Eat that Frog!
What do domain names and eating frogs have to do with each other? As it turns out, quite a bit!
At the end of last year, when evaluating my domain names and deciding what to do with them for the new year, I read the book “Goals” by Brian Tracy. I really got a lot out of it and I’ve used many of its principles to accomplish goals for selling domain names and building websites on other domains.
Recently, I visited Brian’s personal brand site and while there I actually signed up for his email list. I usually hesitate to get on email subscriptions because I get so many emails already, but I figured Brian’s was worth it so I signed up. BTW, I viciously unsubscribe to anyone not providing valuable content in exchange for my email because of some serious information overload… another story for another time.
Now I get all the daily quotes and the recommended “training” or products in the sales pitches that he does – I really don’t mind these type pitches because most of them offer some decent information along with the offer to buy something. I’ll listen to a brief pitch if you give me enough value for free and I can expect the product to be worthwhile if I am interested… and they generally are.
One of the benefits of working for large corporation as my day job is that we have a corporate library with a lot of information about our industry along with business and marketing books, current magazines, etc. I went to the library the other day looking at some personal/business networking books(which I desperately need) and social media books and I saw Brian Tracy’s name on another audio book, “Eat that Frog!” – I filed a mental note to come back another day to check it out…
Within 4 hours I saw two recommendations for Brian’s books – one from an Internet marketer’s site and another from a domain name investor’s website. Both of them highly recommended this book as well as the goals book so I went and picked it up.
These are my notes from listening to the book in its audio format. A lot of it is direct quotes or my summarizations with some domain name information and thoughts thrown into the mix. I’ll also have commentary of my own so if you want a version without my notes convoluting the original ideas go to Amazon or your local bookstore.
“Eat That Frog!” (Notes and application to Domain Names)
“21 great ways to stop procrastinating and get more done in less time”
By Brian Tracy
This book has 21 practical, actionable items that you can put into practice for time management as well as Brian Tracy’s outlook on how you can use them.
Personally, I will be looking and listening at how you and I might be able to apply this to the Internet Marketing and the domain name investing world. Since this is about personal and professional development I can also see how it could benefit entrepreneurs, domain name investors, website developers, and domain name flippers.
“There’s never enough time to do everything that you want to do”
This couldn’t be any more truthful for domain developers, domain owners, and investors because there’s always another domain you could buy, always more development to do, etc.
If you think like me, you get a new idea:
- For every possible domain you see on drop lists or in the forums
- Every day when you see or hear an ad for a business whether it is radio, print, TV, or internet based.
- When using social media like FaceBook or Twitter you see stuff every few minutes that might cause you to think about how you might leverage a domain or website to make that better or implement it differently or apply to one of your sites.
Most people are literally swamped with work and personal responsibilities. Low priority projects stack up, magazines and books form in piles that you plan to read, website plans or ideas get put on sticky notes or to do lists. And this isn’t going to change anytime soon for most people.
Forget about using simple time management techniques to get ahead and get everything caught up because no matter how fast you get at doing things or how efficiently, you will always have a never ending list of things to get done. Seriously. Never.
You CAN get control of your time by changing the way you think, work, and deal with the barrage of responsibilities that you have each day. You will control your tasks and activities only to the level that you stop doing some things and start spending more time on the activities that make real differences.
Brian read a lot of books and articles from Covey, Drucker and other time management experts and did a lot of research on time management and this book is the result. Each time he came across what he thought was a good idea in his research, he would try it out in his own life and work and if it was a good idea he would incorporate it into his talks, seminars, and teachings.
All through his life, he has taken the opportunity to learn about sales. By talking to people who were already successful in sales and asking them what they did to be successful and then following that process he was able to make his sales increase.
He got so good at sales he got promoted to sales manager. So what did he do? Of course he went to talk to other successful sales managers to find out what they did and they told him and then he followed the same process.
For domain names, this is a classic example of what you should do – find somebody in the industry you can either relate to that you think does a really good job at selling, developing or flipping. Hopefully that same person is also sharing a lot of information on their blog that you can use.
Here are some examples of people you could model easily because they tell you everything that you might want to know either in their blogs or e-book or tips and tricks…
They will tell you anything you want to know because they know there are more than enough domains and websites to go around for everybody. The only thing they probably won’t tell you is their most successful niches or give you their email list. However, if you buy high quality domains you can leverage other people’s email list such as Toby Clements or François from domaining.com and get on their sales list.
