Eat That Frog 🐸 B

Introduction This is a wonderful time to be alive. Today, there are more chances and opportunities for you to reach your goals than ever before. Perhaps for the first time in history, you have too many choices. In fact, there are so many good things you can do that your success depends on your ability to choose between them. If you are like most people, you feel overwhelmed because you have too much to do and too little time. While you struggle to finish your work, new tasks and responsibilities keep coming like the waves of the ocean. Because of this, you will never be able to do everything. You will never be finished. You will always be behind on some of your tasks, and probably many of them. For this reason, your success depends on one skill more than any other: your ability to pick your most important task at every moment, start it, and finish it quickly and well. An average person who makes a habit of picking clear priorities and finishing important work quickly will do much better than a genius who talks a lot and makes great plans but finishes very little. For many years, people have said that if the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day feeling good. You will know that the "frog" was probably the worst thing that will happen to you all day. Your "frog" is your biggest, most important task. it is the one you are most likely to put off (procrastinate) if you don’t do something about it. It is also the one task that can have the biggest good result on your life and your work right now. People also say, "If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first." This is another way of saying that if you have two important tasks, start with the biggest, hardest, and most important one first. Force yourself to start immediately. Keep working until the task is finished before you move on to something else. Think of it as a “test.” Treat it like a challenge for yourself. Do not start with the easier task. Keep reminding yourself that one of the most important decisions you make every day is choosing what you will do right now and what you will do later—if you do it at all. There is one last point. "If you have to eat a live frog, it does not help to sit and look at it for a long time." The secret to doing great work and being productive is to create a lifelong habit of doing your biggest task first thing every morning. You must make it a routine to "Eat your frog" before you do anything else, and without taking too much time to think about it. Studies of men and women who get paid more and promoted faster show a specific behavior: they are "action-oriented." This means they start their major tasks immediately and force themselves to work steadily until those tasks are finished. In our world, and especially in business, you are paid and promoted for getting specific results. You are paid for doing something valuable, especially the work that is expected of you. "Failure to execute" (not doing the work) is one of the biggest problems in companies today. Many people confuse "being busy" with "getting things done." They talk all the time, have many meetings, and make great plans, but in the end, nobody does the job or gets the results. About 95% of your success in life is decided by the habits you build over time. The habit of picking priorities, stopping procrastination, and starting your most important task is a skill for your mind and body. Because it is a skill, you can learn it by practicing over and over again. Eventually, it stays in your mind and becomes a permanent part of how you act. Once it is a habit, it becomes automatic and easy. Your mind and feelings are designed to make you feel good when you finish a task. It makes you happy. It makes you feel like a winner. Whenever you finish a task of any size, you feel a jump in energy and confidence. The more important the task is, the happier and more powerful you feel about yourself and your world. Finishing an important task releases "endorphins" in your brain. These are natural chemicals that give you a "high." This feeling makes you feel more creative and confident. Here is one of the "secrets of success": You can actually become "addicted" to that good feeling of finishing tasks. When you have this "positive addiction," you will start to organize your life so that you are always starting and finishing important projects. You become addicted to success and doing good work. One key to a wonderful life and a great career is to build the habit of starting and finishing important jobs. When you do this, the habit becomes powerful and it actually feels easier to finish important tasks than to leave them unfinished. You may know the story of a man in New York who asks a musician how to get to Carnegie Hall (a famous music building). The musician says, "Practice, man, practice." Practice is the key to learning any skill. Luckily, your mind is like a muscle. it gets stronger when you use it. With practice, you can learn any habit that you want or need. You need three qualities to build the habit of focus. You can learn all of them: Decision, Discipline, and Determination. First, make a decision to build the habit of finishing tasks. Second, use discipline to practice these rules over and over until you know them well. Finally, use determination to keep going until the habit becomes a permanent part of who you are. There is a special way to move faster toward becoming a productive person. Think all the time about the rewards of being a person who takes action and stays focused. See yourself as the kind of person who gets important jobs done quickly and well. Your mental picture of yourself is very powerful. Imagine yourself as the person you want to be in the future. The way you see yourself on the inside decides how you perform on the outside. As the speaker Jim Cathcart says, “The person you see is the person you will be.” You have an unlimited ability to learn new skills and habits. When you train yourself to stop procrastinating and finish your most important tasks quickly, you will put your life and career on the fast track. Eat That Frog!

Chapter 1 - Set the Table "There is one quality that a person must have to win, and that is a clear purpose—knowing exactly what they want and having a strong hunger to get it." (Napoleon Hill) Before you can find your "frog" and eat it, you must decide exactly what you want to achieve in every part of your life. Clarity (being clear) is the most important part of getting things done. The main reason some people do more work faster is because they are 100% clear about their goals. They do not get distracted. The clearer you are about what you want and how to get it, the easier it is to stop procrastinating and finish your task. A big reason people wait to do work or feel unmotivated is that they are confused. They aren't sure what they should do, what order to do it in, or why they are doing it. You must try very hard to avoid this by making everything you do as clear as possible. Here is a great rule for success: "Think on paper." Only about 3% of adults have clear goals written down. These people do five or ten times more work than people who have the same (or better) education but have never written down what they want. There is a powerful 7-step formula for reaching goals that you can use for the rest of your life. Using even one of these steps can double or triple how much you get done. Many people have made much more money in just a few months using this simple method. The Seven Steps to Goal Setting Step 1: Decide exactly what you want. Decide for yourself or talk to your boss. Discuss your goals until you are perfectly clear about what people expect from you and which tasks are most important. It is surprising how many people work every day on unimportant tasks because they haven't had this talk with their manager. Rule: "One of the worst ways to use time is to do something very well that does not need to be done at all." Stephen Covey says, "Before you start climbing the ladder of success, make sure it is leaning against the right building." Step 2: Write it down. Think on paper. When you write a goal, it becomes real. It becomes something you can see and touch. A goal that is not written down is just a wish or a dream. It has no power. Unwritten goals lead to confusion and mistakes. Step 3: Set a deadline. A goal without a finished date has no "hurry." It has no real start or end. If you don’t have a deadline and someone responsible for finishing it, you will naturally wait and get very little done. Step 4: Make a list of everything you need to do to reach the goal. As you think of new steps, add them to your list. Keep adding until it is finished. A list gives you a picture of the whole job. It shows you the path to follow. It makes it much more likely that you will reach your goal on time. Step 5: Turn the list into a plan. Organize your list by priority (what is most important) and sequence (what order to do things). Decide what you must do first and what can wait. Decide what needs to happen before or after other things. It helps to draw your plan using boxes and circles on paper. You will be amazed at how much easier it is to reach a goal when you break it into small tasks. With a written goal and a plan, you will do much more than someone who just keeps their goals in their head. Step 6: Take action immediately. Do something. Do anything. A basic plan that you actually start is much better than a perfect plan that you never do. To be successful, doing the work is everything. Step 7: Resolve to do something every single day that moves you toward your big goal. Put this activity into your daily schedule. For example, read a certain number of pages, call a certain number of customers, or exercise for a set time. Never miss a day. Keep moving forward. Once you start, don't stop. This decision and discipline can make you one of the most successful people of your time. The Power of Written Goals Clear, written goals help you think better. They give you energy and make you want to start working. They help you be creative and help you stop procrastinating more than anything else. Goals are like the fuel that makes an engine run. The bigger and clearer your goals are, the more excited you will be to reach them. The more you think about them, the more you will want to finish them. Think about your goals and look at them every day. Every morning when you start, do the most important task that helps you reach your biggest goal at that moment. Eat That Frog! Get a clean piece of paper right now. Make a list of ten goals you want to reach in the next year. Write them as if a year has already passed and they are already true. Use the "present tense" (as if it is happening now), be positive, and use the word "I." For example: "I earn X amount of money per year." Or "I weigh X pounds." Or "I drive this specific car." Then, look at your list of ten goals. Pick the one goal that would change your life the most if you reached it. Write that one goal on a new piece of paper. Set a deadline, make a plan, start working, and do something every single day to reach it. Doing this one exercise could change your life!

