PNTV: The ONE Thing by Gary Keller & Jay Papasan (#144)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got another extraordinary book, the One Thing by Gary Keller. Gary started Keller Williams, which is now the largest real estate company in the world. And this book is extraordinary. We have Philosopher's Notes, a bunch of big ideas. I'm excited to cover my five favorite ones now, so let's jump straight in. First, big idea. Dominoes. Dominoes. Are you familiar with the physics of dominoes? It's amazingly cool. Here's how it goes. So a domino cannot go for another domino that's 50% larger than it. Domino cannot go for another domino that's 50% larger than it. Now what happens when you line up those dominoes is you don't just have linear growth, you have geometric growth and it grows quickly. So dominoes, that's not quite 50%, but you get the idea. You can keep on doing that. It's already going off the screen right now if you start with a 2 inch domino, 2 inches, right? Just a little domino, that domino can knock over another domino that's three inches tall, right? You extend that out by 10, and what do you have? 10, you've got an NFL quarterback. Peyton Manning is about 10 dominoes high in this sequence. Boom, boom, boom. 50% bigger, right? Then you go out 23. What do you have? You have the Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower at 23, that's pretty amazing. You keep on going out to 30 something, I don't know, 31 or so. And you have the Himalayas. You go out 50 plus and you have the moon. Geometric progression of dominoes. It's an amazing thing starting out really, really small. 50% bigger, that grows quickly. 10, 23, 31, 50 plus. You're getting yourself to the moon. Now the key is you need to identify your most important thing and then line them up, line them up and have this huge, extraordinary geometric progressive force behind you. That's a quick look at dominoes. Dominoes. Big idea number one. Big idea number two is success lists. Success lists. What do you have? Do you have a to do list where you just have a ton of stuff? I got to do this and this and this and this and this and this and this. Now I'm going to put in a lot of time, a lot of hours, and I'm going to just go nail it, check them off, throw it in the trash, etc. Maybe you prioritize it a little bit. Where that's number one, that's number two. Okay, whatever. But you get this long to do list. Gary says we need to swap out our to do lists for success lists. Gary, get clear on what success is. What are your dominoes that you need to knock over and quit trying to do everything. You don't want to have a long to do list. You want a success list. Get clear on what your keys to success are and do that. Get rid of your to do list. That's the second big idea. The third big idea is extreme 8020 or extreme Pareto law. Have you heard of Vilfredo Pareto? Vilfredo Pareto, 19th century Italian economist who discovered that 20% of the Italian population back in the day owned 80% of the land. 8020 Pareto principle. Since then we've discovered that a ton of things fall under the Pareto principle. 20% of beer drinkers drink 80% of beer, for example. We can go on, but we won't 80 20. It exists everywhere, right? What is cool about what Gary does? He says, look, okay, so the Pareto principle is awesome. 80 20. But we want to go extreme. We want to take this 80 20, we want to take that 20 and we want to 8020 that. Alright? And then we want to take this 20 and we want to 80 20that. What happens when you do that? Well, you do that enough times and you arrive at your one thing, the most important thing that you could do. So the whole idea of the 8020 principle is you don't want the vital few to be drowned out by the trivial many of a to do list or anything else in your life. You, you want to identify the most important 80 20. But take it to the extreme and keep on 8020 in your 80 20s and you arrive at the one thing. It's a really cool idea. So obviously the book is all about helping us focus on that which is most important. Arriving at our one thing that's extreme Pareto or extreme 80 20. Now the next Big idea is one of my favorites in any book I've read. Setting goals to now. He calls it setting goals to now. Here's how it works. So, basic idea here is you create a someday. Someday you are going to do this one thing. Your big one thing goal is what? Identify that. That's your someday goal. Then what you want to do is you want to connect your five year goal to that someday goal. Your one thing. Five year goal that supports your someday goal. Okay, cool, we got that. Then what's your one year goal that supports your five year goal that supports your someday goal. What's that? Identify that one year goal. Then Identify your one month goal that supports the one year that supports the five year that supports the someday one thing goal. What is it? What are you going to do this year that supports your one. I'm sorry this month that supports your one year that supports your five year that supports your someday Identify that. Keep on going. You can guess what's next one week. What are you going to do this week that supports everything that comes after it? And then what are you going to do today that supports the week that supports the month that supports the year that supports the five years that supports your someday goal. And then the kicker what are you going to do right now that supports today's goal that supports the week, the month, the year, the five year, the someday. That's awesome. Goal setting to now. What's the one thing you could do that would ripple off what our dominoes that will knock over those dominoes such that your moonshot, your huge long term someday lifetime goal is a natural byproduct of you rocking all of these. That's goal setting two right now. All about the one thing. This is echoed by scientific research. Jonathan Haidt in the happiness hypothesis tells us that you want to have vertical coherence. Vertical coherence of your goals. Happy people have vertical coherence in their goals. They're not doing something today and then hoping to eventually come to what they want. Right. Kind of two stepping it. That's not what we want to do. We want to get clear on our long term goals and then line everything up to make sure through an integrity vertical coherence. Big idea. So that's the fourth big idea here. We've got one more time blocking. Time blocking. Really cool idea. He says this is the greatest productivity power tool that you can imagine. Power tool for productivity. The greatest one. Right. Time blocking. The idea here is that you identify your most important thing you're going to do one off or every day or whatever it is and you do it ideally before you do anything else. And you block off the time to do it where there's absolutely no distraction, there's no email, there's no texting, there's no phone calls, there's no interruptions, nothing. But the one thing that you've determined you're going to block off time for and you go get your calendar out and you block off that time. He talks about a great blog online by the guy who started the Y combinator called Maker vs. Manager Schedule, which is great. I'll put a link into that. Maker versus Manager Schedule. So a manager is Constantly reacting to everything all day long. But a maker needs blocks of time to create. You can't do anything meaningful if you're constantly being paper cutted by other things coming into your consciousness. You need the space. 4 hours if you can create it. Half a day, a full day. Whatever you can create so that you can create block your time. So there you go. That's a super quick look at the one thing or at least five of my favorite big ideas. This book is really really really good. Highly recommend it. We've got more in the Philosopher's Note. Dominoes are powerful. Geometric progression 50% bigger. We get to an NFL quarterback at 10 dominoes. We get to the Eiffel Tower at 23 somewhere around 30ish. We get to the Himalayas over 50 and we're approaching the moon. What? It's crazy. So line them up, knock them down. Extreme Pareto style. 80 20. Your 80 20s and 8020 that till you arrive at your one thing. Very cool concept. Goals to now someday. What's the one thing you want to do someday? Think about that. What's the one thing you want to do someday? That's a big question. Okay. What are you going to do in five years? What's the one thing you could do in five years that would best support that one year? Step it back this month. That's all coherent. One week today. And then right now you have clarity. Well, this is the one thing I could do that sets those dominoes off goals to now Time blocking. You need to do it if you want to create something meaningful. There you go. Hope you enjoyed and I look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have another awesome day. See you.