One.

ONE. What does this number mean to you? What can this number possibly mean to me, my friends and colleagues?

Well, recently I’ve come to understand that ONE is a significant number. ONE minute can be devastating. A proposal that is time-stamped ONE minute late can be a deal breaker for being considered for a project. ONE minute late can take you off the boards for consideration! Now I’m not so sure that punctuality was enforced heavily enough in school!

ONE minute could mean something great too! A proposal time-stamped ONE minute early equals an enormous sigh of relief! Whew! We made it! All of those hours and last minute crises were all worth it! We made it with ONE minute to spare.

ONE minute of my time equals diddly squat of company money, whereas ONE minute of a principal’s time equals like 600% of my time. That’s significant.

ONE degree. If a wall is drawn ONE degree off, that could add up to a LOT of extra dollars spent to construct a wall assuming that the length of the wall is a considerable distance. Think about it. Just ONE degree could be unrecognizable to your eye when working on a 14” computer screen and then, BAM! $4,000 (or more) later it adds up to 25 additional lineal feet (or more) of some ridiculously expensive wall type to a project. That's huge.

ONE inch. The same principles apply here as they did for ONE degree. Imprecise measurements can be a devastating mistake. It’s as simple as that.

ONE is generally considered a small number. ONE dollar isn’t much to anybody anymore. ONE minute seems like a blink of an eye in most circumstances. ONE degree - well, any unit of measure that isn’t precise is generally going to cause problems in the future, so should we really be shocked by this one? ONE inch - (see ONE degree).

And let’s not forget, ONE is the loneliest number.