This whole process is so amazingly simple that it doesn’t seem real or possible. All you have to do is find out what successful people are doing to succeed in the industry, follow their model and you should be successful, but almost nobody follows that process. If they had followed this process, they would save a lot of time and money by not wasting it on poor domain names or poor websites or buying too many domains of average to poor quality. Trust me, I know, unfortunately!
The reason people are successful is not only that they are doing the right things right, but they’re doing something slightly different and better than other people. Most importantly they use their time far, far, better than the average person.
Successful people are not better than you, they are just taking action and doing things better than you. Within reason you can learn from them and do as well as they are! This is a true revelation because you should now realize that you can change your life and achieve almost any goal you set if you just find out what other successful people are doing and then do it until you get the results they were getting.
Throughout his career, Brian has found one simple truth:
“The ability to concentrate single-mindedly on your one most important task, to do it well, and finish it completely is the key to great success, achievement, respect, status, and happiness in life.” This is the key insight and the heart and soul of this book. The methods discussed in this book are practical, proven, and fast acting. The key to success is actually taking action!
This is a great time to be alive because there are more tools and more opportunities today than there has ever have been for you to succeed with your goals. More than any point in history – in fact there are so many opportunities that you’re probably drowning in them! Your ability to choose among these ideas opportunities and take action is probably the key determinant of whether you are successful or not.
Most people struggle because there are just too many things to do and never enough time. You find that the more you do the more tasks will come your way so you will never get caught up – never!
Domain investors usually fall into this category because there will always be another domain to find, buy, and register. There will always be another website you could build, another link that you could get…
For this reason, your ability to select and hone in on the most important task at each moment and to start on that task, get it done as quickly as possible, and done well will have more impact on your success than any other quality or skill that you could develop! An average person who can develop this skill, develop priorities, and work on tasks quickly and efficiently will run circles around geniuses who make plans, make notes, and talk about getting things done and come up with ideas, but get very little done.
It has been said that a person who gets up each morning and eats a live frog can then go through the day knowing that eating that frog is probably going to be the worst thing that happens to them all day long and was probably their toughest task. Your personal “frog” is your own biggest, most important task and it is the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don’t do something about it right now. It is also the one task that can have the greatest positive influence on your life at this exact moment.
It has also been said “if you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first” which makes perfect sense – if you have two tough tasks then choose the one that is the biggest, ugliest, hardest and most difficult task first. Discipline yourself to begin the task immediately and keep at it until the task is complete before you move on to anything else.
One of your most important decisions each day will be deciding what you will start on immediately and what you will work on later – if at all. If you have to eat a live frog, a great bit of advice is don’t stare at it or watch it or look at it all day long, just get to it. Don’t take much time to think about it!
Don’t confuse activity with productivity. Don’t hold useless meetings. Think about what you’re going to do and actively decide – don’t just go with the flow and let the day happen because someone else will then be deciding for you or you’ll “choose” the most pressing tasks instead of the most important ones!
The habit of setting priorities, overcoming procrastination, and getting on with your most important task is a mental and physical skill set. Skills are learnable and with practice and repetition you can also develop this skill. If you can keep developing the skill, you will find it becomes a habit.
Accomplishing a task gives you a sort of high like an endorphin rush. A great side effect is that you can actually develop an addiction to the endorphin rush that you get from accomplishing tasks and you will become more competent and gain clarity and confidence. When you develop this addiction, even without thinking about it you will start attacking more complex and relevant tasks and be more productive for the rest of your life. You become addicted to success!
You need three qualities to develop the habits of focus and concentration and they are all learnable:
- Decision – make a decision to develop the habit of task completion
- Discipline – discipline yourself to practice the techniques you are about to learn to master
- Determination – back everything you do with determination until the habit becomes a permanent part of your personality
There is a very specific way you can accelerate becoming an effective, efficient, and effective person. It consists of you thinking continuously about the rewards and benefits of being an action oriented, fast-moving, focused person. Visualize yourself as someone who gets important tasks done efficiently and well on a consistent basis. Your mental picture of how you see yourself has an incredibly strong influence on how you progress with your life…
How you see yourself on the inside strongly impacts how you see yourself on the outside as well as how other people perceive you on the outside. “The person you see is the person you will be!” You have a virtually unlimited ability to learn new skills, habits, and abilities so believe in yourself.
