Anastronaut taught me how to do one pagers… If you’re anything like me, you spend most of your time focusing on the things that you’re good at and enjoy doing, and less time on the things that you’re not so excited about. If you’re an astronaut about to embark on a mission to the International Space Station though, you don’t have that luxury. Commander Chris Hadfield is the best test pilot that NASA has ever had on the astronaut training programme. He’s a test pilot for over 70 different types of aircraft and has been the voice of mission control for 25 space shuttle missions. He was Chief of International Space Station Operations from 2006-2008 after spending 146 days in space where he completed 2,336 orbits of the earth. But being good at flying fast planes won’t get you very far on the space station if somebody loses a finger. Or if you need to reboot (and recode) a computer. Or do a space walk to fix a problem with a tool you haven’t used before. Or if you need to communicate with the Russian prime minister. In Russian. These are all things you’ve never done before which will push you far outside of your comfort zone. Question: How do you learn to do all these things (and more) in less than six months? Answer: One pagers. One pagers helped Commander Hadfield learn many new skills in an accelerated time period, by focusing only on the things that mattered most to him in that critical moment. By only concerning himself with the direct “interface” he would be faced with, he created one pagers as learning devices that would trigger his mind to only remember the things that he needed to know about. From the moment I saw his one pagers, I knew that they could also help me in my mission critical environments. I may not need to solve a problem “in one breath” but I am often under pressure to deliver messages to an executive audience where millions of dollars or thousands of jobs could be impacted. What you will find in this book is a snapshot of the one pagers I’ve created. Some were created for my work at IBM, others simply to learn new skills or understand what made a particular speech so great. Many of them are not pretty. Some of them are almost illegible! But they have all made a huge difference to me and helped me in my personal and professional life. I hope that in some small way they help to inspire you as well.