1 Eat the Frog ??? ??
Jennifer Maggs
Human Development Prof at Penn State University | Research on alcohol, nicotine, cannabis use across transition to adulthood | Also Posting on HigherEd, Jobs for PhDs, Health Equity, My Adventures with Productivity Hacks
You can't go far in productivity-hack-land without encountering the advice to Eat The Frog. Mark Twain is credited with the strategy of eating a live frog early in the morning to guarantee nothing worse will happen all day.
[My 4th great-grandfather did vomit a live toad after a long vacation, but I digress. Archdale was not inspirational in any other way that I can find. More of a disaster.]
The idea behind ??? the ??, popularized by Brian Tracy in his book called, yep, Eat the Frog, is this: Tackle your worst task first, revel in your success, and be inspired to do whatever else you decide to do all day.
What are [my] Frogs?
Frogs are different for everyone.
Frogs are things we hate to do--maybe we feel we aren't good at them, they push our buttons, they are an annoying waste of time, we feel bad we didn't already do them, etc.
A few of my frogs are...
?? = phone calls; almost all phone calls
?? = paperwork involving $$ like finding lost receipts for taxes
?? = making final decisions (what if I choose wrong??)
Review: What Didn't Work
To try to eat some of my frogs, on a random Wednesday morning I re-ordered my to-do list. Put the dreaded ?????? at the top. Then I skipped right over them and I felt a little mocked by ?? all day. To be honest, not so effective. Easy to ignore. I realize this is partly a grade of me, but overall: Grade was D-. Almost a fail.
Review: What Worked OK
I decided I needed some #accountability. And I did need to track down those receipts. So...Made a pact with a friend. We made our own frog lists, in advance, and committed to them for the next day. This went better but felt time-consuming. Also, I am an introvert and I would rather spend friend time on other things than checking whether I did Workday or Activity Insight. Overall: B.
Review: What Worked Well
My final try went great. By this point, I was discovering #coworking. I realized I needed to plan ahead, commit, and tackle with accountability to myself and to strangers (not my friends or sister). On Sunday, I made a list of my leftover dreaded brief tasks from the prior week (or longer ago). I signed up for a co-working session for first thing on Monday morning. I committed to myself that I would Eat the Frogs. And I nailed it. Receipts found, call made. Felt good after, like Mark Twain and Brian Tracy say we will. Overall: A-.