Eat That Frog

Brian Tracy

Most of us find it difficult to find enough time to complete our to-do list. However, the key to tackling this, lies in prioritizing and taking care of the most important tasks first. 

‘Eating your frog’ is an old saying that means taking care of our most unpleasant task for the day first thing in the morning so that the worst is behind us. Brian Tracy uses this phrase as a metaphor for taking care of our most challenging and most important task first. His book Eat That Frog puts forwards ideas on how to accomplish this by staying focused, and to become more efficient persons.

The first step to overcoming procrastination is clarity. Having a clear idea about what we have to do will ensure productivity. Writing down our goals will help us accomplish more than trying to sort them in our heads. After outlining our goals we should also divide and plan our time accordingly. Breaking down our goals into simpler steps and using checklists make it easier to tackle. Checklists will keep us motivated to continue our tasks.

We often make the mistake of taking care of the easier, less important tasks and procrastinating on the most important ones. The Pareto Principle helps remedy this. It says that in a list of ten tasks at least two should be more important than the rest.

The second step is prioritizing. After we have made note of what all has to be done, we should figure out what the most important tasks are and focus on them first. The ABCDE method is designed to help us prioritize and focus. In this method, the tasks in a list are assigned letters from A to E, where A is the most important and E is the least important. The A’s are our frogs which should be taken care of first, while the E’s can be skipped out on if we don’t have enough time. A could be as important as editing our résumé and E could be as simple as finishing a fun video. Also, while doing each of these tasks we should concentrate solely on them and should not let in any distractions.

But being productive is not just about planning and prioritizing. It is a learning process and there is an element of self-exploration involved in it as well. We should learn and adapt ourselves to the most effective ways of doing our tasks as we go along. To do this, first and foremost we should take to working in an environment that is peaceful and comfortable; where we can think for ourselves.

Another important part of self-exploration is understanding our skills and making the most use of them. We should always strive to improve our skills by making use of any available time we have so that they don’t go to waste.

Success comes only with training and discipline because our bodies are our engines to success. An engine should be well cared for, for it to function smoothly. If we are physically and mentally energized we will be more productive. We should take care to not exhaust ourselves. Rest is important for our bodies and in the spirit of that, we should try to sleep for eight hours a day at least. 

To get things done we should also be optimistic. We should be self-motivating individuals. Finding the good in a situation, learning from our mistakes, and not dwelling on the past will ultimately give us a positive outlook on things. This when consistently practiced brings us a more optimistic outlook on life.

Positive thinking will strengthen us and make us more confident. It is also important that we learn creative procrastination which is a part of self-discipline. Creative procrastination is consciously putting off doing the less important tasks to give more room to the more important ones. 

Despite all the planning, we might still find it difficult to achieve our goal. There will be a lot of obstacles along the way that we did not consider. These obstacles can be people, personal weaknesses, or lack of resources. But we should be careful to not focus all the blame on external factors when the problems may well be internal. To overcome these we should start by focusing on any one obstacle at a time and go about it gradually. We should also be self-driven people, not waiting around for others to push us, which is a quality seen in leaders.

Time management is another essential step to productivity. Managing time can be especially difficult for bigger tasks that need continuous attention. This can be tackled by dividing our time into slots and assigning each slot to each step of the task. A time-table works wonders for managing time.

Even though planning is important, we shouldn’t wait too long to start acting on these plans. Only if we start working will our creativity and performance increase. We will eventually achieve a mental state of flow that will in turn increase our productivity. We should act as soon as possible and get it done with, or in other words, we should eat that frog.

Throughout the book, Tracy is conveying the message that to get more things done, we should plan, prioritize, confront our limitations, plan our time, and start acting immediately.  This will put an end to our procrastination and will make us more productive people.

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