The ONE THING Essential to Productivity. How focus can lead you to reach your work and life goals?

12 min readAug 21, 2022

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essentialism how to become more productive focus the one one thing — The ONE THING

My first main focus in my productivity journey was to become as efficient as possible in the tasks that I was doing.
And that is what I focused on — doing tasks to their maximum efficiency.
Maximizing the time I had with to-do lists and all sorts of tips and tricks.
I maximized the hell out of it.

Results — A lot of tasks were done very well.
Big Life goals advancing — None !.

So I hit the online bookshelf and tried to find other approaches to this problem.

The ONE THING — Essentialism Definition for Productivity

I found a thinking mindset — Essentialism — that tells you to focus on a small number of goals and tasks to reach the big life goals that you want to.

Essentialism focuses on these main points: Do less, but do it better.

The cornerstone of essentialism is the never-ending task of identifying the less important things in your life to cut out and doing what’s left over to a higher standard.
Essentialism isn’t about making tiny progress in many directions. Instead, choose a direction and make great strides in the things that matter most to you.

These basically change the way you think about getting results.

Simply Put — if you want to get amazing results: there is a simple way of doing it and it involves doing less — not more.

It basically means that in order to reach the targets — don’t stray along and waste time and energy on tasks that will not get you to the end — work only on the most important thing now to reach your target in the long run and drop the rest — that will make an impact and make you a productive person.

Two highly recommended books in this domain are :

Creating a plan for the Future — Why is thinking big important?

The big and scary future And the magic of thinking big

When we come to think of what our life/work targets we utilize a very basic human coping mechanism — we think small and downplay ourselves.
We are scared of imagining a big ambitious goal in the future — what will happen if we fail?

We have negative associations, such as feeling overwhelmed and intimidated. These negative thoughts often prevent people from thinking big.
When we fail to think big and allow these negative associations to dominate us, our thinking shrinks and we lower our trajectories. We actively limit our potential achievement, condemning ourselves to mediocrity.

And that is the first thing that we need to change in order to reach outstanding results — if you want to reach outstanding results in your life you need to start by setting outstanding goals.

And more importantly — envision it.
See it in your mind, as a result, imagine the future scenario where you have reached this situation and that you are alive at that moment — and dig deeper to how you feel then and there — how does that feel?

Now — don’t you want to pursue it?

Do yourself a favor and set a time without interruptions to think of your life targets. Don’t do it during other meetings, emails, TV, kids’ playtime, etc.

Take some quiet time to think and design where you want to reach.

The future creates Goals and Actions

Now that you have a picture of the future that you want and dream to achieve — let’s put it into actions.
Take that future and turn it into actual Goals — grand Goals, but actual S.M.A.R.T Goals, If you want some more information on how we define goals — see this post.

The next step is to take these goals and create a list of actions from them that will get you to that goal.
Alas, this post is too short to get into that too — but I will have another one in the future on this.

Now, look at your cold hard TO DO list truth — Do you have priority focus? …

Now take a look at your TO DO list (which is a very wrong thing to use in case you still haven’t read this post).

Do you start with the most time-consuming ones, or get smaller tasks checked off first? Maybe you just work through them in the order they were written? maybe you match tasks to the time slots that you have?

But ask yourself this key question :

Which ones are actually relevant and which ones are not relevant to your Goals and Life targets?

Working on your tasks list without the end goal in mind is a very common approach most people unfortunately use but has a main key flaw —
it fails to understand that not all tasks were created equally —
they will not all get you to where you want to be.

And one more key aspect in which this method fails miserably — is again the undeniable truth of the Pareto law — “80 percent of your results or outputs are always delivered by 20 percent of your work or inputs”.

More information on that is in this post.

This basically means: that even if you do work on your TO DO list on tasks that indeed are relevant to your end goal:
Are you focusing on the 20% of tasks that will give you the 80% of output?

The Focusing Question

The main concept in the book “The One Thing” is the focusing question — a question that you need to ask yourself every time you are doing a planning cycle, which means every time you need to decide on your next task that you start executing.

“What’s the ONE thing I can do, such that by doing it everything else will become easier or unnecessary?”

This question actually focuses you on two levels :

The first level is about finding the right direction in life .

what is the next goal I need to pursue in order to reach my envisioned target life.

If in your target life your ideal picture entails having a boat and sailing the sea — what do you need to do next?

If your target life is being very successful at your current work profile — what is the big goal/project that you need to do?

This level has a lot of complexity and basically defines what is your next Goal to go after.

The second level is about choosing the right action to do next to reach your goal.

This is not a question you ask once and stop.

You need to continuously ask yourself the question and go one level down each time until you reach the next basic action that you need to do that answers the Focusing Question.

Repeatedly asking yourself the focusing question will not only keep you aimed at your goal but will provide you with actionable steps that build on each other.

Asking the “focusing question” will help you to prioritize, create actionable tasks and achieve your goals.

How to drop less important tasks? and mastering time management.

And let’s be honest here — we will have a hard time dropping a task — that’s what we are accustomed to doing…

So how do you ruthlessly eliminate tasks?

In short, be extreme with your criteria. One way to do so is by adopting the 90-percent rule. Start by considering the most important criterion for the decision you are making.

With the 90-percent rule, anything that is less than 90 (even an 89) is a zero.

After considering all the options, discard everything that scored less than 90.

Another method is to decide that “if it isn’t a clear yes, then it’s a clear no.” A simple way to put this into action is to list the three minimum things that something must have in order to keep it, as well as three ideal criteria that you want it to meet.

Then when deciding on what to keep, something must pass the three minimum requirements as well as at least two of the ideal ones.

