I doubt the premise of “the one thing” book. Just looking at their example—Bill Gates—if he’d only have one skill, the computer programming, he would never get rich. (The actual developers of MS DOS did not get nearly as rich as Bill Gates.) Instead it was a combination of understanding software, being at the right moment at the right place with the right connections, abusing the monopoly and winning the legal battles, etc. So at the very least, it was software development skills and the business skills; the latter much more important than the former.
(To see a real software development demigod, look at Donald Knuth. Famous among the people who care about the craft, but nowhere as rich or generally famous as Bill Gates.)
I would expect similar stories to be mostly post-hoc fairy tales. You do dozen things; you succeed or get lucky at one and fail at the rest; you get famous for the one thing and everything else is forgotten; a few years later self-improvement gurus write books using you as an example of a laser-sharp focus and whatever is their current hypothesis of the magic that creates success. “Just choose one thing, and if you make your choice well, you can ignore everything else and your life will still become a success” is wishful thinking.
Some people get successful by iteration. They do X, and fail. Then they switch to Y, which has enough similarity with X that they get comparative advantage against people who do Y from scratch, but they fail again. They they switch to Z, which is against has some similarity with Y… and finally they succeed. The switch to Y may happen after decades of trying something else.
Some people get successful by following their dream for decades, but it takes a long time until that dream starts making profit (some artists only get world-wide recognition after they die), so they need a daily job. They probably also need some skills to do the daily job well.
To answer your question directly, recent useful habits are exercising and cooking.
(I also exercised before, but that was some random thing that came to my mind at the moment, e.g. only push-ups; the recent habit is a sequence of pull-ups, one-legged squats, push-ups, and leg raise. I also cooked before, but I recently switched to mostly vegetarian meals, and found a subset that my family is happy to eat. I also cook more frequently, and remember some of the frequent recipes, so at shop I can spontaneously decide what to cook today and buy the ingredients on the spot, and I can easily multi-task while cooking.)
My next decade will mostly be focused on teaching habits to my kids, because what they also do has a big impact on my daily life. The less they need me to micromanage them, the more time I have for everything else.
Somewhat related: In which ways have you self-improved that made you feel bad for not having done it earlier?
I doubt the premise of “the one thing” book. Just looking at their example—Bill Gates—if he’d only have one skill, the computer programming, he would never get rich. (The actual developers of MS DOS did not get nearly as rich as Bill Gates.) Instead it was a combination of understanding software, being at the right moment at the right place with the right connections, abusing the monopoly and winning the legal battles, etc. So at the very least, it was software development skills and the business skills; the latter much more important than the former.
(To see a real software development demigod, look at Donald Knuth. Famous among the people who care about the craft, but nowhere as rich or generally famous as Bill Gates.)
I would expect similar stories to be mostly post-hoc fairy tales. You do dozen things; you succeed or get lucky at one and fail at the rest; you get famous for the one thing and everything else is forgotten; a few years later self-improvement gurus write books using you as an example of a laser-sharp focus and whatever is their current hypothesis of the magic that creates success. “Just choose one thing, and if you make your choice well, you can ignore everything else and your life will still become a success” is wishful thinking.
Some people get successful by iteration. They do X, and fail. Then they switch to Y, which has enough similarity with X that they get comparative advantage against people who do Y from scratch, but they fail again. They they switch to Z, which is against has some similarity with Y… and finally they succeed. The switch to Y may happen after decades of trying something else.
Some people get successful by following their dream for decades, but it takes a long time until that dream starts making profit (some artists only get world-wide recognition after they die), so they need a daily job. They probably also need some skills to do the daily job well.
To answer your question directly, recent useful habits are exercising and cooking.
(I also exercised before, but that was some random thing that came to my mind at the moment, e.g. only push-ups; the recent habit is a sequence of pull-ups, one-legged squats, push-ups, and leg raise. I also cooked before, but I recently switched to mostly vegetarian meals, and found a subset that my family is happy to eat. I also cook more frequently, and remember some of the frequent recipes, so at shop I can spontaneously decide what to cook today and buy the ingredients on the spot, and I can easily multi-task while cooking.)
My next decade will mostly be focused on teaching habits to my kids, because what they also do has a big impact on my daily life. The less they need me to micromanage them, the more time I have for everything else.