Chapter 1 – Set the table
Napoleon Hill said “There is one quality that one must possess to win and that is definiteness of purpose. The knowledge of what one wants and the burning desire to achieve it!”
Clarity is the most important concept in personal productivity. You have to know what you want to achieve in each area of your life. The number one reason some people get more work done faster than everyone else is because they’re absolutely clear on their goals and objectives and they do not deviate from them.
A great rule for success is to think on paper. Only about 3% of adults have clearly written goals and these people commonly accomplish as much as 5 to 10 times as much as people with equal or better abilities, knowledge, and education.
Seven step formula for setting and achieving goals:
- Decide exactly what you want.
- Write it down. Think on paper. When you write down your goal you crystallize and give it a tangible form and do something that you can see with your eyes and your mind. A goal that is not written down is just a wish or a dream
- Set a deadline on your goal. Without a deadline your goal naturally has no beginning or end and you will automatically procrastinate getting it done just by human nature.
- Make a list of everything that you’re going to have to do to achieve your goal. Add and remove from your list as things come up or get accomplished.
- Organize your list into a plan. Order it by priority and sequence.
- Take action on your plan immediately. Do something, do anything, but do it right now! An average plan vigorously implemented is way better than a brilliant plan that is not accomplished. Execution is everything if you’re going to accomplish anything.
- Resolve to do something every day that progresses you toward your major goal. Build this into your daily schedule and never deviate from it.
Exercise: take a clean piece of paper and write down 10 goals that you would like to accomplish in the next year – then take the perspective of you are ALREADY at the end of the year and you’ve accomplished the goals. Now weigh which of these goals that if accomplished at the end of the year would have the biggest effect on your life. Pick the one that would have the greatest impact that you would really like to achieve and write that one on a separate piece of paper and follow the seven step process above for that one goal.
Rule – don’t do something well that doesn’t need to be done at all.
Chapter 2 – Plan every day in advance
Alan Lakein said “Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it right now”
There’s an old saying about how you eat an elephant and of course the answer is one bite at a time. The same principle holds for your biggest, ugliest frog. The smaller scale doesn’t make it any less hard to do, but what you do is take your biggest ugliest frog and break it down into steps and work on it every day so it doesn’t seem so hard. Start with your first bite now!
Being able to develop your plan is what will determine how successful you are in life and how successful you are accomplishing things. Every minute you spend in planning translates to about 10 minutes you save in execution. Then you have 9 minutes you can spend doing something else productive.
If you take 10 or 12 minutes to plan out your day ahead of time it will save you at least two hours during the day. It is a very simple process-all you need is a piece of paper and a pen. Create your list of everything that you need to do and whenever anything comes up that needs to be added then add to the list before you start working on it. Prioritize within the list to make sure that you really need to be working on a task or that there’s not anything that is higher priority or more productive.
Make a list every evening of all the tasks that you did not accomplish that day and add on the list each task you will need to accomplish tomorrow. You will start the day with an effective plan of things that you need to accomplish. An added benefit is that your subconscious mind will work on the list all night long and often you’ll wake up with great ideas on how to accomplish these things and you’ll be energized to get them done.
You need different lists for different things.
- Master list. All the things that you want to do in the future. You should put all ideas that you can think of on this list along with any tasks – you can always sort them out later
- Monthly list. Create at the end of the month for the next month.
- Weekly list. All the things that you’re going to accomplish this week. This list is always under construction.
- Daily list. This is where you transfer items from your monthly and weekly list that you’re going to do today.
As you work through the daily list and accomplish your tasks, check each item off so you get a sense of accomplishment, progress, and achievement. It also serves as a motivating factor because you see that you’re being productive and getting things done and working toward your goals.
If you do this process every day you will become more and more effective and efficient at it so you will get better and better at completing tasks. You become more creative on how to get things done from a productivity standpoint.
As you accomplish a task and check it off you will build momentum and that will turn into significant forward momentum that you can leverage to destroy procrastination – success breeds success so the more you accomplish, the more you want to accomplish.
