Note: Hey all. The blog version is back this week. All of it is derived from the podcast — which goes deeper if you're so inclined.
This week we’re diving back into part two (chapters 10-12) of “The One Thing” by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. This post stands alone — no book required, no previous episodes needed.
“There is an art of clearing away the clutter and focusing on what matters. It is simple and transferable. It just requires the courage to take a different approach.” — George Anders
Whether I’m facilitating a design sprint, trying to run a business, or just attempting to not completely fall apart as a working mom — clearing away the clutter is the work. Physical clutter. Digital clutter. Mental clutter. All of it.
And this section of The ONE Thing gets right to the heart of how you actually do that. It’s three chapters — the Focusing Question, the Success Habit, and the Path to Great Answers — and they all point to the same truth:
How we phrase the questions we ask ourselves determines the answers that eventually become our life.
Chapter 10: The Focusing Question
Before I tell you what the focusing question is, I want to make the case for why the question itself matters so much.
When I work with teams — in workshops, in design sprints, in any kind of discovery session — one of the very first things we do is get crystal clear on the questions we’re actually trying to answer. We don’t go straight to solutions. We go to the question first. That’s because if you ask the wrong question, you’ll get the wrong answer.
If you’ve ever read or watched The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, you know exactly what I mean. They ask the supercomputer the ultimate question about life, the universe, and everything — and the answer comes back: 42. Completely useless. Why? Because they asked the wrong question. The question wasn’t specific enough. The question didn’t contain the right intent.
Sound familiar?
So — what IS the focusing question?
What’s the one thing I can do, such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?
Deceptively simple, right? But there’s a lot packed in there. The book breaks it into three parts, and so will I:
Part 1: “What’s the one thing I can do?” This is your commitment. You don’t get three things. You don’t get a short list. You have to choose. One thing. Not two, not three. That discipline — that act of choosing — is where the real work begins.
Part 2: “Such that by doing it...” This is where you have to dig deep. What you pick isn’t just a task — it’s a domino. It’s the first domino in a line of dominoes. And when you push it, it starts knocking everything else over. That’s why it’s so important to get clear on the one thing that actually starts the chain reaction.
Part 3: “Everything else will be easier or unnecessary.” This is your payoff. When you find the right thing, you’re not just checking a box — you’re creating momentum. It’s not one task. It’s the onset of a whole path clearing in front of you.
Big Picture vs. Small Focus
The book maps this out visually — a big outer circle for your big-picture question, and a dot at the center for your small focus question. (I’ll include a visual of this.)
The big picture question sounds like: What’s my one thing for growing my business this year?
The small focus question sounds like: What’s my one thing right now, today?
I actually use both — and I’ve added a third layer. I set a big-picture intention, then I work in monthly cycles (sometimes aligned to the lunar calendar, because yes, I’m that person) to check in on whether I need to adjust my direction. And each morning, I ask myself: What’s my one thing today?
A quick confession: I technically have two “one things” each day — one for my health, one for my business. And I think that’s okay, because they are completely distinct areas of my life. The book actually validates this, which brings us to chapter 11.
Chapter 11: The Success Habit
This chapter is about making the focusing question a habit — not a one-time exercise, but a foundational daily practice.
The research they reference says it takes about 66 days to truly form a habit. I’ve been doing this consistently for about 30 days, so I’m halfway there. (And yes, every time I say “halfway there,” Bon Jovi starts playing in my head. I can’t help it. It’s a whole thing.)
The book introduces something here that I’ve talked about before: the Wheel of Life. It’s a framework for mapping out the different areas of your life — spiritual, health, personal, relationships, job, business, finances — and applying the focusing question to the ones that matter most right now.
You don’t have to ask the focusing question in every area every single day. But you do want to be intentional about which areas you’re prioritizing, and honest with yourself about which ones you can let slip for a season. Right now for me, it’s business and health. I have goals pulling me forward in both, and I’ve learned the hard way that I can’t let the health ball drop.
The success habit also comes with a rule that someone in one of my Deep Work Days Q&As really needed to hear — and honestly, maybe you do too:
Your one thing should be the first thing you do.
Everything you do before it is a distraction wearing productivity as clothing.
If something is truly your number one priority, why are you waiting until the end of the day to do it? Do the one thing first. Then let the rest of the day happen.
