Reading : The One Thing

“Be like a postage stamp— stick to one thing until you get there.” —Josh Billings On June 7, 1991, the earth moved for 112 minutes. Not really, but it felt that way. I was watching the hit comedy City Slickers, and the audience’s laughter rattled and rocked the theater. Considered one of the funniest movies of all time, it also sprinkled in unexpected doses of wisdom and insight. In one memorable scene, Curly, the gritty cowboy played by the late Jack Palance, and city slicker Mitch, played by Billy Crystal, leave the group to search for stray cattle. Although they had clashed for most of the movie, riding along together they finally connect over a conversation about life. Suddenly Curly reins his horse to a stop and turns in the saddle to face Mitch. Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is? Mitch: No. What? Curly: This. [He holds up one finger.] Mitch: Your finger? Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don’t mean sh*t. Mitch: That’s great, but what’s the “one thing”? Curly: That’s what you’ve got to figure out. Out of the mouth of a fictional character to our ears comes the secret of success. Whether the writers knew it or unwittingly stumbled on it, what they wrote was the absolute truth. The ONE Thing is the best approach to getting what you want. I didn’t really get this until much later. I’d experienced success in the past, but it wasn’t until I hit a wall that I began to connect my results with my approach. In less than a decade we’d built a successful company with national and international ambitions, but all of a sudden things weren’t working out. For all the dedication and hard work, my life was in turmoil and it felt as if everything was crumbling around me. I was failing.

SOMETHING HAD TO GIVE At the end of a short rope that looked eerily like a noose, I sought help and found it in the form of a coach. I walked him through my situation and talked through the challenges I faced, both personal and professional. We revisited my goals and the trajectory I wanted for my life, and with a full grasp of the issues, he set out in search of answers. His research was thorough. When we got back together, he had my organizational chart—essentially a bird’s-eye view of the entire company—up on the wall. Our discussion started with a simple question: “Do you know what you need to do to turn things around?” I hadn’t a clue. He said there was only one thing I needed to do. He had identified 14 positions that needed new faces, and he believed that with the right individuals in those key spots, the company, my job, and my life would see a radical change for the better. I was shocked and let him know I thought it would take a lot more than that. He said, “No. Jesus needed 12, but you’ll need 14.” It was a transformational moment. I had never considered how so few could change so much. What became obvious is that, as focused as I thought I was, I wasn’t focused enough. Finding 14 people was clearly the most important thing I could do. So, based on this meeting, I made a huge decision. I fired myself. I stepped down as CEO and made finding those 14 people my singular focus. This time the earth really did move. Within three years, we began a period of sustained growth that averaged 40 percent yearover-year for almost a decade. We grew from a regional player to an international contender. Extraordinary success showed up, and we never looked back. As success begat success, something else happened along the way. The language of the ONE Thing emerged. Having found the 14, I began working with our top people individually to build their careers and businesses. Out of habit, I would end our coaching calls with a recap of the handful of things they were agreeing to accomplish before our next session. Unfortunately, many would get most of them done, but not necessarily what mattered most. Results suffered. Frustration followed. So, in an effort to help them succeed, I started shortening my list: If you can do just three things this week. ... If you can do just two things this week. ... Finally, out of desperation, I went as small as I could possibly go and asked: “What’s the ONE Thing you can do this week such that by doing it everything else would be easier or unnecessary?” And the most awesome thing happened. Results went through the roof. After these experiences, I looked back at my successes and failures and discovered an interesting pattern. Where I’d had huge success, I had narrowed my concentration to one thing, and where my success varied, my focus had too. And the light came on.

GOING SMALL If everyone has the same number of hours in a day, why do some people seem to get so much more done than others? How do they do more, achieve more, earn more, have more? If time is the currency of achievement, then why are some able to cash in their allotment for more chips than others? The answer is they make getting to the heart of things the heart of their approach. They go small. When you want the absolute best chance to succeed at anything you want, your approach should always be the same. Go small. “Going small” is ignoring all the things you could do and doing what you should do. It’s recognizing that not all things matter equally and finding the things that matter most. It’s a tighter way to connect what you do with what you want. It’s realizing that extraordinary results are directly determined by how narrow you can make your focus. The way to get the most out of your work and your life is to go as small as possible. Most people think just the opposite. They think big success is time consuming and complicated. As a result, their calendars and to-do lists become overloaded and overwhelming. Success starts to feel out of reach, so they settle for less. Unaware that big success comes when we do a few things well, they get lost trying to do too much and in the end accomplish too little. Over time they lower their expectations, abandon their dreams, and allow their life to get small. This is the wrong thing to make small. You have only so much time and energy, so when you spread yourself out, you end up spread thin. You want your achievements to add up, but that actually takes subtraction, not addition. You need to be doing fewer things for more effect instead of doing more things with side effects. The problem with trying to do too much is that even if it works, adding more to your work and your life without cutting anything brings a lot of bad with it: missed deadlines, disappointing results, high stress, long hours, lost sleep, poor diet, no exercise, and missed moments with family and friends— all in the name of going after something that is easier to get than you might imagine. Going small is a simple approach to extraordinary results, and it works. It works all the time, anywhere and on anything. Why? Because it has only one purpose—to ultimately get you to the point. When you go as small as possible, you’ll be staring at one thing. And that’s the point.

