The ONE Thing
Focus on one kills my multitasking mess. Where I win big, I narrowed down.
productivityDon’t fear big. Fear mediocrity. Fear waste. Fear the lack of living to your fullest. When we fear big, we either consciously or subconsciously work against it.
AQ's take: Feared bombing big. Stayed safely mediocre. Wasted prime years. Fear fixed.
Aug 26, 2022Success is actually a short race—a sprint fueled by discipline just long enough for habit to kick in and take over.
AQ's take: Short sprint to habit. Explains my discipline fails.
Aug 25, 2022The trick to success is to choose the right habit and bring just enough discipline to establish it.
AQ's take: Right habit, minimal discipline. Sequential wins forever.
Aug 25, 2022Build one habit at a time. Success is sequential, not simultaneous. No one actually has the discipline to acquire more than one powerful new habit at a time. Super-successful people aren’t superhuman at all; they’ve just used selected discipline to develop a few significant habits. One at a time. Over time.
AQ's take: One habit at a time. Superhumans are just consistent geeks.
Aug 25, 2022Stick with the discipline long enough for it to become routine. Habits, on average, take 66 days to form.
AQ's take: 66 days? My ADHD brain quits at 10. Finally math for my failures.
Aug 25, 2022Time waits for no one. Push something to an extreme and postponement can become permanent.
AQ's take: Pushed blogging to 'tomorrow' for years. Now permanent regret. Brutal truth.
Aug 25, 2022When you gamble with your time, you may be placing a bet you can’t cover.
AQ's take: Gambled weekends on shows. Lost business momentum. Can't afford that bet anymore.
Aug 25, 2022In his novel Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas, James Patterson artfully highlights where our priorities lie in our personal and professional balancing act: “Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And you’re keeping all of them in the air. But one day you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls—family, health, friends, integrity—are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered.”
AQ's take: Work bounces. Family breaks. Juggling wrong cost me family time. Ouch.
Aug 25, 2022When everything feels urgent and important, everything seems equal. We become active and busy, but this doesn’t actually move us any closer to success. Activity is often unrelated to productivity, and busyness rarely takes care of business.
AQ's take: Busyness fooled me forever. Activity ≠ progress.
Aug 24, 2022Instead of a to-do list, you need a success list—a list that is purposefully created around extraordinary results.
AQ's take: Success list over to-do? Game-changer for my mess.
Aug 24, 2022“The 80/20 Principle asserts that a minority of causes, inputs, or effort usually lead to a majority of the results, outputs, or rewards.”
AQ's take: 80/20 slaps. Minority effort, majority wins. Obvious now.
Aug 24, 2022There will always be just a few things that matter more than the rest, and out of those, one will matter most.
AQ's take: One thing matters most. Stop pretending everything does.
Aug 24, 2022Steve Uzzell said, “Multitasking is merely the opportunity to screw up more than one thing at a time.”
AQ's take: Multitasking wrecked my code sprints. Uzzell's quote hurts.
Aug 24, 2022It’s not that we have too little time to do all the things we need to do, it’s that we feel the need to do too many things in the time we have.
AQ's take: Too many things in too little time. My life story.
Aug 24, 2022You can actually give attention to two things, but that is what’s called “divided attention.” And make no mistake. Take on two things and your attention gets divided. Take on a third and something gets dropped.
AQ's take: Divided attention killed my focus. Third thing always drops.
Aug 24, 2022“Be like a postage stamp— stick to one thing until you get there.” —Josh Billings
AQ's take: ADHD brain hates this. But damn, my scattered projects scream for postage-stamp focus.
Aug 23, 2022I would end our coaching calls with a recap of the handful of things they were agreeing to accomplish before our next session.
AQ's take: Coaching calls? I need this. My teams vanish without recaps.
Aug 23, 2022Where I’d had huge success, I had narrowed my concentration to one thing, and where my success varied, my focus had too.
AQ's take: Huge wins when laser-focused. Explains my scattered failures perfectly.
Aug 23, 2022“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.
AQ's take: 'Going small' slays me. Quit chasing everything, nail one thing.
Aug 23, 2022You need to be doing fewer things for more effect instead of doing more things with side effects.
AQ's take: Fewer things, massive impact. Burned out doing too much crap.
Aug 23, 2022Highly 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.
AQ's take: Daily lead domino whack. My chaos needs this ritual.
Aug 23, 2022The key is over time. Success is built sequentially. It’s one thing at a time.
AQ's take: Sequential success hits home. One thing stacked, not juggled.
Aug 23, 2022When 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.
AQ's take: Company's ONE Thing? Brutal truth. Mine's finding it daily.
Aug 23, 2022Passion 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.
AQ's take: Virtuous cycle unlocked. Passion fueled my rare wins.
Aug 23, 2022THE SIX LIES BETWEEN YOU AND SUCCESS Everything Matters Equally Multitasking A Disciplined Life Willpower Is Always on Will-Call A Balanced Life Big Is Bad
AQ's take: Six lies nailed my procrastination hell. Time to debunk.
Aug 23, 2022