The One Thing — The Book That Changed Me 7 Years Ago

It All Started with One Book

July 24, 2019, 7 PM. I was reading Gary Keller's The One Thing.

What made this book special was that it wasn't just another "focus more" self-help book. There were pages in the middle where you actually write things down — and the exercise was unique.

Not mapping out your life goals, but finding the one thing you want to achieve within the next 5 years.

The structure cascades down like this:

5-year goal
  └ The ONE thing to do this year
      └ The ONE thing to do this month
          └ The ONE thing to do this week
              └ The ONE thing to do today

It's not a grand life plan — you find your one thing for today, and it connects upward to your 5-year goal. When I did this exercise for the first time, my head felt clearer than it had in a long time.

Goals Written in a Notebook Get Forgotten

The problem came the moment I closed the book. Whatever I'd written started fading from memory the next day.

What if your smartphone — which you carry everywhere — could remind you of these goals every day? The idea came quickly.

• Input goals in top-down structure: 5 years → year → month → week → today
• Open the app each day and immediately see your one thing for today
• See how goals are connected in a clear visual structure

I started sketching the concept that same day. I drew UIUX wireframes over and over. But it never got finished. I'd work on it a bit, stop, come back, stop again. Eventually, the app never launched — and those notes and sketches got buried somewhere in a folder.

Seven Years Later

It was 2026. I'd grown a lot as a developer, having built Smart Lotto, 3weeks, and BbitbbitBook. And one day, I opened that old folder.

The notes and UIUX sketches from 2019 were still there. After 7 years, the idea still looked good.

I should have built this.

In the next post, I'll talk about picking up this project again after 7 years — and why I chose Flutter this time.