“Every great change starts like falling dominoes.” — BJ Thornton In Leeuwarden, The Netherlands, on Domino Day, November 13, 2009, Weijers Domino Productions coordinated the world record domino fall by lining up more than 4,491,863 dominoes in a dazzling display In this instance, a single domino set in motion a domino fall that cumulatively unleashed more than 94,000 joules of energy, which is as much energy as it takes for an average-sized male to do 545 pushups. Each standing domino represents a small amount of potential energy; the more you line up, the more potential energy you’ve accumulated. Line up enough and, with a simple flick, you can start a chain reaction of surprising power. And Weijers Domino Productions proved it. When one thing, the right thing, is set in motion, it can topple many things. And that’s not all. In 1983, Lorne Whitehead wrote in the American Journal of Physics that he’d discovered that domino falls could not only topple many things, they could also topple bigger things. He described how a single domino is capable of bringing down another domino that is actually 50 percent larger. Do you see the implication? Not only can one knock over others but also others that are successively larger. In 2001 a physicist from San Francisco’s Exploratorium reproduced Whitehead’s experiment by creating eight dominoes out of plywood, each of which was 50 percent larger than the one before. The first was a mere two inches, the last almost three feet tall. The resulting domino fall began with a gentle tick and quickly ended “with a loud SLAM.” Imagine what would happen if this kept going. If a regular domino fall is a linear progression, Whitehead’s would be described as a geometric progression. The result could defy the imagination. The 10th domino would be almost as tall as NFL quarterback Peyton Manning. By the 18th, you’re looking at a domino that would rival the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The 23rd domino would tower over the Eiffel Tower and the 31st domino would loom over Mount Everest by almost 3,000 feet. Number 57 would practically bridge the distance between the earth and the moon!

GETTI N G EXTRAORDI N ARY RESU LTS So when you think about success, shoot for the moon. The moon is reachable if you prioritize everything and put all of your energy into accomplishing the most important thing. Getting extraordinary results is all about creating a domino effect in your life. Toppling dominoes is pretty straightforward. You line them up and tip over the first one. In the real world, though, it’s a bit more complicated. The challenge is that life doesn’t line everything up for us and say, “Here’s where you should start.” Highly successful people know this. So every day they line up their priorities anew, find the lead domino, and whack away at it until it falls. Why does this approach work? Because extraordinary success is sequential, not simultaneous. What starts out linear becomes geometric. You do the right thing and then you do the next right thing. Over time it adds up, and the geometric potential of success is unleashed. The domino effect applies to the big picture, like your work or your business, and it applies to the smallest moment in each day when you’re trying to decide what to do next. Success builds on success, and as this happens, over and over, you move toward the highest success possible. When you see someone who has a lot of knowledge, they learned it over time. When you see someone who has a lot of skills, they developed them over time. When you see someone who has done a lot, they accomplished it over time. When you see someone who has a lot of money, they earned it over time. The key is over time. Success is built sequentially. It’s one thing at a time

