The One Thing

The One Thing is Gary Keller’s framework for cutting through a long to-do list. One focusing question points to the action that makes the most other work easier or unnecessary.

The idea

The book’s central tool is the focusing question. “What’s the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” The framework argues that a small number of actions, sometimes just one, make many later tasks easier or unnecessary. Finding and doing that action first beats spreading effort evenly across a long list.

When to use it

• A to-do list has grown long enough that everything feels urgent and equally important.
• Starting a new project, week, or day and deciding where to put first effort.
• Feeling busy without feeling like the important work is actually moving.

How to apply it

1. Ask the focusing question for the relevant time frame (today, this week, this year, this life).
2. Identify the one action that would make the most other items easier or unnecessary.
3. Do that action before anything else competes for the same time.
4. Repeat the question at the next time frame down, so the daily “one thing” ladders up to longer-term goals.

Watch out for

• Treating “the one thing” as license to ignore genuinely time-sensitive small tasks that still need doing.
• Picking an easy or comfortable task and rationalizing it as “the one thing” when a harder action would make more of the other work easier or unnecessary.

Related models

• First Things First. A related way to separate the important from the merely urgent.
• Prioritization 80/20 Pareto. The same underlying idea that a small share of effort drives most of the result.
• Goal Setting. Choosing the right goal that “the one thing” should be in service of.

Sources

Gary Keller with Jay Papasan, The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results (2013).