Suffering From Procrastination? Eat That Frog
To start off the week, here is a short video with one simple time-management tip:
I think the actual quote by William James should be “Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task”. Either way, I find it very true. Found the video via this post at the Early Retirement Forums.
By Jonathan Ping | Time Management | 12/15/08, 4:42am
December 15th, 2008 at 7:17 am
Well, that helped me procrastinate a few more minutes today…
December 15th, 2008 at 8:08 am
I love it;)
December 15th, 2008 at 11:03 am
What a great idea and tip. Thanks!
December 15th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
If only I could study for the GMAT first thing in the morning, my schedule is so full that it’s easy to procrastinate when I get home from work.
December 15th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
I’ll take a look at that later
December 16th, 2008 at 10:20 am
True.
December 16th, 2008 at 11:50 am
I use a similar method, modified for the busier professional and espoused by Neal Whitten’s project management seminars.
Take 10 minutes at the beginning of the day and get rid of distractions (voicemail, email, etc). Use the time to write your to-do list.
Once the list is done, re-read it and number your top three priorities. This is your real To Do List. Now get to work.
If you find something on your list day after day, you’re either not “eating the frog,” or you’ve genuinely hit a roadblock and need to escalate the matter to bring in some help.
The momentum you build checking off big stuff is very satisfying, and life gets to be less stressful without those eternally unfinished tasks hanging over you.
December 16th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Ugh!
If I may share a story… I love gardening and I grew this beautiful vegetable garden bursting with tomatoes, peppers, sweet potatoes, squash, carrots, watermelon and many other wonderful delights. But one day I saw that this frog had decided that my garden was going to be its new home. Well the frog had to go… and it took a few days before it was evicted but in that short period of time that thing grew… must have put on 3 pounds!…
Well, another important aspect to this video is… if you don’t eat the frog first thing in the morning… it WILL grow… and may end up eating you!
Be well!
December 16th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
[...] day and the rest of the day has to be better”. Then I saw it again yesterday on a post on My Money Blog. After watching the little movie he’d linked to I decided it was a good philosophy to [...]
December 27th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
I believe this is actually a Mark Twain quote, “If you know you have to swallow a frog, swallow it first thing in the morning. If there are two frogs, swallow the big one first.” That’s some good, timeless advice!
December 15th, 2010 at 4:34 am
Awesome posts
Thanks for posting!