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The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results

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The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results Hardcover – April 1, 2013

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What's your ONE thing?

People are using this simple, powerful concept to focus on what matters most in their personal and work lives. Companies are helping their employees be more productive with study groups, training, and coaching. Sales teams are boosting sales. Churches are conducting classes and recommending for their members.

By focusing their energy on one thing at a time people are living more rewarding lives by building their careers, strengthening their finances, losing weight and getting in shape, deepening their faith, and nurturing stronger marriages and personal relationships.

YOU WANT LESS. You want fewer distractions and less on your plate. The daily barrage of e-mails, texts, tweets, messages, and meetings distract you and stress you out. The simultaneous demands of work and family are taking a toll. And what's the cost? Second-rate work, missed deadlines, smaller paychecks, fewer promotions--and lots of stress.

AND YOU WANT MORE. You want more productivity from your work. More income for a better lifestyle. You want more satisfaction from life, and more time for yourself, your family, and your friends.

NOW YOU CAN HAVE BOTH ― LESS AND MORE. In The ONE Thing, you'll learn to:

cut through the clutter
achieve better results in less time
build momentum toward your goal
dial down the stress
overcome that overwhelmed feeling
revive your energy
stay on track
master what matters to you

The book has:

Made on more than 575 appearances on national bestseller lists
Been #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller, New York Times bestseller, and USA Today bestseller
Been translated into 40 languages
Won 12 book awards
Voted Top 100 Business Book of All Time on Goodreads

The ONE Thing delivers extraordinary results in every area of your life--work, personal, family, and spiritual. WHAT'S YOUR ONE THING?

Print length

240 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Bard Press
Publication date

April 1, 2013
Dimensions

6.03 x 0.8 x 8.54 inches
ISBN-10

9781885167774
ISBN-13

978-1885167774
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Popular Highlights in this book

What are popular highlights?

Instead of a to-do list, you need a success list—a list that is purposefully created around extraordinary results.
Highlighted by 17,576 Kindle readers
The key is over time. Success is built sequentially. It’s one thing at a time.
Highlighted by 16,554 Kindle readers
You need to be doing fewer things for more effect instead of doing more things with side effects.
Highlighted by 15,795 Kindle readers

From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Encouraging bones of advice worth gnawing on, but absent substantial meat to sink your teeth into.” ― Kirkus Reviews

“It kind of hit home for me […] that when you wake up in the morning, you put your focus on this one thing of what you want to accomplish during the day, which seems like a no-brainer.” ― Maria Sharapova, World #1 Womens Tennis Association

“The ONE Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan is an easy to read but profound book that helped me to focus on keeping the main thing the main thing in all areas of my life.” ― Brandon Turner, Author and Podcast Co-Host

About the Author

Gary Keller is executive chairman of both kwx, a holding company that represents the collection of all Keller Williams affiliates and subsidiaries, and of Keller Williams Realty, Inc. Several of his books have been bestsellers, and held positions on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal lists. Collectively his titles have sold more than 5.4 million copies worldwide.

Before Jay Papasan co-authored the bestselling Millionaire Real Estate series with Gary Keller, he worked as an editor at Harper Collins Publishers. There he worked on such best-selling books as Body-for-Life by Bill Phillips and Go for the Goal by Mia Hamm. Jay is a keynote speaker, and co-owns a successful real estate team affiliated with Keller Williams Realty with his wife Wendy in Austin, TX.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1885167776
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bard Press; First Edition (April 1, 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781885167774
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1885167774
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.08 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.03 x 0.8 x 8.54 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,232 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #41 in Business Management (Books)
- #86 in Personal Transformation Self-Help
- #95 in Success Self-Help