Chapter 2 – Plan Every Day In Advance “Planning is bringing the future into the present so you can do something about it now.” (Alan Lakein) You have heard the old question, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!” How do you eat your biggest, ugliest frog? You do it the same way; you break it down into specific step-by-step actions and then you start on the very first one. Your mind—your ability to think, plan, and decide—is your most powerful tool for stopping procrastination and doing more work. Your ability to set goals, make a plan, and take action decides how your life will go. The act of thinking and planning opens up your mental powers, starts your creativity, and increases your mental and physical energy. On the other hand, as Alex MacKenzie wrote, “Action without planning is the cause of every failure.” Your ability to plan well before you begin shows how skilled you are. The better your plan is, the easier it is for you to stop procrastinating, get started, "eat your frog," and keep going. One of your main goals at work should be to get the best result from the energy you spend (mental, emotional, and physical). The good news is that every minute you spend planning saves as many as ten minutes in doing the work. It only takes about ten or twelve minutes to plan your day. However, this small amount of time will save you at least two hours (100-120 minutes) of wasted time and confused effort during the day. You may have heard of the “Six P” rule. It says, “Proper Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance.” (This means planning well before you start keeps you from doing a bad job). When you think about how much planning helps you work better, it is amazing how few people do it every day. Planning is actually very simple to do. All you need is a piece of paper and a pen. Even the most expensive computer programs or digital planners work on this same simple rule. They are based on you sitting down and making a list of everything you have to do before you start. Always work from a list. When something new comes up, add it to the list before you do it. You can increase the amount of work you finish by 25% or more starting on the very first day you use a list consistently. Make your list the night before, at the end of the workday. Move everything you did not finish today onto your list for tomorrow. Then add everything you need to do the next day. When you make your list the night before, your "subconscious mind" (the part of your brain that works behind the scenes) works on your list all night while you sleep. Often, you will wake up with great ideas to get your job done faster and better than you first thought. The more time you take to make written lists of everything you have to do in advance, the more effective and fast you will be. You need different lists for different goals. First, you should create a "master list." On this list, you write down everything you can think of that you want to do sometime in the future. This is the place to catch every new idea or task that comes up. You can organize them later. Second, you should have a "monthly list." You make this at the end of the month for the month ahead. This list might have items taken from your master list. Third, you should have a "weekly list." Here, you plan your entire week in advance. You add to this list as you go through your current week. This habit of planning your time can be very helpful. Many people have told me that taking two hours at the end of each week to plan the next week has helped them do much more work and changed their lives completely. This method will work for you, too. Finally, you move items from your monthly and weekly lists onto your "daily list." These are the specific things you are going to finish that day. As you work through the day, check off the items on your list as you finish them. This gives you a visual picture of what you have done. it creates a feeling of success and movement. Seeing yourself move through your list gives you energy. It makes you feel better about yourself and gives you more self-respect. Seeing steady progress helps you keep moving and stops procrastination. When you have any kind of project, start by making a list of every step you need to finish from start to end. Organize the project by priority (what is most important) and sequence (the order of steps). Put the plan in front of you on paper or on a computer so you can see it. Then, work on one task at a time. You will be surprised by how much you can finish this way. As you work through your lists, you will feel more powerful and effective. You will feel like you are in control of your life. You will naturally want to do even more. You will think better and more creatively, and you will get better ideas to do your work even faster. As you work steadily through your lists, you will develop a "positive momentum" (a feeling of moving forward) that helps you stop procrastinating. This feeling of progress gives you more energy to keep going all day long. One of the most important rules for success is the 10/90 Rule. This rule says that the first 10% of time you spend planning your work before you start will save you 90% of the time it takes to do the job once you begin. You only have to try this once to see that it is true. When you plan each day in advance, it is much easier to get started and keep going. The work goes faster and smoother than before. You feel more capable. Eventually, nothing can stop you. Eat That Frog! Start today by planning every day, week, and month in advance. Take a notepad and make a list of everything you have to do in the next 24 hours. Add to it when new things come up. Make a list of all your "projects"—the big jobs with many steps that are important for your future. Organize your big goals and projects by priority (what is most important) and sequence (what must be done first, second, and so on). Start by thinking about the final result and work backward. Think on paper! Always work from a list. You will be amazed at how much more you get done and how much easier it is to "eat your frog."

Chapter 3 - Apply the 80/20 Rule to Everything "We always have enough time, if we use it correctly." (Wolfgang Von Goethe) The 80/20 Rule is one of the most helpful ideas for managing your time and your life. It is also called the "Pareto Principle." It is named after Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian man who first wrote about it in 1895. Pareto noticed that people naturally divide into two groups: the "vital few" (the top 20% who have most of the money and influence) and the "trivial many" (the bottom 80%). He later found out that almost all money and business follow this same rule. For example, this rule says that 20% of your activities will give you 80% of your results. * 20% of your customers give you 80% of your sales. * 20% of your products give you 80% of your profits. * 20% of your tasks give you 80% of the value of what you do. This means if you have a list of ten things to do, two of those things are worth as much (or more) than the other eight things combined. Here is an interesting discovery: Each task might take the same amount of time to finish. But one or two of those tasks will be five or ten times more valuable than the others. Often, one item on a list of ten things is worth more than all the other nine items put together. This important task is the "frog" that you should eat first. Can you guess which tasks most people wait to do? The sad truth is that most people procrastinate on the top 10% or 20% of items that are the most important—the "vital few." Instead, they stay busy with the 80% of tasks that are not important—the "trivial many"—which do not help their results very much. You often see people who look busy all day but seem to finish very little. This is almost always because they are busy doing low-value work while they put off the one or two activities that could really help their company and their career. The most valuable tasks are often the hardest and most complicated. But the reward for finishing these tasks well is huge. For this reason, you must refuse to work on the "bottom 80%" tasks while you still have "top 20%" tasks left to do. Before you start working, always ask yourself: "Is this task in my top 20% or in the bottom 80%?" Rule: "Resist the temptation to finish small things first." Remember, whatever you choose to do over and over becomes a habit that is hard to break. If you start your day with unimportant tasks, you will soon have the habit of always working on unimportant tasks. This is not a habit you want to have. The hardest part of any important task is just getting started. Once you actually begin a valuable task, you will feel naturally motivated to keep going. A part of your mind loves to be busy with big tasks that really matter. Your job is to keep that part of your mind "fed." Just thinking about starting and finishing an important task makes you want to work and helps you stop procrastinating. The truth is that an important job often takes the same amount of time as an unimportant job. The difference is that you feel a great sense of pride and happiness when you finish something valuable. But when you finish a low-value task using the same time and energy, you feel little or no happiness at all. Managing your time is really about managing your life and yourself. It is about choosing what happens next. You are always free to choose which task you will do next. Your ability to choose between what is important and what is not is the main reason for your success. Effective people force themselves to start on the most important task in front of them. They force themselves to eat that frog, no matter what it is. As a result, they do much more than the average person and are much happier. This is how you should work, too. Eat That Frog! Make a list of all the main goals, activities, and projects in your life today. Which of them are in the top 10% or 20% that give you 80% or 90% of your results? Decide today that you will spend more of your time on the few areas that really matter in your life and career, and less time on the tasks that have low value.

