Show notes
Hello, everyone! If you are reading this in real time, Happy Valentine’s Day. Last week I kicked off a series on The ONE Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. We discussed the first three chapters. This week we are talking about chapters 4 and 5, which is part of Part One: The Lies: They Lead Us and Derail Us. Don’t worry, you don’t need to read the book unless you choose, and you don’t need to listen to all episodes. Each podcast/blog is meant to stand alone with its own insight and small experiments you can try.New here? Subscribe to follow the full ONE Thing series. It’s all FREE here!Lie #1: “Everything Matters Equally”Chapter 4 opens with a line I’m going to quote directly from the book:“Equality is a lie. Understanding this is the basis of all great decisions.”The chapter asks one deceptively simple question:When you have a lot to do in a day, how do you decide what to do first?Most of us don’t really decide. We react. We start with email, meetings, messages, or whatever is loudest.For me, the roles pile up quickly: I’m a mom, I run a home (hello, endless laundry), I cook most of our meals, I’m growing a business, and I have this podcast I’m still trying to understand in relation to my “one thing.” If you’re on an entrepreneurial path, you probably know that feeling that the work never ends and you’re always behind.The authors talk about how “achievers” operate differently. They write that:“Achievers always work from a clear sense of priority.”They pause long enough to ask what actually matters most, and then they let that answer drive their day. They’re willing to delay or drop things that aren’t essential.To explain this, they bring in the 80/20 Principle (the Pareto Principle):“A minority of causes, inputs and effort usually lead to a majority of results, outputs and rewards… A small amount of causes create most of the results.”If roughly 20% of what you do creates 80% of your results, the real work is to identify that vital 20%. Next, you narrow even further to your one most important thing.The book makes a really helpful distinction:* Your to‑do list is everything you could do.* Your success list is the tiny set of things you must do to move forward.I’m excellent at the “checkoff game”—even writing things down after I’ve done them just so I can cross them off. It feels good, but it doesn’t always move what actually matters.One of my favorite questions, from Michael Bungay Stanier’s The Coaching Habit, is:“If you’re saying yes to this, what are you saying no to?”You are always saying no to something. The power comes from choosing those nos intentionally.The book sums it up simply:“Regardless, doing the most important thing is always the most important thing.”Lie #2: “Multitasking Works”The second lie in this part of the book is multitasking.I’ll admit: in some contexts, I do advocate a gentle kind of “layering”—like walking during a meeting, where your brain is focused on the conversation and your body is just doing something supportive. I talk about that in my Deep Work Days micro‑course and in what I call “brown meetings.”But when it comes to real focus work, I’m firmly with the authors: multitasking is a trap.They say it bluntly:“Multitasking is a lie. It’s a lie because nearly everyone accepts it as an effective thing to do.”We borrowed the idea from computers, but humans don’t work like that. We’re not truly doing two demanding tasks at once; we’re switching back and forth, and every switch costs us time and energy.The book explains that:* Task switching has a real cognitive cost, even if it doesn’t feel that way in the moment.* The more we switch away from a task, the less likely we are to come fully back to it.* Multitasking doesn’t actually save time; it stretches the time it takes to finish anything.I see this constantly at work. People answer Slack messages in one‑on‑one meetings where full presence really matters. When someone does that while I’m speaking, what I feel is: this time isn’t valuable to you. It also quietly erodes trust.As a manager, my one‑on‑ones with direct reports are their time. If I kept Slack open “just in case,” I’d be robbing them of my attention.This is part of why I care so deeply about workshops and design sprints. One engineering lead once told me that what he loved most about a sprint week was that, for once, he wasn’t constantly context switching. He could just focus with his team on solving a problem. That’s rare—and powerful.The book’s message here is:* Distraction is human. Don’t shame yourself.* But multitasking always takes a toll, on both your results and your relationships.* Trying to do too much at once often leads to doing nothing well.To really live out the principle of The ONE Thing, you can’t keep believing that doing two important things at once is a good idea. You might be able to attempt it, but you can’t do it effectively.Two Tiny Experiments for This WeekYou know I love moving from insight to action, so here are two simple experiments you can try:* Create a mini “success list.”* Write down everything on your mind for the day.* Circle just a few items that truly matter most.* Then star the one most important thing—and do that first, before email, Slack, and reactive work.* Protect one block from multitasking.* Choose a 30–60 minute window.* Close Slack and email, silence your phone, and decide: “This is my one thing for this block.”* Notice how it feels and what you get done compared to your usual scattered time.If finding that block feels impossible right now, that’s a signal in itself. It might be time to rework your calendar, which is exactly what I help people do in my Deep Work Days micro‑course.One More Lie (About Meetings)Since this episode lands around February 14th, I also want to mention a free, interactive workshop I’m running soon:Your Meetings Don’t Have to Suck (Sign Up)Date: Thursday, February 26Time: 12:00 PM ET/ 11 AM CT/ 9 AM PTIt’s not a slide-heavy webinar; it’s a hands‑on session where you’ll learn how to make meetings shorter, more purposeful, more effective, and more engaging, even if you’re not the one officially “running” them.I’d love to hear what you choose as your one thing this week, and how your no‑multitasking block goes. Share in the Substack comments so we can learn from each other’s experiments.Thank you for spending part of your one life working on your one thing with me. Get full access to Confessions of a Facilitation Artist at facilitationartist.substack.com/subscribe