In this episode, we discuss the book, “The One Thing” by Gary Keller and how you should focus your time on the one thing that will make everything else easier in your life.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
At the end of today’s podcast episode, I’m going to give you a prompt question to reflect on in your journal. The idea is to take one to five minutes to reflect on today’s lesson and write a minimum of one paragraph on how you can apply the lesson in your life life. You can use an actual journal, a word document like on Google Drive, or your note-taking app like Evernote. The idea is that you’re actually thinking about how to process the information to help you improve your life.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about the Gary Keller book, “The One Thing: The Surprising Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results”. This book is all about productivity. A lot of people get in the habit of just doing stuff just do to stuff and it causes them to have mediocre results. In the book, Gary Keller says that we should focus our day on doing the one thing that will make everything else easier in our life.
If the one thing that needs to be done is not quite there yet, then you’re should focus on the small domino that can knock over a larger domino. A domino only needs to by half the size of a larger domino in order to knock it down. So if you can’t get after that larger domino that will make everything else easier in your life, then you should focus on the things that will help you get them.
When you go after you one thing, you have to accept chaos in other parts of your life. If you’re really focused on starting a business, then friends, family, and your partner are most likely going to see less attention. So it is wise to communicate to folks that you’re working on stuff and will be busy for the next month. I am bad at this and is a big reason why I’m not in a relationship right now because I’m spending so much time on my one thing. I know once I reach a certain level though, then I can start focusing on my relationships.
So you got to start off by asking yourself where do you want to see growth in your life. If you want a promotion at work, then you got to ask yourself what is the one thing that I should focus on that will help me get that promotion. Is it taking a course that will give you new skills? Is that you need to be a better networker? Is that you need to be a better leader at work? Once you figure out your one thing, then you can start put all your time and energy into that.
Your one thing might not take all day to do. It just might be the most uncomfortable thing to do. Like for me, I know I have to send out a message to at least 10 folks a day as a way to drum up business. It’s uncomfortable but I know if I do this every day, then I’m going to increase the likelihood that I accomplish my goal of getting clients. My goal is also to post this podcast every Monday through Friday and to send out a weekly summary of what I’ve done every Friday. This is my one thing for right now. My one thing is to do things that will generate clients for myself. Once I get clients that I can start doing other things with my business like hire folks and do more speaking engagements, which then can help out even more Latinos with their finances.
If you don’t know what your one thing is, then you have to ask yourself, what do I want out of life? What do I want my life to look like? When you ask yourself this, there is usually only one main thing that you need to do, everything else is just fluff. It doesn’t move the needle forward. It’s just causing you more work then you have to do. Who wants to do more work than they have to. I know I don’t want to. I rather just do enough so I can move on to the next thing. I can improve my processes along the way, but most of the time we just need to learn to get the job done that makes the other person feel good about the work.
With something like losing weight, the one thing that will make everything easier is not going to the gym is working on your diet. And if you cut down on your sugar consumption, then that can work wonders on your waistline. Abs are made in the kitchen, not in the gym. So if you had to focus on the one thing to help you lose weight and improve your health, I would start with your diet first. You could have the best workout in the world, but your diet can wipe out those gains in sitting. If you ever look at how much calories you consume if you eat an entire three-course dinner with drinks, it’s a lot and you would need to stay at the gym all down if you wanted to burn that stuff off. So you might think something like the gym is the one thing, but it really isn’t.
As your figuring out your one thing, you want to do your research to make sure that the one thing you’re working on is actually the one thing that you need to be working on. We can be fooled that this shiny thing is the thing we should focus our energy on, but it will just turn into fool’s gold when you get it. So build up your wisdom so that you’re not fooling yourself and have the strength to work on the uncomfortable stuff that will improve your life.
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, during our day, we should focus on the one thing that will make everything else in our life easier. This might cause you to neglect other parts of your life but you have to be okay with that because you know your life is going to be ten times better after you finish your one thing. If you can’t reach your one thing right now, find the small task that can leverage you up to a higher level, and keep doing this until you reach your one thing. That in turn, is your one thing for now. Hope this episode gives you more clarity on your life and where you should be spending your time and energy.
So in your journal, ask yourself, what is the one thing that I need to work on to make everything else easier in my life. This is something that I put in my journal every day so I know what are the important things that I need to do and then I do them. So if you have other things on your calendar, push them to another day because they can wait while you work on your one thing.
Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
I have a quiz on my website that grades your inner circle, so if you want to find out if your inner circle is an A, B, C, D, or F, you can take that quiz at growwithjoe.me/quiz
I’m also trying to do a feedback Friday episode, so if you have a question that you would like to have my answer on the air, just e-mail me at [email protected]
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
*Music outro
One Thing Book https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C1BHQXK/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