Chapter 4 – Consider the Consequences “Every man has become great, every successful man has succeeded, in proportion as he has confined his powers to one particular channel.” (Orison Swett Marden) (This means a person becomes successful by focusing all their strength on one specific goal). The sign of a great thinker is the ability to correctly predict the consequences (the results) of doing or not doing something. The potential results of any task are what decide how important it really is to you and your company. Evaluating a task this way is how you find your next "frog." Doctor Edward Banfield of Harvard University studied people for more than 50 years. He concluded that “long-time perspective” is the best way to predict if someone will move up in society and money in America. Having a long-term view of time is more important than family background, education, race, intelligence, or connections. It is the most important factor for success at work and in life. Your attitude toward time, or your “time horizon,” has a huge effect on how you act and the choices you make. People who look far into the future of their lives and careers always make better decisions about their time than people who do not think much about the future. Rule: “Long-term thinking improves short-term decision making.” Successful people have a clear focus on the future. They think about where they want to be in five, ten, and twenty years. They look at their choices today to make sure those actions match the future they want. In your work, knowing what is important to you in the long term makes it much easier to decide what is important right now. By definition, an "important" task is something that has long-term results. Something "unimportant" has few or no long-term results. Before starting anything, you should always ask yourself, “What are the potential consequences of doing or not doing this task?” Rule: “Future intent influences and often determines present actions.” (This means what you plan to do in the future changes what you do today). The clearer you are about your future plans, the more that clarity will help you decide what to do right now. With a clear vision of the future, you can look at a task today and see if it helps you get where you truly want to go. Successful people are willing to wait for a reward. They make sacrifices now so they can enjoy bigger rewards later. On the other hand, unsuccessful people think more about having fun right now and do not think much about the long-term future. Dennis Waitley, a motivational speaker, says, “Failures do what is tension relieving (easy and fun) while winners do what is goal achieving (hard but helpful).” For example, starting work earlier, reading about your job, taking classes to improve, and focusing on high-value tasks will all have a huge positive effect on your future. On the other hand, showing up to work at the last minute, reading the newspaper, drinking coffee, and just chatting with coworkers might be fun now, but it leads to no promotions and frustration in the long term. If a task has a big positive result, make it a top priority and start it immediately. If something could have a big negative result if it is not done quickly and well, that also becomes a top priority. Whatever your frog is, decide to finish it first. To be motivated, you need a "motive" (a reason). The bigger the positive effect a task can have on your life, the more motivated you will be to stop procrastinating and get it done quickly. Keep yourself focused and moving forward by always starting and finishing the tasks that make a big difference to your company and your future. Time is going to pass anyway. The only question is how you use it and where you will be after weeks and months. Where you end up depends on how much you think about the results of your actions today. Thinking about the potential results of your choices is one of the best ways to find your true priorities in your work and your personal life. Eat That Frog! Look at your list of tasks and projects often. Always ask yourself, “Which one project or activity, if I did it perfectly and on time, would have the biggest positive effect on my life?” Whatever that task is, set it as a goal, make a plan, and start working on it 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 “The first law of success is concentration – to focus all your energy on one point, and to go directly to that point, without looking to the left or to the right.” (William Mathews) The more you think about your plan and your priorities before you start, the more important things you will finish. You will also finish them much faster once you begin. The more important a task is to you, the more you will want to stop procrastinating and start the job. The ABCDE Method is a powerful way to set priorities every single day. It is so simple and effective that it can make you one of the most successful people in your field. The power of this method is that it is easy. Here is how it works: You start with a list of everything you have to do the next day. Think on paper. Then, you put an A, B, C, D, or E next to each item on your list before you start your first task. An “A” item is very important. This is something you must do. If you do it (or fail to do it), there are serious results (consequences). For example, visiting an important customer or finishing a report for your boss's big meeting. These are the "frogs" of your life. If you have more than one "A" task, you put them in order by writing A-1, A-2, A-3, and so on. Your A-1 task is your biggest, ugliest frog of all. A "B" item is a task you should do. But the results of not doing it are only small. These are the "tadpoles" of your work life. Someone might be unhappy if you don't do it, but it is not nearly as important as an "A" task. Answering an unimportant phone message or checking email are "B" tasks. The rule is: Never do a "B" task when an "A" task is not finished. Do not let a "tadpole" distract you when a big "frog" is waiting to be eaten. A "C" task is something that would be nice to do, but there are no results at all if you do it or not. This includes calling a friend, having coffee with a coworker, or doing personal chores during work hours. This activity does not change your work life at all. A "D" task is something you can delegate (give to someone else). The rule is that you should give away any task that someone else can do. This frees up more time for the "A" tasks that only you can do. An "E" task is something you can eliminate (remove) completely. It won't make any real difference. This might be a task that was important once but is not useful anymore. Often, people do these tasks just out of habit or because they enjoy them. After you use the ABCDE Method on your list, you will be organized and ready to finish important things faster. The secret to making this work is to force yourself to start your "A-1" task immediately. Then, stay with it until it is 100% finished. Use your willpower to keep going on this one job. Eat the whole frog and do not stop until it is done. Your ability to look at your list and pick your "A-1" task is the starting point for doing great things. It will give you more self-respect and personal pride. When you make it a habit to focus on your "A-1" task—on eating your frog—you will start getting more done than any two or three people around you. Eat That Frog! Look at your work list right now. Put an A, B, C, D, or E next to each task. Pick your A-1 job and start it right away. Force yourself to do nothing else until this one job is finished. Practice this ABCDE Method every day on every list for the next month. By then, you will have the habit of working on your most important tasks, and your future success will be certain!

