Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time

by Brian Tracy

Your “frog” is your biggest, most important task, the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don’t do something about it. It is also the one task that can have the greatest positive impact on your life and results at the moment. The first rule of frog eating is this: If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first.

This is another way of saying that if you have two important tasks before you, start with the biggest, hardest, and most important task first. Discipline yourself to begin immediately and then to persist until the task is complete before you go on to something else.

The second rule of frog eating is this: If you have to eat a live frog at all, it doesn’t pay to sit and look at it for very long.

Take Action Immediately

Here is a great rule for success: Think on paper.

Step one: Decide exactly what you want.

One of the very worst uses of time is to do something very well that need not be done at all.

Step two: Write it down.

Step three: Set a deadline on your goal; set subdeadlines if necessary.

Step four: Make a list of everything you can think of that you are going to have to do to achieve your goal.

Step five: Organize the list into a plan. Organize your list by priority and sequence.

Step six: Take action on your plan immediately.

Step seven: Resolve to do something every single day that moves you toward your major goal.

2. Review your list of ten goals and select the one goal that, if you achieved it, would have the greatest positive impact on your life. Whatever that goal is, write it on a separate sheet of paper, set a deadline, make a plan, take action on your plan, and then do something every single day that moves you toward that goal. This exercise alone could change your life!

Always work from a list. When something new comes up, add it to the list

Make your list the night before for the workday ahead. Move everything

Second, you should have a monthly list that you make at the end of the month for the month ahead.

Third, you should have a weekly list where you plan your entire week in advance.

Finally, you should transfer items from your monthly and weekly lists onto your daily list.

20 percent of your tasks will account for 80 percent of the value

Often, a single task can be worth more than all the other nine items put together.

This task is invariably the frog that you should eat first.

The most valuable tasks you can do each day are often the hardest and most complex. But the payoff and rewards for completing these tasks efficiently can be tremendous. For this reason, you must adamantly refuse to work on tasks in the bottom 80 percent while you still have tasks in the top 20 percent left to be done.

Before you begin work, always ask yourself, “Is this task in the top 20 percent of my activities or in the bottom 80 percent?”

The hardest part of any important task is getting started on it in the first place. Once you actually begin work on a valuable task, you will be naturally motivated to continue. A part of your mind loves to be busy working on significant tasks that can really make a difference.

Just thinking about starting and finishing an important task motivates you and helps you overcome procrastination.

Effective, productive people discipline themselves to start on the most important task that is before them. They force themselves to eat that frog, whatever it is.

A long time perspective turns out to be more important than family background, education, race, intelligence, connections, or virtually any other single factor in determining your success in life and at work.

Your attitude toward time, your “time horizon,” has an enormous impact on your behavior and your choices.

Rule: Long-term thinking improves short-term decision making.

Successful people have a clear future orientation. They think five, ten, and twenty years out into the future.

Make Better Decisions about Time In your work, having a clear idea of what is really important to you in the long term makes it much easier for you to make better decisions about your priorities in the short term.

“Losers try to escape from their fears and drudgery with activities that are tension-relieving. Winners are motivated by their desires toward activities that are goal-achieving.”

Motivation requires motive.

Thinking continually about the potential consequences of your choices, decisions, and behaviors is one of the very best ways to determine your true priorities in your work and personal life.

Obey the Law of Forced Efficiency The Law of Forced Efficiency says, “There is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important thing.”

Three Questions for Maximum Productivity

The first question is, “What are my highest-value activities?”

The second question you can ask continually is, “What can I and only I do, that if done well, will make a real difference?”

The third question you can ask is, “What is the most valuable use of my time right now?”

Make time for getting big tasks done every day. Plan your daily workload in advance.

One of the most powerful of all words in time management is the word no! Say it politely. Say it clearly so that there are no misunderstandings. Say it regularly as a normal part of your time management vocabulary.

Procrastinate on Purpose Most people engage in unconscious procrastination. They procrastinate without thinking about it. As a result, they procrastinate on the big, valuable, important tasks that can have significant long-term consequences in their lives and careers. You must avoid this common tendency at all costs.

The first law of success is concentration—to bend all the energies to one point, and to go directly to that point, looking neither to the right nor to the left. WILLIAM MATHEWS

7 Focus on Key Result Areas

When every physical and mental resource is focused, one’s power to solve a problem multiplies tremendously. NORMAN VINCENT PEALE

Once you have determined your key result areas, the second step is for you to grade yourself on a scale of one to ten (with one being the lowest and ten being the highest) in each of those areas.

The Great Question

“What one skill, if I developed and did it in an excellent fashion, would have the greatest positive impact on my career?”

8 Apply the Law of Three