In This Episode…
After reviewing Gary Keller’s “The One Thing” in episode 148 and diving deeper into my purpose in episode 149, in this episode I start looking at Keller’s recommendation to “Live by Priority”. Specifically in this episode I cover:
- Why it is impossible to have multiple priorities.
- How to do the backwards time-walk (it’s like a moonwalk only not as good on the dance floor!).
- The relevance of dominoes (and it has nothing to do with Pizza).
- Two additional things you MUST do to supercharge ANY goal achieving process.
Episode Show Notes…
00:09 – This episode dives deeper into the book “The One Thing” by Gary Keller that I reviewed a couple of days ago. It also builds on yesterday’s episode where I began exploring my purpose.
00:57 – In Keller’s book, he has a lovely iceberg model to help define how to be extraordinarily successful. Yesterday I looked at the bottom level – purpose. Today I am going to look at the middle layer – priority.
01:35 – The more I read this book, the more I like it. The One Thing is extremely well written with lots of deep and meaningful insights and some excellent quotes.
02:04 – Here are a couple of great quotes from this part of the book that really resonated with me:
Live with purpose and you know where you want to go. Live by priority and you’ll know what to do to get there.
Gary Keller, The One Thing
Purpose without priority is powerless.
Gary Keller, The One Thing
02:26 – Keller goes to great length to clarify on the correct use of the term “priority”. Too often we see people claim they have a “number of priorities”. That of course is impossible – you can, by the true definition of the word, only have one priority.
03:10 – Keller calls his approach to goal achievement “Goal Setting To The Now”. This is about setting a long term distant future goal and then working back what needs to be in place in ever shortening time frames. It is like walking back in time from the future.
03:27 – He links the principle to dominoes lined up and then tumbling down in succession when the first one is tipped over.
03:58 – The time frames he uses are:
- Someday
- 5 years
- 1 year
- 1 month
- 1 week
- 1 day
- Now
04:40 – This is like going from the murky distant future to the crystal clear clarity of the now. This is how we are hardwired. Our brain’s process future distant goals as abstract concepts but it sees short term goals as more concrete.
05:25 – Two other important principles Keller shares help supercharge any goal achievement process:
- 05:25 – Visualisation of the process (not just the end result).
- 06:15 – Writing the goals down.
07:54 – I am going to apply this approach to my own work life and build on the foundation I started yesterday when I established my purpose. I’ll share my experiences with you tomorrow.
Until then…