The 10/90 rule states that if you spend 10% of your time planning and write down what you want to do and make sure that you’re doing the right things you’ll save 90% of the time that it takes you to get things done.
Chapter 3 – Apply the 80/20 rule in everything you do!
The 80/20 rule is also known as the Pareto principle from the Italian economist Pareto over 100 years ago.
Pareto recognized that people naturally formed groups around income, success, influence etc. He referred to them as “the vital few” which were the 20% and “the trivial many” which were the other 80%. He later observed that this 80/20 principle also applied to other areas of economics in surprising ways.
The rule basically says that 20% of your efforts will generate 80% of your results or another way to put it is that 20% of your customers will generate 80% of your sales. Or 20% of your products make 80% of your profit.
Applying this to your list means that if you have 10 items on your task list then two of those items will count for more than the other eight combined. You will often find that only one of these tasks will account for as much as the other nine combined and generally this task is your frog.
Most people procrastinate on the single tasks that could make a drastic difference in their careers or lives and work on the trivial things that don’t matter. You must adamantly refuse to work on task in the bottom 80% while you still have tasks in the top 20%.
When you are evaluating your tasks always ask yourself – is this a top 20% task or a bottom 80% task and only prioritize the ones that are in the top 20%. Over time you’ll get better and better at realizing which type of task it is.
A great rule to avoid wasting time is to resist the temptation to clear up the small things first just because they’re quick or easy to do. Remember that whatever you do over time and repetitively, such as choosing to do the simple task or easy task first, becomes a habit and then you’ll habitually do the wrong thing.
The absolute hardest thing to do to accomplish a 20% task is just getting started on it. Once you do get started you’ll find that you will be naturally motivated to continue working on it and complete it. A part of your brain loves to work on tasks in the background and think about ways to complete it and your job is to feed this part of your brain by thinking about it all the time!
Often the time it takes to complete an important task is the same amount of time it would take to complete an unimportant task. The big difference between accomplishing an important task and an unimportant task is a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that you get from completing an important task whereas you get almost no satisfaction from completing in unimportant task.
Time management is really life management. It is taking control of what you do next in the sequence of events. You are almost always free to choose to do the next task that you want – so make it a good one. Your ability to choose to eat that frog instead of choosing a less beneficial task is the key determinant of whether you will be successful or not.
Exercise: Make a list of all the tasks you have right now and determine which of those tasks are the 10 or 20% that will provide the 80 to 90% benefits over the all the rest of them. That is your frog!
Chapter 4 – Consider the consequences
The potential consequences and benefits of a particular task are the key determinants of how successful you can be if you choose the right task.
It has been found that having a long term perspective is more important to your success than social background, race, age, or affluence of your parents.
Rule for success: long-term thinking improves short term decision-making.
Most successful people think 5, 10, or even 20 years out into the future. They analyze choices and actively work in the present based on the contributions it will make to their long-term perspective.
By definition something that has importance also has long term impacts on your life and something that is unimportant has little or no long-term impact on your life. Before you start any task think about the consequences of doing or not doing this task – is there any long term benefit or consequence?
Rule for success: future intent often influences or determines current actions.
The greater clarity you have about your future intentions, the more clarity you will have on your current actions and what you should be doing now.
Dennis Whaley said “failures do what is tension relieving while winners do what is goal achieving”
Things such as coming in early to work, reading articles, websites, and books related to your field, taking training on new or current topics that can impact your future career, and focusing on the most important task will have an amazing impact on the success you have in your career over time because it all adds up to be a huge impact – all the little things become one big thing.
Remember that motivation requires motives. The greater positive impact that a particular task has, the more motivated you will be to overcome procrastination and get it done quickly. The time is going to pass anyway and the only question is how are you going to spend it and where are you going to end up in the weeks months and years that pass.
Exercise: Review your list of tasks frequently and ask the question – which of these tasks will provide the most benefits. Whatever this task is, set it as your primary task and make a plan to achieve it and go to work on your plan immediately!
Remember the wonderful words of Goethe – “Just begin and the mind grows heated – continue and the task will be completed”.
Chapter 5 – Practice the ABCDE method continually
William Matthews said “the first law of success is concentration – to bend all the energies to one point and go directly to that point looking neither to the left or to the right”
The more time you invest in the planning of what you’re going to do the faster you will be able to get it done. The more important a task is to you (not someone else), the more motivated you will be to take action and get things done.
