The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results (Gary Keller)

Do you always worry that your day is very busy but yet you are unable to get all your work done? Are you somebody who believe that multitasking is the only way to get more work done ?

Are you someone who constantly juggle between several tasks at the same time?

If you answer yes to all these questions then this book may provide you with a different perspective worth exploring by you.

The words of wisdom from this book are:

  • “Be like a postage stamp— stick to one thing until you get there.”   —Josh Billings
  • “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” —Mark Twain

    THE SIX LIES BETWEEN YOU AND SUCCESS:
  • Everything Matters Equally
  • Multitasking
  • A Disciplined Life
  • Willpower Is Always on Will-Call
  • A Balanced Life
  • Big Is Bad
    The six lies are beliefs that get into our heads and become operational principles driving us the wrong way.
  • “Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.”   —Johann Wolfgang von
  • As Henry David Thoreau said, “It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants.
  • Australian prime minister Bob Hawke duly noted, “The things which are most important don’t always scream the loudest.”
  • A to-do list becomes a success list when you apply Pareto’s Principle to it.
  • “To do two things at once is to do neither.”   —Publilius Syrus
  • Success is about doing the right thing, not about doing everything right.
  • “Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And you’re keeping all of them in the air. But one day you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls—family, health, friends, integrity—are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered.”
  • “Be careful how you interpret the world; it is like that.” —Erich Heller
  • MY WAGE By J. B. Rittenhouse
    I bargained with Life for a penny, And Life would pay no more, However I begged at evening When I counted my scanty store. For Life is a just employer, He gives you what you ask, But once you have set the wages, Why, you must bear the task. I worked for a menials hire, Only to learn, dismayed, That any wage I had asked of Life, Life would have willingly paid.
  • The Focusing Question collapses all possible questions into one: “What’s the ONE Thing I can do / such that by doing it / everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”
  • “Success is simple. Do what’s right, the right way, at the right time.”   —Arnold H. Glasow
  • “People do not decide their futures, they decide their habits and their habits decide their futures.”   —F. M. Alexander
  • A college professor once told me, “Gary, you’re smart, but people have lived before you. You’re not the first person to dream big, so you’d be wise to study what others have learned first, and then build your actions on the back of their lessons.”
  • “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” — Will Rogers
  • “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”   —George Bernard Shaw
  • Charles Dickens shows us a simple formula for creating an extraordinary life:
    Live with purpose. Live by priority. Live for productivity.
  • Who we are and where we want to go determine what we do and what we accomplish.
  • One of our biggest challenges is making sure our life’s purpose doesn’t become a beggar’s bowl, a bottomless pit of desire continually searching for the next thing that will make us happy. That’s a losing proposition.
  • Dr. Martin Seligman, past president of the American Psychological Association, believes there are five factors that contribute to our happiness: positive emotion and pleasure, achievement, relationships, engagement, and meaning.
  • When each day begins, we each have a choice. We can ask, “What shall I do?” or “What should I do?” Without direction, without purpose, whatever you “shall do” will always get you somewhere. But when you’re going somewhere on purpose, there will always be something you “should do” that will get you where you must go. When your life is on purpose, living by priority takes precedence.
  • “Efficiency is doing the thing right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing.”   —Peter Drucker
  • When life happens, you can be either the author of your life or the victim of it. Those are your only two choices— accountable or unaccountable. This may sound harsh, but it’s true.
  • Your talent and abilities are limited resources. Your time is finite. If you don’t make your life about what you say yes to, then it will almost certainly become what you intended to say no to.
  • As actor and comedian Lily Tomlin once said, “The road to success is always under construction.” So don’t allow yourself to be detoured from getting to your ONE Thing. Pave your way with the right people and place.
  • “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”   —Mark Twain

To summarise:


If you try to do everything, you could wind up with nothing. If you try to do just ONE Thing, the right ONE Thing, you could wind up with everything you ever wanted. The ONE Thing is real. If you put it to work, it will work.

GARY KELLER