Now getting to work How to create momentum to reach your life goals?

Now that you have a list of tasks that is really critical to your end goal — and the Focusing Question guided you to the next task that will get you to your goal and eventually to your life target — Start hammering on it and continue and working on these tasks creating progress and momentum towards your end goal.

In reality, creating success is all about building upon your previous progress with small, incremental steps. Small wins create momentum, which gives you the confidence to further succeed. Moreover, they allow you to stay on track by giving you the opportunity to check whether you are heading in the right direction.

But how do I start working on these tasks?

Since you picked a task which you know the needed steps in order to get it done, the question here is not a question of capability but a question of willpower — how do you summon enough willpower in order to start working on it?

How do extraordinary people get to work on their most important tasks every day?

We see that the key to their success is not so much to constantly apply a tremendous amount of discipline in order to stay focused and driven but, instead, to use discipline selectively to form enduring good habits.

Once this habit is established, you can build on that by channeling your discipline into staying focused on one particular task for longer periods. Once this habit has been formed, you can move on to the next one.

One habit is just the start. Habits are much easier to maintain than to begin, so once something becomes a habit, you can shift your discipline into forming a new one and then build them up sequentially.

Building up positive habits by selectively applying discipline will give you the appearance and benefits of a disciplined life, without the need for super-human discipline.

Will Power is a tank of gas

Will power is not something that you can summon and use every moment to its full potential — will power is a resource you have, same as energy — you need to make sure that when you go about summoning will power to attack your next task, you are at your peak.

Full-strength willpower requires a full tank, so plan your day so that you can avoid making key decisions or judgments when you’re running low — choose carefully where you use it or you may run out when you really need it. And this is very dependent on the person — some are morning people, some are evening people, but the target is to select the correct timing and replenish your willpower (by taking a walk, eating, meditating, etc) so that when you are going to start the task — your tank is full.

Don’t multitask on your key tasks

A research study from 2009 showed that the average human brain is not wired to switch attention between tasks. We are not designed for Multitasking!

Same as a CPU — it is not really multitasking, it’s quickly switching between tasks according to their priority and interrupts — and uses its memory to restore itself to the state it was before — and that takes time and energy …

Humans have an additional problem — When we do that task switching, part of our attention stays with the task that we had to switch from since it got interrupted, so we can’t stay focused on the current one 100%.

This is a phenomenon called “Attention Residue”.

Focusing by Saying NO to tasks that are not answering your Focus Question

“When you think about focusing, you think ‘Well, focusing is about saying yes.’ No! Focusing is about saying no.” — Steve Jobs, 1997.

In order to preserve your time and energy for your biggest goals, you need to say no to lower-priority requests.

You have limited time and willpower — preserve them for the tasks which align with your priorities.

If we surrender our power to choose, we essentially give others permission to choose for us.

you’ll need to separate the decision from the relationship. The pain of saying no may cause regret for ten minutes or so as you worry about someone else’s disappointment or that you’re missing out on something, but you might regret saying yes for way longer.

Maser how to say no with this article.

Life does not have a Pause button. Be prepared to drop some balls on the way.

One important thing you need to keep in mind — life will not stop while you are working on your Focus tasks.

Things will continue to happen in the background and by focusing on your key focus tasks — other things will be neglected due to lack of priority.

And that is perfectly fine.

You need to learn and live with it — if you continue trying to balance all the balls in your life and keep everyone happy — one person will not be unhappy — YOU.

You will not advance to where you aspire and you will not reach your targets.

So what is more important — keeping everyone happy while they advance to their goals or keeping you happy while you advance to your goals …?

Disregard everything — COMMIT to your ONE THING and your goals and commit to working on it tirelessly every day as a habit — even if the lesser important things fall along the way.

One important aspect to remember is that work tasks are perfectly ok to drop

Never compromise your personal life for your professional goals — instead, prioritize your work time ruthlessly…

Never sacrifice priorities in our personal life when the pressure is on at work. The damage done may be irreparable. But if our personal life always takes precedence, how can we succeed professionally? — Ask it the other way around, If my personal life is a mess, what good will it do for me to be very successful at work? or even better — how easy will it be for me to change a job versus how easy will it be for me to change my entire personal life or family?

How to maximize your work environment?

When you are working on your one thing — you need to maintain full focus and creativity for you to be fully productive.

To focus on your ONE thing, you need effective time-management strategies — which we will discuss in further posts.

But two main aspects of this is to :

Be bored and well-rested

A surprising solution for correctly thinking and analyzing your tasks, goal, and future is boredom, which can actually be good for you.

A period of time in which you have nothing to do can give you an opportunity to think clearly about what needs to be done.

In order to ensure that you have that time, clear a break in your schedule every day to give yourself time to escape: to think and to prioritize.

So set a daily time to make sure that your next tasks list is updated to the one thing and your calendar schedule reflects it.

The second critical thing — is to be well-rested and sleep.

The common approach to “wake an hour earlier” to be more productive is wrong at its core, as sleep increases your ability to think, connect ideas and maximize your productivity during your waking hours.

One hour of sleep actually results in several more hours of higher productivity the following day!

In fact, studies have shown that going 24 hours without sleep or getting a weekly average of just four to five hours of sleep per night causes a cognitive impairment equivalent to what you would have with a 0.1 percent blood alcohol level.

In Summary

Success comes from focusing on ONE thing, not many things. When working toward your ONE thing, avoid the pitfalls that prevent you from achieving success. Learn how to cut through the clutter and do your best work where it really counts.

By constantly asking the Focus Question and being essential to your core you will reach your goals and target the future — and most importantly — be a very productive person with amazing results.

Highly Recommended books on this topic: