The following transcript is from an interview between Brandon Laws and Tyler Meuwissen, Xenium HR Representative, on the podcast episode entitled “The One Thing Book Discussion.”
Brandon: Welcome everybody, we’re back for another podcast and this time we’re going to discuss a book, as we have done in the past. With me today I have Tyler Meuwissen, he’s on the HR team and also a member of our book club at Xenium. Welcome, Tyler.
Tyler: Thank you, it’s good to be here. My first one!
Brandon: Yes, first one, and hopefully many to come in the future. Today we’re talking about a book called The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results authored by Gary Keller with Jake Papasan. We read this a couple months back and had a few meetings on it. We had some great discussions about it; it was a really simple read, just about 190 pages. I thought it was a simple read with some really good takeaways. I love books that you can grab some simple concepts from, some that aren’t necessarily so profound but maybe things you hadn’t thought of before. And then you can come together as a group and see how you can apply them as it relates to work or your personal life. I thought this book really accomplished that; what did you think overall?
Tyler: Definitely. I think there are self-help books that are too intricate. They make you look into it too deeply, whereas this one encompasses general principles you can follow, which I appreciate. Also, a lot of it’s underlined, many of the definitions and key takeaways are already underlined for you. I thought that was definitely helpful.
Brandon: I thought that was interesting as well! When you open up the book, you think “I thought I bought a new book, this is underlined and highlighted!”
Tyler: Yes, when I opened the book, it reminded me of purchasing a used book in college from the bookstore and when you open it up, everything’s highlighted already. I thought that was very similar–all the takeaways are there for you to already look at. When I started reading the book, I noticed that there’s an indexing of the topics, which you see in a lot of self-help books. I think the author wanted you to have a self-help book that’s more like a reference guide.
Brandon: I thought that, too.
Tyler: If I’m thinking about how to tackle this goal, I can pull the book out, reference it, and take some of those key points to utilize in my goal-setting.
Brandon: To your point, this is sort of structured like a self-help book, but it’s a reference book. Most self-help books are about the personal life, but this actually relates well to personal business, your career, all those things–so it was a very balanced book. Of course, we, as a bunch of employees at a company, are trying to get some business results out of a book like this, and I thought it tied very well both into the business atmosphere as well as personal habits.
Tyler: Exactly, yes.
Brandon: One of the things that I think he discussed in the first chapter was about dominoes and how, when stacked correctly in a perfect line with each domino 50% larger than the previous one, the fifty-seventh domino you’d knock over would actually reach the moon or something like that. I think his point with that is that if you tackle small tasks with such narrow focus, you could accomplish anything. I thought that was what he was trying to get across, but maybe you have some insight on what you thought.
Tyler: I completely agree. I think what he said in the book was “Success is sequential, not simultaneous.” So if you tackle the small tasks, over time those add up and stack so that in time you can accomplish your bigger goals. It’s really about breaking it down into small steps–small dominoes.
Brandon: The title of the book, The One Thing, I remember in our discussions this came up so much because we’d always start a sentence, “The one thing I got out of the book…” which I believe was by design—great marketing on the book, great title, I thought it was really fitting—but what do you think “The One Thing” really means?
Tyler: In the book he talks about breaking something down into focusing questions. To me, I think the one thing is about focusing on what you want to do and then breaking it down to different levels. He broke down the focusing question into the big picture question and also to the smaller, focused question. The big picture question, for instance, could be what do I want to do in my career, how can I improve my health and wellness, how can I improve my relationships with my family and friends–those are the larger questions that set the foundation for the goals you want to accomplish. And then, your small, focused question could be what can I do right now to help me achieve that, or answer that big picture question. To me, “The One Thing” is about focus and breaking those larger goals into small, simple tasks.
Brandon: Yes, and there was a chapter toward the end of the book, at which point you’re actually putting “The One Thing” into practice, where he talked about asking yourself what’s the one thing I could do in the next five years to get me closer to my big picture goal, the one thing I could do this year that’s going to get me closer to that goal, the one thing I could do this month? And once you break it all the way down to today—right now. And so, to your point, there’s personal health, career, spirituality, business, finance, there’s all these categories, and I think the point is that there’s one thing to focus on, whether it’s your purpose or passion, and to reach that one thing or to do that one thing, there are different ways to approach it and goal set.
Tyler: There definitely are numerous ways to tackle a goal and break it down into key, smaller levels. I think that’s what he was trying to do, was to outline it for you. People often see a goal as too big or too lofty. Keller’s saying, why not? Why not set a larger goal and instead of just thinking of it as a huge goal and undertaking, break it down. Outline what you can do in the next five years, year, month, week, day, and right now to help you get started on that goal. When you start looking at it that way, it becomes more manageable and easier to undertake a huge goal you may have.
