The one thing
This post contains thoughts assembled from many different sources but most recently from The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan that I have been re-reading recently.
What is the one thing that you could do that would make everything else easier or unnecessary?
This is the focusing question. It attempts to cut through the chaff of life.
There are nuances to it.
It is focusing but before this focusing comes direction. Putting all your focus in the wrong direction is not going to help at all.
And before direction comes destination.
To know where you are going requires a destination. Have you thought about where you want to be? In specific terms? In numbers, in emotions, in living and love? When do you want to be there?
This is your destination.
The destination is an aspirational version of yourself projected into the future. A self whose circumstance you can feel, see, smell and touch. A future reality that becomes so real to you that it is not just compelling, it is assumed. It is the de facto self that you are. This current sub-self state is the unreal version of your life. That future state is the real one.
And the destination is only manifest if you can align it with your purpose. Or a purpose. Purpose is the shining light that keeps you moving in the dark times. The purpose must be something emotionally compelling and personal. It must be love or pain or destiny driven. It must be a manifestation of your full potential and the way you fit into the full potential of the world.
When you have your purpose and have divined a destination it can be dissected or decomposed into a set of goals. Goals are quantified, and time based. I will be X and Y by Z.
Why?
Why do you care about becoming the manifestation of your best self? Because once you move beyond self what is left is service and enablement. Your best self will elevate the world and the people you love. Your best self gives you leverage to change the world.
The end game is not the goals or the affirmation of self. Those things are a route towards self-realization. The irony is that by focusing on and perfecting the best version of your self, you are doing the very thing that helps others; your relationships, your community and the world, the most.
We began with purpose. Then we boiled that down into a discrete destination. What will your life be like when you manifest that purpose? What would you have to do today, tomorrow, next year to get to this state?
There really is no discrete destination, and that is ok. We’re are going to pick a ‘desired state of affairs’ and build out the milestones to actualize that. We will make course corrections along the way based on the headwinds and tailwinds of life. But, we need something to plan towards. A stake in the ground on the horizon. This desired state is the best we can do or imagine from where we are.
Don’t get too hung up in it.
This destination is supported by a series of milestones. These milestones are the goals and the actions along the road to that purpose and that self-realization.
Consider the etymology of the word ‘milestone’ – this is literally a rock placed by the side of the road to mark progress. Without these milestones you don’t know if you’re making progress on your road in your journey.
Now that you have some big goals along the path to where you want to get you can start to back-schedule tasks and activities to get there. We might not think these small activities or task could possibly lead to tat desired state, but if I have learned anything in training over the years it is that consistency is the most important element of progress.
Here’s a mental exercise.
Imagine you wanted to build a stone wall. But, you don’t have time to build a wall. What if you carried one rock every day and placed it into the new wall? Every day you would see progress. After a week or two you would have a wall taking shape. In month you’d have the line of the wall. In 6 months you’d have your wall. All it took was one rock a day.
But it took one rock a day.
This is a simple mental exercise. It describes a linear progress. In reality, all the things we do are non-linear. At some point in building that wall you will run into challenges. Something will go wrong. You may have to tear down and restart a section. You may run into a bee nest. Expect it.
When we hit these challenges it slows our progress, but the challenges also teach us. This is where the perseverance comes in. This is where we discover that we may not have the proper tools for the job and need to find them. Maybe, God forbid, we need to ask for help. This is where we grow. And this doesn’t happen unless you are on the road and taking the journey.
Sometimes the progress is non-linear in the other direction.
The act of building that wall manifests resources and opportunities that you hadn’t thought of and the wall becomes a castle. It’s a funny thing. When you are building this wall doors will open. A neighbor will stop by to help or talk. Another may drop a load of rock or recommend a friend. Who knows? A rich movie star may stop and ask you to build a wall for them.
Challenges will come.
Doors will open.
But, only on the road when the journey has begun.
Once we have those milestones and the tasks that support them, we need to execute. The best plans in the world are worthless without execution. Execution means blocking the time to do these things. Actually putting these tasks in your calendar, protecting them and doing them.
Time blocking the tasks that take you to your goals that lead to your desired state sets you up each day to make one critical decision to either make progress on your path or not. It turns your ‘someday’ into today. If I do this thing today I will get to that place I want to be. Likewise, if you don’t do that thing today, if you let the urgent overtake the important, you are deciding to give up on your dreams.
Each day you make the decision, do I do this thing that I know gets me to where I want to be? Or, do I do this other urgent or pleasurable thing that gets me nowhere? That framing sets you up for success. At least success more often than not.
Because you will fall down.
You will choose the video game and the bottle of wine over your dream of writing the next great novel sometimes. When that happens, you call on your perseverance. You forgive yourself. You get up, dust yourself off, and keep moving forward. Time and time again. In the process try to learn about your triggers, your weakness and your strength.
This will require you to be selfish. This will require the stretching and stressing of existing and comfortable relationships. But, remember, the whole point is that you are creating a version of yourself that is better able to help the world. You are growing into the best version of yourself.
That stretching will crack your carapace of comfort and you will molt into many new shells. Some of those shells will not be comfortable. But, you will embrace them and learn from them and use the challenges and learning to grow into the best version of yourself.
Purpose, destination, goals. They all sound great and worthy, but how to keep them from being shoved into a drawer on January 15th?
It’s the execution. It selfishly scheduling those tasks that are needed to make the next milestone and making sure it gets done. That execution is the glue between your thoughts and your better self.
The famous saying is that you will over estimate how much you can achieve in a year and you will grossy under estimate what you can achieve in five years.
Start building your stone wall, whatever it is.
One rock at a time.
One rock at a time.