Time 16 - Frogs

Mark Twain once said that if you have to eat a frog, do it first thing and nothing worse will happen for the rest of the day. 

The time management stratgey of eating the frog is a priotization and a productvity method, designed to help people identify diffcult tasks, so that they can complete them first. Putting the method into practice is quite simple. Think of the task you would least like to do the next day, maybe just before you go to bed, and then wake up the next morning and complete that task first thing. If there are two ‘frogs’ then eat the larger one first and so on. 

The strategy works well because it gets the ball rolling for the rest of the day. If you wake up and complete your largest task for the day, then your intrinsic motivation will be set off to keep you going for the rest of the day. It also takes advantage of your most productive hours. Scientists have found that people are the most productive in the early morning, meaning they complete tasks with better accuracy and more efficiency. 

Identifying the ‘frog’ can sometimes be hard. Frog tasks are important but not urgent, they will require more time than other tasks, and they often come with some resistance. Tracking your time or planning it out can help you make sure you can ‘eat your frog’ and then finish all the other tasks you need to get done in a day.