Chapter 6 - Focus On Key Result Areas “When every physical and mental resource is focused, one’s power to solve a problem multiplies tremendously.” (Norman Vincent Peale) (This means when you focus all your mind and body on one thing, your power to solve problems becomes much stronger.) Why are you on the payroll? This is one of the most important questions you will ever ask and answer throughout your career. As it happens, most people are not sure exactly why they are being paid. But if you are not perfectly clear about why you are on the payroll and what results you were hired to achieve, it is very hard for you to do your best work, get paid more, or get promoted faster. In simple terms, you were hired to get specific results. A wage or a salary is a payment for a certain quality and amount of work. This work is combined with the work of others to create a product or service that customers are willing to buy. Each job can be broken down into about five to seven key result areas, and rarely more. These are the results that you absolutely must get to do your job and help your company the most. Key result areas are like the important functions of the body, such as blood pressure, heart rate, breathing, and brain activity. If any one of these stops, the body dies. In the same way, if you fail to do well in a critical part of your work, it can lead to the end of your job. For example, the key result areas of management are: Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Delegating, Supervising, Measuring, and Reporting. These are the results a manager must get to succeed. There is specific knowledge and skill that you must have for your job. These needs are always changing. There are basic skills you have already developed that let you do your job in the first place. But there are always key results that are the center of your work and decide if you succeed or fail. A key result area is something for which you are completely responsible. This means if you don’t do it, it doesn’t get done. A key result area is an activity that you control. It is a result of your work that helps others do their work. The start of high performance is to first identify the key result areas of your work. Talk about them with your boss. Make a list of the results you are responsible for. Make sure your boss, your coworkers, and the people who work for you all agree with the list. For example, for a salesperson, finding new customers is a key result area. This activity is the key to the whole sales process. Closing a sale is also a key result area. When a sale is made, it starts the work of many other people who make and deliver the product. For a company owner, getting a bank loan is a key result area. Hiring the right people and giving tasks to others (delegating) are also key result areas. For a receptionist, typing a letter or answering the phone and connecting the caller quickly are key result areas. A person’s ability to do these tasks quickly and well decides their pay and if they get a better job. Once you know your key result areas, the second step is to grade yourself from 1 to 10 in each area. Where are you strong and where are you weak? Where are you getting great results and where are you doing poorly? Here is the rule: Your weakest key result area sets the limit for how well you can use all your other skills. This rule says you could be amazing in six areas but very poor in the seventh. Your poor performance in that seventh area will hold you back. It will limit how much you achieve with all your other skills. This weakness will be a constant source of trouble and frustration. For example, "delegating" (giving tasks to others) is a key result area for a manager. This skill lets a manager get results through other people. A manager who cannot delegate well is held back from using their other skills effectively. Poor delegation alone can lead to failure in the job. One big reason people procrastinate at work is that they avoid tasks in areas where they have done poorly in the past. Instead of setting a goal to get better, most people avoid that area completely, which makes things worse. The opposite is also true: the better you become at a skill, the more you will want to do it. You will procrastinate less and be more determined to finish it. The truth is that everyone has strengths and weaknesses. Do not make excuses or try to defend your weaknesses. Instead, identify them clearly. Set a goal and make a plan to become very good in those areas. Just think! You might be only one skill away from being a top performer at your job. Here is a great question to ask yourself: “What one skill, if I developed it and did it perfectly, would help my career the most?” You should use this question to guide your career for the rest of your life. Look inside yourself for the answer. You usually know what it is. Ask your boss this question. Ask your coworkers, friends, and family. Whatever that skill is, find out and then work to improve your performance in that area. The good news is that all business skills can be learned. If anyone else is great at that skill, it is proof that you can become great at it, too, if you decide to. One of the fastest ways to stop procrastinating and finish more work is to become excellent in your key result areas. This is as important as anything else you do. Eat That Frog! Identify the key result areas of your work. What are they? Write down the results you must get to do your job perfectly. Grade yourself from 1 to 10 on each one. Then, find the one key skill that would help you the most if you were excellent at it. Take this list to your boss and talk about it. Ask for honest feedback. You can only get better when you listen to the helpful ideas of others. Talk about your results with your staff, coworkers, and spouse. Make a habit of doing this check-up regularly for the rest of your career. Never stop improving. This decision alone can change your life.

Chapter 7 – Obey the Law of Forced Efficiency "Concentration, in its truest, purest form, means the ability to focus the mind on one single, solitary thing." (Komar) This law says: "There is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important thing." In other words, you cannot eat every tadpole and frog in the pond. But you can eat the biggest and ugliest one, and that will be enough for now. When you run out of time, and the results of not finishing a big project could be very bad, you always seem to find the time to finish it. This often happens at the very last minute. You start early, you stay late, and you push yourself to finish the job because you do not want to face the negative results of being late. Rule: "There will never be enough time to do everything you have to do." The truth is that the average person today has about 110% to 130% more work than they can actually do. The jobs and responsibilities just keep piling up. Everyone has piles of things to read that they haven't started yet. One study found that the average manager has 300 to 400 hours of reading and projects waiting at home and at the office. This means you will never be "caught up." Get that out of your mind. The best you can hope for is to stay on top of your most important responsibilities. The other tasks will just have to wait. Many people say they work better under the pressure of a deadline. However, many years of research show that this is rarely true. Under the pressure of a deadline—which people often create themselves by waiting until the last minute—people feel more stress. They make more mistakes and have to do the work over again more than at any other time. Often, the mistakes made during a rush lead to big financial losses in the long term. Sometimes the job actually takes much longer to finish because people rush at the last minute and then have to fix their mistakes. There are three questions you can ask yourself regularly to keep your focus on finishing your most important tasks on time. The first question is: "What are my highest value activities?" Put another way, what are the biggest frogs you have to eat to help your company the most? Your family? Your life in general? This is one of the most important questions you can answer. First, think about it yourself. Then, ask your boss. Ask the people you work with. Ask your friends and family. Like focusing a camera, you must be perfectly clear about your most valuable activities before you start working. The second question you can ask continually is: "What can I, and only I do, that if done well, will make a real difference?" This question comes from Peter Drucker, a famous teacher of management. It is one of the best questions for being successful. What is something that only you can do? If you don’t do it, it won’t get done. But if you do it, and do it well, it can really help your life and career. What is that "frog" in your work? Every hour of every day, you can ask this, and there will be a specific answer. Your job is to know the answer and then work on that task before doing anything else. The third question you can ask is: "What is the most valuable use of my time, right now?" What is my biggest frog of all at this exact moment? This is the most important part of time management. This is the key to stopping procrastination and becoming a person who finishes a lot of work. Every hour, there is an answer to this question. Your job is to ask it over and over and always work on the answer. Do the most important things first, and do the unimportant things not at all. As Goethe said, "The things that matter most must never be at the mercy of the things that matter least." (This means don't let small things stop you from doing big things). The more accurate your answers are to these questions, the easier it will be to set clear priorities, stop procrastinating, and start the one activity that is the best use of your time. Eat That Frog! Your most powerful tool for success is your ability to choose which task is more important than another. Take a few minutes every day to sit quietly where no one will bother you. During this time, let your mind relax and just think about your work and tasks without stress. Almost every time you sit in silence like this, you will get wonderful ideas. These ideas will save you a huge amount of time when you use them at work. Often, you will find a new way of thinking that will change the direction of your life and work.

Chapter 8 – Get Everything Ready Before You Start "It does not matter how good you are now. You have more talent inside you than you could ever use in your whole life." (James T. McKay) One of the best ways for you to stop waiting and start working faster is to have everything you need near you before you begin. When you are totally ready, you are like a gun that is ready to fire or an archer with an arrow pulled back and ready to fly. You only need a small push in your mind to start your most important work. This is like getting everything ready to cook a big meal, which is like eating a "big frog" (a big task). You put all the food and tools on the counter in front of you. Then, you start making the dinner one small step at a time. Start by cleaning your desk or your work area. Make sure only one task is in front of you. If you have to, put everything else on the floor or on a table behind you. Collect all the information, reports, details, papers, and tools you will need to finish the job. Have them close to you so you can reach them without standing up or moving. Make sure you have all your pens, computer disks, passwords, email addresses, and everything else. You need these to start and keep working until the job is finished. Set up your work area so it feels good, looks nice, and helps you work for a long time. Most importantly, make sure you have a comfortable chair. It should support your back and let your feet sit flat on the floor. The people who get the most work done take time to make a work area where they like to spend time. If your work area is clean and neat before you start, it is much easier for you to begin and keep working. One great way to stop being lazy (eating frogs) is to get everything completely ready to work before you start. When everything is laid out in the right order, you feel much more like doing the job. It is surprising how many books are never written. It is surprising how many school degrees are never finished. Many life-changing tasks never start because people do not take the first step of getting everything ready in advance. The city of Los Angeles brings in people from all over America. These people dream of writing a movie story and selling it to a movie studio. They move to Los Angeles and work in simple jobs for many years. While they work, they dream of writing and selling a famous story. Not long ago, a newspaper called the Los Angeles Times sent a reporter to a street called Wilshire Boulevard. He talked to people walking by. He asked them one question: "How is your movie story going?" Three out of four people said, "It is almost done!" The sad truth is that "almost done" usually meant "I have not started yet." Do not let this happen to you. When you sit down, with everything in front of you and ready to go, act like a person who does great work. Sit up straight. Sit forward and away from the back of the chair. Act like you are an organized, strong, and hard-working person. Then, pick up the first piece of work and say to yourself, "Let's get to work!" and start immediately. Once you have started, keep going until the job is done. Eat That Frog! Take a good look at your desk or your office, both at home and at work. Ask yourself, "What kind of person works in a place like this?" The cleaner and neater your work area is, the more positive, busy, and brave you will feel. Decide today to clean your desk and office completely. This way, you will feel ready and strong every time you sit down to work.

