A Good Day for a Toad Day

With our “normal” agendas in disarray and social distancing the norm, there could not be an easier time for a Toad Day. Not only will a Toad Day make you feel so much better, it will work wonders for your personal and professional productivity.

“Toad Day? What the heck is a Toad Day?” you may ask. Well, let me explain.

Of all creatures in your garden, the toad is the least likely to be loved. You don’t want to pick him up, because he’s ugly, warty, and weird. And the childhood stories about getting warts, you know, well, who knows? Princesses may occasionally kiss a frog, but none are known to kiss toads. Basically, toads just get no love.

We all have one or two “toad files” or “toad jobs”. There’s nothing intrinsically bad about them, they’re just ugly and unattractive. You just wish they’d hop away and hide under a rock. You always make them number nine on your to-do list, knowing (if you were honest with yourself) that the best you can hope to accomplish is six. 

Toad jobs keep slipping into tomorrow, never resolved, yet always at the edge or your awareness. You know they’re there, and that someday you will have to grapple with them. Just not today.

But because you know they're there, they are a low-grade headache at the edge of your consciousness. Until you deal with them, they will always be a drag on focus and productivity. 

The other thing about Toad Files is that most of them have some time-sensitive imperative in them. Far-off limitation periods are often the most dangerous for professionals, just because they can be ignored for a long time. But not forever, and therein is the danger.

So the trick is to hold a Toad Day once or twice per year, perhaps more often, depending on you and your circumstances. In our office we used to hold them twice a year.

Our Toad Days used to go something like this: clients were advised that the office was closed for St. Bufo’s Day, and the phones would not be answered. All personnel were encouraged to wear their dirtiest, grubbiest clothes. We treated it like a holiday in the workplace. Pizza was ordered for lunch, perhaps even with a “beverage”.

Every lawyer, every clerk, the receptionist, the IT guy…. absolutely everyone was to take their personal Toad File to their own corner and face it down. In all its ugliness, all day long. Nothing else. No excuses. No cleaning your desk. No meetings. No interruptions. No distractions. Just you and the Toad.

As soon as you sat down with the file and blew off the dust, you’d remember exactly what you hated about it, and why you’d been actively neglecting it for months and months. But because it was just you and the Toad and your pride, you’d press ahead, inch by painful inch. Invariably, as the day progressed, you’d become clear about where this had to go, and how to get there. 

By the end of the day, if you had not wrestled the thing to the ground, you at least had a clearly roadmapped project with timelines and controls, and you were no longer afraid of the Toad. Exhausted, but liberated, you could now go forward with honest and achievable to-do lists and schedules. The “splinter under the fingernail” low-grade annoyance was gone.

So, what better time than covid lockdown to have a Toad Day? Who’s going to know if you show up unshowered and in your pajamas? Who’ll see if you eat a whole extra-large pizza for lunch and wash it down with two beers? Only the Toad will know, and at the end of the day, he’ll be gone.

Try it!

Norman Bowley works with professionals who want to be even better. [email protected]