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Eat That Frog: A Practical Approach to Reaching Your Goals
Understand your key result areas
Understand what you were hired to do and the results you are supposed to deliver.
By being aware of hat you're truly accountable for, you can justify delegating and deleting tasks that aren't related to your job-specific tasks and goals.
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Key Ideas
'Eat that Frog'
This is a productivity method developed by Brian Tracy. The 'frog' refers to the most important and most impactful task you have to complete.
If you work on it first thing every morning, you'll be more productive and successful, and you'll reach your goals more quickly.
Clarify your goals
If you don't know what your goals are, most likely you won't be able to identify and prioritize the specific tasks you need to work on to achieve those goals.
Write your major goals down and break them into tasks. Your goal tasks are your frogs, the things you want to work on first thing every day for greater productivity and success.
Think long-term
... to make better short-term decisions.
If you question the consequences of doing/not doing a to-do before you start on it, it not only makes it easier to find your frogs, but it also makes it easier to find time-wasting tasks that are better deleted from your list or delegated to someone else.
ABCDE prioritization method
- A tasks: things you must do - they're your frogs.
- B tasks: things you should do. Replying to emails or attending meetings are often should-do tasks.
- C tasks: nice-to-dos. You probably want to do them, but there are no consequences if you don't.
- D tasks: things you should delegate to someone else so you have more time for your A tasks.
- E tasks: things you should eliminate. You don't need or want to do them.
Understand your key result areas
Understand what you were hired to do and the results you are supposed to deliver.
By being aware of hat you're truly accountable for, you can justify delegating and deleting tasks that aren't related to your job-specific tasks and goals.
Prepare for your work
- Plan your frog for the next day at the end of the previous workday and block off time to work on that frog so you can tackle it with no interruptions.
- Make sure you have all of the things you need to do your work and a comfortable workspace to do it in.
One task at a time
Once you have your goals broken down into tasks, you have to work on those tasks one at a time.
Prioritize them, schedule them, and then when it's time to eat your frogs, focus on them completely.
What's holding you back
Identify the things that are holding you back, internal and external and eliminate them.
More often than not our constraints are internal: we procrastinate because of impostor syndrome, or we fill our time with low-value tasks and distractions.
Schedule your 'frogs'
Schedule time on your calendar at the end of every workday for working on your frog the next morning, or create a recurring meeting for the first hours of every day to make sure you always have time blocked for goal tasks.
Finish your tasks
After you start working on a frog, continue working on it until you can take it off of your to-do list.
To do this effectively, you'll need to make sure you have tasks that are small enough to complete in one sitting. Also, make sure you have time blocked to work on your task.
'Eating that Frog' in short
- Define your goals and write them down.
- Break those goals down into tasks.
- Break those tasks down into the smallest possible subtasks.
- Prioritize your tasks, and delete/delegate tasks you don't need to do.
- Schedule time on your calendar every single day, ideally first thing in the morning, to work on your highest-priority goal task.
- Focus on your goal task during your scheduled time, and work on it until it's complete.
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Eat That Frog!
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Failure to execute
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The "frog"
It is your biggest, most important task, the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don't do something about it.
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"One of the very worst uses of time is to do something very well that need not be done at all".
The ABCDE prioritization approach
- A items : Things you must do, which will have a serious positive or negative consequence.
- B items : Things you should do, that have minor consequences.
- C items : Things that are nice to do but don’t have any real consequences when they’re done.
- D items : Things to delegate so you can free up more time to do A tasks.
- E items : Things to eliminate. Generally stuff you do out of habit.
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Learning how to prioritize...
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Master lists
Capture everything on a Master List and then break it down by monthly, weekly, and daily goals.
- Start by making a master list—a document, app, or piece of paper where every current and future task will be stored.
- Once you have all your tasks together, break them down into monthly, weekly, and daily goals.
- When setting your priorities, try not to get too “task oriented” - you want to make sure you’re prioritizing the more effective work.
Eisenhower Matrix
The matrix is a simple four-quadrant box that answers that helps you separate “urgent” tasks from “important” ones:
- Urgent and Important: Do these tasks as soon as possible
- Important, but not urgent: Decide when you’ll do these and schedule it
- Urgent, but not important: Delegate these tasks to someone else
- Neither urgent nor important: Drop these from your schedule as soon as possible.
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