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“Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it.” —George Halas Achieving extraordinary results through time blocking requires three commitments. First, you must adopt the mindset of someone seeking mastery. Mastery is a commitment to becoming your best, so to achieve extraordinary results you must embrace the extraordinary effort it represents. Second, you must continually seek the very best ways of doing things. Nothing is more futile than doing your best using an approach that can’t deliver results equal to your effort. And last, you must be willing to be held accountable to doing everything you can to achieve your ONE Thing. Live these commitments and you give yourself a fighting chance to experience extraordinary THE THREE COMMITMENTS TO YOUR ONE THING 1. Follow the Path of Mastery 2. Move from “E” to “P” 3. Live the Accountability Cycle 1. FOLLOW THE PATH OF MASTERY When you can see mastery as a path you go down instead of a destination you arrive at, it starts to feel acc...

“Productivity isn’t about being a workhorse, keeping busy or burning the midnight oil... . It’ s more about priorities, planning, and fiercely protecting your time.” —Margarita Tartakovsky Productive action transforms lives. Putting together a life of extraordinary results simply comes down to getting the most out of what you do, when what you do matters. Living for productivity produces extraordinary results. If money is a metaphor for producing results, then it’s clear— a time-managing system’s success can be judged by the productivity it produces. The most successful people are the most productive people. “My goal is no longer to get more done, but rather to have less to do.” —Francine Jay Productive people get more done, achieve better results, and earn far more in their hours than the rest. They do so because they devote maximum time to being productive on their top priority, their ONE Thing. They time block their ONE Thing and then protect their time blocks wi...

“Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.”  —Alan Lakein Live with purpose and you know where you want to go. Live by priority and you’ll know what to do to get there. Without direction, without purpose, whatever you “shall do” will always get you somewhere. But when you’re going somewhere on purpose, there will always be something you “should do” that will get you where you must go. When your life is on purpose, living by priority takes precedence. GOAL SETTING TO THE NOW Our life is driven by the purpose we give it. But there’s a catch even he had to confront. Purpose has the power to shape our lives only in direct proportion to the power of the priority we connect it to. Purpose without priority is powerless. The truth is we have goals and plans for only one reason—to be appropriate in the moments of our lives that matter. While we may pull from the past and forecast the future, our only reality is the present moment. ...

“Even if you ’ re on the right track, you ’ll get run over if you just sit there.” — Will Rogers EXTRAORDINARY RESULTS Simple formula for implementing the ONE Thing and achieving extraordinary results: purpose, priority, and productivity. Bound together, these three are forever connected and continually confirming each other’s existence in our lives. Their link leads to the two areas where you’ll apply the ONE Thing—one big and one small. Your big ONE Thing is your purpose and your small ONE Thing is the priority you take action on to achieve it. The most productive people start with purpose and use it like a compass. They allow purpose to be the guiding force in determining the priority that drives their actions. This is the straightest path to extraordinary results. Think of purpose, priority, and productivity as three parts of an iceberg. With typically only 1/9 of an iceberg above water, whatever you see is just the tip of everything that is there. This is exactly how p...

“People do not decide their futures, they decide their habits and their habits decide their futures.” —F. M. Alexander The Focusing Question helps you identify your ONE Thing in any situation. It will clarify what you want in the big areas of your life and then drill down to what you must do to get them. It’s really a simple process: You ask a great question, then you seek out a great answer. As simple as two steps, it’s the ultimate Success Habit. Your one-two punch for extraordinary results. 1. ASK A GREAT QUESTION The Focusing Question helps you ask a great question. Great questions, like great goals, are big and specific. They push you, stretch you, and aim you at big, specific answers. And because they’re framed to be measurable, there’s no wiggle room about what the results will look like.  Four options for framing a Great Question. Now, let’s examine the pros and cons of each question quadrant, ending with where you want to be—Big & Specific...

“Success is simple. Do what’ s right, the right way, at the right time.”  —Arnold H. Glasow The choice we face is whether or not we want to form habits that get us what we want from life. If we do, then the Focusing Question is the most powerful success habit we can have. Whenever the outcome absolutely matters, I ask it. I ask it when I wake up and start my day. I ask it when I get to work, and again when I get home. What’s the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary? And when I know the answer, I continue to ask it until I can see the connections and all my dominoes are lined up. Obviously, you can drive yourself nuts analyzing every little aspect of everything you might do. I don’t do that, and you shouldn’t either. Start with the big stuff and see where it takes you. Over time, you’ll develop your own sense of when to use the big picture question and when to use the small-focus question. The Focusing Question is the found...

“Be careful how you interpret the world; it is like that.” —Erich Heller UNCLENCHED  When you try to live up to something that isn’t possible, you can get pretty down. We can’t manage time, and that the key to success isn’t in all the things we do but in the handful of things we do well. I learned that success comes down to this: being appropriate in the moments of your life. If you can honestly say, “This is where I’m meant to be right now, doing exactly what I’m doing, ” then all the amazing possibilities for your life become possible. Most of all, I learned that the ONE Thing is the surprisingly simple truth behind extraordinary results. THE FOCUSING QUESTION “There is an art to clearing away the clutter and focusing on what matters most. It is simple and it is transferable. It just requires the courage to take a different approach.” —George Anders The great secret— concentrate your energy, thought and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged....