Mark Twain once said "eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of day." You probably should not take this literlly however you can apply this philosophy to your work life.
Eat the Frog in a business context means that you do the tasks you find the hardest or dread the most first. It is very easy to get distracted by things such a s social media or a bit of online shopping, according to businesscomparison.com the UK loses 441,827,088 days per year to unnecessary admin and attending meeting just for the sake of it, also 60% of the 2,040 employees surveyed admitted to to spending atleast half a day per week on tasks deamed a waste of time.
Brian Tracey, the author of Eat That Frog! 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time, advocates that you should tackle the most difficult tasks in the morning when your energy levels are high, the advantages to this can include less anxiety and procastination because you have got jobs done early in the morning leaving you more relaxed and feeling more productive for the rest of the day.
If you want to try the Eat the Frog method then follow these steps
- Identify the most challening or important task
- Make time to get these tasks done, preferbly in the morning
- Eliminate distractions, this can include turning off your phone or any external notifications
- Get the tasks done and move on with the rest of your day
It is an easy principle but does require discipline as you need to, define your goals, break them down into tasks and those tasks into the smallest possible subtask, you then need to prioritise your tasks and delegate less important tasks and finally focus on your tasks and work until it is complete, this is the easting of the frog.
Like in all business techniques this method is not applicable in all situations, some morning when you can not get going even after a gallon of coffee or you get called into an emergancy meeting, but if you regularly Eat the Frog then you will achieve more and find that your afternoons are less consumed by procrastination.