Brandon: I recall when I first opened this book and thought about the title, which is obviously very intuitive, I thought, “One thing? What’s one thing I could focus on?” There’s a million things I could focus on, so how do you narrow it down? Why would you, Tyler, want to focus on fewer things instead of more? Don’t we all want more skills, don’t we want to accomplish more goals?
Tyler: Yes, I think everyone wants to do as many things as possible, and to do many things at one time. But, honestly, that can make the quality of your focus and attention to a project lesser and more scattered. You’re not able to give 100% to three or four things you want to tackle when you’re doing them at the same time. But if you focus on one thing and give 100% to that one thing, you’re able to create a more quality goal or efficient way of tackling that goal. To do fewer things, I think, is more efficient, and it’s better for you because you learn more than you would while trying to give 50% or 20% to different tasks.
Brandon: To Tyler’s point, in the book, multitasking is said to be a lie, and I agree with this. I don’t think you can do two things 100% at the same time. However, I think there’s a caveat to this. There are some things you can do subconsciously, like through muscle memory, such as driving a car. When you’ve done something so much, it doesn’t require your full brainpower. So, and this is a bad example because I don’t do this, but you could talk on the phone while you’re driving or listen to the radio. Now it doesn’t mean that you’ll do it perfectly, but there are some parts that you do unconsciously so you’re not truly multitasking.
Tyler: You could definitely get by when doing multiple things. Talking while driving, yes, you may be able to do that functionally, but are you able to do it effectively and efficiently.
Brandon: Or as if you were not distracted at all. And if that’s the case, then multitasking is a complete lie, because I don’t think I’d be driving with 100% of my capability while talking on the phone, which is why I don’t talk on the phone while driving.
Tyler: When you’re trying to accomplish a purpose–safety, for instance, since we’re discussing driving–if you’re trying to be safe driver and abide by the rules, you won’t want to talk and drive at the same time. Even though you may be able to, you’ll want to be devoting your full attention and capacity to it.
Brandon: Let’s bring this to the business world. Let’s say I have somebody come up to my desk and they want to have a stand-up meeting or something. They’re trying to have a conversation with me and get my attention, but what if I’m checking my email or looking back at my computer while they’re trying to talk to me. Do you think you can totally hear what they’re saying and respond to emails at the same time?
Tyler: No.
Brandon: Exactly! I think, overall, when we look back at The One Thing and the point of this book, it’s exactly that. It’s laser focus, it’s being present in your goal setting.
Tyler: Yes, and by task-switching instead of multitasking.
Brandon: Yes. So let’s take it further: there’s a great section of a chapter on work-life balance. I thought this was a great point because I struggle with this sometimes, too, where I’m jumping in and out and doing really quick intervals of being at work, then at home, then at work, then home, doing a few things for myself–etc. Keller argues differently. Do you remember what he said exactly in the book about how you should treat the work-life balance?
Tyler: It’s a counterbalancing, kind of like a scale. During your personal time, you ought to devote your time to your personal life and only your personal life, and at work it’s the same–vice versa. It’s kind of like a balance or measure or weight scale in that way. I think that’s what he was getting at in saying that you cannot multitask your personal and work life at the exact same time.
Brandon: I think he called that living in the extremes. With that counterbalance, say you have a vertical line, and one side of it is work, the other your personal life. He says, go so far into the extremes that you’re all in at work or all in at your personal life, and it’ll balance itself out a lot better than if you have one foot in each at all times.
Tyler: Yes, otherwise you’re not giving your full attention to either.
Brandon: There’s a section in the book where he talked about purpose and passion. How do you think that plays a role in success overall and also “The One Thing”?
Tyler: I think it’s the overall encompassing question that you have. Why am I doing this? Why am I setting the goal–what is the reason for it? There are always ways you can find out what you need to do or how you need to do it. ‘Why’ is the question. I think if you begin with the ‘why’, then from there you can break it out into smaller goals and of what you need to do here, or this week, and then go from there.
Brandon: In summing up the book, I really liked it and found it very simple to read. I also thought the discussion we had about it as a group was really great as well. It wasn’t the most amazing book, but there were some great takeaways and I thought it was one of the better books we’ve read recently. With that in mind, I’d probably give it a 7.5 out of 10. What about you?
Tyler: Yes, definitely, I’d agree with 7 or 7.5. I like those books that, even though it’s not a long read, that’s actually a good thing, because you can get these good discussions going and have these takeaways that you can reference later on because you aren’t taking so much in at one time. These are small little takeaways. I enjoyed it too, and felt like it brought a lot of good discussion.
Brandon: For people listening today, we’ll share some links and resources on the blog, but feel free to continue the discussion on our blog and social media and interact with us about what you thought of the book or whether we perhaps enticed you to go read the book. And thank you, Tyler, so much for being on the podcast, and we’ll definitely have you back in the future.
Tyler: Thank you! And definitely, this was great.
Brandon: And thanks to everyone listening today!
Transcript: The One Thing Book Discussion
