In recent years, following rising popular complaints about corruption plaguing some of our civil servants, government at all levels has been introducing new measures to foster lianzheng (clean governance).

There have been attempts at setting up lianzheng public accumulation fund systems (similar to housing public accumulation funds), in which individuals and government jointly contribute to an account, and the officials are entitled to receive money from the account periodically if they remain clean by that time.

There have been attempts at building lianzheng files, which would keep a meticulous record of individual officials’ history of governance.

There have been lianzheng competitions. Some governments have been in the habit of giving out lianzheng manuals, which provide various tips on how to keep clean.

In a neighborhood in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, a 3-by-1.4-meter statue has been erected that is dedicated to the memory of clean governance in ancient China.

In parts of Shandong Province and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, officials have received epigrammatic anti-corruption text messages, moralizing about the many benefits of staying clean.

There are lianzheng movies, lianzheng cartoons, lianzheng calendars, outdoor anticorruption advertising, lianzheng training sessions targeting official spouses, even anticorruption cards and postcards.

As calendars made at public expense have become much-maligned as wasteful and corrupt, there have been directives recently calling for a halt to this practice, to the chagrin of some calendar makers.

There are also high-tech fixes, among them equipping official cars with GPS that will track down the whereabouts of the users.

Our officials have shown repeatedly their imaginative and innovative power, but they also need to show their courage to try the ONE approach that probably works.

Fewer things for more effect

It is difficult to stick to just one thing.

In the Song Dynasty (960-1127), Zhao Pu, a prime minister, was a voracious reader, often reading late into night.

Apparently, his reading enabled him to go about his official business with great dispatch and confidence the next day.

When he died, it was found that all these years he had been reading only one book, the Analects, one of the first books of the Confucian canon.

As a matter of fact, Zhao found that half of the Analects sufficed for him to serve the state heart and soul.

In this world burdened with information, or disinformation, and distractions, everyone is confronted with the challenge of finding the ONE book, or the ONE thing.

In “The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results” by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan (2013), the authors point out that superior success comes from extraordinary focus on your “ONE Thing,” while multitasking and following long to-do lists might prevent you from achieving goals.

Aligning your purpose with your one thing brings you clarity, and puts many larger forces in motion.

Success requires long years of laser-like concentration, not scattershot swats.

Going small

If you find your “ONE Thing,” everything else will fall into place.

One-shot prioritizing ­— or “going small” with a focus on a singular purpose or achievement — enables you to get more done in a day.

Desks groaning with to-do lists and calendars packed with dozens of projects divide your concentration into tiny pieces.

“You want your achievements to add up, that actually takes subtraction, not addition. You need to be doing fewer things for more effect instead of doing more things with side effects,” the book observes.

As a result, adding more projects without trimming others dooms your results, your family relationships, friendships, diet, sleep pattern and health.

Here we naturally think of the plight of our children, who are all masters at multitasking at schools, and many of them busy rushing from one training session to the next, even during the weekends.

Unlike many adults who fall prey to the inundation of information because they lack the willpower to resist the bits and pieces, these overscheduled children have all this imposed on them by their eager parents who do it for “the benefits of the kids.”

The kids are all born as holistic entities, vigorous and distinct, but in the modern assembly line of education, they are tempered and battered daily by discreet, tiny fragments of information that cannot relate to each other, or to any larger purpose.

Given the intensity of the instruction, most of them would have reached functional Chinese literacy by the third grade, but how many of them have come across the one book that can truly inspire them?

In the case of my son, he had plenty of time for reading before the fourth grade, but since then his reading has been curtailed drastically because his teachers have been so eager to  test and retest his verbal capacity by using numerous test items.

To ensure these items will put the kids — and their parents — on their knees, they are constructed in such a way as to discourage independent understanding.

Recently my failures to come up with the standard answers have given my son considerable satisfaction.

Why can’t Chinese language teachers give them a good book and leave them alone?

When these courses that ought to be anticipated with eagerness become curses, what kinds of graduates do we expect from such an education establishment?

As the book observes, passion and skill often align with a person’s one thing, for singular focus leads to spending a large amount of time developing a skill that improves your results and adds to your enjoyment.

“The most productive people start with purpose and use it like a compass. They allow purpose to be the guiding force in determining the priority that drives their actions,” the book points out.

As it is shown, ultimate success comes from passion, not willpower and discipline.

True education should inspire our children and equip them with a sense of judgment.

Such equipment would help them to identify their priority.

True greatness can only be internally motivated.

The book also provide specifics on how to effect change. “The people who achieve extraordinary results don’t achieve them by working more hours. They achieve them by getting more done in the hours they work,” the authors conclude.

Working long hours for years might not work for everyone, so the authors suggest trying “time blocking.”

“It’s a way of making sure that what has to be done gets done” by focusing your energy on your most important work.

Take your calendar and block off the time you need to accomplish your one thing — even if the amount of time seems disproportionate.

Extend your time blocking for extraordinary results. Follow three guidelines:

1. Block time for rest and relaxation — You need some time off to be productive.

2. Block time for your one thing — Use all of the time allotted, and more if needed, to complete your one task. If you finish sooner, refocus the remaining time on the next step toward your one thing. Block this time out as early as possible in the day.

3. Block time for planning — Use this time for setting and evaluating your goals and progress. Take an hour each week to look at your monthly and annual goals.