Webinar Recording: The Power of One Thing

In this webinar, we talk about the power of doing one task, one project, one goal … and how this is one of the keys to simplifying our lives.

I’ve broken this webinar recording into two parts:

  1. Part I – My Talk: I share how to bring the power of One Thing to your life. (See notes)
  2. Part II – Questions & Answers: I answered questions about one goal in different areas of your life, choosing Most Important Tasks, and more.

Part I: Leo’s Talk (with notes)

You can download this video here, or download just the audio. Or watch above.

Here are the notes from my talk (video is below the notes):

We all know that we’d like to single-task, but we very rarely give ourselves that power.

As we look at simplifying our lives, one of the biggest things we can do to simplify is to reduce how many things we are doing at once.

  1. How many goals are we trying to focus on?
  2. How many projects do we have on our plates?
  3. How many tasks are we trying to do right now?

Many of us have overfull plates because we try to do too much, and try to do it all at once. We’re like a dog with a chew toy in our mouths that we don’t want to let go of, even though we also want to put a bone in our mouths. We want to have both at once … but we can’t.

The answer is to lean into the power of One Thing.

Imagine, instead of having half a dozen goals at once, we only had one goal at a time. We’d be much more likely to accomplish that goal, because we could put our full power into it. It would be the only thing that would matter. We wouldn’t waiver from this commitment — we’d be like people ready to walk through walls to make it happen.

Imagine, instead of having half a dozen projects going on, that we could focus on one at a time. We’d pour everything we had into this project. It would get our full attention and full care. Wed be meticulous about this project, because we’re not distracted. And once we’re done with that, we could focus fully on the next project.

Now, I know not everyone has the luxury of being able to have only one project at a time, but you can see the power of this mode of working. Maybe we could put aside at least one or two projects for now, to focus on just a few. Or maybe we could split  each project into mini-projects, and focus on each of those one at a time.

No matter what, we can bring the same kind of power of focus to single-tasking. Most of us know that single-tasking is a good thing, an effective way of working, but we rarely do it. That’s because of a few factors:

  1. We’re pulled away by distractions
  2. We immediately think of other things we need to do and jump to do something on one of those tasks, like a dog distracted by a squirrel
  3. We are repelled away from a task that’s difficult, complicated or filled with uncertainty

When we allow ourselves to be pulled away by distractions or other tasks, we’re allowing our focus to be diluted, and complicating our lives.

What if we could give ourselves the luxury of this kind of simplicity?

It’s fairly simple to practice too — we just have to keep it in mind:

But there’s something magical that happens when we give ourselves this undistracted space. It’s a staying in uncertainty, which is where real creativity happens. It’s forcing ourselves to come up with something new, when we don’t have the answers. It’s giving the gift of full presence.

There is tremendous power in letting ourselves be in this space without running away. Without switching or letting ourselves be distracted. It is a shift to openness to what’s before us.

It’s also much more effective, as a way of working. And it just happens to be a great way to simplify everything we do — we can let go over being overloaded and spinning plates, and just be fully with one goal, one project, one task.

Part II: Questions & Answers

You can download this video here, or download just the audio. Or watch below.

In this 2nd part of the webinar, I answered some great questions about:

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