“Eat that frog”, brings to mind all sorts of connotations and most of them, not good for sure. Now before you go thinking I have lost the plot, I should explain exactly why you should ‘eat that frog’. According to author Brian Tracy, your frog is your biggest, most important task, the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don’t do something about it. ‘The frog’ part comes from Mark Twain who once quipped:
"Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day."
There are lots of reasons why we put off doing the biggest, most important task. Some of us are perfectionists and let our desire to have the task or the outcome to be so idealised and perfect that it stymies our ability to actually start the task. Some people suffer inertia because the task seems too large to deal with, while others are so lacking motivation or drive that they fail to start, or there is another group of people who mean to do the task (and know that the task has to be done), but let the myriad of little, unimportant things get in the way so that they never have time to even start, let alone complete the most important task. You’re not alone if you recognise yourself in one of these groups.
Stephen Covey has a great method of sorting the important from the unimportant tasks. He says that all tasks fall into one of four categories or quadrants. Important tasks are the activities that represent your values, mission and high priority goals and urgent tasks are activities that require immediate attention.
• Important and urgent e.g. Crisis, deadline driven projects, meetings, reports
• Important and non-urgent e.g. Preparation, planning, relationship building, prevention, values clarification and re-creation
___________________________________________________________
• Unimportant and urgent e.g. needless interruptions, unimportant meetings, email, phone calls, and dealing with other people’s minor issues
• Unimportant and non urgent e.g. ‘busy’ work, phone calls, email, excessive television, internet and relaxation
Many of us focus on the tasks below the line, that is, the unimportant ‘busy stuff’, which consumes us and occupies our minds, most of the time, most days. Covey argues that we would be more productive and have better outcomes if we focused on and live “north of the line”, that is on the important and urgent, but also the important and non urgent. If we were to spend more of our productive time on preparation, planning, and the most important tasks, then it’s more likely that we will achieve far more and be more successful in the long term.
Remember John Lennon’s line: “Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans” Well, yes, this is true to a point, but keep in mind that doing the ‘unimportant busy stuff’ can be a sheer waste of our time and energy and at the end of it all, we have not achieved or moved closer to our more important goals and achieving our most important tasks.
It’s time to reclaim back part of our life that may have gone astray and divest ourselves of the ‘busy unimportant’ parts of our life. Some ways you might do this, is to:
• Limit the amount of time spent watching television
• Limit the time spent writing and answering emails
• Limit the time spent on interruptions, phone calls and the like
• Do the most important tasks first – prioritise them
• Keep going on these tasks until they’re completed
• Allocate time to planning and preparing for the day, week and rest of the year
• Write down your top three priorities or tasks each day and work on these
• Spend time each day working on your ‘real’ priorities – number them, so that you know what’s most important to you at that point in time or in the future
• Spend quality time but more importantly, spend more time with your family
• Ask yourself, “If I could do only one thing all day long, which task would contribute the greatest value to my life, or my career or my happiness?”; that’s what you need to focus on that day, according to Brian Tracy.
It's not a perfect world and sometimes our best intentions come unstuck by the 'busyness' of life but it is within all of us to make some small changes that might yield amazing results in what we can achieve in life. It's worth the effort to make some simple changes, apply some easy strategies that can exponentially improve our productivitiy and ultimately our happiness and sense of achievement. What are you waiting for? As Brian Tracy would suggest: Eat that frog now!
"Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day."
There are lots of reasons why we put off doing the biggest, most important task. Some of us are perfectionists and let our desire to have the task or the outcome to be so idealised and perfect that it stymies our ability to actually start the task. Some people suffer inertia because the task seems too large to deal with, while others are so lacking motivation or drive that they fail to start, or there is another group of people who mean to do the task (and know that the task has to be done), but let the myriad of little, unimportant things get in the way so that they never have time to even start, let alone complete the most important task. You’re not alone if you recognise yourself in one of these groups.
Stephen Covey has a great method of sorting the important from the unimportant tasks. He says that all tasks fall into one of four categories or quadrants. Important tasks are the activities that represent your values, mission and high priority goals and urgent tasks are activities that require immediate attention.
• Important and urgent e.g. Crisis, deadline driven projects, meetings, reports
• Important and non-urgent e.g. Preparation, planning, relationship building, prevention, values clarification and re-creation
___________________________________________________________
• Unimportant and urgent e.g. needless interruptions, unimportant meetings, email, phone calls, and dealing with other people’s minor issues
• Unimportant and non urgent e.g. ‘busy’ work, phone calls, email, excessive television, internet and relaxation
Many of us focus on the tasks below the line, that is, the unimportant ‘busy stuff’, which consumes us and occupies our minds, most of the time, most days. Covey argues that we would be more productive and have better outcomes if we focused on and live “north of the line”, that is on the important and urgent, but also the important and non urgent. If we were to spend more of our productive time on preparation, planning, and the most important tasks, then it’s more likely that we will achieve far more and be more successful in the long term.
Remember John Lennon’s line: “Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans” Well, yes, this is true to a point, but keep in mind that doing the ‘unimportant busy stuff’ can be a sheer waste of our time and energy and at the end of it all, we have not achieved or moved closer to our more important goals and achieving our most important tasks.
It’s time to reclaim back part of our life that may have gone astray and divest ourselves of the ‘busy unimportant’ parts of our life. Some ways you might do this, is to:
• Limit the amount of time spent watching television
• Limit the time spent writing and answering emails
• Limit the time spent on interruptions, phone calls and the like
• Do the most important tasks first – prioritise them
• Keep going on these tasks until they’re completed
• Allocate time to planning and preparing for the day, week and rest of the year
• Write down your top three priorities or tasks each day and work on these
• Spend time each day working on your ‘real’ priorities – number them, so that you know what’s most important to you at that point in time or in the future
• Spend quality time but more importantly, spend more time with your family
• Ask yourself, “If I could do only one thing all day long, which task would contribute the greatest value to my life, or my career or my happiness?”; that’s what you need to focus on that day, according to Brian Tracy.
It's not a perfect world and sometimes our best intentions come unstuck by the 'busyness' of life but it is within all of us to make some small changes that might yield amazing results in what we can achieve in life. It's worth the effort to make some simple changes, apply some easy strategies that can exponentially improve our productivitiy and ultimately our happiness and sense of achievement. What are you waiting for? As Brian Tracy would suggest: Eat that frog now!
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