Writing style: A short 120-page book, which can be read over a weekend or in a single sitting. This book will change your life and reset your thinking around procrastination.
Top Tip: Set time aside to read a section of this book every morning, enjoy it in bed with a cup of coffee and it will fill you with drive and ambition to get the most out of your working day.
Firstly, let’s start by explaining that by reading this book you don’t actually have to ‘ Eat A Frog’ (sigh of relief). It’s a metaphor for tackling your biggest and most challenging task of the day, the task you are most likely to procrastinate on which is also most likely to be the task that will have the greatest impact on your daily life.
“If the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go about the rest of your day with the satisfaction of knowing that the worst thing likely to happen to you all day is already behind you.”
The first rule Tracy explains is that if you have to eat two frogs, eat the biggest and ugliest one first! In other words, you need to put your biggest and hardest task right at the top of your list. We will call this task “A“. The second rule is, if you have to eat a frog ‘it doesn’t pay to sit and look at it for very long.’ This means to take action straight away before the idea of procrastination gets to sink in and become a reality.
After his introduction, Tracy leads on to explain his twenty-one practical and achievable tasks which will aid you to stop procrastinating and get more of your important tasks done, today!
The Pareto Principle was one of these tasks which resonated with our book club the most, also known as the 80/20 rule where virtually all economic activity falls under this theory. For example, 20% of your daily activities will amount to 80% of your results; or 20% of the tasks you complete will lead to 80% of the value of what you achieve. Out of a list of ten items, only two of these will outweigh the worth of the other eight items included. What do we learn here? Write your daily lists, and get your biggest and uglies jobs done first!
All in all the key to any organisation is the priority, writing a list of tasks in an order that will significantly contribute towards achieving your key results:
A– 1-4 tasks which MUST be completed first (the most important).
B– Tasks that you should do, these have a benefit towards your targets but are not as important as ‘A’
C– Wouldn’t it be nice to go out for a business lunch? Be HONEST, these tasks will not benefit you, but they would be nice to do. These tasks often bypass A&B but they mustn’t!
D– Delegate… or dump! These are tasks you can outsource and do not need to engulf any of your time.
E– Eliminate it!! These are not making us better and we do not need to do them.
Great summary Sammie. I haven’t read this book but I get the concept. With the ABCDE tasks, you say that C tasks often bypass the A&B lists, but what do you do with them? Do they need to be consciously moved to A, B or D?
Great summary Sammie. I haven’t read this book but I get the concept. With the ABCDE tasks, you say that C tasks often bypass the A&B lists, but what do you do with them? Do they need to be consciously moved to A, B or D?