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

by Brian Tracy

You can get control of your tasks and activities only to the degree that you stop doing some things and start spending more time on the few activities that can really make a difference in your life.

I have immersed myself in the works of Peter Drucker, Alec Mackenzie, Alan Lakein, Stephen Covey, and many, many others.

“You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.”

The ability to concentrate single-mindedly on your most important task, to do it well and to finish it completely, is the key to great success, achievement, respect, status, and happiness in life.

The key to success is action.

The first rule of frog eating is this: If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one 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.

develop the lifelong habit of tackling your major task first thing each morning.

Successful, effective people are those who launch directly into their major tasks and then discipline themselves to work steadily and single-mindedly until those tasks are complete.

Your success in life and work will be determined by the kinds of habits that you develop over time.

habit is learnable through practice and repetition, over and over again,

Practice is the key to mastering any skill. Fortunately, your mind is like a muscle. It grows stronger and more capable with use.

You need three key qualities to develop the habits of focus and concentration, which are all learnable. They are decision, discipline, and determination.

See yourself as the kind of person who gets important jobs done quickly and well on a consistent basis.

You have a virtually unlimited ability to learn and develop new skills, habits, and abilities. When you train yourself, through repetition and practice, to overcome procrastination and get your most important tasks completed quickly, you will move onto the fast track in your life and career and step on the accelerator of your potential.

There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants and a burning desire to achieve it.

Clarity is perhaps the most important concept in personal productivity.

A major reason for procrastination and lack of motivation is vagueness, confusion, and fuzzy-mindedness about what you are trying to do and in what order and for what reason.

Step one: Decide exactly what you want.

Step two: Write it down. Think on paper.

Step three: Set a deadline on your goal;

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. Do something. Do anything.

For you to achieve any kind of success, execution is everything.

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

Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement.

The more you think about your goals, the greater becomes your inner drive and your desire to accomplish them.

Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.

Six-P Formula. It says, “Proper Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance.”

This discipline of systematic time planning can be very helpful to you.

When you plan each day in advance, you will find it much easier to get going and to keep going.

Make a list of all your projects, the big multitask jobs that are important to your future.

Lay out all of your major goals, projects, and tasks by priority, what is most important, and by sequence, what has to be done first, what comes second, and so forth.

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 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.

Your job is to feed this part of your mind continually.

The fact is, the time required to complete an important job is often the same as the time required to do an unimportant job.

Time management is really life management, personal management.

Your ability to choose between the important and the unimportant is the key determinant of your success in life and work.

Resolve today that you are going to spend more and more of your time working in those few areas that can really make a difference in your life and career and spend less and less time on lower-value activities.

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.

“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.

“There is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important thing.”