Chapter 9 – Do Your Homework "The only way to truly succeed is to do more and better work than people expect from you, no matter what your job is." (Og Mandino) This is one of the most important rules for being productive. Learn what you need to learn so you can do your work in an excellent way. The better you become at doing a specific "frog" (a task), the more likely you are to jump in and finish it. A big reason why people wait or delay is because they feel they are not good enough. They might lack confidence or feel they cannot do a main part of the task. If there is even one area where you feel weak, it is enough to make you stop wanting to start the job at all. Always work to make your skills better in the most important parts of your job. Remember, it does not matter how good you are today; your knowledge and skills are becoming old very fast. As the basketball coach Pat Riley said, "If you are not getting better, you are getting worse." One of the most helpful ways to manage your time is to get better at your main tasks. Improving yourself and your work skills is one of the best ways to save time. The better you are at an important task, the more you will want to start it. The better you are, the more energy and excitement you have. When you know you can do a job well, it is easier to stop waiting and get the job done faster and better than ever before. One new piece of information or one new skill can make a huge difference in how well you do your job. Find the most important things you do. Then, make a plan to keep improving your skills in those areas. Rule: "Learning all the time is the smallest thing you need to do to succeed in any job." Do not let a weakness or a lack of skill hold you back. You can learn anything. And if other people have learned it, you can learn it too. When I started to write my first book, I felt bad because I could only type with two fingers (the "hunt and peck" way). I soon realized that I had to learn how to type properly without looking at the keys if I wanted to write and change a 300-page book. So, I bought a computer program to teach me how to type. I practiced for 20 to 30 minutes every day for three months. By the end of that time, I could type 40 to 50 words every minute. Because of this skill, I have written 12 books that are now sold all over the world. The best news is that you can learn any skill you need to do more work and be better at it. You can learn to type fast if you need to. You can become an expert with a computer. You can become a great negotiator or a great salesperson. You can learn to speak in front of people. You can learn to write well. These are all skills you can get as soon as you decide they are important. Read about your job for at least one hour every day. Get up a little earlier in the morning. Read for 30 to 60 minutes in a book or magazine that has information to help you be better at what you do. Take every class or meeting you can find about the skills that help you. Go to the big business meetings for your job. Go to the small classes. Sit in the front and write notes. Buy the recordings of the programs to listen to later. Work hard to become one of the most knowledgeable and skilled people in your field. Finally, listen to learning programs in your car. The average person who owns a car sits behind the steering wheel for 500 to 1,000 hours every year while driving. Change your driving time into learning time. You can become one of the smartest, most capable, and highest-paid people in your field just by listening to teaching programs while you drive. The more you learn and know, the more confident and excited you feel. The better you become, the more you will be able to do in your job. The more you learn, the more you can learn. Just like you build your muscles by exercising your body, you build your mind by exercising your brain. There is no limit to how far or how fast you can go, except for the limits you put on your own imagination. Eat That Frog! Decide today to make yourself a "Do-It-To-Yourself" project. Be a student of your job for your whole life. For a professional, school is never finished. What are the main skills that can help you get better and faster results? What are the core skills you will need in the future to be a leader in your job? Whatever they are, set a goal, make a plan, and start building your skills in those areas. Decide to be the very best at what you do!

Chapter 10 – Use Your Special Talents "Do your work. Do not just do your work and nothing more. Do a little bit more for the sake of doing it well—that little bit more is worth more than all the rest." (Dean Briggs) You are amazing! You have special talents and skills that make you different from every other person who has ever lived. There are "frogs" (tasks) you can eat, or learn to eat, that can make you one of the most important people of your time. There are certain things that you can do, or that you can learn to do, that can make you very valuable to yourself and to other people. Your job is to find the special things that only you can do. Then, you must promise yourself to become very, very good at those things. Your most valuable asset, when thinking about money, is your “ability to earn.” Your ability to work allows you to bring thousands of dollars into your life every year. You do this simply by using your knowledge and skills. This is your ability to finish specific tasks faster and better than other people. You could lose everything you own—your house, your car, your job, your bank account. But as long as you still have your ability to earn, you could make it all back and even more. Look at your unique talents and skills often. What is it that you do very well? What are you good at? What do you do easily that is hard for other people? Looking back at your career, what has helped you succeed the most in life and work so far? What were the most important "frogs" you have eaten in the past? You are made in a way that you will enjoy doing the things you are best at. What do you enjoy the most about your work? what kind of "frogs" do you like eating most? The fact that you enjoy something usually means you have the talent to be excellent in that area. One of your big responsibilities in life is to decide what you really love to do. Then, you must put your whole heart into doing that special thing very, very well. Look at the different things you do. What do you do that gets you the most nice comments and praise from other people? What do you do that helps the work and success of other people more than anything else? Successful people are always the ones who have taken the time to find out what they do well and what they enjoy most. They know what they do that really makes a difference in their work. Then, they focus only on that task or area. You should always use your best energy and skills to start and finish the main tasks where your special talents let you do a great job and help a lot. You cannot do everything. But you can do those few things that you are great at—the few things that can really make a change. Eat That Frog! Ask yourself these important questions all the time: “What am I really good at? What do I enjoy the most about my work? What has been most responsible for my success in the past? If I could do any job at all, what job would it be?” If you won the lottery or got a huge amount of money, and you could choose any job to do for a long time, what work would you choose? What kind of learning or getting ready would you have to do to be able to do that work in an excellent way? Whatever your answer is, start doing it today.