The ABCDE method is a powerful priority setting mechanism you can use every day. This method is so simple and effective yet it can make you one of the most effective people in your field.
This technique is effective in its simplicity because you start with a piece of paper and list everything you need to get done the next day.
Think on paper.
Place an A, B, C, D, or E beside each item on the list before you ever start any task.
An “A” is something that is critical that you must get done with consequences if you don’t – these things are your frogs. If you have more than one frog(A) then you prioritize them with a1, a2, a3, and so on.
A “B” is somewhat important but not critical. These are your tadpoles. These are fairly important emails, phone calls, or anything else that requires your attention, but it will only make people slightly upset or a little inconvenienced if they don’t get done. Absolutely no “B” item should ever be done before all “A” items are completed. Never be distracted by a tadpole when there is a big ugly frog sitting in front of it.
A “C” is something that would be nice to do, but has absolutely no negative consequences – these include calling friends, chatting, or completing personal tasks during work hours.
A “D” task is one that you can Delegate to someone else. The rule is to delegate everything possibe to free up time for you to do the tasks that only you can do.
An “E” task is anything that you can Eliminate with no consequences whatsoever. These might be things that you enjoy or that you do out of habit, but aren’t really required.
The key to this is to make sure that you create the lists and that you always do the “A” tasks before you do anything else. Stay on each task in order until it is done. That way you are working on the most important tasks at all times.
If you can actually do this and stay focused on your frogs you will get more done than any two or three people combined around you at work or home.
Take action now – immediately create your list and assign an ABCDE to all of your tasks and prioritize the A’s. Then work on the tasks that need to get done and have the willpower and discipline to complete those tasks
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Note to self – Do this every day for one month – make it a 30 day challenge!
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Chapter 6 – Focus on key result areas
Ask yourself the question – why am I on the payroll? There should be 5 to 7 key results/answers that are critical to each position and these are your primary key result areas.
Example of the key results for a management position might include planning, organizing, staffing, delegating, supervising, measuring, and reporting.
Grade yourself in each of these key areas from 1 to 10 and it should show where you’re strong and where you’re weak. Your weakest area sets the height at which you can perform all other areas.
One major reason for procrastination in approaching an area is that you have historically performed poorly in that area. Rather than setting a goal of improving this skill you just avoid it which just makes it even worse!
I believe the reverse is also true and that if you get better in that area you become motivated to get even better. Refuse to rationalize, justify, make excuses, or defend your areas of weakness. Instead, develop a goal to improve it.
The one question having the most positive impact you could ever ask yourself is: “What one skill, if I developed it in a great fashion, would have the best or greatest positive impact on my life?” Ask yourself and answer this question and work on this the rest of your life and let it guide your career.
The great news is that all skills are learnable in a business sense so if you see someone who has a skill then you can learn that skill as well.
Chapter 7 – Obey the law of forced efficiency
Concentration means the ability to focus the mind on one single, solitary thing.
The law of forced efficiency states that “there’s never enough time to do everything, but there’s always enough time to do the most important thing.” You can’t eat every tadpole and frog in the pond, but you can eat the biggest ugliest frog. Oddly enough that is all it takes!
The single largest task always seems to get done no matter what happens, but often is the very last thing at the very last minute. You will stay late, come in early, work weekends, and anything else that it takes to avoid not accomplishing this task.
New rule: You will never have enough time to do everything that needs to be done. You will never be caught up! So get that thought out of your mind.
Three questions to use on a regular basis to keep yourself focused on getting the most important tasks completed on schedule:
- What are my highest value activities? Or what are my biggest frogs?
- What can I, and only I, do that if done well would make a real difference?
- What is the most valuable use of my time right now? Or in other words what is my biggest frog at the current moment? This is key to productivity and for every hour of every day there is one exact answer to this question!
Do the first things first and second things not at all! Things that matter the most should never be at the mercy of the things that matter least!
Chapter 8 – Prepare thoroughly before you begin
“No matter the level of your current ability, you have more potential than you’ll ever develop in a lifetime”
One of the best ways to get past procrastination is to have everything available that you’re going to need for a task before you begin. Have only one thing on your desk at a time that you need to do the most important thing – clear your desk of everything else.
