It’s a fast-paced self-help book and I liked that.

I don’t want to read multiple pages in order for the author to convey a simple idea. It should be straight to the point, because that’s what the book wants to help me with: getting things done.

And it delivers on that front.

I was skeptical at the beginning, there was too much of the “The ONE Thing” mentioned. But I guess you need to embed that into the reader somehow, to make them understand the concept.

There will be a lot of things in there that you already have read in other similar books, but if there is one thing (get it?) that I liked it’s the idea of thinking big and starting with the smallest step to go in that direction. Set a big plan, break it into chunks and start with the smallest one inside the first milestone.

I’ll leave you with the notes I made as I read the book. Made very few tweaks to them.

• one thing at a time
• ok, we get it, one thing at a time
• ok, one fucking thing at a time
• a lot of info that you will find in other self-help books
• some nonsense numbers and concepts thrown around. The whole willpower concept is like a battery, and as we use much of it, we’re prone to make bad choices after.
• there might be some truth about the willpower. I guess I have a problem with the term used
• life is a balancing act. A balanced life is not the goal, you have to counterbalance all the time. Work requires long-term effort, while personal needs short-term to keep it all together.

“Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And you’re keeping all of them in the air. But one day you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls - family, health, friends, integrity - are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered.”

• create a habit, one at a time. On average, 66 days are required to create a new habit.
• ask yourself what is the one thing you can do to improve X? (your life, work, relationship, etc)
• set goals and work towards those goals
• plan and visualize the whole process from this moment until your final goal
• set a “someday goal”, a 5-year goal that will help achieve your someday goal, a 1-year goal that will help achieve the 5-year goal that will help achieve the someday goal, a one-month goal that will help achieve the 1-year that will help achieve the 5-year which will help achieve the someday, a 1-week, a today goal
• block time for your One Thing, block your calendar and focus on what is important. Literally put a meeting in your calendar.
• work on your One Thing every day. Cross each day and get a habit out of performing to achieve what you want
• achieving extraordinary results doesn’t mean working extra hours, but doing more in the hours you work
• be careful about the people you surround yourself with. Their energy will influence you
• think big, bigger! So you can then decide where to start small