In the book, Eat that Frog, the author, Brian Tracy suggests 21 great ways to stop procrastinating and get more done in less time. Here I am summarizing the key learning from the book.
What is ‘Frog’ in “Eat that Frog”?
In the book, “Eat that Frog”, ‘that Frog’ refers to your biggest and most important task which has the maximum consequences in your life and which you are most likely to procrastinate. This is because you do not like doing it going out of your comfort zone.
Why does the author want us to ‘eat that frog’?
If you are served a live ugly frog every morning, as your breakfast, you will definitely try to avoid eating it. You will eat other tasty foods while looking at it thinking of having it sometime later. What if you get something you really desire on eating the frog? Will it pay to look at the frog and worry about eating it till dinner? You will neither get what you desire nor can enjoy the taste of other items as you eat looking at the frog.
Every morning, we have some big uninteresting yet important tasks. But these tasks have the maximum impact on our careers. By the name “Eat that frog”, the author tells us to identify these highest value tasks, your biggest ugliest frog and take it up as the first thing and keep on working on it till completion. If you finish these tasks as the first thing, it will give you a feeling of accomplishment and inspire you to do your other tasks as well.
What are the 21 ways suggested by Brian Tracy to stop procrastination?
Here is the summary of 21 ways to stop procrastination and get more done in less time.
1. Set the Table
- Your preparation starts with listing down 10 goals you want to achieve.
- Find out tasks you need to do to achieve your goals.
- Create a Master List of all these tasks preferably using pen and paper; however digital mode will also serve the purpose, as defined in step #16.
2. Plan Every Day in Advance
- All the tasks identified in the previous step are in a master list.
- Pick up the tasks you plan to complete in the current month and move them to your Monthly List.
- At the beginning of every week, pick up the tasks from the master list which you should complete in the current week and put them in your Weekly list.
- Now review your weekly list, preferably the night before and filter out the most important tasks you need to do the next day. Put them on your daily list which you need to focus on throughout the day. You need to update your daily list every day.
The author mentions the importance of planning with the 6P formula which states – “Proper Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance”.
3. Apply the 80/20 rule to everything
- The Pareto principle or 80/20 rule states that 20% of your task has 80% consequences.
- Identify your top 20% of tasks which can help you achieve 80% of your goals.
- Work only on those 20% of tasks till completion before looking at the remaining 80% and do them only if you have spare time.
4. Consider the Consequences
- While selecting your top 20% of tasks, look for the consequences of doing or not doing each of your tasks.
- Take up only those tasks, which have the maximum positive consequence that is completion of which will take you one step towards achieving your goals.
5. Practice Creative Procrastination
- Procrastination is not always bad, it is necessary as well if you apply it thoughtfully.
- You will not have enough time to do all your tasks, so you have to procrastinate some of them. Most of people go for unconscious procrastination which leads to procrastinating jobs which are really important for their goals.
- Choose tasks which are of no value and deliberately procrastinate doing them.
6. Use the ABCDE method continually
- The author, Brian Tracy, suggests categorizing your tasks using the ABCDE rule which states :
- A – These are tasks you MUST DO which no one else can do as best as you can and can help you reach your goal faster.
- B – These are tasks you SHOULD DO which others expect you to do. Doing these may not have much impact on your career but not doing them can have an impact.
- C – These tasks are NICE TO DO and do not have much impact, positive or negative on your life.
- D – Anyone else can do these tasks at a low cost, so DELEGATE them.
- E – These tasks NEED NOT BE DONE AT ALL.
- They might have been needed at one time but are of no importance now. So eliminate them. Identify your A tasks and if there are multiple A tasks then subcategorize them into A1, A2 etc.
- Your A1 task is your most important task which is your biggest and ugliest frog which you need to eat first no matter whether you like it or not. Then move on to the A2 task.
- Always make sure that you never take up any Category B task while a Category A task is incomplete.
7. Focus on Key Result Areas
- When someone is paying you, there must be some value which they want you to generate for them.
- Find out why people are paying you or should pay you and what is expected of you.
- Your earning grows as you generate value for your client or employer. The results expected of you are your key result areas.
- So focus on only those key result areas as these will give you maximum growth.
- Evaluate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 in each of these areas.
- The key result area where you get the lowest grade is your weakest point or choking point which will restrict your growth. Your career growth will be limited by the weakest key result area.
- You have to put maximum focus on this weakest key result area.
8. Apply the Law of Three
- Identify the three most important goals in each dimension of your life which includes your professional goal, financial goal, family goal, health goal etc.
- From the top goals, identify the top 3 tasks, accomplishing which, can give you maximum return.
- If you identify your top 3 tasks correctly and focus only on them till completion, your growth will be in the same proportion as you put your effort into these three tasks.
9. Prepare Thoroughly Before You Begin
- Clean your work desk and keep only those things required for your current work.
- Having unwanted things on your work desk will distract you as well as you need to spend extra effort on finding resources related to your current work.
