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Eat That Frog!
21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More
Done in Less Time
Brian Tracy
Introduction: Eat That Frog
- The Need to Be Selective
- The Truth about Frogs
- 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.
- 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
- Develop the Habits of Success
- Develop a Positive Addiction
- No Shortcuts
- “Practice, man, practice.”
- Practice is the key to mastering any skill.
- The Three Ds of New Habit Formation
- Decision
- Discipline
- Determination
- Visualize Yourself as You Want to Be
1 Set the Table
Here is a great rule for success: Think on paper.
Step one: Decide exactly what you want.
Stephen Covey says, “If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall,
every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.”
Step two: Write it down.
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.
Step six: Take action on your plan immediately.
Step seven: Resolve to do something every single day that moves you toward your major goal.
Keep pushing forward. Once you start moving, keep moving. Don’t stop.
The Power of Written Goals
Clear written goals have a wonderful effect on your thinking.
Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement.
Think about your goals and review them daily.
2 Plan Every Day in Advance
Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.
ALAN LAKEIN
Alec Mackenzie wrote, “Taking action without thinking things through is a prime source of problems.”
Increase Your Return on Energy
Six-P Formula: “Proper Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance.”
Two Extra Hours per Day
Always work from a list.
Different Lists for Different Purposes
create a master list
Second, a monthly list
Third, a weekly list
Finally, you should transfer items from your monthly and weekly lists onto your daily list.
Planning a Project
Begin today to plan every day, week, and month in advance.
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.
3 Apply the 80/20 Rule to Everything
We always have time enough, if we will but use it aright. JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
Number of Tasks versus Importance of Tasks
Often, a single task can be worth more than all the other nine items put together.
Focus on Activities, Not Accomplishments
Rule: Resist the temptation to clear up small things first.
The hardest part of any important task is getting started on it in the first place.
Motivate Yourself
Just thinking about starting and finishing an important task motivates you and helps you overcome procrastination.
Time management is really life management, personal management.
4 Consider the Consequences
Every great man has become great, every successful man has succeeded, in proportion as he has confined his powers to one particular channel.
ORISON SWETT MARDEN
Rule: Long-term thinking improves short-term decision making.
Make Better Decisions about Time
Rule: Future intent influences and often determines present actions.
Think about the Long Term
Motivation requires motive.
Denis Waitley, a motivational speaker, says, “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.”
Obey the Law of Forced Efficiency
Rule: There will never be enough time to do everything you have to do.
Deadlines Are an Excuse
Under the pressure of deadlines, often self-created through procrastination, people suffer greater stress, make more mistakes, and have to redo more tasks than under any other conditions.
Three Questions for Maximum Productivity
“What are my highest-value activities?”
“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?” In other words, “What is my biggest frog of all at this moment?”
Goethe said, “The things that matter most must never be at the mercy of the things that matter least.”
Goethe: “Only engage, and the mind grows heated.
Begin it, and the work will be completed.”
5 Practice Creative Procrastination
Make time for getting big tasks done every day. Plan your daily workload in advance. Single out the
relatively few small jobs that absolutely must be done immediately in the morning. Then go directly
to the big tasks and pursue them to completion.
BOARDROOM REPORTS
Priorities versus Posteriorities
A priority is something that you do more of and sooner, while a posteriority is something that you do less of and later, if at all.
Rule: You can get your time and your life under control only to the degree to which you discontinue lower-value activities.
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.
Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the world, was once asked his
secret of success. He replied, “Simple. I just say no to everything that is not absolutely vital to me at the moment.”
Procrastinate on Purpose
Your job is to deliberately procrastinate on tasks that are of low value so that you have more time for tasks that can make a big difference in your life and work.
Set Posteriorities on Time-Consuming Activities
Cut down on television watching and Internet surfing and instead spend the time with your family, read, exercise, or do something else that enhances the quality of your life.
6 Use the ABCDE Method Continually
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
Think on Paper
An “A” item is defined as something that is very important, something that you must do.
”Shoulds” versus “Musts”
A “B” item is defined as a task that you should do.
A “C” task is defined as something that would be nice to do but for which there are no consequences at all, whether you do it or not.
A “D” task is defined as something you can delegate to someone else.
