Eat that Frog by Brian Tracy

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Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy

Eat That Frog Summary

• "Your ‘frog’ is your biggest, most important task, the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don’t do something about it.”

• “The first rule of frog eating is this: If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first.”

• “Continually remind yourself that one of the most important decisions you make each day is what you will do immediately and what you will do later if you do it at all.”

• “The second rule of frog eating is this: If you have to eat a live frog at all, it doesn’t pay to sit and look at it for very long.”

• “The key to reaching high levels of performance and productivity is to develop the lifelong habit of tackling your major task first thing each morning.”

12. Leverage Your Special Talents

Continually ask yourself these key questions:

“If I could do any job at all, what job would it be?”

“What has been most responsible for my success in the past?”

“What am I really good at? What do I enjoy the most about my work?”

13. Identify Your Key Constraints

Keep asking, “What sets the speed at which I get the results I want?”

Successful people always begin the analysis of constraints by asking the question, “What is it in me that is holding me back?”

14. Put the Pressure on Yourself

Work as though you have only one day to get your most important jobs done.

“To reach your full potential, you must form the habit of putting the pressure on yourself and not waiting for someone else to come along and do it for you.”

15. Maximize Your Personal Powers

“Take one full day off every week. During this day, either Saturday or Sunday, absolutely refuse to read, clear correspondence, catch up on things from the office, or do anything else that taxes your brain.”

“Whenever you feel overtired and overwhelmed with too much to do and too little time, stop yourself and just say, ‘All I can do is all I can do.’”

16. Motivate Yourself into Action

Optimists have four special behaviors, all learned through practice and repetition:

They think and talk continually about their goals

They always look for the solution to every problem

They always seek the valuable lesson in every setback or difficulty

They look for the good in every situation

Optimism is the most important quality you can develop for personal and professional success and happiness.

17. Get Out of the Technological Time Sinks

“Resist the urge to start turning on communication devices as soon as you wake up in the morning.”

“For you to be able to concentrate on those few things that make the most difference in your business or personal life, you must discipline yourself to treat technology as a servant, not as a master.”

“For you to stay calm, clearheaded, and capable of performing at your best, you need to detach on a regular basis from the technology and communication devices that can overwhelm you if you are not careful.”

18. Slice and Dice the Task

“You use [the Swiss cheese] technique to get yourself into gear by resolving to punch a hole in the task, like a hole in a block of Swiss cheese. You Swiss cheese a task when you resolve to work for a specific time period on it. This may be as little as five or ten minutes, after which you will stop and do something else.”

“With [the salami slice] method, you lay out the task in detail and then resolve to do just one slice of the job for the time being, like eating a roll of salami one slice at a time—or like eating an elephant one bite at a time.”

19. Create Large Chunks of Time

“Make work appointments with yourself and then discipline yourself to keep them. Set aside thirty-, sixty- and ninety-minute time segments that you use to work on and complete important tasks.”

“Your ability to carve out and use these blocks of high-value, highly productive time is central to your ability to make a significant contribution to your work and to your life.”

20. Develop a Sense of Urgency

“One of the simplest and yet most powerful ways to get yourself started is to repeat the words ‘Do it now! Do it now! Do it now!’ over and over to yourself.”

“When you regularly take continuous action toward your most important goals, you activate the Momentum Principle of success. This principle says that although it may take tremendous amounts of energy to overcome inertia and get started initially, it then takes far less energy to keep going.”

“With this ingrained sense of urgency, you develop a ‘bias for action.’”

“One of the ways you can trigger this state of flow is by developing a sense of urgency.”

“When you work on your most important tasks at a high and continuous level of activity, you can actually enter into an amazing mental state called ‘flow.’”

21. Single Handle Every Task

“Single handling requires that once you begin, you keep working at the task without diversion or distraction until the job is 100 percent complete.”

“Your ability to select your most important task, to begin it, and then to concentrate on it single-mindedly until it is complete is the key to high levels of performance and personal productivity.”

“Every great achievement of humankind has been preceded by a long period of hard, concentrated work until the job was done.”

11. Upgrade Your Key Skills

“Continuous learning is the minimum requirement for success in any field.”

10. Take It One Oil Barrel at a Time

Get your mind off the huge task in front of you and focus on a single action that you can take.

9. Prepare Thoroughly Before You Begin

Brian’s personal rule is “Get it 80 percent right and then correct it later.

Get everything you need at hand before you begin.

8. Apply the Law of Three

“It is the quality of time at work that counts and the quantity of time at home that matters.”

7. Focus on Key Result Areas

One of the greatest questions you will ever ask yourself: “What one skill, if I developed and did it in an excellent fashion, would have the greatest positive impact on my career?”

“Your weakest key result area sets the height at which you can use all your other skills and abilities.”

6. Use the ABCDE Method Continually

“An ‘E’ task is defined as something that you can eliminate altogether, and it won’t make any real difference.”

“A ‘D’ task is defined as something you can delegate to someone else.”

“A ‘C’ task is defined as something that would be nice to do but for which there are no consequences at all, whether you do it or not.”

“The rule is that you should never do a B task when an A task is left undone.”

“A ‘B’ item is defined as a task that you should do.”

“An ‘A’ item is defined as something that is very important, something that you must do. This is a task that will have serious positive or negative consequences if you do it or fail to do it."

5. Practice Creative Procrastination

“Ask yourself continually, ‘If I were not doing this already, knowing what I now know, would I start doing it again today?’”

“Continually review your life and work to find time-consuming tasks and activities that you can abandon. Cut down on television watching and instead spend the time with your family, read, exercise, or do something else that enhances the quality of your life.”

“Say no to anything that is not a high-value use of your time and your life.”

“You can get your time and your life under control only to the degree to which you discontinue lower-value activities.”

“A priority is something that you do more of and sooner, while posteriority is something that you do less of and later, if at all.”

“To set proper priorities, you must set posteriorities as well.”

“The difference between high performers and low performers is largely determined by what they choose to procrastinate on.”

4. Consider the Consequences

“Do first things first and second things not at all.”

The Law of Forced Efficiency: “There is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important thing.”

“Motivation requires motive.”

“Successful people are those who are willing to delay gratification and make sacrifices in the short term so that they can enjoy far greater rewards in the long term.”

“Future intent influences and often determines present actions.”

“Before starting on anything, you should always ask yourself, ‘What are the potential consequences of doing or not doing this task?’”

“In your work, having a clear idea of what is really important to you in the long term makes it much easier for you to make better decisions about your priorities in the short term.”

“Long-term thinking improves short-term decision making.”

3. Apply the 80/20 Rule to Everything

“Your ability to choose between the important and the unimportant is the key determinant of your success in life and work.”

“Resist the temptation to clear up small things first.”

“Before you begin work, always ask yourself, ‘Is this task in the top 20 percent of my activities or in the bottom 80 percent?’”

2. Plan Every Day in Advance

“Finally, you should transfer items from your monthly and weekly lists onto your daily list.”

“Third, you should have a weekly list where you plan your entire week in advance.”

“Second, you should have a monthly list that you make at the end of the month for the month ahead.”

“Create a master list on which you write down everything you can think of that you want to do sometime in the future.”

“You need different lists for different purposes.”

“Make your list the night before for the workday ahead.”

“Always work from a list.”

1. Set the Table

“Think about your goals and review them every morning. Take action on the most important task you can accomplish to achieve your most important goal at the moment.”

“One of the very worst uses of time is to do something very well that need not be done at all.”

“Think on paper.”