The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results

THE ONE THING by Garry Keller and Jay Papasan is all about focusing—on that one winning idea—rather than running after a lot of ideas at the same time. Before we get to the book, two-bits about the author. While Keller is a chairman of the board and co-founder at Keller Williams Incorporated— the numero uno real estate firm in the United States—Papasan is the editor at HarperCollins Publishers, and often, the co-author of Gary’s books. Papasan is also a frequent speaker and corporate trainer. Simply put The One Thing explains the steps to a “successful habit”; overcome six lies that block success; beat seven thieves that steal time; and leverage laws of purpose, priority, and productivity. As the authors point out, “Sometimes it's the only thing you do. But it’s always the one thing that delivers extraordinary results.” In one of its chapters, the authors say, “Where I’d had huge success, I had narrowed my concentration to one thing, where my success varied, my focus had too.” The theme of the book is described via one Russian adage, “If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one.”

In the second chapter of the book, the authors start the conversation with a quote from Mark Twain, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” The problem according to the authors is that “people tend to act on what they believe even when what we believe isn’t anything we should. As a result, buying into the ‘one thing’ becomes difficult because we’ve unfortunately bought into too many others— and more often than not those “other things” muddle our thinking, misguide our actions, and sidetrack our success. In the sixth chapter titled The Disciplined Life the authors say that one does not need to be a “disciplined” person to be successful. “In fact, you can become successful with less discipline you think, for one simple reason: success is about doing the right thing, not about doing everything right." The trick to success is to choose the right habit and bring just enough discipline to establish it. That’s it. That’s all the discipline you need. As this habit becomes part of your life, you will start looking like a disciplined person, but you won’t be one. What you will be, is someone who has something regularly working for you, because you regularly worked on it. The flow of the book is really very good. It is readable and well written with good examples and stories to justify the author’s idea. It has drawings that fill the gaps and visualise the written text. The book concludes with the line “success in life depends within you. You know what to do you know how to do it. Your next step is simple. You are the first domino.”