“It is those who concentrate on but one thing at a time who advance in this world.” — Og Mandino Proof of the ONE Thing is everywhere. Look closely and you’ll always find it. ON E PRODUC T, ONE SERVICE Extraordinarily successful companies always have one product or service they’re most known for or that makes them the most money. Colonel Sanders started KFC with a single secret chicken recipe. The Adolph Coors Company grew 1,500 percent from 1947 to 1967 with only one product, made in a single brewery. Microprocessors generate the vast majority of Intel’s net revenue. And Starbucks? I think you know. The list of businesses that have achieved extraordinary results through the power of the ONE Thing is endless. Sometimes what is made or delivered is also what is sold, sometimes not. Take Google. Their ONE Thing is search, which makes selling advertising, its key source of revenue, possible. And what about Star Wars? Is the ONE Thing movies or merchandise? If you guessed merchandise, you’d be right— and “There can only be one you’d be wrong. Revenue from toys recently totaled over $10 billion, while combined worldwide box office revenue for the six main films totaled less than half that, $4.3 billion. From where I sit, movies are the ONE Thing because they make the toys and products possible. The answer isn’t always clear, but that doesn’t make finding it any less important. Technological innovations, cultural shifts, and competitive forces will often dictate that a business’s ONE Thing evolve or transform. The most successful companies know this and are always asking: “What’s our ONE Thing?” Apple is a study in creating an environment where an extraordinary ONE Thing can exist while transitioning to another extraordinary ONE Thing. From 1998 to 2012, Apple’s ONE Thing moved from Macs to iMacs to iTunes to iPods to iPhones, with the iPad already jockeying for the pole position at the head of the product line. As each new “golden gadget” entered the limelight, the other products weren’t discontinued or relegated to the discount tables. Those lines, plus others, continued to be refined while the current ONE Thing created a well-documented halo effect, making the user more likely to adopt the whole Apple product family. When you get the ONE Thing, you begin to see the business world differently. If today your company doesn’t know what its ONE Thing is, then the company’s ONE Thing is to find out.

“There can only be one most important thing. Many things may be important, but only one can be the most important.” —Ross Garbe ONE PERSON The ONE Thing is a dominant theme that shows up in different ways. Take the concept and apply it to people, and you’ll see where one person makes all the difference. As a freshman in high school, Walt Disney took night courses at the Chicago Art Institute and became the cartoonist for his school newspaper. After graduation, he wanted to be a newspaper cartoonist but couldn’t get a job, so his brother Roy, a businessman and banker, got him work at an art studio. It was there he learned animation and began creating animated cartoons. When Walt was young, his one person was Roy. For Sam Walton, early on it was L. S. Robson, his father-inlaw, who loaned him the $20,000 he needed to start his first retail business, a Ben Franklin franchise store. Then, when Sam was opening his first Wal-Mart, Robson secretly paid a landlord $20,000 to provide a pivotal expansion lease. Albert Einstein had Max Talmud, his first mentor. It was Max who introduced a ten-year-old Einstein to key texts in math, science, and philosophy. Max took one meal a week with the Einstein family for six years while guiding young Albert. No one is self-made. Oprah Winfrey credits her father, and the time she spent with him and his wife, for “saving” her. She told Jill Nelson of The Washington Post Magazine, “If I hadn’t been sent to my father, I would have gone in another direction.” Professionally, it started with Jeffrey D. Jacobs, the “lawyer, agent, manager and financial adviser” who, when Oprah was looking for employment contract advice, persuaded her to establish her own company rather than simply be a talent for hire. Harpo Productions, Inc., was born. The world is familiar with the influence that John Lennon and Paul McCartney had on each other’s songwriting success, but in the recording studio there was George Martin. Considered one of the greatest record producers of all time, George has often been referred to as the “Fifth Beatle” for his extensive involvement on the Beatles’ original albums. Martin’s musical expertise helped fill the gaps between the Beatles’ raw talent and the sound they wanted to achieve. Most of the Beatles’ orchestral arrangements and instrumentation, as well as numerous keyboard parts on the early records, were written or performed by Martin in collaboration with the band. Everyone has one person who either means the most to them or was the first to influence, train, or manage them. No one succeeds alone. No one. “You must be singleminded. Drive for the one thing on which you have decided.” —General George S. Patton

