What is 'Eat That Frog'? Prioritization for Maximum Productivity

What is Eat That Frog?

Eat That Frog is the practice of doing your most difficult or most avoided task first. The name comes from a line attributed to Mark Twain: if you eat a live frog first thing, nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day. Brian Tracy built the productivity method around it.

The idea

An avoided task does not sit still. It occupies attention all day, generates low-level dread and makes every easier task more attractive by comparison. Doing it first removes that drag, and the rest of the day runs against a lighter background.

Finding the frog

It is usually the task you have moved to tomorrow more than once. Not the largest task, the one with resistance attached: the difficult conversation, the report you do not know how to start, the call you keep not making.

Making it work

• Choose it the night before. Deciding in the morning is itself a way of avoiding it.
• Start before email. Once the inbox is open the day belongs to other people.
• If it is too big, eat a leg. "Write the proposal" resists. "Draft the three section headings" does not.

Where it does not fit

If your hardest work needs peak concentration and yours arrives mid-morning, forcing it to 07:00 wastes the advantage. The rule is really about resistance rather than the clock: do the avoided thing before the day fills up, whenever your usable attention actually begins.