Why You Should Eat A Frog This Week

When was the last time that you ate a frog? I ate a few big frogs last weeks and felt amazing afterwards.

You see, I just finished a book called Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy. In the book, Brian talks about the importance eating a metaphorical frog every day.

What is a “frog”?

Put simply, a frog is your biggest, ugliest, slimiest task or project. A frog is usually the most important task or project that you need to get done and is often the task or project that we most avoid doing.

Why do we avoid it? Because it sucks! Who, in their right mind, would eat a big ass frog? No one. (Unless, of course, you were in a fancy French restaurant.)

The key lesson of the book can be found at the start of Chapter 21. It reads:

Your ability to select your most important task, to begin it, and then to concentrate on it single-mindedly until it is complete is the key to high levels of performance and personal productivity.

Most of us use our time poorly, myself included. We spend too much time being busy, not being effective. Do tend to do things, not get things done. We fail to prioritize the tasks and projects in our lives, which puts of in a perpetual state of reaction rather than proaction.

To get ahead in life, we need to develop the habit of eating a frog every day. The bigger, uglier, and slimier, the better.

Last week, I took this approach at work and learned that the project manager for my company’s Salesforce implementation was singing my praises in New York.

As a part of the project, we had a big, ugly frog that no one wanted to eat. While a few people looked at it and one person proverbially licked it, no one actually took the time to eat it. Unfortunately, the frog was critical to the success of the project, and we could not move forward without eating it.

So I threw myself into it head first, volunteering as the key frog eater. I scheduled seven hours of working sessions with coworkers all over the world, holding one meeting at 5:30am because the guy lives in the United Kingdom.

As a result, we ate the frog in a day after two months of looking at it, which speaks to the power of focus. Sometimes, you just need to get everyone in a room and say, “No one leaves until this is done.”

So I have a question for you: What is the biggest, nastiest frog in your life right now? In other words, what is the single most important task or project that, if completed, would make the biggest difference in your life?