Look at your desk at home or at work and ask yourself the question – what kind of person works at a desk like this and what did they get done? The cleaner and neater your work environment, the more focused it is, the more confident and positive you will feel!
Chapter 9 – Do your homework
Getting better at your key tasks is one of the best timesavers available. Also, the better you are at it the more motivated and likely you will be to jump right onto a task and get it completed without procrastination.
Rule for success: Continuous learning is the minimum requirement for success in any field. Since everything in business is learnable, refuse to allow yourself to be bad or have weak abilities in any one key task.
Continuously improve! Get up 30 minutes or an hour early every day and read articles and books about your field. You want to be the very best at what you do! Take courses, attend training, or go to conferences in your field.
Another great tip is to listen to audio while you’re in your car because you can listen to entire books in your daily commute – get commute times and estimate books and podcasts.
Chapter 10 – leverage your special talents
Do your work and then do a little more because at some point that “little more” will prove to be worth more than all the rest!
Focus on your favorite frogs to eat because that is probably what you enjoy the most and it could be your special talent. Most successful people find that special thing that they are really good at and focus on it exclusively.
Ask yourself these questions:
- What am I really good at?
- What do I enjoy the most about my work?
- What task has been most been responsible for my success in the past?
- If you could do only one job and one task for the rest of your career, what would it be?
- You won the lottery so money is no object. You still want to work – what task would you do?
Now answer the questions and get started on it today!
Chapter 11 – Identify your key constraints
What has stopped you from eating the frogs that really make a difference? Why aren’t you at your goal already?
For every task you want to accomplish there will always be a limiting factor. Your job is to determine what the limiting factor is and then focus on getting past that limiting factor. The factor may be a resource such as an expert or an employee who needs training or knowledge.
The 80/20 rule applies here as well because 80% of your limiting factors are internal and only 20% are external.
You must be brutally honest when looking at yourself to determine what your own limiting factor is that is keeping you from achieving your goals.
To be successful, the question you have to ask is always – what is it in me that is holding me back? Accept responsibility by looking for both the cause and the cure within yourself!
Find and remove your biggest constraint as quickly as possible. Starting your day by removing a key constraint with focused energy propels you into eating your frog. It may even be that the key constraint removal IS your key frog of the day.
Take action by determining your key goal right now in life and then determine what sets the speed at which you accomplish this goal. In other words, what is the limiting factor. Ask yourself the hard question – What is it me that is holding me back and why haven’t I accomplished this already? Now take action immediately and get started!
Chapter 12 – Take it one oil barrel at a time
One of the key ways to get past procrastination is to get your mind off of the huge task in front of you and focus on incremental steps you need to take to get it done.
Focus on one single action that you can take now. The only way to eat a really large frog is one bite at a time. Confucius said the journey of 1000 leagues begins with one step. This is a great strategy for getting past procrastination and getting things done.
You can accomplish huge tasks by breaking them down into small individual tasks. By the time you get done with some smaller tasks, you will be able to see into the horizon as to what your next task should be. Accomplishing each individual task will further clarify remaining tasks. Even if you aren’t completely sure what your next task is, take action on the task and your next task will clarify itself! Leap and the net will appear!
You can apply this to financial or physical goals: if you save a little bit each day over a long period of time it will add up to financial independence. If you work out a little every day and eat a little less each day it will turn into physical success over time. You can get over procrastination and accomplish great things by taking action on one small item.
Chapter 13 – Put the pressure on yourself
The world is full of people waiting for someone to come along to motivate them to become the people that they need, should, or wish to be. The problem is nobody is coming!
Only about 2% of people can work without supervision. We call these people leaders! This is the kind of person that you are meant to be!
You have to be able to choose your own frogs and make yourself eat them before somebody else comes along and gives you a frog to eat! They probably won’t have your best interests at heart so define your own frogs!
Successful people always put pressure on themselves to get tasks done and get more done. Dedicate yourself to come in earlier, stay later, and work harder than anyone else.
One great way to overcome procrastination is to pretend like you’re leaving for a month. You have only one day to get everything done that needs to be done. Your frog tasks are those that you’re going to get done in that day.
Put this in action by setting deadlines and sub deadlines on every task and activity.
Chapter 14 – Maximize your personal powers
Actively manage your energy levels. Your productivity goes down drastically after eight or nine hours and working late into the night you become even less productive.