Customer Reviews:
4.6 20,377 ratings

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Gary Keller
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Gary Keller is executive chairman of both kwx, a holding company that represents the collection of all Keller Williams affiliates and subsidiaries, and of Keller Williams Realty. Several of his books have been bestsellers and held positions on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal lists. Collectively, his titles have sold more than 5.4 million copies worldwide.
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Jay Papasan
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Jay Papasan [Pap-uh-zan] is a bestselling author who serves as the Vice President of Strategic Content for Keller Williams Realty International, the world’s largest real estate company. He is also Vice President of KellerINK and Co-Owner, alongside his wife Wendy, of Papasan Properties Group with Keller Williams Realty in Austin, Texas.
Jay was born and raised in Memphis, TN. After attending the University of Memphis, he spent several years working in Paris. He later graduated from New York University’s graduate writing program and began his publishing career at HarperCollins Publishers. There, he helped piece together bestselling books such as Body-for-Life by Bill Phillips and Go for the Goal by Mia Hamm.
After moving to Austin, Jay joined Keller Williams Realty International, and in 2003 he co-authored The Millionaire Real Estate Agent, a million-copy bestseller, alongside Gary Keller and Dave Jenks.
His most recent work with Gary Keller on The ONE Thing has sold nearly 2.5 million copies worldwide and garnered more than 500 appearances on national bestseller lists, including #1 on The Wall Street Journal’s hardcover business list. It has been translated into 41 different languages.
See more on the author's page

Customer reviews

20,377 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book accessible, easy to read, and well-written. They also say it's insightful, has great ideas, and practices. However, some readers feel the content is repetitive, disjointed, and boring.

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Readability Insight Actionable Ease of application Focus Multitasking Value for money

944 customers mention "Readability"919 positive25 negative

Customers find the book amazing, accessible, and well-written. They say it's straight and to the point. Readers also mention the book is well organized and has a simple, almost visual idea.

"...The authors emphasize the power of simplicity and the importance of identifying the one thing that will make everything else easier or unnecessary...." Read more

"...Reading this very accessible book will ensure the message is internalized.And you will be very pleased you did...." Read more

"Wow, this is an easy to read and easy to understand and simple almost visual idea of what we all do to get in our own way on the journey to..." Read more

"...Haven’t got to finish reading it yet, but seems good." Read more

863 customers mention "Insight"863 positive0 negative

Customers find the book insightful, practical, and compelling. They say it has great ideas and practices. Readers also mention the book helps them figure out their true purpose and overcome multitasking. They appreciate the excellent examples that make his point crystal clear.

"...Overall, “The ONE Thing” is an insightful and practical book that encourages readers to prioritize their efforts and focus on what truly matters to..." Read more

"This book opened me up to better understanding and the importance of focusing on the most important thing...." Read more

"...To me, while the whole book is replete with great insight, the chapter, actually the page that made the most impact (Kindle version), were pages 90..." Read more

"...The final section motivates with unusual clarity on the four thieves of productivity: • Thief #1: Inability to Say “No” • Thief #2:..." Read more

31 customers mention "Actionable"31 positive0 negative

Customers find the book actionable. They say it has different strong concepts, practical advice, and interesting exercises. Readers also mention the book is realistic and easy to understand and implement.

"...The book’s clear, concise writing and actionable steps make it an accessible and valuable read for anyone looking to boost their productivity and..." Read more

"...There are some interesting exercises to do (like “Goal Setting to the Now”) but apart from the main idea that you need to focus on your ONE Thing as..." Read more

"...This book presented me with the Mother of All Questions and teaches how to create movement. This book has come at the appropriate time in my life...." Read more

"...The book is inspiring and actionable. I haven't figured out my ONE thing completely, yet, but I have what I need to get there...." Read more

30 customers mention "Ease of application"23 positive7 negative

Customers find the book practical and easy to implement. They say it teaches them to work smarter, not harder, to achieve any goal. Readers also mention the book is straightforward and hard to put down.

"An amazingly easy, straightforward read that has helped me immensely professionally...." Read more

"...Great read full of gold. Simple process that anyone can apply to their business or industry." Read more

"...the theory to a basic & practical way of working which can be easily applied...." Read more

"...But a lot of the points are really simple, and not too mind-blowing...." Read more

29 customers mention "Focus"29 positive0 negative

Customers find the book helpful in realigning their focus on what matters most. They say it's an easy read and helps them get laser-focused in life.

"...this book to be an amazing set of stories, principles, and tips on how to intensify focus and achieve extraordinary results in life...." Read more

"...Of course, Focusing Question is great. Well, well, all things are great in this book. You never regret, just pick it...." Read more

"...If you know what your one thing is, this book will help you find a greater focus...." Read more

"...The focusing question gave me clarity. I was able to drill down to the One Thing in my life that would make me more resourceful...." Read more

18 customers mention "Multitasking"15 positive3 negative

Customers find the book excellent and helpful for stopping multitasking. They say it makes them stop and prioritize. Readers also mention the book will make them rethink how they set their priorities.

