Have you ever heard the phrase, “Eat the frog?”
It’s actually pretty popular in productivity circles. And here’s the basic concept behind it.
Say that you have to eat a frog.
If you’re like most people, you’ll probably put off eating that frog for as long as possible. And who could blame you?
But the longer you put off eating that frog, the longer you’ll have to think about it, worry yourself sick over it, and dread the moment when you’ll have to start chowing down. In the meantime, you’re ability to concentrate on anything else will be shot. And enjoying your free time? Forget about it. How can you really have fun when you know that you have to eat a frog?
Popular wisdom says that if you absolutely, positively have to eat a frog, you should do it as soon as possible. The sooner you eat that frog, the sooner you can stop thinking about it. And once it’s over and done, you’ll be free to move on.
For the record, the “frog” isn’t actually a frog. It’s that dreaded task on your daily to-do list. The one you’d do anything to avoid.
The “eat the frog” rule says that the task you dread most should be what you do first. Once it’s out of the way, doing the other tasks on your to-do list will be a cakewalk.
This is great advice that really works…except when it doesn’t.
Say you have a task on your to-do list that you’ve identified as your “frog.” You aren’t going to do anything else on your list until you complete that task. And, sometimes, this works. You get the dreaded task out of the way, and breeze through the rest of the day.
Other times, you dread the frog so much that resistance kicks in, and procrastination isn’t far behind. No matter how much you tell yourself you should get to work on that dreaded task, you can’t seem to do it. And since you don’t want to do the other stuff on your list until you eat your frog, most of that “other stuff” won’t get done either.
If you sometimes feel paralyzed by the dreaded tasks on your to-do lists, here are three things you can do that will help you eat those frogs.
1. Start Sooner Than You Have To
Do you have a project that isn’t due for a week or two, maybe even more? You’ve worked out exactly when you need to start in order to be done by the deadline. And, since it’s a dreaded project, you don’t intend to start until you absolutely have to.
But why wait? Instead, start working on that project now.
Every day, make working on that project for just ten minutes your frog.
By the time your original “have to start” date arrives, you’ll have worked up some momentum, and that project won’t be so dreaded anymore. You’ll also be farther along than if you’d waited to start.
2. Ten Minutes at a Time
What if you have a project that has to be done by the end of the week? Or maybe even by tomorrow.
Working on it for ten minutes a day isn’t going to cut it, because there aren’t that many days left until you need to be finished. But thinking of everything you have left to do, and how little time you have left to do it, makes your old buddy procrastination pop in for a visit.
So, once again, make your frog working on that dreaded task for ten minutes. Then work on another project on your to-do list for half an hour or so. Then work on your dreaded project for another ten minutes. Then work on another project for half an hour. And so on.
You might find that, the third or fourth time you work on your dreaded project that day, you don’t want to stop after ten minutes. You’ll work on it for thirty minutes, or an hour. You might even work on it until it’s done.
But that won’t always happen. As the hours tick by, and the deadline really starts to loom, you might have to force yourself to just buckle down and work on that project whether you want to or not. But all of those ten-minute work sessions will have added up. Instead of starting cold, you’ll have made some progress, and built up some momentum. And finishing might turn out to be easier than you thought it would.
3. Start with the Easy Parts
Some of us approach individual projects with the same “eat the frog” mentality. It seems logical to get the hardest parts out of the way first. Then, when there are just easy parts left, you can coast to the finish line.
This isn’t a bad approach. Unless the thought of working on the hardest parts of a project make you procrastinate on getting started at all.
Instead of starting with the hardest parts, start with the easiest.
Every project has parts that are easier than others. And starting with one of those easier parts has many advantages.
- If the first few steps of a project are easy, you’re more likely to start instead of procrastinate.
- You’ll make progress on the project, because doing something “easy” is still getting something done.
- Working on the easy parts will give you that momentum I’ve been harping on this entire post. And that momentum will help carry you through the harder parts.
If you thought the whole “eat the frog first” idea was a good one, but could never seem to implement it, give these tips a try. Maybe you’ll never enjoy eating the frogs on your to-do list. But these tips might help make completing your dreaded tasks just a little easier.