- Make sure to get everything needed for your work handy so that you do not have to leave your desk, once you start your work.
- It is worth spending time on organizing your workplace at the beginning as it will help you stay focused and complete your work faster and better.
10. Take It One Oil Barrel at a Time
- If you have a big task in your hand, it is very difficult and often demotivating to work on it as you cannot clearly see the progress.
- So split it into subtasks, aligning the deadline with your main task.
- Work on one subtask at a time till all your subtasks are done.
- You will eventually complete your bigger task.
11. Upgrade Your Key Skills
- We have a tendency to procrastinate tasks which we are not confident of accomplishing properly.
- Lack of knowledge in your key result area results in a lack of confidence and ends up in procrastinating high-valued tasks.
- You must always upgrade your skills in your key result areas to remain on top of your career.
12. Identify Your Key Constraints
- If you have not achieved your goal already, then find out what is stopping you from achieving it.
- Whatever it may be, it is your limiting factor.
- 80% of these limiting factors are in you and instead of finding excuses and looking for any external cause, find the internal limiting factors and work on solving them.
- Put whatever effort is required to get rid of these limiting factors.
13. Put the Pressure on Yourself
- The author Brian Tracy, states that only 2% of people work unsupervised and are called leaders while the remaining 98% of people work for those leaders.
- Leaders can choose their most important tasks and can drive those till completion.
- Be the leader, choose your most important goal achieving task, take it up and work till completion.
- Always try to beat the deadline which you have set for your work.
14.Motivate Yourself into Action
- Self-motivation is most important in every sphere of life. You cannot ruin your life on the excuse that no one came in your rescue when you felt demotivated.
- Always indulge in positive self-talk like “I like myself” or “I can do it”.
- Never discuss your problems unnecessarily. Very few people are bothered about your problem and instead of helping you solving them, they will demotivate you.
- Always be optimistic and try to find solution rather than discussing about your problem.
15.Technology is a Terrible Master
- The author refers technology as a master because as servants become used to responding to their masters’ call immediately, we are now used to responding to every notification coming up on our mobile or other electronic devices.
- 90% of these notifications beeping your phone or laptop are of no use to you but are successful in diverting your attention.
- Unsubscribe to email notifications they are not your priority but the sender’s priority.
- Mute any social media notification and if possible keep the phone as far as possible.
- Spend time on setting email rules which will save time on scanning mail box every day to find few important emails out of many unnecessary ones.
- It is better to fix 3 time slots in a day to check emails rather than responding every time they reach your inbox.
16.Technology is a Wonderful Servant
- A servant’s duty is to help master in accomplishing his/her goal. So remember that technology is here to help you do your work seamlessly rather than distracting you.
- Technology can provide you excellent tools which, if used properly, can ease your life by helping you list your tasks, prioritize them and also remind you of any job which you plan and want to remember.
- You can use digital to-do list, digital planner, digital time tracker and lot to fast track your work.
17.Focus Your Attention
- However skillful you may be, unless you are focused, it is not going to take you anywhere.
- Your focus must be towards your goal and tasks that can help you reach your goal. You can never allow yourself getting distracted.
- Multitasking is a myth and you can never do multiple tasks at a time. You are just switching between tasks.
- Every time you switch a task, it takes around 17 minutes to focus back which decreases your productivity rather than increasing it.
18.Slice and Dice the Task
- Often the most important task is the biggest and most complex task. We have a tendency to avoid such tasks trading with a smaller one.
- A big task is like Salami and as you cut salami into slices before eating, similarly, split your big task into small subtasks.
- Instead of looking at the big task, work on completing the subtasks one at a time. As you complete one subtask, it will give you an urge to complete the next.
19.Create Large Chunks of Time
- Even if you split your big important tasks into subtasks, it often requires large chunk of time to complete.
- Also taking up related subtasks back to back gives you a flow to do it fast and in the best possible way.
- Allocate a large chunk of your time based on your estimate for this most important task so that you can complete it single mindedly.
- Often early hours of the day or late night is the time when there are fewer disturbances and you can concentrate on your task. Block your calendar accordingly and focus only on the task till it is complete.
20.Develop a Sense of Urgency
- Many people wait for perfect time to start a work. But situation will never be perfect and you will keep on waiting.
- Start with a good plan and concentrate on your tasks. Gradually you will enter a state called flow when ideas will come to your mind automatically.
- Then things will gradually become improve and you will reach a state of mind when you feel elated and energized as you complete your tasks.
- Developing a sense of urgency help you take up a task and keep focused till completion as if it is the most urgent work on the world.
- As you do this, your self-esteem increases and you will become the go-to person in your workplace.
21.Single Handle Every Task
- Once you have selected your most important task from your list, all other tasks are unimportant at that point of time.
- Ability to start and focus on a task, single mindedly is self-discipline in action.
If you follow these 21 steps, you will see a massive change in your life. This is just the essence of what you get in the book ‘Eat that Frog’. Reading the full book is much more interesting and you will find the detailed explanation with related stories.