Your Personal Success Depends on Doing One Thing

It’s time to steal back your attention

Reread the title, that’s the message of this whole article. Did you get it?

Ok, but seriously, if you want to be successful at anything, you need to concentrate your efforts on one thing.

What’s your main goal right now? What do you want to achieve?

Do you want to make a million dollars?

Do you want to find the love of your life?

Do you want to just feel happy for once?

Really think about it. Picture it. Feel it.

Whatever it is you’re focussing on, that’s your “One Thing”.

The “One Thing”, a term from Gary Keller, is the most important goal in an area of your life.

It’s something you’ve not achieved yet, but that you know you need to. And the reason you haven’t is that you don’t act like it’s your One Thing.

So you struggle.

You don’t know where to start.

You can’t build momentum.

You find it too complicated.

And it’s frustrating because you know you’re capable, you’re just missing something.

What you’re missing isn’t more time, money, or skill. It’s the focus.

Focus on your One Thing.

Fortunately, refocusing your life is often a surprisingly simple task when you know how to do it.

So the question is: are you ready to commit to what’s most important to you?

Your attention has been stolen

“Tell me what you pay attention to and I will tell you who you are.” — José Ortega y Gasset

How many times did you check your phone this morning? Be honest.

Now think about how much time you waste on that screen alone every day.

Our society has literally brainwashed us to glue our faces to tech. Our attention has been stolen by big tech companies and sold to the highest bidder.

We’re addicts. We’re like Pavlov’s dogs, salivating in anticipation of the next ping in our pocket.

You’re probably already aware of the plethora of issues regarding tech addiction. We’re all going to have “square eyes”, like my nan used to say.

But you’re probably not aware of just how much this is costing you.

And trust me, it’s really costing you.

We’ve been duped

“Multitasking is a lie … It’s an effective way to get less done.” — Gary Keller

Funnily enough, you can’t effectively scroll through Instagram, watch Netflix, and eat your dinner all at the same time. The stains on my favorite t-shirt prove this.

In fact, your brain is incapable of focusing on two things at once. Instead, it has to rapidly switch between them. This is known as “task-switching”.

Research has exposed the hidden costs of task-switching. And it’s not good. Even the briefest shift between tasks causes a mental block that can steal as much as 40 percent of our productive time.

In other words, checking that text for 5 seconds might almost half your ability to get sh*t done.

The consequences get even more serious when you apply this to your goals.

Checking that email at work can add massive time delays to your project. And that means more stressed evenings and more late nights.

Looking at that text while you’re creating content will break you out of the flow and ruin the magic that was pouring from your fingertips.

The bottom line is this: you’re fighting an uphill battle against forces ingrained into our society that are designed to rob you of your attention.

The two most valuable currencies are time and energy. Attention is literally time + energy.

Attention = Time + Energy

The cost of losing that cannot be measured in money alone.

How to steal back your attention

“What is the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” — Gary Keller & Jay Papasan

Let’s face it, we’re screwed unless we can steal back our attention. But it is possible.

The best way to steal back your attention is to add focus to your life.

Focus means direction and concentration. It means vision and persistence. And above all, it means determination. The determination to stick with one thing at a time and get it done.

Some easy ways you can immediately add more focus into your life are to:

• Mute your phone
• Uninstall social media apps
• Block out “do not disturb” times on your calendar
• Remove the things you know tempt you (mine is cake)
• Don’t give in to the urge to look at your phone every time you’re bored

These are a good starting point, but you’ll need more if you want to achieve attention independence.

Here are three advanced strategies to improve your focus.

1. Do One Thing

Every day I have the One Thing that I need to do. This One Thing is a task that really moves the needle and has the most possible impact on my bottom line. For example, my One Thing today was to write the first draft of this article.

You can combine the One Thing with Brian Tracey’s idea of “eating the frog”. Get the hardest, most horrible task out the way first.

This means that no matter what happens, you’ll always know you’re getting the most important things done.

Bonus benefit: Getting the worst, most important, task out the way first really helps alleviate productivity guilt. It’s reassuring to know you’ve at least got that important task done.

2. Deep work & flow

There have been countless books written on deep work and flow. My favorites are the aptly titled Cal Newport’s Deep Work and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow.

This principle is simple: get your task (hopefully your One Thing!) and do it. Do only it for an extended period of time. Starting might hurt, but after a while, you’ll warm up and you’ll enter a state where the work will pour from you.

This is especially useful when you don’t feel like working. Just do 5 minutes, promising yourself that if you don’t get into it, you’ll stop. More than 9 times out of 10, you’ll keep going.

Using flow you can get a lot done in a relatively short amount of time, and it feels great.

Just be careful not to pause to check how “well” you’re doing. Flow doesn’t care about your or anyone else’s stats.

And keep that phone far away!

3. Be deliberately imbalanced

To cultivate a focus on some things, you need to side-line others.

Choose the things to which you want to say “yes”, and say “no” to everything else. Do not let anything take away your scheduled deep work time. Do not let anything take priority over your One Thing.

It pays off, in the long run, to tackle each thing at a time. It’s easier to stack the successes, rather than trying to build multiple skills at once.

Doing One Thing: A health warning

Now let’s be clear, doing One Thing doesn’t mean concentrating your life down to only one thing at the expense of all others.

Don’t be that guy who seems to sleep at the office.

The real key to stealing back your attention and building focus is balance.

Now I know I just told you to be deliberately imbalanced, but you’re smart enough to hold two ideas at once.

My version of imbalance assumes you know what constitutes a healthy balance in your life and adjust this to prioritize to your current needs. This way you get the most important things done but don’t neglect everything else.

The best way to ensure a healthy balance is to break down your life into different areas and have One Thing for each of them.

My key areas are career, side hustle, health, family, and relationships.

You can’t climb the corporate ladder, build a $10,000/month side hustle, train for a marathon, care for your parents, and find the right partner all at the same time. But you can do each of them over a lifetime.

You need to know what your One Thing for each area of your life is, and then rank them in order of priority. Choose one to do first, then start on the next.

Remember also not to rush. You don’t want to shortcut your way to one goal then start on another, only to have the first collapse. You’ll only be wasting your own time and energy.

Push yourself, but at your pace. Be ok with being slow.

An image I like for this comes from the famous old-timey comedian Josh Billings:

“Be like a postage stamp — stick to one thing until you get there.”

Key Takeaways:

• Time + Energy = Attention. Protect your most valuable asset.
• Find your One Thing and do it to death.
• Utilize flow states / deep work to make tasks a breeze.
• Establish a healthy balance in your life so that you can consciously imbalance it as you need.