An “E” task is defined as something that you can eliminate altogether, and it won’t make any real difference.
Take Action Immediately
Review your work list right now and put an A, B, C, D, or E next to each task or activity. Select your A-1 job or project and begin on it immediately. Discipline yourself to do nothing else until this one job is complete.
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
The Big Seven in Management and Sales
The key result areas of management are: planning, organizing, staffing, delegating, supervising, measuring, and reporting.
Clarity Is Essential
The starting point of high performance is for you to identify the key result areas of your work.
Give Yourself a Grade
Rule: Your weakest key result area sets the height at which you can use all your other skills and abilities.
Poor Performance Produces Procrastination
identify areas of weakness clearly. Set a goal and make a plan to become very good in each of those areas. Just think! You may be only one critical skill away from top performance at your job.
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
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. THEODORE ROOSEVELT
One Thing All Day Long
“If I could do only one thing all day long, which one task would contribute the greatest value to my career?”
Time Management Is a Means to an End
- Fully 85 percent of your happiness in life will come from happy relationships with other people
- Rule: It is the quality of time at work that counts and the quantity of time at home that matters.
Work All the Time You Work
- To keep your life in balance, you should resolve to work all the time you work.
Balance Is Not Optional
- “Moderation in all things.” You need balance between your work and your personal life.
9 Prepare Thoroughly Before You Begin
No matter what the level of your ability, you have more potential than you can ever develop in a lifetime. JAMES T. MCCAY
Create a Comfortable Workspace
- The most productive people take the time to create a work area where they enjoy spending time.
Launch toward Your Dreams
- Wayne Gretzky: You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.
10 Take It One Oil Barrel at a Time
Persons with comparatively moderate powers will accomplish much, if they apply themselves wholly and indefatigably to one thing at a time. SAMUEL SMILES
Take It One Step at a Time
- “Leap—and the net will appear!”
- Lao-tzu wrote: “A journey of a thousand leagues begins with a single step.”
11 Upgrade Your Key Skills
The only certain means of success is to render more and better service than is expected of you, no matter what your task may be. OG MANDINO
- A major reason for procrastination is a feeling of inadequacy, a lack of confidence, or an inability in a key area of a task.
Never Stop Learning
- One of the most helpful of all time management techniques is for you to get better at your key tasks.
- Rule: Continuous learning is the minimum requirement for success in any field.
Three Steps to Mastery
First, read in your field for at least one hour every day.
Second, take every course and seminar available on the key skills that can help you.
Third, listen to audio programs in your car.
The more you learn, the more you can learn.
12 Identify Your Key Constraints
Concentrate all your thoughts on the task at hand.
The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.
ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL
Identify the Limiting Factor
The 80/20 Rule Applied to Constraints
80 percent of the constraints, the factors that are holding you back from achieving your goals, are internal. They are within yourself…
Only 20 percent of the limiting factors are external to you…
Look into Yourself
Successful people always begin the analysis of constraints by asking the question, “What is it in me that is holding me back?”
Strive for Accuracy
take action immediately. Do something. Do anything, but get started.
13 Put the Pressure on Yourself
The first requisite for success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one
problem incessantly without growing weary. THOMAS EDISON
Lead the Field
See yourself as a role model. Raise the bar on yourself.
Make a game of starting a little earlier, working a little harder, and staying a little later.
Create Imaginary Deadlines
One of the best ways for you to overcome procrastination and get more things done faster is by working as though you had only one day to get your most important jobs done.
Successful people continually put the pressure on themselves to perform at high levels. Unsuccessful people have to be instructed and pressured by others.
Create your own “forcing system.”
14 Motivate Yourself into Action
It is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and of creative action that man finds
his supreme joys. ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY
Most of your emotions, positive or negative, are determined by how you talk to yourself on a minute-to-minute basis.
Control Your Inner Dialogue
You should talk to yourself positively all the time to boost your self-esteem.
Viktor Frankl: “The last of the human freedoms [is] to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”
Ed Foreman says, “You should never share your problems with others because 80 percent of people don’t care about them anyway, and the other 20 percent are kind of glad that you’ve got them in the first place.”
Develop a Positive Mental Attitude
Optimistic people seem to be more effective in almost every area of life. optimists have four special behaviors, all learned through practice and repetition. First, optimists look for the good in every situation.
