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

by Brian Tracy

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.

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 that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long.

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

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.

Practice is the key to mastering any skill. Fortunately, your mind is like a muscle. It grows stronger and more capable with use. With practice, you can learn any behavior or develop any habit that you consider either desirable or necessary.

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

“Taking action without thinking things through is a prime source of problems.”

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

When you make your list the night before, your subconscious mind will work on your list all night long while you sleep.

Time management is really life management,

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

The mark of the superior thinker is his or her ability to accurately predict the consequences of doing or not doing something.

Long-term thinking improves short-term decision making.

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.”

“What can I and only I do, that if done well, will make a real difference?”

“What is the most valuable use of my time right now?”

You can get your time and your life under control only to the degree to which you discontinue lower-value activities.

For you to do something new, you must complete or stop doing something old.

The key result areas of management are planning, organizing, staffing, delegating, supervising, measuring, and reporting.

The key result areas of sales are prospecting, building rapport and trust, identifying needs, presenting persuasively, answering objections, closing the sale, and getting resales and referrals.

Your weakest key result area sets the height at which you can use all your other skills and abilities.

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

The main reason to develop time management skills is so that you can complete everything that is really important in your work and free up more and more time to do the things in your personal life that give you the greatest happiness and satisfaction.

It is the quality of time at work that counts and the quantity of time at home that matters.

All of life is the study of attention; where your attention goes, your life follows. JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI

Elbert Hubbard defined self-discipline as “the ability to make yourself do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.”