The 11 Big Ideas:

• Decide what your “One Thing” is

• Small and simple wins

• Focus on what you can take away, not add, to your day

• No one becomes great alone. Find your mentor, whether in person or through study

• Don’t confuse activity with productivity

• Use habits to simplify your life

• Need to use willpower on important things, not irrelevant things

• Cultivate a sense of mastery or craftsmanship – will give you the proper purpose for what you do

• What’s the one thing you can do?

• Everything you encounter has been studied and dealt with before. Learn from history

• Time blocking is essential to get your important thing done

My Highlights From the Book:

Decide what your “One Thing” is

“What’s the ONE Thing you can do this week such that by doing it everything else would be easier or unnecessary?”… Where I’d had huge success, I had narrowed my concentration to one thing, and where my success varied, my focus had too.

Small and simple wins

“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 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.

Focus on what you can take away, not add, to your day

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.

No one becomes great alone. Find your mentor, whether in person or through study

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.

Don’t confuse activity with productivity

When 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.

Instead of a to-do list, you need a success list—a list that is purposefully created around extraordinary results.

Use habits to simplify your life

The payoff from developing the right habit is pretty obvious. It gets you the success you’re searching for. What sometimes gets overlooked, however, is an amazing windfall: it also simplifies your life. Your life gets clearer and less complicated because you know what you have to do well and you know what you don’t.

Need to use willpower on important things, not irrelevant things

Don’t spread your willpower too thin. On any given day, you have a limited supply of willpower, so decide what matters and reserve your willpower for it. Monitor your fuel gauge. Full-strength willpower requires a full tank. Never let what matters most be compromised simply because your brain was under-fueled. Eat right and regularly. Time your task. Do what matters most first each day when your willpower is strongest. Maximum strength willpower means maximum success.

Cultivate a sense of mastery or craftsmanship – will give you the proper purpose for what you do

View work as involving a skill or knowledge that must be mastered. This will cause you to give disproportionate time to your ONE Thing and will throw the rest of your work day, week, month, and year continually out of balance. Your work life is divided into two distinct areas—what matters most and everything else. You will have to take what matters to the extremes and be okay with what happens to the rest. Professional success requires it.

What’s the one thing you can do?

The Focusing Question collapses all possible questions into one: “What’s the ONE Thing I can do / such that by doing it / everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”… The Focusing Question always aims you at the absolute best of both by forcing you to do what is essential to success—make a decision. But not just any decision—it drives you to make the best decision. It ignores what is doable and drills down to what is necessary, to what matters.

When you ask yourself, “What’s the ONE Thing I can do in my life that would mean the most to me and the world, such that by doing it everything else would be easier or unnecessary?” you’re using the power of The ONE Thing to bring purpose to your life.

Everything you encounter has been studied and dealt with before. Learn from history

The first is the same as when you stretch. You uncover the best research and study the highest achievers. Anytime you don’t know the answer, your answer is to go find your answer. In other words, by default, your first ONE Thing is to search for clues and role models to point you in the right direction. The first thing to do is ask, “Has anyone else studied or accomplished this or something like it?” The answer is almost always yes, so your investigation begins by finding out what others have learned.

Time blocking is essential to get your important thing done

Time blocking. Most people think there’s never enough time to be successful, but there is when you block it. Time blocking is a very results-oriented way of viewing and using time. It’s a way of making sure that what has to be done gets done. Alexander Graham Bell said, “Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.” Time blocking harnesses your energy and centers it on your most important work. It’s productivity’s greatest power tool. So, go to your calendar and block off all the time you need to accomplish your ONE Thing. If it’s a onetime ONE Thing, block off the appropriate hours and days. If it’s a regular thing, block off the appropriate time every day so it becomes a habit. Everything else—other projects, paperwork, e-mail, calls, correspondence, meetings, and all the other stuff— must wait. When you time block like this, you’re creating the most productive day possible in a way that’s repeatable every day for the rest of your life.

The key to making this work is to block time as early in your day as you possibly can. Give yourself 30 minutes to an hour to take care of morning priorities, then move to your ONE Thing. My recommendation is to block four hours a day. This isn’t a typo. I repeat: four hours a day. Honestly, that’s the minimum. If you can do more, then do it.