You need to know what matters most.

In the area of productivity, it doesn’t matter how efficient you are; your productivity won’t really increase. Many managers I come across in the workplace are working frantically on ten to twelve things all at once, and all of it gets done kind of average. In other words, a lot of ‘average stuff gets kinda’ done. I think there’s a problem with this. It means that we can the most crucial projects or tasks, which actually require most of our attention.

Gary Keller recently wrote a book called ‘The One Thing,’ and I love the premise of this book: that there is one thing that matters most. You have one most important step and everything else is just a distraction until that one thing is done. He describes it as being like a domino effect. If you can nail the one most important thing for your day, your week or your year, you trigger a domino effect and have the most impact.

Here is the big question I’ve been promising:

What is the one thing you can do, that through doing it, you’ll achieve the most leverage or make everything else easier?

Use this one quesion to guide you when thinking about your next project, or as a daily question to ask when starting your day.