Eat Your Frog
It's a stressful time in the world. Between the U.S. Capitol riot last week and the ongoing pandemic, one can feel a bit unmoored.
When my daughter, Marina, said she was going to "eat her frog" yesterday, I thought it would be a good topic—focusing on things we CAN control in a time of chaos.
The metaphor of eating a frog comes from one of my favorite productivity books, “Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time,” by Brian Tracy.
Your “frog” is your biggest, most important task—the one you may be most likely to procrastinate on. If you have two frogs, eat the “ugliest” one first. Often, we find ourselves focusing on lower priority activities that are easy to check off. The goal here is to interrupt that tendency and get the important hard stuff done first.
Why eat your frog? Who cares? Because when you eat your frog, you not only make great progress, you free up your mind and your time to do the things that fill you up. If you’re continually worried about what you need to do, you will spend more of your energy worrying about it than you would have spent just doing it.
The five big ideas from the book have been captured well by Sam T. Davies in his book summary:
- “The key to reaching high levels of performance and productivity is to develop the lifelong habit of tackling your major task first thing each morning.”
- “Think about your goals and review them daily. Every morning when you begin, take action on the most important task you can accomplish to achieve your most important goal at the moment.”
- “Think on paper.”
- “Always work from a list.”
- “Your ability to choose between the important and the unimportant is the key determinant of your success in life and work.”
Honestly, I don’t eat my frog first thing EVERY morning, but I strive to be aware of the important things I need to do each day and notice when I’m avoiding an important task. A new tool I’m using to track and prioritize my tasks is asana.com. The free version does everything I need it to do!
Number two above says to “think about your goals…” What if you don’t have goals? Many people don’t. If you don’t have a few goals for 2021 yet, I’d consider that a frog that needs to be eaten.
Ignite Your Life 2021
If you'd like support to help you identify your goals, you're welcome to join us in the Ignite Your Life 2021 process. There is no cost. Our next and final session is on January 15 at noon PT. You can register here.
We held our third Zoom session last Friday. You can watch recordings of the first session, the second session, and the third session. Here are links to the materials we are using: Reflecting on 2020 Worksheet, and A Weekly Guide for Soulful Living journal.
Our final session this Friday is focused on vision boards; however, you are welcome to come whether you've completed the other work or not. For those of you interested in starting a vision board before the January 15 session, check out this video about how to create a physical vision board. Here’s an instruction video on using Canva to create a digital vision board.
Wishing you peace and a sense of direction during these turbulent times,
Barbara Fagan-Smith