How you do one thing is how you do everything. ~Old Zen Saying
Hunter Powers: Welcome to The ONE. I'm your host, Hunter Powers broadcasting live from our nation's capital, D.C. proper, Washington, D.C., and your ONE idea for today is, "How you do one thing, is how you do everything." This reportedly is an old zen saying. There's no single individual to which it's attributed. The quote is sometimes said, "The way a person does one thing is the way they do everything." I like the slightly more ownership angled, "How you do one thing is how you do everything." So today we will examine this idea. What does it mean? Do we believe in it? How can we apply it? "How you do one thing is how you do everything." But the basic premise here is that your approach, your rules, your philosophy, on how you approach one area of your life, one ask in your life, however small of a unit you want to consider, that while you'd feel that approach is specific to that one thing, it's actually the approach you use for everything.
Hunter Powers: Let's look at an example. Suppose when you go to a grocery store and you get to the cereal aisle, your approach is to look at the price for every box of cereal in that aisle and find the absolute cheapest cereal you can find and that's the one you purchase because in your mind, cereal is cereal and you want the best deal. Now also in your mind is that you only apply this logic to cereal, but the suggestion of this quote is that you are probably applying this logic to all areas of your life, trying to find the cheapest version of everything. Then the insight is further that there is substantial overhead that you should at a minimum be aware of in adding this rule, this philosophy, this idea of I'm going to find the absolute cheapest version of this because cereal is cereal in all other parts of your life.
Hunter Powers: Let's take this same person and move the example to searching for a pair of pants. "I need a new pair of pants." Well, you now need to consider, are pants pants? Do I simply look for the cheapest pair of pants I can find because a pair of pants is pants, and this idea is suggesting that that's probably what you're doing, or that's probably what someone else is doing, right? So there's also the implied logic here that if you see someone in the cereal aisle applying this cereal is cereal, let me find the cheapest cereal, that's the one that I buy, that they most likely apply this same logic to all other areas of their life. It's a reasonable conclusion. It's not a certainty, but it's a reasonable conclusion. So then the question is how can you take that knowledge and make use of it?
Hunter Powers: Let's move on to another example that I've seen before that I think is slightly more real world applicable, and that's lying. Some people say lying is bad, some people say that some lies are okay, a white lie, we have this idea of a white lie, did no one any harm, in fact, maybe it did some good. The idea that I often hear about lying is that it's far easier to never tell any lies than it is to lie about just a very few small number of things. Here's how the logic goes. So let's assume a close family member asks you, "How are you doing?" You know if you say, "I'm doing fine," that they will put a smile on their face and they will move on with the conversation. You know if you say, "I'm terribly frustrated by everything," that they will become deeply saddened and you will have to endure a terribly long conversation about why you're so deeply troubled about everything.
Hunter Powers: Additionally, you have reason to believe that this will bring their mood level down substantially. So while they were in a rather content place, if you answer this question honestly, you are going to bring them down. So you say, "Well, in this scenario I'm just going to say, 'Okay, I'm doing okay. Just fine." The conversation moves on and the moment moves on. But how you do one thing is how you do everything and here's where the problem comes. So before, you didn't lie and now you've introduced the idea that there are some times where lying is fine. There are moments where the truth is an option and this particular instance, if we surveyed a hundred people on the street, 99 would say, "It's completely fine." "There's no issue here." "You're good to go." "I would have done the same thing." "That makes a lot of sense." But you've now introduced the option in everything that maybe we'll tell the truth or maybe we'll optimize or lie about the truth in order to get something that we want.
Hunter Powers: In this case it was I want this relative to remain happy and they don't need to be concerned with this other thing and they're going to miss read them anyway. So now we move along with our day. Let's say it's a Wednesday. Let's say you need to make a presentation on Friday and the boss comes by and the boss says, "Hey, that presentation for Friday, do you have it already? You good to go?" and you haven't finished it yet. But you feel completely confident that it will be ready on Friday and you know that your boss will feel much more assured if you tell them that, "Yes, it's ready to go, we're good to go. 100%. Can't wait." Then if you tell them it's not quite ready yet and you're still working on it, it's going to introduce a lot of nervousness, a lot of concern, maybe less confidence in your performance and who you are and why are you waiting to the last second.
Hunter Powers: So you say, "Well, in this moment I'm going to use that lying option again. I'm going to say, 'Yes, I am ready. We're good to go. It's solid." Why do you say this? Well, because no one will ever know about this one. There's still Thursday. In fact, you've got the day off there, some random series of happenstances allowed you to have the day off Thursday and you're actually about 20 minutes away, finding 20 minutes on Thursday, terribly easy. So no one is ever going to know that the presentation wasn't ready on Wednesday. You're going to complete it on Thursday. On Friday, you'll present it. The boss will believe you were well prepared from the very beginning and you can feel good. You're going to get some positive feedback on Wednesday when you say, "Yeah, it's ready." They're going to say, "Excellent, excellent. I knew I could count on you, right?" It's this rush of great emotions and then Thursday you'll get it done and no one will ever be the wiser.
Hunter Powers: But now you've introduced another exception to the truth, right? First it was, well, if I'm making a relative happier and they don't really need to know the truth, that was kind of the first scenario. The next scenario is, well, if they'll never find out and it positively benefits me and it positively benefits them, then okay, another time when I don't have to tell the truth, which by the way is a far gap from the first example. But now every time that you're asked something, every single time you have to consider where's my threshold for truth? What's the threshold for when it's okay for me to vary the truth, to compromise the truth? Is this one of those scenarios? I've got to think about it. I've got a process it. I've got to consider my previous times.
Hunter Powers: By the way, maybe this is something that you do very quickly and maybe this is something that you labor over. I don't think it's terribly relevant. You could take the argument that, well, some people are better liars and that's certainly true, but this idea still holds water, that once you introduce the idea of varying from the truth, that's now how you do everything in your life. You consider everything, every opportunity, every scenario, you consider every scenario as an opportunity to vary the truth. Why? Because how you do one thing is how you do everything. So the insight here is that you have to be aware that how you do one thing is how you do everything. So if you take one opportunity and compromise, you will now have to for every opportunity going forward question if this is an opportunity where you should compromise yourself.
Hunter Powers: So that's kind of a negative example, but I think there's also positive examples of how you do one thing is how you do everything and it probably comes around to standards, how complete, how polished, how professional, how creative is the work that you do. If it's lacking, look for other areas in your life that are lacking in that same way. Why? Because how you do one thing is how you do everything and you will probably find a similar pattern where you aren't getting that thing done. Maybe you're procrastinating too much, maybe you're not allowing enough time. Maybe you're always being overly optimistic about how much can be done in a brief moment. Because how you do one thing is how you do everything. So look for the other areas in your life where you're seeing the same limitation.
Hunter Powers: I like this quote, it takes it a little bit to an extreme, but it's also a great way to look for optimizations in your life, optimizations in your work and to try to diagnose why things might not be going right. So for this moment we will agree with the zen saying, and that was your ONE idea for today. Until next time, this is Hunter Powers and you've been listening to The ONE.