I had a two-hour interview with someone yesterday (that will be available soon) about my firm and investment programs and found myself sharing a few of the same thoughts, over and over.

“Managing the ASYMMETRY^® investment programs is all we do. I am fully committed and focused on this one thing: buying, selling, and managing risk in global markets to generate the positive asymmetry needed to compound capital positively within our risk tolerance”.

In a recent letter to our investors to reflect on the 10-year anniversary of my founding Shell Capital Management, LLC, I described the evolution of the firm, ASYMMETRY^®, and myself over 10 pages. I called it “10 years of Shell Capital Management”; Christi called it “10 pages of 10 years of Shell Capital Management”! (When talking about these things, I have no short version!)

That’s because I’m fully committed and focused on this one thing we do. In that letter, I went so far as to say: it’s all I have, all I am, and all I ever will be. As I reflected on the past 10 years, it occurred to me that my whole life has revolved around this one thing. Without it, none of the other things, the lifestyle we enjoy, would exist. I believe my priorities are in line with reality. That has been a tremendous advantage for us.

Then this morning, I get an email from getAbstract: “Top 10 Summaries”, the 10 most downloaded getAbstract summaries in 2014.

The first on the list?

“Achieving great success in all aspects of your life calls for devotion to one single thing.”

The One Thing
The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results

Gary Keller and Jay Papasan
Bard Press, 2013

getAbstract goes on to describe it: (I highlighted a key part in bold)

“Gary Keller, co-founder of Keller Williams Realty and a best-selling author, overcame his own issues about focus, which makes his claims about cultivating better habits even more compelling. Multitasking isn’t fruitful, he says, since success requires long periods of laser-like concentration, not scattershot swats. If you find your “ONE Thing,” Keller says, everything else will fall into place. Keller, writing with co-author Jay Papasan, breaks his approach down into manageable steps based on research and experience. With an engaging writing style and plenty of bullet points, this reads much faster than its 200-plus pages”

It says the ONE Thing will bring your life and your work into focus. I obviously don’t need a book to tell me that, but it may help me understand myself better. I’ll be reading the abstract, but also listening to the audiobook version on Audible during my long walks in sunny Florida.