From Busy to Effective with One Question

ByJowi Witt

We are caught in everyday to-do lists.
Some days feel like a golden cage.

There are just enough urgent tasks on the list that you don’t immediately quit.

I have also tried many fancy, long to-do lists.
And the day had just started —
and I was already chasing after it.

I was running behind on every task.

As soon as I deliver & finish my first activity on time.
I already ran behind the rest.

Even all the productivity hacks can’t help you.
They are all good and well until something changes your wild set-up.

The train is delayed.
No matter how efficient you are, once you lost time somewhere, you can’t catch back up.

Studying Forestry has definitely helped me with my long term thinking.

I had to zoom out of the moment.

We had to make decisions which tree to cut down and which to keep.

The Question became as following: Which one Tree do I need to support today
so that it can keep growing better for the next 10 years
​without needing more help?

That was the simple question that I had to answer for each tree. The ones that needed to be cut down – where the ones with less chance of growing well and were in the way of a more healthy tree.

I started noticing that not every problem that exists today is actually going to be there tomorrow.

The author of The One Thing has summarized this into one powerful question:

What one thing can I do today that would make all my other problems go away?

Now my to-do list started to shrink.

The better I got with asking this question,
the faster I got to narrow down my next one thing to work on.

This question is now the replacement of my to-do list.

I focus on this one thing and get it done.

This has not made me efficient,
but effective.

I work until I’m done.
The work is more difficult —
but effective.

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