"If it's your job to to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first."
-Mark Twain
There's always that one task on your to-do list that you are dreading. It's a long and tedious task to complete and you'd rather do a million other things than actually complete it. Brian Tracy coined the phrase "eating the frog" and made this time management technique popular in his book, Eat That Frog!. Take his advice and get that biggest, ugliest task out of the way. Once you've finished, you've made room to accomplish easier tasks and actually do the things you enjoy.
Eating the Frog First: Creating an Efficient Calendar
Maybe your frog is your weekly expense report. Maybe it's that call with a key customer that you've been avoiding. Whatever it is, it's the thing you don't want to do but you need to do. It's the task that you're prone to put off until the last minute. If it's not completed, it will probably lead to some serious consequences.
Identify the frog? Check. Now, you have to bite the bullet and actually do the thing that you've been dreading to do. There's no hack or quick trick to get around it. Avoiding the frog just makes it a bigger and more daunting task to accomplish.
Of course, there are some things that you must do. However, there are other tasks that you take on unnecessarily that are a waste of time and energy. Learn to set boundaries, say "no" to tasks that drain you, and say "yes" to projects and activities that excite you and light you up.
In the event that you do procrastinate, the activities below outline how procrastination can improve your creative process. Procrastination gives you an opportunity to think in nonlinear ways and consider divergent ideas that you probably wouldn't have thought of if you'd finished your project hours ahead of schedule.
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