The ONE Thing

by Gary Keller

  Now you just have to avoid getting hijacked.

  17 THE FOUR THIEVES

  “Focus is a matter of deciding what things you’re not going to do.”

  —John Carmack

  In 1973, a group of seminary students unknowingly participated in a grand study known as “The Good Samaritan Experiment.” These students were recruited and divided into two groups to see what factors influenced whether or not they would help a stranger in distress. Some were told they were going to prepare a talk about seminary jobs; the others, that they were going to give a talk about the Parable of the Good Samaritan, a Biblical story about helping people in need. Within each group, some were told they were late and had to hurry to their destination, while others were told they could take their time. What the students didn’t know was that researchers had planted a man along the way—slumped on the ground, coughing, apparently in distress.

  In the end, fewer than half the students stopped to help. But the deciding factor wasn’t the task—it was time. Ninety percent of the students who were rushed failed to stop and render aid to the stranger. Some actually stepped over him in their hurry to get where they were supposed to go. It didn’t seem to matter that half of them were on their way to deliver a talk on helping others!

  Now, if seminary students can so easily lose focus on their real priority, do the rest of us even have a prayer?

  Clearly, our best intentions can easily be undone. Just as there are the Six Lies that will deceive and mislead you, there are Four Thieves that can hold you up and rob you of your productivity. And since there’s no one standing by to protect you, it’s up to you to stop these thieves in their tracks.

  THE FOUR THIEVES OF PRODUCTIVITY

  Inability to Say “No”

  Fear of Chaos

  Poor Health Habits

  Environment Doesn’t Support Your Goals

  1. INABILITY TO SAY “NO”

  Someone once told me that one “yes” must be defended over time by 1,000 “nos.” Early in my career I didn’t understand this at all. Today, I think it’s an understatement.

  It’s one thing to be distracted when you’re trying to focus, it’s another entirely to be hijacked before you even get to. The way to protect what you’ve said yes to and stay productive is to say no to anyone or anything that could derail you.

  Peers will ask for your advice and help. Co-workers will want you on their team. Friends will request your assistance. Strangers will seek you out. Invitations and interruptions will come at you from everywhere imaginable. How you handle all of this determines the time you’re able to devote to your ONE Thing and the results you’re ultimately able to produce.

  Here’s the thing. When you say yes to something, it’s imperative that you understand what you’re saying no to. Screenwriter Sidney Howard, of Gone with the Wind fame, advised, “One-half of knowing what you want is knowing what you must give up before you get it.” In the end, the best way to succeed big is to go small. And when you go small, you say no—a lot. A lot more than you might have ever considered before.

  No one knew how to go small better than Steve Jobs. He was famously as proud of the products he didn’t pursue as he was of the transformative products Apple created. In the two years after his return in 1997, he took the company from 350 products to ten. That’s 340 nos, not counting anything else proposed during that period. At the 1997 MacWorld Developers Conference, he explained, “When you think about focusing, you think, ‘Well, focusing is saying yes.’ No! Focusing is about saying no.” Jobs was after extraordinary results and he knew there was only one way to get there. Jobs was a “no” man.

  The art of saying yes is, by default, the art of saying no. Saying yes to everyone is the same as saying yes to nothing. Each additional obligation chips away at your effectiveness at everything you try. So the more things you do, the less successful you are at any one of them. You can’t please everyone, so don’t try. In fact, when you try, the one person you absolutely won’t please is yourself.

  Remember, saying yes to your ONE Thing is your top priority. As long as you can keep this in perspective, saying no to anything that keeps you from keeping your time block should become something you can accept.

  Then it’s just a matter of how.

  All of us struggle to some degree with saying no. There are many reasons. We want to be helpful. We don’t want to be hurtful. We want to be caring and considerate. We don’t want to seem callous and cold. All of this is totally understandable. Being needed is incredibly satisfying, and helping others can be deeply fulfilling. Focusing on our own goals to the exclusion of others, especially the causes and the people we value the most, can feel downright selfish and self-centered. But it doesn’t have to.

  Master marketer Seth Godin says, “You can say no with respect, you can say no promptly, and you can say no with a lead to someone who might say yes. But just saying yes because you can’t bear the short-term pain of saying no is not going to help you do the work.” Godin gets it. You can keep your yes and say no in a way that works for you and for others.

  Of course, whenever you need to say no, you can just say it and be done with it. There is nothing wrong with this at all. In fact, this should be your first choice every time. But if you feel there are times you need to say no in a helpful way, there are many ways to say it that can still lead people forward toward their goals.

  You can ask them a question that leads them to find the help they need elsewhere. You might suggest another approach that doesn’t require any help at all. You might not know what else they could do, so you could help them by gently prompting them to get creative. You can politely redirect their request to others who might be better able to assist them.