A major reason for procrastination is trying to start a task when you’re very tired. Many people are working in a mental fog. The most productive time of day is probably different for everyone, but usually coincides with a good night’s sleep so eat your frogs first thing in the morning.
You must also keep in good shape physically so eat well. Consume a high-protein, low-carb, low-fat breakfast. Have salads with fish for lunch and feed your body like a pro athlete!
Take action by asking yourself the following questions:
- What am I doing physically that I should do more?
- What am I doing physically that I should do less?
- What am I not doing that I should start doing to perform my best?
- What am I doing currently that I should stop doing altogether because it affects my health?
Whatever your answers are to these questions take action today!
Chapter 15 – Motivate yourself into action
Coach and encourage yourself to play at the top of your game! Be your own cheerleader!
As much as 95% of your attitude and emotions depend on how you talk to yourself minute by minute. Your version of events or how you interpret what happens to you determines whether it motivates or demotivates you.
You must become a complete optimist! You must react positively to all of the attitudes, conditions, reactions, and actions of others. Refuse to let everyday occurrences of “life” affect you in a negative way. Continually tell yourself “I can do it, I can do it!” When someone asks you how you are, say “I feel terrific!”
You should never share negative emotions or feelings with anyone because 80% of people don’t care and the other 20% are kind of happy that you having problems!
Optimism is the most important quality you could develop for personal success and happiness. Optimists have three special behaviors which are all learned through practice:
- Optimists always look for the good in every situation no matter what bad has occurred. If you look for the good in a situation you will find it and if you look for the bad situation you will also find that!
- Optimists always look for the lesson in every setback or problem.
- Optimists always look for the solution to every problem. Instead of looking for people to blame and look for actions to take to resolve the situation
Optimists are always talking about their goals and they are always looking toward the future instead of the past.
Put this into action by learning to control your thoughts. You become what you think about most of the time so make sure that you think about the things that you want not the things that you don’t want.
Accept complete responsibility for everything that you do and for everything that happens to you. Make progress instead of excuses. Refuse to blame anyone else for your problem even if they are the cause of it. Keep your thoughts looking forward and let everything else go.
Chapter 16 – practice creative procrastination
You can’t possibly get everything done that you need to do so make a choice and procrastinate explicitly on smaller frogs and tadpoles or less ugly frogs. The main difference between very high performers and very low performers is what they choose to procrastinate!
Rule: you can only get your life and time under control to the degree to which you discontinue lower value activities.
The most viable tool you have in time management is the word NO. Use it for anything that does not provide high-value. You have no spare time – you only have choices as to what to spend your time on. Thoughtfully and precisely consider what you’re going to procrastinate on right now!
Most people practice unconscious procrastination which means they don’t really think about what they’re going to procrastinate on so they end up procrastinating on the most important or most difficult things and generally these tasks would have provided the most value. Avoid this type of procrastination at all costs! Your job is to consciously procrastinate on things that aren’t important.
Practice zero-based activities balancing. Ask yourself every time that you start something new that hard question – if I knew then what I know now, would I have started on this and should I continue on this?
Chapter 17 – Do the most difficult task first
Doing the most difficult task first is probably the hardest part of this entire process.
To work on this plan, spend some time at the end of your workday to make a list of what you need to work on the next day. Review this list with the ABCDE method combined with the 8020 rule. Choose this most difficult task and plan out your task to start the first thing tomorrow morning and lay out all tools and materials that you will need for the next morning. The next morning get up with a singular focus and work on this one task until it is complete. Do this for 21 days until it becomes a habit and continue it for the rest your life. This will literally double your productivity in less than one month.
Develop this habit and never look back and you will become one of the most productive people of your generation!
Put this into action by seeing yourself as a work in progress. Work on the habits and tasks of very productive people until it become a habit. One of the most powerful phrases that you can learn and apply is “just for today.” Don’t look at the idea as if it is for the rest of your life, if it is a good idea then do it “just for today” and then evaluate frequently.
Chapter 18 – Slice and dice the tasks
Often the reason you procrastinate on the most important task is because they seem so large and hard when you first look at them.
