opposite. It’s a way to gain the greatest freedom and flexibility
possible. Your talent and abilities are limited resources. Your time is
finite. If you don’t make your life about what you say yes to, then it
will almost certainly become what you intended to say no to.
In a 1977 article in Ebony magazine, the incredibly successful
comedian Bill Cosby summed up this productivity thief perfectly. As
he was building his career, Cosby read some advice that he took to
heart: “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying
to please everybody.” This is advice worth living by. If you can’t say
no a lot, you’ll never truly be able to say yes to achieving your ONE
Thing. Literally, it’s one or the other—and you get to decide.
When you give your ONE Thing your most emphatic “Yes!” and
vigorously say “No!” to the rest, extraordinary results become
possible.
2. FEAR OF CHAOS
A not-so-funny thing happens along the way to extraordinary results.
Untidiness. Unrest. Disarray. Disorder. When we tirelessly work our
time block, clutter automatically takes up residence around us.
Messes are inevitable when you focus on just one thing. While
you whittle away on your most important work, the world doesn’t sit
and wait. It stays on fast forward and things just rack up and stack up
while you bear down on a singular priority. Unfortunately, there’s no
pause or stop button. You can’t run life in slow motion. Wishing you
could will just make you miserable and disappointed.
One of the greatest thieves of productivity is the unwillingness to
allow for chaos or the lack of creativity in dealing with it.
Focusing on ONE Thing has a guaranteed consequence: other
things don’t get done. Although that’s exactly the point, it doesn’t
automatically make us feel any better about it. There will always be
people and projects that simply aren’t a part of your biggest single
priority but still matter. You will feel them pressing for your