Second, optimists always seek the valuable lesson in every setback or
difficulty. They believe that “difficulties come not to obstruct but to instruct.” Third, optimists always look for the solution to every problem. Fourth, optimists think and talk continually about their goals.
Control your thoughts. Remember, you become what you think about most of the time.
15 Technology Is a Terrible Master
There is more to life than just increasing its speed.
MOHANDAS GANDHI
You Have a Choice
The key is to keep your relationship with technology under control.
When people are too plugged in, communications technology quickly becomes a destructive addiction.
Don’t Become Addicted
Take Back Your Time
80/20 Rule
Refuse to Be a Slave
Unchain yourself from your computer. Unsubscribe from all unwanted
newsletters.
16 Technology Is a Wonderful Servant
Technology is just a tool. MELINDA GATES
You must discipline yourself to treat technology as a servant, not as a master. The purpose of technology is to make your life smoother and easier, not to create complexity, confusion, and stress.
to get more done of higher value, you have to stop doing things of lower value.
Take Control of Your Communication
Clear your digital workspace as you would your physical desk
But What about Emergencies?
This is an absolutely valid concern. The solution, however, is not to be available to everyone at all times. Create special areas in your digital life for your most important tasks.
Take Control of Your Time
Your calendar makes a wonderful servant but a terrible master. Never automatically click Accept on a digital invitation.
Take Control of Your Emotions Using Technology
Many people fail to make technology their servant because they fear learning new skills.
Technology is no longer optional; it is just as important as reading, writing, and arithmetic.
17 Focus Your Attention
All of life is the study of attention; where your attention goes, your life follows. JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI
Developing an Addiction
When you start your day with a few shots of dopamine triggered by your e-mail or IM bell going off, you find it extremely difficult to pay close attention to your important tasks for the rest of the day.
The Multitasking Illusion
people can focus only on one thing at a time. What they are really doing is called “task shifting.”
The Proven Solutions
First, don’t check your e-mail in the morning
Second, if you must check your e-mail for any reason, get in and out fast
Finally, resolve to check your e-mail only twice a day
Double Your Productivity
First, plan each day in advance
Second, work nonstop for ninety minutes with no diversion or distraction, and then give yourself a fifteen-minute break.
Third, start again and work another ninety minutes flat out.
Finally, after this three-hour work period, you can then reward yourself with a shot of dopamine by checking your e-mail.
18 Slice and Dice the Task
The beginning of a habit is like an invisible thread, but every time we repeat the act we strengthen the strand, add to it another filament, until it becomes a great cable and binds us irrevocably, in thought and act.
ORISON SWETT MARDEN
Develop a Compulsion to Closure
An important point to remember is that you have deep within you an “urge to completion,” aka “compulsion to closure.” This means that you actually feel happier and more powerful when you start and complete a task of any kind.
“Swiss Cheese” Your Tasks
You “Swiss cheese” a task when you resolve to work for a specific time period on it. This may be as little as five or ten minutes, after which you will stop and do something else.
Become action oriented. A common quality of high performers is that when they hear a good idea, they take action on it immediately. Don’t delay. Try it today!
19 Create Large Chunks of Time
Nothing can add more power to your life than concentrating all of your energies on a limited set
of targets. NIDO QUBEIN
Schedule Blocks of Time
Make work appointments with yourself and then discipline yourself to keep them.
Use a Time Planner
A powerful personal productivity tool: a time planner, broken down by day, hour, and minute and organized in advance.
Make Every Minute Count
Use travel and transition times, what are often called “gifts of time,” to complete small chunks of larger tasks.
Think continually of different ways that you can save, schedule, and consolidate large chunks of time.
20 Develop a Sense of Urgency
Do not wait; the time will never be “just right.”
Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better
tools will be found as you go along. NAPOLEON HILL Highly productive people take the time to think, plan, and set priorities.
Getting into “Flow”
When you work on your most important tasks at a high and continuous level of activity, you can actually enter into an amazing mental state called “flow.”
Trigger High Performance in Yourself
One of the ways you can trigger this state of flow is by developing a sense of urgency. This is an inner drive and desire to get on with the job quickly and get it done fast.