Take the big frog task and cut it into really small slices and it will seem much easier to do. Then resolve to work on that one task until it is complete and then the next and the next and the next. Often once you get started on that first task and complete it the rest of the tasks will not seem that difficult and you will progress much quicker than you expect.
Humans by nature have something deep within them called an “urge to completion” otherwise known as “compulsion to closure”. This means that deep within your being you get great satisfaction from completing a task and this satisfaction triggers you to want to work on the next task. Each task you complete motivates you more and more and you get an inner energy, happiness, and satisfaction from completing tasks.
Another way to approach breaking up the big tasks is called the Swiss cheese method. This method means you resolve to work on a specific task for a very specific amount of time – maybe even as short as 5 or 10 minutes. The power of this method is that you will feel a sense of accomplishment.
A common trait among happy and successful people is that they are very action oriented.
Chapter 19 – Create large chunks of time
Examples of this are sales people who resolve to spend an hour every day cold calling sales prospects, executives who spend a certain amount of time on a certain task everyday, people who exercise every day at a certain time for a certain period of time, and people who read books maybe right before bed every night.
The key to being successful with setting aside time is to plan your day in advance so you can use that period of time that you know you’ll be working on a specific task – then you don’t deviate.
A daily time planner broken down into half hour increments is a great tool to make this successful. Remove all distractions such as phone calls, emails, everything! Work only on that specific task during that time.
Getting up a couple of hours early and working on very focused, specific tasks at home where there are no distractions is a great way to get things done. You can be 3, 4, or 5 times more productive during that time. Also, use travel and transition times to get small tasks done in focused blocks of time.
Plan out how you can consolidate and schedule large blocks of time to get things done. Then only use time for large important task and nothing else. Also make every minute count.
Chapter 20 – Develop a sense of urgency
Do not wait! The time will never be just right!
Start right now, exactly where you stand, using whatever tools are available to you now! Better tools will be found along the way and you will be better equipped to use them with the experience you gain by action.
Highly productive people take time to think, plan, and set priorities, but primarily they are action oriented.
If you work consistently and constantly you can enter a state known as “flow” where you get extraordinary amounts of things done. In this state, you see the connections between things that other people don’t, your insight and intuition is turned on, and you’re able to get things done quickly and succinctly.
You can sometimes trigger this flow with a sense of urgency. A sense of urgency is an inner drive to get all tasks done quickly and efficiently. It feels like an internal race against yourself.
With a sense of urgency, you develop a bias to action and are much more likely to take action than just talk about what actions are going to take. Big difference!
By taking action you activate the momentum principle of success. This principle states that even though it takes tremendous amounts of energy to get started initially, it then takes far less energy to keep going at the same rate. The great news is that the faster you move, the more energy you create.
One of the best ways to start your momentum is to repeat to yourself over and over again “do it now!” Also, repeat “back to work, back to work!” anytime you find yourself not doing the most important task. To start taking action on this, choose one area where you tend to procrastinate and focus on applying these principles.
Chapter 21 – Single handle every task
Your ability to “eat that frog” single-mindedly and stay focused on a very specific task is your key to success.
Single handling every task means that you work on that one specific task until it is complete. By focusing single-mindedly on one specific task you can reduce the amount of time it takes to complete it by 50% or more.
In some cases it’s been shown that if you start and stop a task over and over again it can increase the time it takes to complete by 500%. By starting and stopping a task you always have to motivate yourself to begin the task, remember where you were, and then get some inertia and momentum by taking action.
The truth is that once you select your frog, anything else you work on is a relative waste of time! This is based on your own evaluation, right! The more you can focus on a task the further along you move on the efficiency curve and become more and more efficient and productive.
Self-discipline can be defined as making yourself do what you should do, when you should do it, even if you don’t feel like it.
Persistence is self-discipline in action!
When you become this productive through persistence in getting things done you will have increased feelings of knowledge and power and you will become a superior person and feel like you can do anything that you set your mind to.
Take action today! Determine what your frog is and launch into it as fast as possible. Discipline yourself to not do anything else until that task is complete. Treat this task as a test to determine for yourself whether you’re the type of person who can get things done. Once you begin, refuse to stop until the job is finished.
Summary and conclusion:
The main point of this book and the key to everything needed for incredible success and getting more done than most any other person in the world is to make sure that you “eat that frog” every morning.
Buy the book now if you want to learn more about it!
Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time
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