Every day we juggle a whole bunch of tasks.
Emails, calls, meetings, and the never-ending list of to-dos. It’s like trying to catch butterflies in a garden full of them.
But let me introduce you to a simple, yet powerful idea that could transform your productivity: eating the frog.
In Brian Tracy’s book, ‘Eat That Frog!’, Brian tells us to imagine the biggest, ugliest frog we can (i.e. our most important task) and ‘eat’ it (i.e. do that task) first thing in the morning. The idea is that by ‘eating the frog’ we’ve tackled our most daunting and important task, so anything else we do will be a bonus (and will seem like a piece of cake too).
You see, when we focus on the most important task, we’re less likely to get distracted and achieve results on the stuff we care about most.
For example, the University of California, Irvine, found that it takes an average of 23 minutes to regain focus after an interruption. So, by knocking out that major task first, we’re saving heaps of time we’d otherwise spend getting back on track.
As a real-world example of this, Stephen King has published over 60 novels and hundreds of short stories across his writing career. The reason he’s managed to publish so much is because he had a simple rule: write 2000 words every day, no matter what. That’s his ‘frog’. By defining this as his most important task, he’s become one of the most prolific writers of our time.
So, what does this mean in practice? Here’s the game plan:
- Identify Your Frog: What’s the big, critical task that’ll make your day or week successful?
- Set the Stage: Clear your workspace, gather what you need, and block off time.
- Eat That Frog: Dive into the task without distraction. Break it into smaller bites if needed, but keep chewing.
By focusing on the most important task, you’re not just getting stuff done; you’re creating a win early in your day. And you’ll ride that wave of success through the rest of your tasks.
So, what’s your ‘frog’ for tomorrow?
Quote of the Day
To produce at your peak level you need to work for extended periods with full concentration on a single task free from distraction. Put another way, the type of work that optimises performance is deep work. If you’re not comfortable going deep for extended periods of time, it’ll be difficult to get your performance to the peak levels of quality and quantity increasingly necessary to thrive professionally
Tool of the Day
📖 Kindle
It’s pretty uncontroversial to say that reading a book is probably better for us in the long term than scrolling through Instagram. The problem is that scrolling through Instagram when we’re commuting or in bed is just too easy. Having a Kindle on our bedside or in our bags makes it much easier to ditch the scrolling and to become engrossed in a good book. Plus, whenever you hear a book recommendation on a podcast or blog, you can instantly hop onto Amazon on your phone, buy the book on Kindle, and start reading it within seconds