Nick Hutchison reviews The ONE Thing, which has sold over 2.4 million copies. The book's core idea: identify the one thing you can do such that by doing it, everything else becomes easier or unnecessary. Hutchison applies this to his own work by prioritizing author networking and podcast promotion, and to his health with a daily morning smoothie.
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If you chase 2 rabbits, you will not catch either. That is a Russian proverb right out of the start of this beautiful book, The One Thing. The subtitle here is The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results, and the authors are Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. I thought, hey, you know what, we've got to start doing some more video book reviews back on Book Thinkers. And because we just did a podcast with Jay, which comes out on Thursday, make sure you tune in. This would be a good book to kick things off. I've had a big change in 2020, and that's becoming more of an essentialist. For those of you that listened to my podcast episode earlier this year with author Greg McKeown— he wrote Essentialism— you'll realize that a lot of people major in minor things, meaning they focus on low-impact activity, that 80% of their daily activity that only leads to 20% of the results. Now, The One Thing helps to reinforce a lot of those principles, and I'm so happy I reread this book. It's one of my all-time favorites. And you know what? Over 2.4 million people have also read this book, and it's been translated into roughly 50 languages. How cool is that? Now, anytime I post this book, a lot of people have great commentary. They say, hey, that's my favorite book of all time, or that book helped me through a hard time, or it's made me more productive, whatever the case may be. I just know that I had an amazing conversation with Jay, and my biggest takeaway is the focusing question that this book helps us focus on on a daily basis. And that question is, what's the one thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary? And so recently I've been trying to look at my time. I want to fill my time with more high-impact activity. I don't want to major in minor things. So the act of actually analyzing your schedule and prioritizing, putting the best, highest-impact activity up top, that's the one thing that can make your life easier. And actually, I had a really fun conversation with Jay where he says that networking is his one thing. If he can put a system around networking and implement it into his weekly schedule, then he's going to be more efficient. He'll break out of that introverted shell that he has, and he'll meet more people. And so for me, what's my one thing right now for Book Thinkers? It's been a combination of working with authors as well as providing great content to the Book Thinkers family. So let's focus a little bit on the authors. What's a great way that we can network with authors? Well, we have the podcast and we have author promotions. So if I can put those things at the top of my day and make sure that if I get those things done, the rest doesn't matter, then I'm in a fulfilled place. I know we can make progress in the business. The one thing can also be applied to every other area of your life. For example, health. What is one thing you can do in your health, meaning maybe the food you're consuming and the way that you're exercising, the way you're interacting with the world, What's one thing that you can do such that by doing it, everything else health-wise becomes easier or unnecessary? And so for me, an example of that is having the same exact smoothie every single morning. I don't have to use any willpower on deciding what I'm going to eat in the morning. I know I'm going to have my morning smoothie, and that thing is packed with tons of stuff that's going to give me great energy for the rest of the day. So now by having that morning smoothie, I keep my willpower, it's all still there, I don't need to waste any of it on the smoothie, and then I've also pumped my brain full of all this good stuff and my body, and the rest of my day is easier. And so that is one example of how I use it in health. Why don't you guys comment down below, let me know if you've read this book, let me know what you think. Be sure you stay tuned for Thursday. Thursday is when the podcast is coming out. And lastly, comment down below and let me know what your one thing for the day is. I hope everybody has a great one. Bye. Bye.