(Full disclosure: I recorded this podcast before doing my own one thing for business today. I contain multitudes. Progress, not perfection.)
Chapter 12: The Path to Great Answers
This is my favorite part — because this is where productivity meets facilitation meets my work as a product leader. It all comes together here.
The Four Quadrants
The book introduces four quadrants to help you figure out what kind of question you’re actually asking:
* Small & Broad — weak question, low bar, won’t stretch you
* Big & Broad — better, but too vague to act on
* Small & Specific — targeted, but not ambitious enough for extraordinary results (this is where a lot of us get stuck — we’re basically just writing a to-do list)
* Big & Specific — the sweet spot
Here’s their example: “What can I do to increase sales this year?” That’s small and broad. Fine, but not exciting.
Now change it to: “What can I do to double sales in the next six months?”
That second question forces you out of your normal playbook. You can’t just do more of the same and get there. You have to actually think differently. The specificity creates urgency. The ambition creates stretch. That’s what a big, specific question does — it makes ordinary answers impossible.
The Three Horizons
Once you have a great question, the answer you reach for matters just as much. The book frames this in three levels — and if you’re in product management, this is going to sound very familiar.
Doable → Horizon 1 (Defend the Core) Small, incremental improvements. Feature enhancements. Keeping the lights on. These are valuable — they compound over time and keep clients happy. But they are not going to get you extraordinary results. They’re not designed to.
Stretch → Horizon 2 (Emerging Offerings) This is where you start thinking beyond what people asked for, and into what they actually need. If you start noticing themes in problems your product didn’t intend to solve or workarounds in your product, this can be a flag to consider to think about an emerging offering. Suddenly you’re solving a completely different, and sometimes more meaningful problem.
Possibility → Horizon 3 (Innovation) This is where most people get scared and retreat back to the doable. And I get it. I see it constantly with the product managers I coach. So many PMs start out as Horizon 1 thinkers — they’ve been rewarded for that, they’ve been trained for it. My whole goal when I work with people is to help them stretch into Horizon 2 and 3 thinking. But here’s what I see happen: we get into possibility space together, people get genuinely excited, and then the sprint ends and they retreat right back to safe.
Safe things and certain things will absolutely move the needle. In small ways. But if you want extraordinary results — for your product, your business, your life — you have to be willing to go beyond the doable.
As the book puts it: “a possibility answer exists beyond what is already known and being done.”
Search for Clues
Here’s what I love about how the book approaches this: before you even try to solve a problem, there’s a step that often gets skipped. It’s one of my favorite things we do in design sprints — Lightning Demos.
I give teams 15–20 minutes to go out into the world and look for examples of how similar problems have been solved — not just in their industry, but everywhere. Because copying what a competitor did is only useful if that competitor was thinking at the right horizon. If they were playing small, you’re just inheriting their limitations.
The richest inspiration often comes from completely different contexts. I was recently working on something in the higher education space, and one of the most generative insights we found came from health monitoring apps. Completely different industry — but the way they help individuals make decisions about their health gave us a whole new framework for thinking about our problem. That’s what cross-industry research unlocks.
Don’t limit yourself to the obvious sources. Look for clues. Ask bold questions. And don’t retreat to Horizon 1 when things get uncomfortable.
The Big Takeaway
Chapters 10, 11, and 12 all point to the same truth:
The quality of your question determines the quality of your results.
Ask a small, vague question — get a small, ordinary answer. Ask a big, specific question — open yourself up to extraordinary results.
And then do the work to find a great answer. Don’t default to what you already know. Don’t retreat to Horizon 1 when the stakes get real. Find some clues. Stretch yourself.
As the book says — and I underlined this — “trailblazing up the path of possibilities is always worth it. When we maximize our reach, we maximize our life.”
Next week: We’re diving into Part 3 of The ONE Thing — Live by Purpose, Live by Priority, Live by Productivity. I’ve read this section before and it really stuck with me. I think you’re going to love it.
And if you’re in West Michigan — come hang out! I’m leading the West Michigan Product Community meetup on Wednesday, March 11th at Cornerstone University, kicking off at 5:30pm. We’re launching a whole series on product discovery and I am genuinely pumped about it.
Now go find your one thing. 🎯
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