Westbow Press Blog

02/15/2012

Eat that Frog!

While visiting with my sister and brother-in-law over the holiday, I tripped on a book called, Eat That Frog! 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done In Less Time by Brian Tracy. I hate to admit it but some of my favorite and most memorable marketing and self help book finds have been discovered in their “library” located in the downstairs guest bathroom. Eat That Frog! is one of those fun bathroom reads that have inspired me to get organized and stay focused in 2012.

So what does, Eat That Frog!, mean and how does it relate to what you want to accomplish? Mark Twain once said that if the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long. Your “frog” is the biggest and most important task, the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don’t plan for and tackle first.

For me personally, I am a list maker and I get a thrill out marking items off my list that I’ve completed in a day. But I am a huge offender of taking out the easy tasks first and often find that at the end of day, the hardest, most time consuming and important tasks are left to roll over until the next day which means I am facing those same “frogs” the next morning.

According to Eat That Frog!, the key to reaching high levels of performance and productivity is to develop a habit of tackling your major task at the start of your day. You must develop a routine of “eating your frog” at the start of each day or face the reality of never getting those high level tasks moved over to your “complete” column. Here are a handful of suggestions when tackling your “frog”:

Torn between two frogs? If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest frog first
Take action immediately. If you have to eat a live frog at all, it doesn’t pay to sit and look at it very long
Think on paper. Only three percent of adults have clear, written goals. These people accomplish five to ten times as much as people of equal or better education that have no written goals
Learn to say, “no.” Say “no” to anything that is not a high-value use of your time
Technological time sinks. Technology can be your best friend or your worst enemy. As a society, we feel compelled to communicate incessantly via email (work/personal), text, blogs, Twitter and the mother-of-all time sinks, Facebook. Technology should act as your “servant,” not your “master.”

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