December 22, 2016
Interview with Jay Papasan, co-author of the book The One Thing
Mike Carruthers:
To be more successful, accomplish a goal, or get the results you want you might want to ask yourself this question…
Jay Papasan:
What’s the 1 thing I can do right now, such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?
Jay Papasan, co-author of the book The One Thing, says asking that 1 question is crucial – at least for most people.
You stop and you ask this question it gets you really, really focused down (not to 3 things or 4 things) but down to 1 thing. Often times they’ll ask the question knowing the answer but just they hadn’t stopped to ask the question – so it just doesn’t show up. They look at their to-do list and they just start knocking off the easiest or the fastest things to do and that’s really more about stress relief than moving forward.
With all the things you could do figuring out the 1 best thing to do keeps you on track.
You know I ask this question at work – what’s the 1 thing I need to do in my career as a writer so that I can advance it? And if you look and study the lives of the great writers what do they do? They wrote every single day. So everybody has their 1 thing and most people kind of know what it is and if you ask them they feel kind of guilty for not doing it.
And when you do your 1 thing also matters.
If you really think about it and you look at the research your brain has got like a battery power to it and it goes down the more you use it. And it’s about decision making and it’s about focus. And in the morning you tend to be the freshest and that morning window is your best opportunity to do things that you know you need to do.
