Productivity
by Brian Tracy
Which task keeps getting put off?
Most lists have one task that keeps getting pushed to tomorrow, usually the one that matters most. Brian Tracy calls it your frog. He borrows a saying he credits to Mark Twain, that if you eat a live frog first thing, nothing worse will happen all day.
Hear a sample · read by Laura
Tracy has two rules for frogs. If you've got two, eat the uglier one first. And if you've got to eat one, don't sit staring at it. The longer you look at a hard task, the bigger it grows, so start before you talk yourself out of it.
Tracy labels every task on his list. A means serious consequences if it isn't done, B mild ones, C none at all. D is for delegate, E for eliminate. Your most important A task is your frog, and it comes before everything else.
Tracy applies the 80/20 rule to your to-do list. In a list of ten tasks, he says, two will often be worth more than the other eight put together. Those two also tend to be the hardest, which is why we clear the easy eight first and still feel busy.
There's never time to do everything, Tracy says, but there's always time for the most important thing. Since you'll put things off anyway, choose which. He calls it creative procrastination. You decide to leave the low-value jobs undone, so the frog isn't the job that gets put off.
The frog
Do your biggest, hardest task first thing in the morning, before anything else gets a turn.
Two frogs
If you have two hard jobs waiting, start with the worse one.
Plan on paper
Write your list the night before. A few minutes of planning saves hours of work.
The 80/20 rule
A few of your tasks bring most of your results. Find those and start there.
ABCDE
Mark each task A to E by how much it matters, and never do a B while an A waits.
A story from the book
As a young man, Tracy crossed the Sahara. The track was marked with old oil drums set out across the sand, and the only way through was to reach the next drum, then the one after. He uses it for any job too big to see the end of.
One thing to try
Before bed, list what you need to do tomorrow. Mark each task A to E, then number the As. Write A-1 on a sticky note and put it on your keyboard. In the morning, start A-1 before you open email, and keep at it until it's finished.
Knotd has the key ideas from 250+ non-fiction books, each in a few minutes, in plain words. Eat That Frog comes with a Spot the Trap case to make it stick.
Get the whole book on KnotdOpen in the appWhich task keeps getting put off? Most lists have one task that keeps getting pushed to tomorrow, usually the one that matters most. Brian Tracy calls it your frog. He borrows a saying he credits to Mark Twain, that if you eat a live frog first thing, nothing worse will happen all day.
The ugliest frog first; A, B, C, D, E; Two items beat the other eight; Procrastinate on purpose.
Before bed, list what you need to do tomorrow. Mark each task A to E, then number the As. Write A-1 on a sticky note and put it on your keyboard. In the morning, start A-1 before you open email, and keep at it until it's finished.
Yes. Knotd has the key ideas from Eat That Frog in a few minutes, in plain words, plus a Spot the Trap case to test them. It's one of 250+ non-fiction books in the app.
