We all want to achieve extraordinary results. To achieve that we require 3 commitments. Learning about these commitments was the number one lesson from the best selling book “The One Thing” by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan that I have learnt. In this article, I will be condensing an 18 page long valuable lesson into a 6 min read. I chose this lesson to be the most important one because it covers what to do while striving for extraordinary results.

Gary Keller is the founder and chairman of the world’s largest Real Estate company by agent count, Keller Williams Realty. He has shared his learnings through this book.

I am writing this article to make sure I implement these 3 commitments in my life and also help you do the same.

The 3 Commitments

To achieve our goals, we must give 3 commitments to ourselves. First, follow the path of mastery. Seeking to be the best at what you are aiming for. Second is to do the things the right way. Lastly to be accountable for your own faith. Let us dive deeper and know how to implement them.

Follow The Path Of Mastery 

“If the people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn’t seem wonderful at all ” - Michelangelo

Thought of mastering may seem intimidating at first. Being the best in the field sounds impossible. We look at someone who has already achieved it and think, “I can never achieve that!”. The truth is mastery is not an endpoint. It is a mindset. A mindset that makes you aware that in order to achieve mastery you must follow a path. As you start following the path mastering seems more possible with each step.

Following The Path

Once you realise mastery is not an endpoint but a path, you start walking on it. It is simply giving at least 4 hours a day consistently while being the most productive. You might have heard of 10,000-hour rule to achieve mastery. Many of the elite performers start their career at the age of 10 years and they practice daily for 3 hours. By the time they are adult, they achieve mastery in their field. Same applies to us. If we put in 4 hours every day, 250 days a year, we can achieve mastery in 10 years.

Giving Your Best Shot

After making a daily commitment to practice something you must give your 100% to it. During those 4 hours, nothing is more important than the goal. Be in the best mental and physical state before you start working on it.

Perks of Mastering One Thing

Once you have mastered a thing, your mindset develops. You stop seeing goals as impossible. You start thinking in terms of how much time and effort it will take to achieve it. Hence mastering one thing enables you to master anything else next. Then extraordinary results will become a norm in your life.

Move From ‘E’ to ‘P’

“The Path of mastering something is the combination of not only doing the best you can do at it, but also doing it the best it can be done”
When we set out to the path of mastery, we start doing the things that naturally come to us. Those methods are not always the best. If we keep on practising with a suboptimal approach we are bound to hit a limit. Even after hitting a limit if we keep trying the same approach, the results won’t change. Eventually seeing no progress we give up and start aiming something else and the cycle continues.

There are two ways to do a thing, Entrepreneurial way (E) and Purposeful way (P). The Entrepreneurial way is what comes to us naturally and we start doing the thing without giving it a proper thought. This may be a sub-optimal approach. The Purposeful way of doing involves seeking the best models and systems to do a task. After you hit a ceiling with this approach you ask what other models and system I can use to go further.

Seeking The Optimal Way

Most of the time we are not the first one to walk on the path of mastery. Many people in the past have walked on it before. Seek them and learn from them. Read books on the topic you want to gain mastery, do an online search for articles and videos on it. You will find endless models and systems to choose from. When you run out of all of them, it is time to be creative and start making your own. Whenever you hit a limit seek the optimal way instead of being OK with results.

Accountability

“Accountable people achieve results others only dream of”
We all know that the actions we take have an effect on our environment and the outcome we get. Also, our environment and outcomes have an effect on what actions we will take. This is the accountability cycle. If we take positive and meaningful actions it has a positive effect on the environment which in turn allows us to take other meaningful actions.

Being Accountable

To be successful we must have an internal locus of control. Means whatever is happening to us is because of ourself only (in the context of achieving our big goal). Even if there are external causes, we have to take charge and look at how to solve problems raised by them.
How accountable people function can be shown best in this diagram:
We would like to move towards the accountable side of the diagram. Be mindful of your problems and ask those questions.
 

Accountability Partner

Studies have shown that when someone holds you accountable for your goals you are 76.7% more likely to achieve it. Study only involved participates sending a weekly report on their progress. Hence just by updating someone regarding your goal can be very beneficial.
Let us improve the role of Accountability Partner further. If he has some knowledge on your chosen thing of mastery then he can provide objective feedback based on reality. Alert you when you are distracted. Best accountability partner would be a coach or a mentor. He can provide you with the models and systems to achieve mastery and be there to check on your progress. When you encounter a problem you can seek his help.

One Example To Understand All

Let’s say your big goal is to become a graphic designer freelancer. You have just heard about a senior who is making a living out of it. So now your goal is fixed we can apply 3 commitments.
  • To master the skill of graphic designing you have decided to make at least 1 graphic every day(Mastering). It takes you around 5 to 6 hours to make one. 
  • You start using Adobe Illustrator from your knowledge of Microsoft Paint(Entrepreneurial way).
  • You soon realise you do not know how to use Adobe Illustrator so you go on Youtube to learn it. After a week you can easily make graphic without any help online(Purposeful way). But then you are stuck again because your graphics look a bit odd and are asymmetrical(Plateau). So you contact your senior to help you out (Seeking new models and systems). Your senior directs you to a course on Udemy for the graphic designer. You take that course and in next 1 month, your graphics start looking appealing.
  • There are still some imperfections that your senior points out. You show him your work regularly to get feedback(Accountability Partner). 
  • After 5 months of daily graphic designing and applying the optimal approaches you finally what to start freelancing work. Unfortunately, you can not find any. So you ask yourself what is going on(Seeking reality). You get to know that you have no clients yet, so no one is ready to trust you. You accept this(Accepting the reality). Then you ask what can I do? One solution was to work for free for the first 5 clients(Finding solution). After applying it your 6th client was impressed by your previous work and you got the job easily. Like this, you are a freelancing graphic designer making a living for yourself.

Conclusion

We all want to live a meaningful life, filled with extraordinary achievements. So let us all today pledge to keep these commitments. We will select the path of mastery to achieve our big goal. We will seek out the optimal methods. We will take sole responsibility for our future.
This was only one of the key lessons I learnt the book “The One Thing”. Book is filled with valuable lessons like common lies about success (my next favourite one), the 4 thieves of productivity and the 3 Ps(live with purpose, live by priority and live for productivity). It was a magnificent book and I highly recommend it. Click here to check it out.

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