  Now, if you do end up saying yes, there are a variety of creative ways you can deliver it. In other words, you can leverage your yeses. Help desks, support centers, and information resources couldn’t exist without this kind of strategic thinking. Preprinted scripts, frequently asked question pages or files, written explanations, recorded instructions, posted information, checklists, catalogs, directories, and prescheduled training classes can all be used to effectively say yes while still preserving your time block. I started doing this in my first job as sales manager. I leveraged training sessions to cut frequently asked questions off at the pass, and then by either printing or recording them, created a library of answers my team could access whenever I wasn’t personally available.

  The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that it helps to have a philosophy and an approach to managing my space. Over time I developed what I refer to as the “Three-Foot Rule.” When I hold one of my arms out as widely as possible, from my neck to my fingertips is three feet. I’ve made it my time-managing mission to limit who and what can get within three feet of me. The rule is simple: A request must be connected to my ONE Thing for me to consider it. If it’s not, then I either say no to it or use any one of the approaches I shared above to deflect it elsewhere.

  Learning to say no isn’t a recipe for being a recluse. Just the opposite. It’s a way to gain the greatest freedom and flexibility possible. Your talent and abilities are limited resources. Your time is finite. If you don’t make your life about what you say yes to, then it will almost certainly become what you intended to say no to.

  In a 1977 article in Ebony magazine, the incredibly successful comedian Bill Cosby summed up this productivity thief perfectly. As he was building his career, Cosby read some advice that he took to heart: “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” This is advice worth living by. If you can’t say no a lot, you’ll never truly be able to say yes to achieving your ONE Thing. Literally, it’s one or the other—and you get to decide.

  When you give your ONE Thing your most emphatic “Yes!” and vigorously say “No!” to the rest, extraordinary results become possible.

  2. FEAR OF CHAOS

  A not-so-funny thing happens along the way to extraord
inary results. Untidiness. Unrest. Disarray. Disorder. When we tirelessly work our time block, clutter automatically takes up residence around us.

  Messes are inevitable when you focus on just one thing. While you whittle away on your most important work, the world doesn’t sit and wait. It stays on fast forward and things just rack up and stack up while you bear down on a singular priority. Unfortunately, there’s no pause or stop button. You can’t run life in slow motion. Wishing you could will just make you miserable and disappointed.

  One of the greatest thieves of productivity is the unwillingness to allow for chaos or the lack of creativity in dealing with it.

  Focusing on ONE Thing has a guaranteed consequence: other things don’t get done. Although that’s exactly the point, it doesn’t automatically make us feel any better about it. There will always be people and projects that simply aren’t a part of your biggest single priority but still matter. You will feel them pressing for your attention. There will always be unfinished work and loose ends lying around to snare your focus. Your time block can feel like a submersible, where the deeper you commit to your ONE Thing, the more the pressure mounts for you to come up for air and address everything you’ve put on hold. Eventually it can feel like even the tiniest leak might trigger an all-out implosion.

  When this happens, when you give in to the pressure of any chaos being left unattended, it can be a total relief. But not when it comes to productivity.

  It’s a thief!

  The truth is, it’s a package deal. When you strive for greatness, chaos is guaranteed to show up. In fact, other areas of your life may experience chaos in direct proportion to the time you put in on your ONE Thing. It’s important for you to accept this instead of fighting it. Oscar-winning filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola warns us that “anything you build on a large scale or with intense passion invites chaos.” In other words, get used to it and get over it.

  Now, in anybody’s life or work there are some things that just can’t be ignored: family, friends, pets, personal commitments, or critical job projects. At any given time, you may have some or all of these tugging at your time block. You can’t forgo your power hours, that’s a given. So, what do you do?

  “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?”

  —Albert Einstein

  I get asked this a lot. I’ll be teaching and know that, as soon as I finish, hands are going to shoot up. “What do I do if I’m a single parent with kids?” “What if I have elderly parents who constantly depend on me?” “I have absolute obligations I must take care of, so what do I do?” These are obviously fair questions. Here’s what I tell them.

  Depending on your situation, your time block might initially look different from others’. Each of our situations is unique. Depending on where you are in your life, you may not be able to immediately block off every morning to be by yourself. You may have a kid or a parent in tow. You may be doing your time block at a day care, nursing home, or some other place you have to be. Your alone time may have to be at a different time of day for a while. You may have to trade off time with others so they protect your time block and you in turn protect theirs. You may even have your kids or parents help you during your time block because they simply must be with you or you actually need the support.

  If you have to beg, then beg. If you have to barter, then barter. If you have to be creative, then be creative. Just don’t be a victim of your circumstances. Don’t sacrifice your time block on the altar of “I just can’t make it work.” My mom used to say, “When you argue for your limitations, you get to keep them,” but this is one you can’t afford. Figure it out. Find a way. Make it happen.

  “The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.”

  — William James

  When you commit to your ONE Thing each day, extraordinary results ultimately occur. In time, this creates the income or opportunity to manage the chaos. So, don’t let this thief pickpocket your productivity. Move past your fear of chaos, learn to deal with it, and trust that your work on your ONE Thing will come through for you.

