This productivity tool for sure has a weird name, but it is very helpful, telling you when to get the important things done and when the best time to do that is. I’ve heard of this tool many times and its impact is immediate, which is what make it so worth sharing in today’s post.
Picture this: if you had to eat a frog everyday, when would you do it? Would you do it at the start of the day? Or would you leave it to the end of the day? Would you just get it over and done with so that you could continue with your day? Or would you put it off and try to live your life and not think about it?
If you do it earlier, you’ll get it over and done with quickly and won’t have to think of it for the rest of the day. But if you leave it for later, it’ll be on your mind all day, messing up your mood. That’s the point of this tool: to ‘Eat the Frog’ as soon as possible so that you won’t have to deal with it.
Now, eating frogs is not part of our daily life, so what does the frog represent? The frog represents the big, hard, important tasks that you have to do but keep putting it off. If you were to start with those harder tasks, you’ll get it over and done with faster. Then all the following tasks will feel easier and will get easier as you go.
But what would happen if you didn’t start off with the ‘frog’? You’d procrastinate. You’d keep putting the hard task off and you’d keep telling yourself that you’d do it later. That way, the task will, unfortunately, always be on your mind and you’ll keep dreading the moment when you’ll have to face it, ruining your day. As you get through your other tasks, those will get harder and harder because you know you’re getting closer and closer to having to do the one you don’t want to do.
Here’s an example: you need to write an important essay before a deadline. You can keep putting it off ‘for later’, but that means that you’ll have to do trivial things in order to get to ‘later’ and you won’t be able to do something really nice for yourself. By the time you start, you’ll be feeling stressed and at the end of the day you won’t feel like you’ve done enough that day, making you feel horrible. Instead, you could just get started with that essay and get it over and done with in the next hour to 2 hours then have the rest of the day to yourself for you to relax and enjoy yourself. Which one would you prefer?
Once you begin, you’d realise that the task didn’t need as much time as you thought it did and if it needed more time than you’ve given it then you would have plenty more time to spare and make sure it gets done. Surprisingly, you’d have freed up plenty of time for yourself too! That’s why ‘eating the frog’ is a lot more helpful than you may think.
That’s all from me today! I’ll see you in my next post. Now go Eat that Frog!
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