Chapter 11 – Find the Main Things Holding You Back "Put all of your thoughts on the work you are doing right now. The sun’s rays do not burn anything until they are focused on one spot." (Alexander Graham Bell) What is stopping you? What decides how fast you reach your goals? What decides how quickly you move from where you are now to where you want to be? What stops you or holds you back from "eating the frogs" (doing the tasks) that can really change things? Why have you not reached your goal already? These are some of the most important questions you will ever ask if you want to be productive and do a good job. Whatever you have to do, there is always one "limiting factor." This is the one thing that decides how fast and how well you finish a job. Your job is to look at the task and find that one thing that slows you down. You must then put all your energy into fixing that one "chokepoint" (the place where everything gets stuck). In almost every job, big or small, there is one thing that sets the speed for finishing the work. What is it? Put all your thinking on that one area. This is the best way to use your time and your talents. This "limiting factor" might be a person whose help you need. It might be a tool or resource you need. It might be a weakness in a company. But it is always there, and it is your job to find it. For example, the goal of a business is to find and keep customers. By doing this a lot, the company makes money and grows well. In every business, there is one thing that decides how fast the company reaches this goal. It might be the advertising (marketing), the number of sales, or the people selling the products. It might be the cost of running the business or how the products are made. It might be how much cash the company has. The success of the company might depend on other companies (competition), the customers, or the market. One of these things, more than anything else, decides how fast the company grows and makes a profit. What is it? If you find the correct "limiting factor" and focus on it, you will usually make more progress in a short time than any other activity. The 80/20 Rule also works for the things that hold you back in life and work. This means that 80% of the things holding you back from your goals are internal. They are inside of you. They are part of your own personality, your skills, your habits, your self-control, or how good you are at your job. Only 20% of the things holding you back are external (outside of you or your company). The main thing holding you back might be something small that is hard to see. Sometimes you need to make a list of every step in your work. Look at every part to see exactly what is slowing you down. Sometimes, it is just one bad feeling a customer has that slows down all the sales. Sometimes, it is because a product is missing one small part. Look at your company honestly. Look at your boss, the people you work with, and the people who work for you. See if there is a weakness that is holding you or the company back like a brake on a car. In your own life, you must be honest and look deep inside yourself. Find the skill you are missing that sets the speed for reaching your personal goals. Successful people always start by asking, “What is it in me that is holding me back?” They take full responsibility. They look at themselves to find both the reason for the problem and the way to fix it. Keep asking, “What decides the speed at which I get the results I want?” How you describe the problem decides how you will fix it. If you find the wrong problem, you will go in the wrong direction. You will waste time solving a problem that does not matter. One big company I worked with was losing sales. They thought the problem was the salespeople and the managers. They spent a lot of money changing the managers and teaching the salespeople again. Later, they found the real reason sales were down. An accountant had made a mistake. He accidentally made the price of their products too high compared to other companies. Once they fixed the price, their sales went up again and they made money. Behind every problem that holds you back, you will find another one once the first one is fixed. Whether it is getting to work on time or building a great career, there are always things that set your speed. Your job is to find them and fix them as fast as possible. Often, starting your day by fixing a big problem gives you a lot of energy and power. it helps you finish the whole job. There is always something in the way. Often, the main thing holding you back is the most important "frog" you could eat at that moment. Eat That Frog! Find your most important goal in life today. What is it? What is the one goal that would change your life for the better if you reached it? What is the one big thing you could do in your job that would help your work-life the most? Once you know your goal, ask yourself, “What decides how fast I reach this goal? Why don’t I have it already? What is it in me that is holding me back?” Whatever your answers are, do something right now. Do anything, but start.

Chapter 12 – Take It One Oil Barrel at a Time "People with only small powers will finish a lot if they work hard on only one thing at a time." (Samuel Smiles) There is an old saying: "By the yard it is hard; but inch by inch, anything is a cinch (easy)!" One of the best ways to stop waiting is to stop thinking about the huge job in front of you. Instead, focus on just one action you can take. One of the best ways to eat a large "frog" (a big task) is to take one bite at a time. The thinker Confucius wrote: "A journey of a thousand leagues starts with a single step." This is a great plan for stopping laziness and getting more things done faster. Many years ago, I crossed the middle of the Sahara Desert. This part was called the Tenezrouft, in the country of Algeria. At that time, the French had left the desert years ago. The places to get gas were empty and closed. the desert was 500 miles wide in one stretch. There was no water, no food, no grass, and not even a fly. It was totally flat, like a giant yellow sand parking lot that went on forever in every direction. More than 1,300 people had died while trying to cross that part of the Sahara in the years before. Often, the blowing sand covered the path. Travelers would get lost in the night. To fix the problem of having no signs on the land, the French had marked the path with black oil barrels (55-gallon drums). They put them five kilometers apart. Because the earth is round, they were placed exactly where you could see them as you crossed the flat land. Because of this, wherever you were during the day, you could see two oil barrels. You could see the one you just passed and the one five kilometers in front of you. And that was enough. All you had to do was drive toward the next oil barrel. Because of this, we were able to cross the biggest desert in the world by simply taking it "one oil barrel at a time." In the same way, you can finish the biggest task in your life. You must teach yourself to take it just one step at a time. Your job is to go as far as you can see right now. When you get there, you will be able to see far enough to go even further. To finish a great task, you must move forward with faith. You must be sure that your next step will soon become clear to you. Remember the wonderful advice: “Leap—and the net will appear!” (This means if you jump, the help you need will show up). A great life and a great career are built by doing one task at a time, quickly and well. And then, you move on to the next task. Having enough money (financial independence) is reached by saving a little money every single month, year after year. Being healthy and fit is reached by just eating a little less and exercising a little more, day after day and month after month. You can stop waiting and finish amazing things. You just have to take the first step toward your goal. Then, you take it one step, or one oil barrel, at a time. Eat That Frog! Choose any goal, task, or project where you have been waiting (procrastinating). Take just one step toward finishing it right now. Sometimes, all you need to do to start is to sit down. Make a list of all the steps you need to take to finally finish the task. Then, just start and finish one thing on that list. Then do one more, and so on. You will be surprised at how much you finally finish.

Chapter 13 – Put the Pressure on Yourself "The first thing you need for success is to put your body and mind into one problem all the time without getting tired." (Thomas Edison) The world is full of people who are waiting. They are waiting for someone to come and give them the energy to be the kind of people they want to be. The problem is that, "No one is coming to save them." These people are waiting for a bus on a street where no buses go. Because of this, if they do not take control of their own lives and put pressure on themselves, they might wait forever. and that is what most people do. Only about 2% of people can work completely without someone watching them. We call these people "leaders." This is the kind of person you are meant to be. Your job is to make a habit of putting pressure on yourself. Do not wait for someone else to come and do it for you. You must choose your own "frogs" (tasks) and then make yourself eat them in the order of how important they are. The rules you set for your own work and how you act should be higher than the rules anyone else could set for you. Make it a game with yourself. Start a little earlier, work a little harder, and stay a little later. Always look for ways to do more, and to do more than you are paid to do. Your "self-esteem" is the center of who you are. The psychologist Nathaniel Brandon called it "your reputation with yourself." Everything you do, or fail to do, makes your reputation with yourself better or worse. The good news is that you feel great about yourself whenever you push yourself to do your best. You feel great whenever you keep going after the average person would usually quit. Imagine every day that you just got an emergency message. Imagine that you have to leave town tomorrow for a whole month. If you had to leave for a month, what work would you definitely finish before you left? Whatever that task is, start working on it right now. Imagine that you just won a free vacation with all costs paid as a prize. But you must leave tomorrow morning, or the prize will be given to someone else. What would you be sure to finish before you left so you could go on that vacation? Whatever it is, start on that one job immediately. Successful people always put pressure on themselves to do great work. People who are not successful have to be told what to do and must be pressured by others. One of the best ways for you to stop waiting is to work as if you only had one day to finish all your most important jobs before leaving for a month or going on vacation. By putting pressure on yourself, you finish more tasks and better tasks, faster than ever before. You become a person who does a lot and succeeds. You feel great about yourself. Little by little, you build the habit of finishing tasks quickly. This habit will help you for the rest of your life. Eat That Frog! Set "deadlines" (times when the work must be finished) for every task. Create your own "forcing system." Set high goals for yourself and do not let yourself stop. Once you have set a time to finish, stay with it and even try to finish earlier. Write down every step of a big job or project before you start. Then, decide how many minutes and hours you will need to finish each part. Organize your daily and weekly calendars to make special times when you work only on these tasks.

