Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

If you think "The ONE Thing" is an acronym, you are wrong. It is indeed "One Thing" and many little others. Considering that this book took 4 years, research and Gary Keller's tremendous (and oft-repeated) teaching experience to create it is surprisingly short on originality and substance. It starts out with "Six Lies", their "truthiness" soundly defeated under the heavy blows of (recycled) research. Then moves on to the "Truth", the focusing question. There is a big-picture and a small-focus question. This then turned into a habit, promptly focused onto seven areas of life. Surprisingly then we have to look for others to set up a benchmark and follow trending. Then we move from icebergs to dominoes, to arrive to "The Three Commitments" and to "The Four Thieves". Then there will be success. I feel that most of us promptly will run into the following problem. Not being the chairman of the board of a multimillion dollar company, we will have a hard time to create a four hour-a-day blocked time segment to pursue our ONE Thing. Then of course we have other areas of our lives with their own little ONE things. The book is a pretty little thing, well designed with cute graphics, colored quotes, great feel...yet it just feels amiss. Somehow it feels as the brainchild of a very succesful businessman, who is unable to truly relate to others in other profession in other stages of their careers. It is also somewhat contradictory. The author himself admits that he went through stages of different life/career philosophies as he built his own business. He then lost his way to find THE truth that eventually allowed him to find peace and balance (excuse me, balancing). That is, if I build an empire, with blood, sweat and tears (and luck; do not forget THAT real estate boom that ended with a BANG!) once I am on the top, it is easy to look back with a hindsight bias. There is precious little proof that following his own book's advice he would be where he is right now. I would go as far as to offer a reward to the readers; follow this advice, succeed, then I can use your story as proof that this and only this system rewarded you with success. ONE thing somehow implies over-specializing and this, just like in investment increases risk exponentionally. No Bill Gates, no Steve Jobs, no Mark Zuckerberg got to be known pursuing ONE Thing. I think Gary Keller will do much better if he writes an autobiography instead of trying to be a self-help guru. He obviously has a truly fascinating life story to tell, but unfortunately not much wisdom to teach. UPDATE 06/17/13: I took off one additional star for the following reason; the core tenet of the book is a little too similar to an advice that could be read in Brian Tracy's "Eat That Frog!".