The One Thing is a book written by one of the founders of Keller Williams. I have had many real estate agents and brokers as clients over the years. I’d heard about the book from one of them about ten years ago. If I recall correctly an agent has approximately 157 different tasks that they need to do in order to do their job well.
The premise of the book is simple. Very simple. It is to focus on the most important singular task that you need to do at one time and just do that.
Simple. Clear. One. Thing.
I work with really busy people. Driven and accomplished. Most are very efficient and effective. They’re focused and have figured out how to stay on task and work their way through checklists to keep their eyes on the prize. Until they can’t.
When pressure comes (and it comes for all of us) most people end up engaged in the part of themselves that is simply meant to get us out of harms way and regain comfort. When that part is running the show it/you can become very unreasonable and steer towards ease. So much so that our ability to reason, be creative, and to solve complex problems fails.
We have many parts of our brains and each part handles different things. I won’t try to tell you much else about the brain or my true ignorance will show up and rather than you thinking I’m smart (which is what I want) you’ll know that my brilliance is narrowed to some pretty specific things.
One part of the brain handles things when we’re scared. So when you’re overwhelmed, stressed out, anxious, or wanting/needing to feel safe from a saber tooth tiger that’s trying to eat you that part of the brain runs things a specific way. It actually locks us out of other parts of our brain and inhibits other functioning from occurring. You will not be as creative, you will be unreasonable, and you will struggle to solve problems. We fight, flee, or fawn. We act in some way or we recede back.
Blah blah blah…
I’ve set you up with all this to now tell you that if you’re clear on what your top priorities are and clear on what your “one thing” is at any given time when you get all wound up in life you will be more likely to keep moving things forward and take action rather then get bummed out and demotivated. Focus on the one thing that’s needed and take action on that thing.
The opportunity:
When you have your head on straight;
Write of list of things to do when you don’t know what to do.
When you’re struggling and not sure what to do refer to said list and go through the list.
Thanks for your time, have a great day!