Chapter 14 – Make Your Personal Power Stronger "Collect all your tools, bring together all your thoughts, use all your energy, and focus all your skills on becoming a master of at least one thing." (John Haggai) The "raw material" (the basic things you need) to do good work and be busy comes from your body, your mind, and your feelings. When you have rested well, you can get two times, three times, or even five times more work done than when you are tired. Your body is like a machine. It uses food, water, and rest to make energy. You then use that energy to finish important tasks in your life and work. One of the most important things for being happy and busy is to protect and take care of your energy at all times. The rule is that you start doing less work after eight or nine hours of working. For this reason, working late into the night is not always good. Even if you have to do it sometimes, it usually means you are doing less work while taking more time. The more tired you get, the worse your work becomes, and you make more mistakes. At a certain point, like a battery that is empty, you hit "the wall" and you simply cannot keep going. The truth is that you have specific times during the day when you are at your best. You need to find these times. You must teach yourself to use these times for your most important and difficult tasks. Most people are at their best in the morning, after sleeping well at night. Some people are better in the afternoon. A few people do their best thinking and work in the evening or late at night. A big reason why people wait (procrastinate) is because they are very tired. They try to start a task when they have no energy. They have no excitement. Like a cold car engine in the morning, they cannot seem to get themselves started. Whenever you feel too tired and feel like you have too much to do and too little time, stop yourself. Just say, “All I can do is all I can do.” Sometimes the very best way to use your time is to go home early, go to bed, and sleep for ten hours. This can completely "recharge" you (fill you with energy). It will let you do two or three times as much work the next day. Also, the work will be much better than if you had stayed up late working. Many researchers say that the average person is not getting enough sleep for the amount of work they do. Millions of people are working with a "mental fog" (a cloudy mind) because they work too much and sleep too little. One of the smartest things you can do is turn off the television and go to bed by ten o'clock every night during the week. Sometimes, just one extra hour of sleep every night can change your whole life. Here is a rule for you: Take one full day off every week. During this day, on Saturday or Sunday, you must refuse to read work papers, answer work messages, or do anything that makes your brain work hard. Instead, go to a movie, exercise, spend time with your family, or go for a walk. Do any activity that lets your brain rest and fill up with energy again. It is true that “a change is as good as a rest.” Take regular vacations every year. Take long weekends and breaks for one or two weeks to rest and feel new again. You are always able to do the most work after a weekend or a vacation. If you go to bed early five nights a week, sleep late on the weekends, and take one full day off each week, you will have much more energy. This extra energy will help you stop waiting. It will help you start your big tasks faster and with more strength than if you were tired. Also, to keep your energy high, be careful about what you eat. Start the day with a breakfast that has a lot of protein, but is low in fat and sugar (carbohydrates). Eat salads with fish or chicken for lunch. Stay away from sugar, salt, white flour, or sweet desserts. Do not drink sodas or eat candy and pastries. Feed yourself like a world-class athlete before a big game. In many ways, that is what you are before you start work each day. If you eat healthy food, exercise often, and get lots of rest, you will do more work and better work. It will be easier and you will feel happier than ever before. The better you feel when you start work, the less you will wait. You will be more excited to finish the job and move to other tasks. Having high energy is necessary if you want to be very busy, happy, and successful in everything you do. Eat That Frog! Look at your current energy and your daily health habits. Decide today to make your health and energy better by asking these questions: * What am I doing for my body that I should do more of? * What am I doing that I should do less of? * What am I not doing that I should start doing to work at my best? * What am I doing today that hurts my health that I should stop doing completely? Whatever your answers are to these questions, take action today.

Chapter 15 - Motivate Yourself into Action “A person finds their greatest happiness in the excitement of a big adventure, in winning, and in creating something new.” (Antoine de Saint-Exupery) To do your best work, you must become your own personal cheerleader. You must create a habit of coaching yourself. You must encourage yourself to play at your highest level. Almost 95% of your feelings, whether they are good or bad, come from how you talk to yourself every minute. It is not about what happens to you. Instead, it is about how you explain the things happening to you. This explains how you feel. Your own version of what happens decides if you feel motivated or unmotivated. It decides if you feel full of energy or tired. To stay motivated, you must decide to be a complete optimist. You must choose to react in a positive way to the words and actions of people around you. You must refuse to let the normal problems of daily life ruin your mood or your feelings. Your level of self-esteem—which means how much you like and respect yourself—is the most important part of your motivation. You should talk to yourself in a positive way all the time to grow your self-esteem. Say things like, “I like myself! I like myself!” Say it many times until you start to believe it. Act like a person who has a high-performance personality. To stay motivated and to stop feeling doubt or fear, tell yourself again and again, “I can do it! I can do it!” When people ask you how you are, always tell them, “I feel terrific!” It does not matter how you really feel at that moment or what is happening in your life. Decide to stay happy and positive. People say that you should never tell your problems to others. This is because 80% of people do not care about your problems. The other 20% are actually happy that you have problems. In many studies, scientists who study the mind have found that "optimism" is the most important quality for success and happiness. It looks like optimists have three special habits. They learn these habits by practicing them many times. First, optimists look for the good in every situation. No matter what goes wrong, they always look for something good or helpful. And, it is not a surprise that they always find it. Second, optimists always look for a helpful lesson in every problem or difficulty. They believe that "difficulties do not come to stop us, they come to teach us." They believe that every problem has a lesson that helps them grow. They are determined to find that lesson. Third, optimists always look for the answer to every problem. Instead of blaming other people or complaining when things go wrong, they focus on taking action. They ask questions like, “What is the solution? What can we do now? What is the next step?” Also, people who are usually optimistic and positive think and talk about their goals all the time. They think and talk about the future and where they are going. They do not talk about the past or where they came from. They are always looking forward instead of looking back. When you look at your goals in your mind and talk to yourself in a positive way, you feel more focused. You feel more energy. You feel more confident and creative. You feel like you have more control and power over your life. The more positive and motivated you feel, the more you want to get started. You become more determined to keep going. Eat That Frog! Control your thoughts. Remember, you become what you think about most of the time. Be sure that you are thinking and talking about the things you want, not the things you do not want. Keep your mind positive by taking full responsibility for yourself and for everything that happens to you. Refuse to judge or blame other people for anything. Decide to make progress instead of making excuses. Keep your thoughts and your energy moving forward. Focus on the things you can do to make your life better, and let everything else go.

Chapter 16 - Practice Creative Procrastination “Find time to finish big tasks every day. Plan your work for the day before you start. Choose the few small jobs that you must finish immediately in the morning. Then, go straight to the big tasks and work on them until they are finished.” (Boardroom Reports) Creative procrastination is one of the best ways to improve your work. It can change your life. The truth is that you cannot do everything you need to do. You must procrastinate on something! This means you should wait to do the smaller or easier tasks. Instead, finish the biggest and hardest tasks before you do anything else. The difference between people who do great work and people who do not is mostly decided by what they choose to procrastinate on. Since you have to procrastinate anyway, decide today to procrastinate on tasks that are not very important. Decide to delay, give to others, or stop doing the activities that do not help your life very much. Get rid of the small tasks (the tadpoles) and focus on the big tasks (the frogs). Here is an important point. To decide what to do first (priorities), you must also decide what to do last (posteriorities). A priority is something you do more of and do sooner. A posteriority is something you do less of and do later, or maybe not at all. Rule: “You can only control your time and your life when you stop doing tasks that are not very important.” One of the most powerful words in time management is the word “No!” Say “No” to anything that is not a very good use of your time. Say it early and say it often. The truth is that you have no extra time. Your schedule is already full. For you to start something new, you must finish or stop doing something old. Starting something means leaving something else. Picking one thing up means putting another thing down. Creative procrastination is when you carefully and slowly decide on the exact things you are not going to do right now, or ever. Most people procrastinate without thinking about it. Because of this, they procrastinate on the big, hard, and important tasks. These are the tasks that can really help their lives and their jobs in the long run. You must try very hard to avoid doing this. Your job is to slowly and carefully procrastinate on the tasks that are not very important. This gives you more time for the tasks that can really change your life and your work. Always look at your work and your duties. Find the tasks that take a lot of time but do not help you. You can stop doing these without losing anything. This is a job for you that never ends. For example, a friend of mine loved to play golf when he was single. He played three or four times a week for many hours. Over many years, he started a business, got married, and had two children. But he still played golf many times a week. Finally, he realized that playing golf was causing him a lot of stress at home and at work. He had to stop playing most of his golf games so he could control his life again. Always look at your life and work to find the activities that take a lot of time but are not necessary. Watch less television. Use that saved time to be with your family, to read, to exercise, or to do something that makes your life better. Look at your work and find tasks that you can give to someone else or stop doing. This will give you more time for the work that is truly important. Start today to practice creative procrastination. Decide what to do last whenever you can. This choice alone could change your life. Eat That Frog! Use "zero-based thinking" on every part of your life. Ask yourself all the time, “If I was not doing this already, and I know what I know now, would I start doing it again today?” Look at every part of your personal life and your work. Think about it based on your life right now. If it is something you would not start doing again today, it is a perfect task to stop doing or to procrastinate on.

