The Power of Finding Your ONE Thing

Have you ever struggled to identify what’s most important now? I certainly have. If someone stopped you right now and asked you, “What’s most important now?” How would you answer?Well, you were just asked that question. Pause for a moment and ponder your answer. Got it? Tuck it away in your memory or jot it down somewhere as we will come back to it in a moment. That question, “What’s most important now?” is posted on my desk as a reminder. I posted it there more than a year ago after reading The ONE Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. Honestly, even though that reminder has been posted there for over a year, there are times that I’ve struggled to answer that question.Struggled might be understating it just a wee bit. I had used What’s most important now? as shorthand for what Gary and Jay call the focusing question.

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

When I first read The ONE Thing, I found this question perplexing. I pondered it. What is the one thing I should do? That one question launched dozens of others in my mind.

• What do you mean one thing? There are dozens of things on my to-do list and they are all important. How can I pick just one?

• The one thing according to whom? My boss (or client), spouse, kids, parents, etc.?

• One thing? Oh yeah, win the lottery! (You do know that creates more challenges than it solves, right?)

I pondered. Made lists of possible ONE things. Pondered some more. Then I got annoyed and downright frustrated. So I wrote it on a card and posted it on my desk.Do you ever struggle to answer that question?

Confusing Urgent and Important

Ever heard of the tyranny of the urgent. If you don’t know it by name, let me assure you, you know it by experience. While Stephen Covey may be the person most often associated with the phrase, it actually originated in a little book by the same name, Tyranny of the Urgent written in 1984 by Charles E. Hummel.Hummel, and later Covey (and Roger and Rebecca Merrill to be technically accurate) noted that there are always urgent things clamoring for your attention. Here’s how Hummel summarized it,[Tweet "Your greatest danger is letting the urgent things crowd out the important"]It can be extremely difficult to sort out the important from the urgent.Returning to your answer to the opening question, What’s most important now? Was your answer truly addressing what’s most important now, or what’s most urgent in this moment? Your answer to that question may be dramatically different an hour from now and might even be completely different tomorrow.There is a difference between urgent things and important things. A huge difference. But most of us are caught in the tyranny trap.I now realize the tyranny of the urgent actually filtered the way I read, heard, and interpreted the focusing question. You see, I changed the can to a should and it made all the difference in the world.Perhaps, I am the only person in the whole world who ever changed the can to a should and by so doing, redirected the question to focus on what’s urgent rather than what’s important.You see, I was using the question as a filtering question — out of all of the things on my to-do list, what’s most urgent now? But that’s not the question.It was only as I revisited the content from The ONE Thing earlier this year, that I saw it in a different light.I noticed that Gary and Jay labeled it a focusing question. The question actually asks what’s the ONE thing you can do such that by doing it, everything else becomes easier or unnecessary. Hmm.[Tweet "What if the ONE thing that could change everything is not even on your to-do list?"]

My Discovery

It was through an exercise of reverse-engineering the future that allowed me to discover the ONE thing I can do. Gary and Jay call it planning to the now. Identify your most important someday goal. Say it’s 5 - 10 years in the future.Then back it up. If that’s where you want to be in five years, then where will you be in three years? Back it up some more, in one year? In six months, in three months, in one month? And then reversed engineer it all the way back to today and right now. It’s like lining up the dominoes that lead to your future.What’s the first domino in the chain? And what can you do right now that makes the rest of the dominoes fall faster? That’s one way to identify your ONE thing. Here’s how Gary and Jay depict the power of your ONE Thing**.Remember, it’s not what should you do to get things off of your to-do list. But what can you do that makes everything else easier or even unnecessary.It took me quite a while to finally figure out my answer to that question. Forget finding the perfect answer. If you’re a perfectionist or recovering perfectionist you can endlessly over-think and over-analyze this.[Tweet "Aim for progress, not perfection!"]The ONE thing I have committed to doing is writing — every single day. Right now I’m in a 6-week blogging blitz and invite you to come along. You can find out more here.What about you? Have you reverse-engineered your future to help you identify the ONE Thing that will make everything else easier or even unnecessary? If not, why not give it a try? You just might find the clarity you seek.

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[convertkit form=4868835]Please keep me posted on your progress by leaving a comment below.** The Living a Domino Run is Figure 25 from the book The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan, Bard Press 2013. www.the1thing.com. It is shared with permission.