“You must be singleminded. Drive for the one thing on which you have decided.” —General George S. Patton ONE PASSION , ONE SKILL Look behind any story of extraordinary success and the ONE Thing is always there. It shows up in the life of any successful business and in the professional life of anyone successful. It also shows up around personal passions and skills. We each have passions and skills, but you’ll see extraordinarily successful people with one intense emotion or one learned ability that shines through, defining them or driving them more than anything else. Often, the line between passion and skill can be blurry. That’s because they’re almost always connected. Pat Matthews, one of America’s great impressionist painters, says he turned his passion for painting into a skill, and ultimately a profession, by simply painting one painting a day. Angelo Amorico, Italy’s most successful tour guide, says he developed his skills and ultimately his business from his singular passion for his country and the deep desire to share it with others. This is the story line for extraordinary success stories. Passion for something leads to disproportionate time practicing or working at it. That time spent eventually translates to skill, and when skill improves, results improve. Better results generally lead to more enjoyment, and more passion and more time is invested. It can be a virtuous cycle all the way to extraordinary results. Gilbert Tuhabonye’s one passion is running. Gilbert is an American long-distance runner born in Songa, Burundi, whose early love of track and field helped him win the Burundi National Championship in the men’s 400 and 800 meters while only a junior in high school. This passion helped save his life. On October 21, 1993, members of the Hutu tribe invaded Gilbert’s high school and captured the students of the Tutsi tribe. Those not immediately killed were beaten and burned alive in a nearby building. After nine hours buried beneath burning bodies, Gilbert managed to escape and outrun his captors to the safety of a nearby hospital. He was the lone survivor. He came to Texas and kept competing, honing his skills. Recruited by Abilene Christian University, Gilbert earned AllAmerica honors six times. After graduation he moved to Austin, where by all accounts he is the most popular running coach in the city. To drill for water in Burundi, he cofounded the Gazelle Foundation, whose main fundraiser is—wait for it—“Run for the Water,” a sponsored run through the streets of Austin. Do you see the theme running through his life? From competitor to survivor, from college to career to charity, Gilbert Tuhabonye’s passion for running became a skill that led to a profession that opened up an opportunity to give back. The smile he greets fellow runners with on the trails around Austin’s Lady Bird Lake symbolizes how one passion can become one skill, and together ignite and define an extraordinary life. The ONE Thing shows up time and again in the lives of the successful because it’s a fundamental truth. It showed up for me, and if you let it, it will show up for you. Applying the ONE Thing to your work—and in your life—is the simplest and smartest thing you can do to propel yourself toward the success you want.

ON E LI FE If I had to choose only one example of someone who has harnessed the ONE Thing to build an extraordinary life, it would be American businessman Bill Gates. Bill’s one passion in high school was computers, which led him to develop one skill, computer programming. While in high school he met one person, Paul Allen, who gave him his first job and became his partner in forming Microsoft. This happened as the result of one letter they sent to one person, Ed Roberts, who changed their lives forever by giving them a shot at writing the code for one computer, the Altair 8800—and they needed only one shot. Microsoft began its life to do one thing, develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800, which eventually made Bill Gates the richest man in the world for 15 straight years. When he retired from Microsoft, Bill chose one person to replace him as CEO— Steve Ballmer, whom he met in college. By the way, Steve was Microsoft’s 30th employee but the first business manager hired by Bill. And the story doesn’t end there. Bill and Melinda Gates decided to put their wealth to work making a difference in the world. Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, they formed one foundation to do ONE Thing: to tackle “really tough problems” like health and education. Since its inception, the majority of the foundation’s grants have gone to one area, Bill and Melinda’s Global Health Program. This ambitious program’s one goal is to harness advances in science and technology to save lives in poor countries. To do this they eventually settled on one thing— stamp out infectious disease as a major cause of death in their lifetime. At some point in their journey, they made a decision to focus on one thing that would do this—vaccines. Bill explained the decision by saying, “We had to choose what the most impactful thing to give would be... . The magic tool of health intervention is vaccines, because they can be made inexpensively.” A singular line of questioning led them down this one path when Melinda asked, “Where’s the place you can have the biggest impact with the money?” Bill and Melinda Gates are living proof of the power of the ONE Thing. ONE THING The doors to the world have been flung wide open, and the view that’s available is staggering. Through technology and innovation, opportunities abound and possibilities seem endless. As inspiring as this can be, it can be equally overwhelming. The unintended consequence of abundance is that we are bombarded with more information and choices in a day than our ancestors received in a lifetime. Harried and hurried, a nagging sense that we attempt too much and accomplish too little haunts our days. We sense intuitively that the path to more is through less, but the question is, Where to begin? From all that life has to offer, how do you choose? How do you make the best decisions possible, experience life at an extraordinary level, and never look back? Live the ONE Thing. What Curly knew, all successful people know. The ONE Thing sits at the heart of success and is the starting point for achieving extraordinary results. Based on research and real-life experience, it’s a big idea about success wrapped in a disarmingly simple package. Explaining it is easy; buying into it can be tough. So, before we can have a frank, heart-to-heart discussion about how the ONE Thing actually works, I want to openly discuss the myths and misinformation that keep us from accepting it. They are the lies of success. Once we banish these from our minds, we can take up the ONE Thing with an open mind and a clear path.