  3. POOR HEALTH HABITS

  I was once asked, “If you don’t take care of your body, where will you live?” It was a real question. I had been fighting the painful side effects of interstitial cystitis (you don’t want to know) and was dealing with continually shaking legs, a debilitating side effect of cholesterol-fighting statins. My ability to function, much less focus, was extremely compromised, and the challenge to overcome this was daunting. My doctor gave me some options and asked me what I wanted to do. The answer was to change my health habits. It was then that I discovered one of the greatest lessons of extraordinary results:

  Personal energy mismanagement is a silent thief of productivity.

  When we keep borrowing against our future by poorly protecting our energy, there is a predictable outcome of either slowly running out of gas or prematurely crashing and burning. You see it all the time. When people don’t understand the power of the ONE Thing, they try to do too much—and because this never works over time, they end up making a horrific deal with themselves. They go for success by sacrificing their health. They stay up late, miss meals or eat poorly, and completely ignore exercise. Personal energy becomes an afterthought; allowing health and home life to suffer becomes acceptable by default. Driven to hit goals, they think of cheating themselves as a good bet, but this gamble can’t pay off. Not only does this approach consistently short-circuit your best work, it’s dangerous to assume that health and hearth will be just waiting for you to come back and enjoy anytime in the future.

  High achievement and extraordinary results require big energy. The trick is learning how to get it and keep it.

  So, what can you do? Think of yourself as the amazing biological machine you are and consider this daily energy plan for high productivity. Begin early with meditation and prayer for spiritual energy; starting the day by connecting with your higher purpose aligns your thoughts and actions with a larger story. Then move straight to the kitchen for your most important meal of the day and the cornerstone of physical energy: a nutritious breakfast designed to fuel your day’s work. You can’t run long on empty calories, and you can’t run at all on an empty tank. Figure out easy ways to eat right and then plan all your daily meals a week at a time.

  Fueled up, head to your exercise spot to relieve stress and strengthen your body. Conditioning gives you maximum capacity, which is critical for maximum productivity. If you have limited time to exercise, the simple thing to do is to wear a pedometer. Toward the end of the day, if you haven’t walked at least 10,000 steps, make it your ONE “exercise” Thing to reach your 10,000-step goal before you go to bed. This one habit will change your life.

  Now, if you haven’t spent time with your loved ones at breakfast or during your workout, go find them. Hug, talk, and laugh. You’ll be reminded why you’re working in the first place, and motivated to be as productive as possible so you can get home earlier. Productive people thrive on emotional energy; it fills their heart with joy and makes them light on their feet.

  Next, grab your calendar and plan your day. Make sure you know what matters most, and make sure those things are going to get done. Look at what you have to do, estimate the time it will take to do them, and plan your time accordingly. Knowing what you must do and making the time to do it is how you bring the most amazing mental energy to your life. Calendaring your day this way frees your mind from worrying about what might not get done while inspiring you with what will. It’s only when you make time for extraordinary results that they get a chance to show up.

  When you get to work, go to work on your ONE Thing. If you’re like me and have some morning priorities you must get done first, then give yourself an hour at most to do them. Don’t loiter and don’t slow down. Clear the decks and then get down to the business of doing what matters most. Around noon, take a break, have lunch, and turn your attention to everything else y
ou can do before you head out for the day.

  Last, in the evening when it’s time for bed, get eight hours of sleep. Powerful engines need cooling down and resting before taking off again, and you’re no different. You need your sleep so your mind and body can rest and recharge for tomorrow’s extraordinary productivity. Anyone you know who gets little sleep and appears to be doing great is either a freak of nature or hiding its effects from you. Either way, they aren’t your role model. Protect your sleep by determining when you must go to bed each night and don’t allow yourself to be lured away from it. If you’re committed to your wake-up time, you can stay up late only so many nights before you’re forced to hit the hay at a decent hour. If your response is that you have too much to do, stop right now, go back to the beginning of this book, and start over. You apparently missed something. When you’ve connected proper sleep with success, you’ll have a good enough reason to get up and you’ll go to sleep at the right time.

  THE HIGHLY PRODUCTIVE PERSON’S DAILY ENERGY PLAN

  Meditate and pray for spiritual energy.

  Eat right, exercise, and sleep sufficiently for physical energy.

  Hug, kiss, and laugh with loved ones for emotional energy.

  Set goals, plan, and calendar for mental energy.

  Time block your ONE Thing for business energy.

  Here’s the productivity secret of this plan: when you spend the early hours energizing yourself, you get pulled through the rest of the day with little additional effort. You’re not focused on having a perfect day all day, but on having an energized start to each day. If you can have a highly productive day until noon, the rest of the day falls easily into place. That’s positive energy creating positive momentum. Structuring the early hours of each day is the simplest way to extraordinary results.