Eat that frog, first thing

There are lots of people giving advice on how to be more productive, get more things done, stop procrastinating. It does seem like we all share the desire to be more effective in our daily lives.

I discovered something that’s helped me a lot!

Brian Tracy is a well respected and prolific productivity guru. His book Eat That Frog, was first published in 2004, and this link points to a newer edition.

The idea is simple.

Frog: any task that you’ve been putting off, where the consequences of putting it off are BIG. The consequences could be good, or bad.

• If you don’t do it, you’ll see BAD consequences. For example, don’t file your taxes and just watch that Frog hop into your life take away some of your hard-earned money!
• If you DO do it, you stand to win BIG! For example, you’ll never get the lead role in that film unless you go to the auditions!.

Eat: take care of it. Show up and do something about it.

Here’s how it works.

1. Every morning when you wake up, identify your biggest Frog, and then first thing, eat that Frog.

2. If you find you have several Frogs, eat the ugliest one first.

3. If the Frog is particularly ugly, don’t spend too much time thinking about it. Just gobble it up.

And that’s all there is to it.

I think I heard that Brian Tracy thought of this when he was watching a jungle reality TV show, and the contestants had some really awful, creepy things they had to eat. He thought that if the first thing he had to do in the morning was to eat a live frog, then the rest of the day could only get better. Or something like that.

So, tomorrow, awaken to your gently chiming Zen alarm clock. Then, first thing, think: Do I have any Frogs today? Ah, yes. I have two of them: ring the doctors for an appointment for that test, and finish that work I said I’d do this month (because it’s now the last day of the month!)

I find this is just the best for reminding me to get done first thing the most important thing.

What do you think?