Quote
“What's the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”— Gary Keller & Jay Papasan, in The One Thing (2013) · The One Thing →
Why it was said
Gary Keller and Jay Papasan build The ONE Thing around this question, which they capitalise throughout. It is asked at every scale, the year, the month, the day, the next hour, and it is the whole method.
What it actually means
Most to-do lists are flat: everything counts the same. The question forces a ranking by leverage, the thing that, done, makes the rest easier or removes it altogether. The second half is the part people miss: not the most important task, but the one that changes the others. Asked every morning it produces a day with a single first priority and, over months, a life with fewer things in it and more of them done.
How to use it
- 1Ask the question at the start of each day and do that one thing before opening anything else.
- 2Ask it once for the year and once for the quarter, and check the daily answers against those.