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

by Brian Tracy

Many people confuse activity with accomplishment. They talk continually, hold endless meetings, and make wonderful plans, but in the final analysis, no one does the job and gets the results required.

10/90 Rule. This rule says that the first 10 percent of time that you spend planning and organizing your work before you begin will save you as much as 90 percent of the time in getting the job done once you get started.

20 percent of your activities will account for 80 percent of your results, 20 percent of your customers will account for 80 percent of your sales, 20 percent of your products or services will account for 80 percent of your profits, 20 percent of your tasks will account for 80 percent of the value of what you do, and so on.

The average person in business today, especially a manager in the age of cutbacks, is working at 110 to 130 percent of capacity.

“What are my highest-value activities?” Put another way, what are the biggest frogs that you have to eat to make the greatest contribution to your organization? To your family? To your life in general?

Everyone procrastinates. The difference between high performers and low performers is largely determined by what they choose to procrastinate on. Since you must procrastinate anyway, decide today to procrastinate on low-value activities. Decide to procrastinate on, outsource, delegate, and eliminate those activities that don’t make much of a contribution to your life in any case. Get rid of the tadpoles and focus on the frogs.

“Once I had identified the second most important task, you asked me the same question with regard to the third most important task. “You then said something that shocked me at the time. You said that fully 90 percent of the value that you contribute to your company is contained in those three tasks, whatever they are. Everything else you do is either a support task or a complementary task that could probably be delegated, downsized, outsourced, or eliminated.”

“I had been working very hard for more than eight years, and I doubled my income in just one month by focusing all my time and energy on my three key tasks. Not only that, but instead of working ten- and twelve-hour days, I work from eight o’clock to five o’clock and spend time in the evenings and on the weekends with my husband and my children. Focusing on my key tasks has transformed my life.”