“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but schedule your priorities.”
Stephen Covey
What is a frog when it comes to time management and productivity? A frog is your biggest, ugliest task or tasks that you need to complete for your business. When you eat your daily frogs you will:
- Get important tasks done in your business
- It will help you work more efficiently which will help you improve your work/life balance
- When you get important things done you’ll feel accomplished and you’ll be moving your business forward and leading with confidence
Let’s look at some examples of frogs:
Ironically, a frog is usually something that will help us in our business and at the same time it’s something that we tend to procrastinate on.
Tasks or “frogs” can look like:
- Tasks closest to our revenue line that brings in income, creates a product or saves money
- Administrative tasks like bookkeeping, creating a newsletter or blogging
- Tasks that have a financial consequence associated with them:
- Invoicing
- Paying taxes
- Tasks that have a solid deadline such as filing a tax return
- Tasks that other people are waiting on from you. You may need to do something that then allows someone else to do their part.
If you want to learn more about frogs, I recommend reading: “Eat That Frog: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time.” Brian Tracy
So, when should you eat frogs?
You start with the ugliest and biggest frog and work your way down to the tadpoles. The biggest frog would be the one that would have the biggest impact and the one you’re most likely to procrastinate on. Work your way down to the smaller tasks that don’t take as long or don’t have quite as high of an impact.
- Eat your biggest frog first thing in the morning
- You get the satisfaction of getting it done instead of having it looming over you
- If the rest of the day goes sideways, you know you’ve gotten it taken care of
- This starts your day off on the right foot
- We have more willpower first thing in the day before other things chip away at our willpower:
- Stress
- Emotions
- Interruptions
- Make your to do list the evening before and start the list with your biggest frog
- Work without interruptions when you eat frogs
- Strive for 96 minutes at a time which is 20% of an 8 hour work day
- Turn off phone notifications
- Don’t check email during this time (unless that is your frog)
- Close your door while you’re eating your biggest frog so you can work uninterrupted
One size doesn’t always fit all. Here are some alternatives:
- Consider your own natural time of day that you have the most energy and feel your best
- Are you a night owl? Maybe for you it is better to sleep in and eat frogs at night
- What if you like to knock out a bunch of little tasks before diving into a frog that takes longer?
- Put all those little tasks together on your list and consider them as one frog
- Make sure these tasks will in no way prevent you from actually getting to your frogs
- Make sure they aren’t a way to procrastinate
- Make sure they won’t end up turning into bigger projects that make you run out of time to eat your frog
- Make sure you are scheduling in enough time to eat your frog(s)
- What if your frog is really big?
- Eat one bite at a time, just like you eat an elephant
- Break up your project into multiple frogs and schedule your meals accordingly
Wrap up:
I want you to eat the frogs in your business so you can feel accomplished, improve your life balance, work less and enjoy life more.
“You can do anything, but not everything.”
David Allen
