What’s the One Thing That’ll Move You Forward
Is your work actually fruitful or are you just busy? Are you majoring in the minor things? What is taking up most of our time and is it actually making a difference?
In Gary Keller’s, “The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results,” he talks about identifying the highest priority that’ll accomplish the most significant work you’re striving for. There is mention of the 80-20 rule where you identify that work that accomplishes 80% of the job with 20% of the time and effort. What is the best return of investment of time for you?
For me I realized that one of my best hurdles to content creation is writing. Although I do spend much time taking photos, recording videos and editing them all, the origin of it all comes from writing. The ideas that I have, the refining process, and the final outline and even script is all written. Even when I am not directly creating, I am reflecting in a journal about my struggles, my priorities, my hopes. In education, while taking a course, listening to a podcast, or reading a book I am note-taking. If there is one thing that takes up much effort that can change things better for me in my content creation journey at this point in time, it’s writing.
At the level of production that I am currently running my YouTube channel, I have many projects being worked on simultaneously. Some of them are fully written out and ready to go, and some are partially written, waiting to be picked up again and be completed so it can be used for shooting.
Once you start creating for yourself, getting into the work and seeing the behind-the-scenes, the more you discover how intentional things are at the stage of production. It’s all planned from the clothes that someone wears, to the kind of plant that is placed for set design. For me, this is mostly, if not all, written.
Great! Now that I’ve discovered the one thing to make more impact on my journey things should be easier, right? Yes, but not quite. What are the barriers to me spending more time on writing? It’s the constant notifications that I look at and answer. It’s lack of sleep that I have make up for in between work days because I try to do too much too late into the night when I should be sleeping before my 5am shift at work the next day. It’s also not being more intentional with my time as I continue to surrender it to other things that don’t move me closer to my goals and desires.
So moving forward, when I set aside time to write, do not disturb is being turned on. No matter what work I think is important, I will put it down by before 7pm so that I can get 7-8 hours of sleep before my 5am shifts. When I plot time on my weekly calendar for time to write I will not budge for a fun time with friends if it wasn’t planned beforehand or if I am on crunch time with deadlines.
If there is a will, there is a way, and I’m trying to make that way happen. Whether or not I am able to follow this course of action 100% day to day, what’s most important is clarifying what is really important to me and affirming myself why I can do this ONE thing.
If you want to read the book yourself, you can catch it over here: The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller
Purchasing through the link will help support me at no additional cost to you.
