I just re-read The One Thing, the book that asks you to ask yourself, for each area of your life, this “Focusing Question”:

“What’s the ONE thing I can do, such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary.”

The book, and the movement it has created, makes the case for drilling down through all of the possible things you could do, to find the one to do first.

I just asked myself that question about a new project I’m starting. It’s big and important and a bit intimidating and I don’t know where to begin.

In asking myself The Focusing Question, the answer I gave myself was this: research. It’s the one thing I can do that will make everything else easier or unnecessary.

I’ll see my options, identify available resources, and get lot’s of ideas, all of which will help me gain perspective.

And that’s what I’m doing.

Reading, studying, learning, and making notes. When I’ve done that for a while, I will ask the focusing question again and see what to do next.

This is a much better approach than what I might otherwise have done: start anywhere and see what happens. As long as I don’t spend too much time learning and not enough time doing, I should be in good shape.

As you know, learning never stops for a professional. We continually invest in our business and ourselves. I buy a lot of books and courses and read every day because I’m all I’ve got and I want to be the best I can be. I’m sure you do, too.

If you want to be the best you can be in terms of marketing your practice, you owe it to yourself to check out my course, The Quantum Leap Marketing System which I’ve just re-released.

For taking your practice to the next level, it could be your “one thing”.

The Quantum Leap Marketing System

Confession time. I’ve missed some of my daily walks lately. I could tell you it’s been hot or I’ve been busy but the reasons don’t matter. I need to get back on the consistency train.

How about you? Is there something you’ve stopped doing, or something you haven’t started you know you should?

A project, a person you need to call, a decision you need to make?

We all have these. The question is, what do we do about them?

The first step is to identify the problem. Sometimes that’s hard to do but you can’t fix a problem you don’t know (or won’t admit) you have.

Identify what you’re not doing and write it down in a place where you’ll see it. If you need a little more, talk to someone who will hold you accountable and confess your sins.

The good news is that this one step–being honest with yourself (and others) about a problem is often all you need to fix it. All that was needed was to remove it from the recesses of your consciousness and bring it front and center.

There will be other things we resist starting (or re-starting). As coach Don Shula once said, “It’s the start that stops most people.”

More good news: starting is easy.

The other day I was supposed to start a project that involved some research and writing. It’s not difficult, it won’t take more than an hour or two to do everything, but I still found myself procrastinating.

I opened a new tab in my browser, entered a a keyword phrase, and came up with 7 or 8 sites that had the information I needed.

I didn’t read everything, I simply saved the urls into a new note.

I’ll have this thing done today or tomorrow.

Baby steps, for the win.

Speaking of steps, I need to go take some right now.

Life is short. And messy. It’s easy to get worked up about little things that don’t amount to a hill of beans. 

Most things don’t matter. As John C. Maxwell put it, “You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.”

So my message to you (and myself) is to let it go. Whatever’s bothering you, put it in a helium balloon and let it float away.

(That’s the image I use sometimes. You’re welcome to use it.)

A few things do matter. Maybe 20%. Maybe less. Probably less. These few things, “the precious few,” account for most of your results and are worth most of your effort.

But they’re not worth any of your worry. Nothing is, because worry is a useless emotion. 

When you feel yourself starting to worry about a problem or poor results, use that feeling as a signal to review what you’re doing (or not doing) and make adjustments.

Ask yourself, “What can I do about this?” If there’s something you can do, do it. That’s your plan. If you don’t know what to do, your plan is to find out what you can do.

And if can’t do anything about the problem? Yep. Let it go.

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