Gary Keller’s Focusing Question Could Simplify Everything

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. — Lao Tzu

But instead, our journeys of a thousand miles begin with mapping out the path, preparing for the journey, and telling enough people about the journey that it doesn’t begin at all.

With so many stories on Medium and the self-help world focusing on goals and productivity, both of which I am guilty of myself, we often lose focus on what’s important.

We diversify and don’t put all of our eggs in one basket to make sure that no single task or goal could become our downfall, without realizing that these practices hold us back from accomplishing anything at all.

Gary Keller, the founder of Keller-Williams Realty and the author of The One Thing takes a different path to productivity by using one simple question.

What’s the ONE Thing that I could do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?

Instead of diversifying and carrying lots of baskets, we could focus on one thing, more important than all the rest, that makes everything else easier or unnecessary.

Once we have accomplished that thing, we can ask the question again and again, thereby stacking the ONE thing upon the last.

This will produce a domino effect in your career. By accomplishing today’s ONE thing, you are able to accomplish tomorrow’s ONE thing, leading to the next ONE thing and so on.

As these ONE things become larger and more relevant for the bottom line, your productivity will skyrocket and you will leave behind us a wake of accomplishments that has no ballast or wasted space.

How to identify the one thing?

This is where the rubber meets the road and is the real challenge of the focusing question. But it is less complicated than it might seem at first and it gets better with practice.

Start with a traditional to-do list or next actions list and go line by line to determine which items can support others or make others easier.

These lists can be simplified at work or home.

For example, in my personal life, when I see my partner, everything else becomes easier if I first kiss her and ask about her day. In a different relationship, everything might be made easier by first taking out the trash or first cooking dinner.

Instead of attacking to-do lists with an unfettered intensity, identify which pieces of your workday will help the others and set you up well for the rest of your tasks.

Maybe that means finishing a training or having a planning meeting with your boss. Or maybe it means blocking out distractions for 90 minutes of “deep work” to finish that blog post.

Whatever it is, focus on the ONE thing that will make everything else easier or unnecessary, rather than spending your precious time and energy working on things that could have been easier or unnecessary if done in a different order.