"...The highlight off this book is that I have been delivered from multitasking and focusing on my “One Thing”, which I was able to experience the..." Read more

"...It is a simple idea to not multitask and to work on one thing at a time...." Read more

"...And yes, I see a difference in my priorities and work schedule." Read more

"...What do you have to lose? It has really challenged me to re-think my priorities and to have more faith in the way the universe works...." Read more

57 customers mention "Value for money"8 positive49 negative

Customers find the book repetitive, disjointed, and not worth reading. They say the content isn't appealing and has no substance. Readers also mention the approach is tiresome and overwhelming.

"...book, the fact that we must focus on our ONE Thing, is somehow not well introduced...." Read more

"...It covers a lot of really basic things, and gets a little repetitive sometimes.For example:X was famous. X's story is blah blah blah...." Read more

"...Upon a closer examination, the book is sorely disappointing.The author tries to fit everything in the context of "The One Thing"...." Read more

"...Tiresome dreck." Read more

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Jorge Lafosse

What I needed to achieve some objectives I had pending!

Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2024

Verified Purchase

The ONE Thing” by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan is a transformative guide to achieving extraordinary results through focused effort and prioritization. The central premise of the book is the idea that by concentrating on one single task—the most important one—you can achieve more significant results than by spreading your effort across multiple tasks.

The authors emphasize the power of simplicity and the importance of identifying the one thing that will make everything else easier or unnecessary. They provide practical strategies for overcoming distractions, building productive habits, and maintaining focus.

Through a combination of research, anecdotes, and practical advice, Keller and Papasan guide readers on how to apply this principle in various aspects of life, including work, personal goals, and relationships. The book’s clear, concise writing and actionable steps make it an accessible and valuable read for anyone looking to boost their productivity and achieve their goals.

Overall, “The ONE Thing” is an insightful and practical book that encourages readers to prioritize their efforts and focus on what truly matters to achieve extraordinary results.

7 people found this helpful

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Robert N.

Great book

Reviewed in the United States on September 27, 2024

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This book opened me up to better understanding and the importance of focusing on the most important thing. And to do that break your priorities down to the ONE THING to get the Dominoes falling.

2 people found this helpful

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Ian Mann

That’s great, but what’s the “one thing”

Reviewed in the United States on June 19, 2017

Verified Purchase

This book by Gary Keller was a number 1, Wall Street Journal bestseller. The author’s credibility derives from his being the founder of Keller Williams Realty International, which is the largest real estate company in the world, by agent count.
The book opens with a dialogue between Curly and Mitch from the comedy/drama, “City Slickers”.
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.

