How to Use AI to Find Your ONE Thing (In 10 Minutes or Less)

Feeling Scattered? This Prompt Will Help You Refocus and Move Forward With Clarity

Welcome to Words Into Works. Each week, I share one article that helps you use AI to apply what you learn from nonfiction books. If you’ve ever finished a great book—and struggled to do something with it—this newsletter is for you. Paid subscribers gain full access to every prompt, walkthrough, and live example I’m creating to help turn ideas into action.

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TL;DR

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Most productivity advice tells you to do more. The ONE Thing by Gary Keller asks a better question: What’s the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary? In this issue, I share how that question shifted my focus from effort to leverage—and how a simple prompt can help you find your own highest-return action.

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A few months ago, I felt overwhelmed. Not the dramatic kind; the slower, heavier kind that creeps in when everything feels slightly off.

My to-do list had grown wild, and I couldn’t remember the last time I finished something that mattered.

Each day, I worked and fell further behind. I wasn’t burned out, per se. I was busy. However, my effort wasn’t earning traction. If anything, it was scattering it.

I’d tried everything I knew. Blocking time. Sorting tasks. Chasing clarity with different exercises.

And still, I was left with the same sense of drift: I was moving constantly, but rarely forward.

What if the problem wasn’t effort? What if it was the question I was using to decide where to place it?

That’s when I revisited a line I’d highlighted in my Kindle years ago in The ONE Thing by Gary Keller.

I’d skimmed past it at the time, half-nodding in agreement, half-reaching for the next page in a bid to {Blank}. But this time it stopped me.

Not because it offered an answer, but because it changed the question.

The Question That Changed the Question

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

—Gary Keller, The ONE Thing

Keller calls it the Focusing Question: part tool, part compass, part lens, part lever—all designed to move you forward with clarity.

It sharpens your attention until one thing stands out. That ONE Thing, Keller says, is often the first domino that topples bigger outcomes with less effort and less waste.

It’s easy to miss the power of that image. We’re trained to think in piles, not sequences; lists, not levers.

But the Focusing Question invites a different kind of logic: do the right thing first, and the rest will either fall into place. or fall away.

Let’s break it down.

• “ONE thing” narrows your field. No multitasking. No hedging. Just one deliberate act.

• “I can do” brings the idea down to ground level. Not what you should do, or could do, but what’s possible here and now.

• “Such that by doing it…” introduces leverage. You’re not looking for output. You’re looking for a cascade.

• And finally, “…everything else becomes easier or unnecessary” shifts the framing from what needs to be done to what makes everything else irrelevant.

That’s what makes the Focusing Question so potent. It compresses ambition and execution into a single, repeatable act:

Tip the right domino, and let momentum carry the rest.

Here’s the real genius: it works at every level. At the macro level, it clarifies your direction:

“What’s the ONE thing I can do with my career? My health? My relationships?”

At the micro level, it salvages scattered days:

“What’s the ONE thing I can do in the next 15 minutes that will actually move something forward?”

In both cases, it brings attention to the thing that’s quietly decisive. The Focusing Question doesn’t doesn’t demand.

It just waits for you to slow down and listen.

How to Find and Tip Your First Domino

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Most people treat the Focusing Question as a decision-making tool.

But in practice, it’s something more profound: a diagnostic. A way to isolate the task that doesn’t just move the project, but resets the system.

Here’s what I mean.

A colleague I work with was stuck in what looked like indecision. She was toggling between project directions, briefing formats, and resourcing concerns.

But once she ran the Focusing Question—first through her notes, then through the prompt you’re about to see—what surfaced wasn’t strategy. It was silence.

Her ONE Thing was timeblocking two hours of deep work to think without interruption.

That single act made everything else easier, and a few things unnecessary.

This is what the prompt helps you do. Not just pick a priority, but see what’s blocking it, design for it, and move toward it, within your context.

Think of it like a lightweight executive coach. One that listens carefully, reflects the hard truths, and guides you to your first real domino that changes the shape of the day.

For Paid Subscribers, I’ve adapted the Focusing Question into a prompt you can reuse daily, weekly, or anytime you find yourself buried in too much.

Here’s the prompt: