needed in the 21st century. Set a winning (growth) mindset, Manage distractions, believe you can achieve, and execute.

Not only does this book inspire you to dream big and go for big goals, it also gives you step by step guidance on how to actually make those big dreams a reality.

This book a great book. It will open your eyes on thing you already know. Highly recommend for your kids. Get them organize.things in life.

Yes I have been an entrepreneur since 1973 and even a serial entrepreneur. We entrepreneurs have this habit of seeing to many things that we want to do! We are like a child in a toy store! To this day I walk the toy aisles of Walmart and Dollar Tree and even buy a new Match Box vehicle for my collection! I am 76 years young!I got so much out of this book and already knew the incredible history of Keller Williams; however did not know the secret to his success. Now I do and so can you!Get this book ASAP and follow his secret:"What’s the ONE Thing I can do right now to start using The ONE Thing in my life such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”

Really hit home the power of focusing on one thing. I will probably re-read and re-visit the lessons in this book again and again in years to come.Lots of great insight.

I enjoyed the book. Many comments tend to summarize what they read and call it a waste of time. I can say a knew everything the authors stated, BUT there was one key element that I was not applying in my day to day life and I will say I had to read everything to get to the “One Thing” that I was missing.Also learned to protect your will power!

This is very useful and show great content. Perfect for entrepreneurs, corporate employees. The book is easy to read and it is well structured

Priorities in life are critical. Clarity is a must. Clarity is important to set your priorities. This book is a great reminder.