The route to extraordinary success, according to Keller, is the discovery of what your ‘One Thing’ is.
As children, we were required to do things when the time came: breakfast time, time to go to school, time to do homework, bath time, and bedtime. As we got older, we were given the discretion to choose when to do things, but not whether – homework before bed. But as adults, everything becomes a choices, and it is these choices that define our lives. This book addresses the question of how to make good choices.
Without a clear formula for making decisions, everything feels urgent and important. The ‘One Thing’ is such a formula.
Keller describes the search for the ‘One Thing’ tightly: “What’s the One Thing you can do this week (day/month or year) such that by doing it, everything else would be easier or unnecessary?” He reports that where he has had huge success, it was always a function of narrowing his concentration down to one thing - and the converse was true too.
Your to-do list probably contains many entries and possibly a few rated ‘A’. What this indicates is that you could be focusing attention on all your ‘A’s today, as opposed to the ‘One Thing’ that will help you achieve your major ‘One Thing’ in your business or private life. To-do lists commonly lack the focus on the ‘One Thing’ - success. “In fact,” notes Keller, “most to-do lists are actually just survival lists.” Survival lists are long, success lists are short.
Keller uses this principle to explain why some people seem to get ahead where others don’t. Why, with the same number of hours available, do some succeed and others don’t? The successful identified the ‘One Thing’ that they really wanted to achieve, and applied the ‘One Thing’ principle to it, daily. This is not limited to work, but to one’s health – (What is the one thing I should do to increase my fitness?), marriage, income, and so on.
This is the realization that not everything matters equally and that focusing on many things precludes giving your ‘One Thing’ the time and effort it deserves.
To grasp the full intent of the criteria for a true ‘One Thing’, focus needs to be on the second half of the formula: “What’s the ONE Thing you can do this week such that by doing it everything else would be easier or unnecessary?”
To illustrate the power of this insight, Keller cites the ‘domino effect’. This effect is the repercus sions of an act on every associated entity, like a row of standing dominos that falls when just the first one is pushed over. In an article in the prestigious American Journal of Physics in 1983, Lorne Whitehead described how a single domino can bring down another domino that is actually 50 percent larger.
Getting extraordinary results is all about creating a domino effect in your life through the ‘One Thing’ principle.
The ‘One Thing’ bears a striking resemblance to the over-used Pareto Principle, or the ‘80-20’rule, and differs only in that Kelly takes it to the extreme. His call it to take the 20% of your activities which will give you 80% of your benefit, and identify the ‘One Thing’ from that - the vital few of the vital few, until you get to the essential One Thing. All efforts are not equal, some will produce significantly more.
To be able to say “yes” to the ‘One Thing’ requires saying no to all else. “Whether you say ‘later’ or ‘never’, the point is to say, ‘not now’ to anything else you could do until your most important work is done,” Keller advises.
The suggestion that human beings can multitask is nonsense. Professor Clifford Nass of Stanford University, conducted enough experiments to conclude that “multitaskers were just lousy at everything.” The term was developed to describe computers not people, and the computers only processed only one piece of code at a time, just fast enough to appear as multitasking.
Once the ‘One Thing’ of your work or current concern is identified, you won’t have to become a extremely disciplined human being to achieve. We already, naturally, have more discipline than we need: we simply need to direct and manage it a little better. “When you see people who look like disciplined people, what you’re really seeing is people who’ve trained a handful of habits into their lives,” Keller observes.
Success is about doing the right thing, not about doing everything right.
Before retiring, Michael Phelps had won 22 medals, making him the most-decorated Olympian in any sport. His coach since age 11, Bob Bowman, talked of his ability to focus as his greatest attribute, despite the fact that others said he would “never be able to focus on anything”. It would be fair to say that Phelps channelled all of his energy into one discipline, the One Thing, that developed into one habit—swimming daily.
The results from developing the right habit are inevitable, they produce both the success you are searching for which greatly simplifies your life.
“It’s not that we have too little time to do all the things we need to do,” Keller notes, “it’s that we feel the need to do too many things in the time we have.”
The ‘One Thing’ is hardly a new notion, anyone who ever attended the 30-minute motivational speech at the company conference, has heard it. But hearing the message is quite different from internalizing it. Reading this very accessible book will ensure the message is internalized.
And you will be very pleased you did.
Readability Light -+--- Serious
Insights High -+--- Low
Practical High ---+- Low

*Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy, and is the author of the recently released ‘Executive Update.

132 people found this helpful

Helpful

Rich G

ONE thing, really just ONE?

Reviewed in the United States on August 25, 2024

Verified Purchase

Wow, this is an easy to read and easy to understand and simple almost visual idea of what we all do to get in our own way on the journey to success.

To me, while the whole book is replete with great insight, the chapter, actually the page that made the most impact (Kindle version), were pages 90 - 92.

Every chapter had an impact or provoked thought!

GET THIS BOOK, READ THIS BOOK - DON'T WAIT

6 people found this helpful

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Luis

Excelente Libro

Reviewed in Mexico on April 17, 2024

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Me gusto que es un libro que de una manera sencilla te ayuda a enfocarte en tus prioridades

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Glory

Libro interesante, para mantener tu capacidad de comprensión del inglés.

Reviewed in Spain on August 15, 2024

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Libro entretenido y agradable a la vez que te ayuda a mantener lo aprendido del idioma de inglés.

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Hayat Essakkati

Motivating!

Reviewed in the Netherlands on August 4, 2024

Verified Purchase

Amazing book! I read it in one go - focused on one thing ;)

Alberto regis

Fantastico

Reviewed in Italy on April 25, 2021

Verified Purchase

Cercando ispirazioni per portare un maggiore senso pragmatico alla mia vita, ho trovato questo libro. Semplice, chiaro, efficace. Non vedo l'ora di iniziare a metterlo in pratica!

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Paulo Castro

I suggest you to read this book if you're living a stressfull life and it seems that it is always far from your life goal

Reviewed in Brazil on May 20, 2018

Verified Purchase

I was with many simultaneous goals and now I understand that I should take small steps toward my life goal. I appreciated the ideas contained in this book and during the reading I applied and I am already seeing results. I'm happier and focused and I've given up the stress that having so many goals at the same time cause. I intend to read this book again. I suggest you to read this book If you are living a stressfull life! I Hope you enjoy It like me.

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