Book Review: The One Thing by Gary Keller

As I started upon my journey into real estate, I knew my taste in reading had to change a bit. I'm not cutting out my magical fantastic adventure stories, but the majority of my reading will be in the realm of business since I do feel like I am hitting a learning curve. I have has an urge to read up on successful business practices and mindset adjustment into entrepreneurship. I want to alleviate that feeling of not knowing, and at least put myself in a state of awareness, even to the things that I may not have had any exposure to.


Gary Keller is a real estate agent who help found the Keller Williams real estate franchise which is one of the biggest worldwide. Gary writes about how important prioritizing is, and preaches that the way to achieve big goals, is to go small. This practice is smart, simple, and gives you a sense of relief from expecting yourself to be able to multitask which could be detrimental and unfocused. Gary starts the book with a cute Russian proverb; "If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one". This proverb goes along perfectly with the tone of "The One Thing" that generally focuses on prioritizing one thing to make the next easier.

Gary's use of quotes, proverbs, jokes, and personal stories gives me a sense of relating to the best practices he lays out as the framework to making your business successful. "Going small" is the consistent model for Gary's approach.  I especially connected with an example from the book that included a model of dominoes in a geometric progression where they would increase in size by 50% as the line of dominoes continued. A geometric progression is a like a long, long train - it starts out too slow to notice until it's moving too fast to stop. One domino can knock over the other, but as the line goes on, the dominoes get larger and larger, and before you know it, the results could defy the imagination and by the 57th domino would be practically the length between the earth and the moon! This model and example hit home for me because it created a visual representation of what focus and prioritization in addition to consistency would end up doing for anything that you set your heart on.

Gary talks a big game about a healthy work/life balance and thats something that I wanted to get a little help thinking about. Planning your day, or week, and then actually running behind schedule, not getting things done on time and making decisions to keep family time as a priority is just as important as planning for your business. This was a key element that I focused on and tabbed in this book. If this is something that you struggle with and need a bit of hand holding through planning more family time, then this is a great chapter for you.

As the book goes on you learn new models and best practices to follow to prioritize, and really get down to your true ONE THING. I finished the book and wrote down the looming question that I will be asking myself daily from this point on: "Today, what is the ONE thing I can do today such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?".

Time management is important, and should be prioritized when it comes to starting or managing your business but I feel like some of the lessons and practices from this book can transcend into other factors in my life. The lessons are good and open your eyes to the importance of planning and prioritizing, but just focusing on ONE things and specializing in just ONE thing is not the goal, more importantly you should be focusing on ONE thing at a specific TIME. I have been a victim of multitasking in the past, where I would complete something with a lack of true focus because I am multitasking which is seen as somewhat of a positive trait, where in realty multitasking can increase the potential for error. I want to be able to increase my focus on one thing at a time and be a super planner to put together truly productive days.