Build Up a Sense of Momentum
When you regularly take continuous action toward your most important goals, you activate the Momentum Principle of Success.
Do It Now!
One of the simplest and yet most powerful ways to get yourself started is to repeat the words “Do it now! Do it now! Do it now!” over and over to yourself.
When you see an opportunity or a problem, take action on it immediately.
21 Single Handle Every Task
Herein lies the secret of true power. Learn, by constant practice, how to husband your resources,
and to concentrate them at any given moment upon a given point. JAMES ALLEN
Once You Get Going, Keep Going
Single handling requires that once you begin, you keep working at the task without diversion or distraction until the job is 100 percent complete. You keep urging yourself onward by repeating the words “Back to work!” over and over whenever you are tempted to stop or do something else.
Don’t Waste Time
The truth is that once you have decided on your number one task, anything else that you do other than that is a relative waste of time.
Self-Discipline Is the Key
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.”
And the key to all of this is for you to determine the most valuable and important thing you could possibly do at every single moment and then Eat That Frog!
Conclusion: Putting It All Together
The key to happiness, satisfaction, great success, and a wonderful feeling of personal power and effectiveness is for you to develop the habit of eating your frog first thing every day when you start work.
Fortunately, this is a learnable skill that you can acquire through repetition.
Here is a summary of the twenty-one great ways to stop procrastinating and get more things done faster.
Set the table: Decide exactly what you want. Clarity is essential. Write out your goals and objectives before you begin.
2. Plan every day in advance: Think on paper. Every minute you spend in planning can save you five or ten minutes in execution.
3. Apply the 80/20 Rule to everything: Twenty percent of your activities will account for 80 percent of your results. Always concentrate your efforts on that top 20 percent.
4. Consider the consequences: Your most important tasks and priorities are those that can have the most serious consequences, positive or negative, on your life or work. Focus on these above all else.
5. Practice creative procrastination: Since you can’t do everything, you must learn to deliberately put off those tasks that are of low value so that you have enough time to do the few things that really count.
6. Use the ABCDE Method continually: Before you begin work on a list of tasks, take a few moments to organize them by value and priority so you can be sure of working on your most important activities.
7. Focus on key result areas: Identify those results that you absolutely, positively have to get to do your job well, and work on them all day long.
8. Apply the Law of Three: Identify the three things you do in your work that account for 90 percent of your contribution, and focus on getting them done before anything else. You will then have more time for your family and personal life.
9. Prepare thoroughly before you begin: Have everything you need at hand before you start. Assemble all the papers, information, tools, work materials, and numbers you might require so that you can get started and keep going.
10. Take it one oil barrel at a time: You can accomplish the biggest and most complicated job if you just complete it one step at a time.
11. Upgrade your key skills: The more knowledgeable and skilled you become at your key tasks, the faster you start them and the sooner you get them done. Determine exactly what it is that you are very good at doing, or could be very good at, and throw your whole heart into doing those specific things very, very well.
12. Identify your key constraints: Determine the bottlenecks or choke points, internal or external, that set the speed at which you achieve your most important goals, and focus on alleviating them.
13. Put the pressure on yourself: Imagine that you have to leave town for a month, and work as if you had to get your major task completed before you left.
14. Motivate yourself into action: Be your own cheerleader. Look for the good in every situation. Focus on the solution rather than the problem. Always be optimistic and constructive.
15. Technology is a terrible master: Take back your time from enslaving technological addictions. Learn to often turn devices off and leave them off.
16. Technology is a wonderful servant: Use your technological tools to confront yourself with what is most important and protect yourself from what is least important.
17. Focus your attention: Stop the interruptions and distractions that interfere with completing your most important tasks.
18. Slice and dice the task: Break large, complex tasks down into bite-sized pieces, and then do just one small part of the task to get started.
19. Create large chunks of time: Organize your days around large blocks of time so you can concentrate for extended periods on your most important tasks.
20. Develop a sense of urgency: Make a habit of moving fast on your key tasks. Become known as a person who does things quickly and well.
21. Single handle every task: Set clear priorities, start immediately on your most important task, and then work without stopping until the job is 100 percent complete. This is the real key to high performance and maximum personal productivity.
Make a decision to practice these principles every day until they become second nature to you.
