How to Prioritize When Everything Feels Important: The ONE Thing Framework

Linda

November 19, 2025

Introduction

In last month’s blog, I spoke about strategic decision-making—the four tools that help us make the right decisions when stakes are high. But here’s what happens after you’ve applied that framework: you still have dozens of things you could potentially say yes to that meet the criteria. Some are objectively good. Some are even better. And all of them are competing for the same limited resource—your time, your energy, your attention.

So the question shifts from “Is this aligned with my values and vision?” to “Among everything that’s aligned, what actually deserves my singular focus?”

The Problem With Too Many Right Things

Let’s say your vision is to achieve financial freedom within the next 10 years—the kind where you don’t need to work for money any longer. Many of my clients want this, either through a productive business or career, and they all face the same challenge: not a lack of options, but an overwhelming abundance of them.

Some decisions are straightforward. You wouldn’t spend more money than you earn, for instance. But then comes the harder question: How do I actually get there? What do I focus on first? Which opportunities move me closer to that goal, and which ones just look like they should?

Here’s the insight that shifts everything: most of us don’t fail because we’re working on the wrong things. We fail because we’re working on too many right things. We run out of fuel before we reach the summit.

The Question That Cuts Through Complexity

In The ONE Thing, Gary Keller and Jay Papasan ask a deceptively simple question:

“What’s the ONE Thing you can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”

The book sold nearly 2.5 million copies because this question cuts through complexity like nothing else. (I wish my books sold as massively. 😉)

The brilliance isn’t just that it helps you identify what matters most—it’s that it forces you to confront the cost of divided attention. Saying yes to your ONE Thing inherently means saying no to everything else. Not sometimes. Not eventually. Right now.

How This Works in Practice

Take our financial freedom seeker. She has multiple ambitions: save aggressively, find a high-paying job, buy an investment property. All worthy goals. All aligned with her vision. But which is her ONE Thing?

After reflection, she determines that establishing a career trajectory with increasingly higher income is her leverage point. Why? Because higher income makes saving easier, investing more accessible, and wealth-building faster. When this piece is in place, everything else falls into line.

But she doesn’t stop there. The ONE Thing isn’t just a big-picture concept—it scales down. She asks the question again for the next quarter: “What’s the ONE Thing I can do in the next three months to significantly advance my career trajectory?”

She considers her options—get a certification, change companies, start a side business. After consideration, she realizes that moving to a company with better growth potential is her ONE Thing right now. It provides both an immediate income increase and long-term advancement opportunities, making the certification less urgent and the side business less necessary for now.

She went from feeling overwhelmed by multiple good paths to having absolute clarity about where to direct her energy next. Divided attention slows results, creates fatigue, and honestly isn’t very efficient for what you’re trying to achieve. Don’t trust people who say they can multitask effectively—they may juggle multiple things, but their work is rarely excellent.

The Discipline of Actually Choosing

Here’s what makes this hard: the ONE Thing demands that you choose. Not “these are my top three priorities.” Not “I’ll work on all of these but focus mostly on one.” One. Singular.

This isn’t about robbing yourself of life’s opportunities. It’s about recognizing that extraordinary results require focused effort, and focused effort requires the courage to say no. Your limited fuel needs to go toward the most important work.

When you’re clear on your ONE Thing, the no’s become easier. Not effortless, but easier. Because you’re not rejecting something arbitrarily—you’re protecting something essential.

What I’ve Observed

Both in my own life and in working with clients who establish their ONE Thing, something shifts. We get a turbocharged engine to move things forward with real force. That’s what undivided attention does when you stop hedging your bets.

Within months—not years, months—their businesses and careers become highly productive. Not because they worked harder, but because they worked with singular focus. Momentum builds faster than expected. Doors open that didn’t exist before. The path that seemed impossibly steep suddenly has footholds you couldn’t see.

When you concentrate your energy instead of dispersing it, you don’t just do more—you do better. You go deeper. You create compound effects that scattered effort never could.

The Promise and the Challenge

This approach doesn’t make life easier—focus is actually quite difficult. But it makes progress inevitable. And there’s something deeply liberating about knowing that if you just keep showing up for your ONE Thing, if you protect it fiercely and work it consistently, you will get where you’re trying to go.

Even when you are focusing on ONE Thing, you might not get there as fast as you hoped. The path might twist in ways you didn’t anticipate. But you will move forward. Meaningfully. Measurably. That forward motion transforms good intentions into real results.

When Priority Becomes Practice

The question “What’s my ONE Thing?” isn’t something you ask once. It’s a filter you return to daily—when your calendar fills up, when opportunities arise, when you’re tempted to say yes to something good that isn’t great. It’s how strategic performers turn abstract vision into concrete action.

Your Turn

So here’s the question: What’s the ONE Thing you can do right now—this week, this month, this quarter—such that by doing it, everything else in pursuit of your vision will be easier or unnecessary?

Not three things. Not five. One.

And once you’ve identified it: What are you willing to say no to in order to say yes to that?

That’s where the real power lives.