Chapter 17 - Do the Most Difficult Task First “As I get older, I am sure that the big difference between people—between the weak and the strong, or the great and the small—is energy. It is having a strong will and a goal that you will not give up on until you win.” (Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton) One of the best ways to stop waiting and get more things done faster is to start your work by doing your hardest task first. This is truly “Eating your frog.” This is one of the most difficult but also one of the most important skills for managing your life. You can grow this habit by following these steps: First, at the end of your workday or on the weekend, make a list of everything you must do the next day. Then, look at this list using the ABCDE Method and the 80/20 Rule. Next, choose your "A-1" task. This is the most important job. It is the job that has the biggest results if you finish it or if you do not finish it. Collect everything you need to start and finish this job. Put these things out so they are ready for you to start work in the morning. Clean your desk completely. Leave only this one, most important task—like a big frog—sitting on your desk waiting for you in the morning. Then, use self-discipline to get up and get ready. Walk in, sit down, and start on your hardest task. Do this without stopping and before you do anything else. Do this every day for 21 days until it becomes a habit. With this discipline, you will do twice as much work in less than a month. Starting early in the morning with your biggest and most important task is the opposite of what most people do. This habit stops you from procrastinating. It puts your future in your own hands. Starting with your hardest job, or a part of that job, gives you a fast start to the day. Because of this, you will have more energy and do more work from that moment on. On the days when you start your top job immediately, you will feel better about yourself and your work than on any other day. You will feel more powerful, more successful, and more in control of your life than at any other time. Create the habit of doing the hardest task first and you will never look back. You will become one of the most productive people of your time. Eat That Frog! See yourself as someone who is always improving. Work hard to create habits that help you do a lot of work. Practice them many times until they become automatic and easy. One of the most powerful things you can say is, “Just for today!” Do not worry about changing yourself for your whole life. If it sounds like a good idea, do it “just for today.” Say to yourself, “Just for today, I will plan, prepare, and start on my hardest task before I do anything else.” You will be surprised at the big difference this makes in your life.

Chapter 18 - Slice and Dice the Task “The start of a habit is like a thin string that you cannot see. But every time we do the action again, we make the string stronger. We add more strings until it becomes a thick rope that holds our thoughts and actions together.” (Orison Swett Marden) A big reason people wait to start important tasks is that the tasks look too big and scary when you first look at them. One way you can make a big task smaller is the “Salami Slice” method. With this method, you list all the parts of the task. Then, you decide to do only one "slice" of the job for now. It is like eating a roll of salami one slice at a time. Or, it is like eating one small piece of a frog at a time. Mentally, you will find it easier to do one small piece of a large project than to start the whole job at once. Often, once you start and finish one part of the job, you will feel like doing just one more “slice.” Soon, you will be working through the job one part at a time. Before you know it, the job will be finished. An important thing to remember is that deep inside you, you have a "need to finish." This is sometimes called a "drive for closure." This means that you actually feel happier and more powerful when you start and finish any kind of task. You satisfy a deep need in your mind to finish a job or project. This feeling of finishing motivates you to start the next task and to keep going until it is done. Finishing a task releases "endorphins"—the chemicals in your brain that make you feel good. The bigger the task you start and finish, the better and happier you feel. The bigger the frog you eat, the more power and energy you will feel. When you start and finish a small piece of a task, you feel motivated to start and finish another part, then another, and so on. Each small step forward gives you energy. You create an inner drive that helps you finish the whole thing. Finishing gives you a great feeling of happiness that comes with any success. Another way you can start working is called the “Swiss Cheese” method. You use this to get moving by deciding to "punch a hole" in the task, like a hole in a piece of Swiss cheese. You "Swiss cheese" a task when you decide to work for a specific amount of time. This might be only five or ten minutes. After that, you will stop and do something else. You will take just one bite of your frog and then rest or do something else. The power of this method is like the salami slice method. Once you start working, you feel like you are moving forward and achieving something. You get energy and feel excited. You feel motivated from the inside to keep going until the task is finished. You should try the "Salami Slice" or the "Swiss Cheese" method on any task that feels too big. You will be surprised at how much these methods help you stop procrastinating. I have many friends who became famous writers by simply deciding to write one page, or even one paragraph, every day until the book was finished. You can do the same thing. Eat That Frog! Use these methods right now. Take a big, difficult job that you have been avoiding. Either "salami slice" it or "Swiss cheese" it to get started. Successful and happy people usually take action quickly. When they hear a good idea, they try it immediately to see if it helps. Do not wait. Try it today!

Chapter 19 - Create Large Chunks of Time “Nothing gives more power to your life than putting all of your energy into a small number of goals.” (Nido Qubein) This strategy requires you to promise to work at set times on big tasks. Most important work needs long periods of time without any stops to finish. Your ability to find and create these blocks of high-value time is very important. It helps you do great things in your work and your life. Successful salespeople choose a specific time every day to call new customers. Instead of waiting or delaying a task they do not like, they decide to call for one full hour between 10:00 AM and 11:00 AM. They then force themselves to follow that plan. Many business leaders set aside a specific time each day to call customers and ask for their opinions. Some people give 30 to 60 minutes every day to exercise. Many people read famous books for 15 minutes every night before sleep. Because they do this, they eventually read many of the best books ever written. The secret to this method is to plan your day before it starts. You must schedule a fixed time for a specific task. You must make "work appointments" with yourself and then keep them. Set aside blocks of 30, 60, or 90 minutes. Use this time to work on and finish important tasks. Many very productive people schedule their whole day in time slots. These people build their lives around finishing important tasks one at a time. Because of this, they become much more productive. They do two, three, or five times more work than the average person. A time planner that is organized by day, hour, and minute is a powerful tool. It helps you see where you can put time together to create blocks for deep work. During this work time, turn off your phone. Remove everything that distracts you and work without stopping. One of the best habits is to wake up early and work at home for a few hours. You can do three times more work at home without interruptions than you can in a busy office with phones and people. When you travel by plane for business, you can make the airplane your office. Plan your work carefully before you leave. When the plane starts flying, work without stopping for the whole trip. You will be surprised at how much work you can finish when you work steadily without interruptions. To be very productive, you must make every minute count. Use travel time—which we call "gifts of time"—to finish small parts of large tasks. Remember, the pyramids were built one stone at a time. A great life and a great career are built one task at a time. Your job is to carefully organize the long periods of time you need to do your important jobs well and on time. Eat That Frog! Think all the time about new ways to save and schedule large blocks of time. Use this time for important tasks that have the biggest results for your future. Make every minute count. Work steadily and continuously without stopping or looking away. Plan and prepare your work early. Most of all, stay focused on the most important results that you are responsible for.