I recently read The One Thing by Gary Keller. It’s an insightful book that
can help you get the most out of your life.
The message of the book is simple: you should focus on just one thing that
gives you the most impact. Not a few things, but just one thing. So it goes
further than the Pareto principle that says you should focus on a few important
things. That’s why the book calls its principle extreme Pareto.
A key reason why the approach works is that the most important thing is
usually difficult to do. It’s not something we are comfortable doing. It’s not
something we would naturally do. As a result, we tend to procrastinate doing it.
How? By doing the less important things! But, by removing the less important
things, we have no choice but to do the most important one.
This mindset can be applied to different areas of your life. Here, though,
I’d like to apply it to habit building.
Applied to habit building, it means that you should focus on building just
one habit that will give you the most impact. Don’t try to build too many
habits at once. Instead, pick just one habit and focus on building it.
In The Power of Habit, such a habit is called a keystone habit. This is the
habit that can start a chain reaction of positive events in other areas of your
life.
How do we choose this habit?
The One Thing suggests using the so-called Focusing Question to help you
decide. Here is the question:
What’s the ONE Thing you can do such that by doing it everything else will
be easier or unnecessary?
Applied to habit building, the question becomes:
What’s the ONE habit you can do such that by doing it everything else will
be easier or unnecessary?
As you can see, there are two criteria here: easier and unnecessary.
With easier, it means that the habit should enable you to do other things
more effectively. This can happen if the habit provides you with the energy,
motivation, or knowledge to do those other things.
With unnecessary, it means that the habit should give you clarity. It
should help you decide whether or not something is necessary to do. This can
happen if the habit helps you align with your values and long-term goals.
Your one habit should meet at least one of these two criteria.
Here are some examples:
• Exercise can make it
easier for you to do other activities. How? By giving you the energy to do
them.
• Having a quiet time can
give you clarity. How? By helping you be aligned with your values.
• Reading can make it
easier for you to reach your goals. How? By giving you the knowledge to get
there.
These are just a few examples; you need to find what your one habit is.
Then, after finding it, you should focus on building it. The One Thing says that
it takes an average of 66 days to build a habit.
What is your one habit? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.
Life Optimizer.
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