One of the main ideas of “The One Thing” is that we can determine what our top priority should be by asking ourselves this question: what’s the one thing I can do right now such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?
It’s a great way to approach your to-do list. Instead of just working on important items, you can work on items that have a trickle-down effect. By completing one task, you may solve multiple problems at once. If you’re worried that the tree outside your window might fall on your house, you can eliminate that concern by cutting down the tree. But doing that might also eliminate the concern about roots damaging your foundation, will allow grass to grow in that part of your yard, and will reduce the amount of leaves you have to rake up in the fall.
My cousin Eddie has another way of phrasing “the one thing.” Instead, he asks what we need to do to “make the problem go away.”
Life doesn’t always go as planned. We all have problems, some of them unexpected, and when they pop up, we need to find a way to solve them. Eddie’s approach is to tackle the problem head on and take whatever steps we need to to make it like it never even happened.
The first time I heard him use this expression was when we were flying back from Vegas several years ago. As the plane was descending, I realized that I had left my keys in the hotel room safe. Instead of panicking, Eddie asked, “what do we need to do to make the problem go away?”
We quickly developed a game plan. When the plane landed, he went with our wives (girlfriends at the time) to pick up the luggage from baggage claim while I hopped on the shuttle to the rental car facility. I rented a car, met them at the terminal, dropped my cousin and his wife off at their house, picked up the extra set of house keys from my Mom’s, and called the hotel when I got home. They overnighted the keys to me, and a couple days later I was able to return the rental car. While this seemed like a big problem initially, it ended up costing us a few minutes at the airport and about a hundred dollars. Three days later, it was as if nothing had ever happened.
To make the problem go away, sometimes it takes more than “one thing” – it actually takes a series of steps. But usually there are only a handful of tasks that need to be completed, and we can quickly return to normal.