Eat that frog: 7 ways to stop procrastinating and get more done.

Table of Contents

1. Eat that frog:

In this book, the frog represents the most important and challenging work in your daily life. You won’t be able to succeed if you put off the frog that is nothing but a challenging task.

Consider the following scenario: You have three tasks to complete:

preparing for a seminar, writing a book, and cleaning the house. If preparing for a seminar is your most difficult assignment, you should complete it first thing in the morning. Because after you’ve finished the most difficult duty, the others will be simple. However, if you put off the most difficult assignment, you will never be able to finish it. Furthermore, you will be unable to concentrate on other tasks since your attention will be drawn to the most difficult task, “I must prepare for a seminar,” throughout the day. One must eat their frog in order to make a productive, efficient, and stress-free day.

2. Set the table:

We don’t always know what we want or what we want to achieve. Before you eat a frog, you must first determine your life’s purpose. It might be anything from reducing weight to passing an exam to growing a business. Decide on a goal and develop a strategy to achieve it. You can simply eat your frog after you have clarity on your goals and plan. This is how successful people manage to accomplish more in a single day. The main causes of procrastination are a lack of clarity about what to do, how to do it, and why to do it.

There are seven effective formulas for obtaining objectives:

Decide on a goal: Make a list of what you want to accomplish in your life.

Make a clear written goal: According to research, people who write their objectives down are more likely to attain them than those who do not.

Set a deadline: Regardless of your aim, you must set a deadline. There is no sense of urgency in a goal that does not have a deadline. You tend to procrastinate more if you don’t have a deadline.

Make a list of everything you want to do: Make a list of the actions you’ll need to take in order to achieve your objective. Make a list of all of your activities on a piece of paper.

Make a plan: After listing the activities, put them in the correct sequence. Sort your to-do list by priority and order. Take a few moments to consider what you must do first (biggest frog) and what you can postpone(small frog).

Take action: after formulating plans, take action right away. In the world, the beginning is a difficult challenge. It’s simple to get into the swing of things once you get started.

Do every single day: Make a daily commitment to do something that takes you closer to your main objective. Include this activity in your everyday routine. Don’t let a single day pass you by. Make it a habit to do so.

3. Every day should be planned ahead of time.

You are less likely to procrastinate on your task if you have a solid plan in place. A secret strategy for success is to think before you act. The majority of the time, problems arise as a result of hasty actions taken without consideration.

The good news is that every minute spent planning saves up to 10 minutes when it comes to execution. You will save 60 to 120 minutes per day if you sit and plan for 10 minutes each day.

Before going to bed, make a list for the next day. If you do this, even while you’re sleeping, your subconscious mind will start preparing you for the day ahead. As a result, when you wake up, you’ll have better ideas and plans for achieving your objectives. To begin, construct a master list, which includes a list of all the activities necessary to achieve your goal. Make a monthly list after that. Set a target for each month, such as a monthly deadline. Make a weekly list out of it now. Finally, create a daily list in order to create a weekly list.

Make a plan from beginning to end, including all activities, if you need to complete a specific project. You will be successful once you have devised a suitable plan.

4. Apply the 80/20 Rule to everything:

This indicates that if you have a list of 10 things to do, two of them will be worth five or ten times as much as the other eight combined. Even if each of the ten jobs takes the same amount of time to perform, only two of them will be more valuable than the others. These 2 tasks were your frogs that should be eaten first. This implies identifying the most important and valuable task and doing it as soon as possible.

Some people work all day and get very little done. because those individuals focus on 80% of work that is worth less than the other 20% of work. The 20% of tasks that add the most value are undoubtedly the most difficult. However, the payback and rewards for efficiently executing these duties can be enormous.

You are motivated to complete the critical activity just by thinking about it. Both important and unimportant tasks will take the same amount of time to complete. You will feel more satisfied and driven after completing an important assignment. When you finish the unimportant activity first, however, you will be less motivated and disappointed since you will believe you have wasted so much time on an easy task.

5. Consider the consequences:

Short-term decision-making is enhanced by long-term thinking. Successful people have a clear vision of the future. They consider next five, ten, and twenty years. They examine their current decisions and behaviors to ensure that what they are doing now is in line with the long-term goals they have set for themselves.

If you have a clear future intention, you will be able to make better decisions and plans than those who do not. Successful people are those who are willing to put off gratification in the short term because they know it will pay off in the long run. Unsuccessful people, on the other hand, are more concerned with short-term pleasure and immediate fulfillment than with the future.

6. Use Creative Procrastination:

In any case, time will pass. The only question is how you’ll put it to use and where you’ll be at the end of the weeks and months. The law of forced efficiency says, “There is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important thing,” In other words, you won’t be able to eat all of the frogs in the pond, but you will be able to eat the biggest and ugliest frog, which will be enough for your success.

You will not be able to complete all of the tasks you have listed. You’re going to procrastinate in any case. But whose task is it? Procrastinate on the simplest of tasks. Eat smaller or ugly frogs later. Eat the biggest and ugliest frogs before anything else. Do the worst thing first! What people choose to procrastinate on determines the difference between successful and unsuccessful people. So put off the tasks that will not help you achieve your goals.

Priorities must be accompanied by posteriorities in order to be defined. Priorities are things you do more of and sooner, whereas posteriorities are things you do less of and later. Creative procrastination is the act of selecting which tasks are of lesser importance and hence contribute less to your achievement. If you practice creative procrastination, you will not only gain more time, but you will also save energy that you can use to support your main goal.

Set your back on time-consuming activities. Instead of watching television, spend time with your family, play games, or do something else that will improve the quality of your life. Examine your schedule to see where you’re wasting time on less important activities. Try to stay away from those activities. You will have more time than you think if you do so.

7. Continue to use the ABCDE Method:

The ABCDE Method is an effective method for creating priorities that you may use on a daily basis. Put your pen to paper and make a list of all the things you have planned.

Now, among those activities, write “A” next to the most important one (ugliest frog). This is a must-do activity, and failure to do it will result in serious consequences. These activities will be labeled A1, A2, A3, and so on.

A “B” item is a task that you should complete. However, the consequences are minor. Therefore, you should not proceed to “B” until you have completed “A.”

A “C” task is described as anything that would be great to perform but has no consequences whether you complete it or not.

A “D” task is one that you can assign to another person.

An “E” task is something that you can get rid of completely, and it won’t make much of a difference.

Consider the following scenario:

Task A: Complete the report for the upcoming board meeting.
Task B: Emails to be sent.
Task C: Making a phone call to a buddy.
Task D: Doing laundry.
Task E: Watching television.

You will start getting more done than any two or three individuals around you after you adopt the habit of concentrating on your A-1, most important, activity—eating your frog.