Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy

Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy

Eat That Frog!

21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More
Done in Less Time

Brian Tracy

Contents

Preface

Introduction: Eat That Frog

1 Set the Table

2 Plan Every Day in Advance

3 Apply the 80/20 Rule to Everything

4 Consider the Consequences

5 Practice Creative Procrastination

6 Use the ABCDE Method Continually

7 Focus on Key Result Areas

8 Apply the Law of Three

9 Prepare Thoroughly Before You Begin

10 Take It One Oil Barrel at a Time

11 Upgrade Your Key Skills

12 Identify Your Key Constraints

13 Put the Pressure on Yourself

14 Motivate Yourself into Action

15 Technology Is a Terrible Master

16 Technology Is a Wonderful Servant

17 Focus Your Attention

18 Slice and Dice the Task

19 Create Large Chunks of Time

20 Develop a Sense of Urgency

21 Single Handle Every Task

Conclusion: Putting It All Together

Notes

Index

Learning Resources of Brian Tracy International

About the Author

Preface

Thank you for picking up this book. I hope these ideas help you as much as

they have helped me and thousands of others. In fact, I hope this book changes

your life forever.

There is never enough time to do everything you have to do. You are literally

swamped with work and personal responsibilities, endless e-mails, social media,

projects, stacks of magazines to read, and piles of books you intend to get to one

of these days—as soon as you get caught up.

But the fact is that you are never going to get caught up. You will never get

on top of your tasks. You will never get far enough ahead to be able to get to all

those e-mails, books, magazines, and leisure-time activities that you dream of.

And forget about solving your time management problems by becoming more

productive. No matter how many personal productivity techniques you master,

there will always be more to do than you can ever accomplish in the time you

have available to you, no matter how much it is.

You can get control of your time and your life only by changing the way you

think, work, and deal with the never-ending river of responsibilities that flows

over you each day. You can get control of your tasks and activities only to the

degree that you stop doing some things and start spending more time on the few

activities that can really make a difference in your life.

I have studied time management for more than forty years. I have immersed

myself in the works of Peter Drucker, Alec Mackenzie, Alan Lakein, Stephen

Covey, and many, many others. I have read hundreds of books and thousands of

articles on personal efficiency and effectiveness. This book is the result.

Each time I came across a good idea, I tried it out in my own work and

personal life. If it worked, I incorporated it into my talks and seminars and

taught it to others.

Galileo once wrote, “You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help

him find it within himself.”

Depending upon your level of knowledge and experience, these ideas may

sound familiar. This book will bring them to a higher level of awareness. When

you learn and apply these methods and techniques over and over until they

become habits, you will alter the course of your life in a very positive way.

Learning from Successful People

Let me tell you something about myself and the origins of this little book. I

started off in life with few advantages, aside from a curious mind. I did poorly in

school and left without graduating. I worked at laboring jobs for several years.

My future did not appear promising.

As a young man, I got a job on a tramp freighter and went off to see the

world. For eight years, I traveled and worked and then traveled some more,

eventually visiting more than eighty countries on five continents.

When I could no longer find a laboring job, I got into sales, knocking on

doors, working on straight commission. I struggled from sale to sale until I

began looking around me and asking, “Why is it that other people are doing

better than I am?”

Then I did something that changed my life. I began to ask successful people

what they were doing that enabled them to be more productive and earn more

money than me. And they told me. I did what they advised me to do, and my

sales went up. Eventually, I became so successful that I was made a sales

manager. As a sales manager, I used the same strategy. I asked successful

managers what they did to achieve such great results, and when they told me, I

did it myself. In no time at all, I began to get the same results they did.

This process of learning and applying what I had learned changed my life. I

am still amazed at how simple and obvious it is. Just find out what other

successful people do and do the same things until you get the same results. Learn

from the experts. Wow! What an idea.

Success Is Predictable

Simply put, some people are doing better than others because they do things

differently and they do the right things right. Especially, successful, happy,

prosperous people use their time far, far better than the average person.

Coming from an unsuccessful background, I had developed deep feelings of

inferiority and inadequacy. I had fallen into the mental trap of assuming that

people who were doing better than me were actually better than me. What I

learned was that this was not necessarily true. They were just doing things

differently, and what they had learned to do, within reason, I could learn as well.

This was a revelation to me. I was both amazed and excited with this

discovery. I still am. I realized that I could change my life and achieve almost

any goal I could set if I just found out what others were doing in that area and

then did it myself until I got the same results they were getting.

Within one year of starting in sales, I was a top salesman. A year later I was

made a manager. Within three years, I became a vice president in charge of a

ninety-five-person sales force in six countries. I was twenty-five years old.

Over the years, I have worked in twenty-two different jobs; started and built

several companies; earned a business degree from a major university; learned to

speak French, German, and Spanish; and been a speaker, trainer, or consultant

for more than 1,000 companies. I currently give talks and seminars to more than

250,000 people each year, with audiences as large as 20,000 people.

A Simple Truth

Throughout my career, I have discovered and rediscovered a simple truth. The

ability to concentrate single-mindedly on your most important task, to do it well

and to finish it completely, is the key to great success, achievement, respect,

status, and happiness in life. This key insight is the heart and soul of this book.

This book is written to show you how to get ahead more rapidly in your

career and to simultaneously enrich your personal life. These pages contain the

twenty-one most powerful principles on personal effectiveness I have ever

discovered.

These methods, techniques, and strategies are practical, proven, and fast

acting. In the interest of time, I do not dwell on the various psychological or

emotional explanations for procrastination or poor time management. There are

no lengthy departures into theory or research. What you will learn are specific

actions you can take immediately to get better, faster results in your work and to

increase your happiness.

Every idea in this book is focused on increasing your overall levels of

productivity, performance, and output and on making you more valuable in

whatever you do. You can apply many of these ideas to your personal life as

well.

Each of these twenty-one methods and techniques is complete in itself. All

are necessary. One strategy might be effective in one situation and another might

apply to another task. All together, these twenty-one ideas represent a

smorgasbord of personal effectiveness techniques that you can use at any time,

in any order or sequence that makes sense to you at the moment.

The key to success is action. These principles work to bring about fast,

predictable improvements in performance and results. The faster you learn and

apply them, the faster you will move ahead in your career—guaranteed!

There will be no limit to what you can accomplish when you learn how to Eat

That Frog!

Brian Tracy

Solana Beach, California

January 2017

Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy

Introduction: Eat That Frog

This is a wonderful time to be alive. There have never been more

possibilities and opportunities for you to achieve more of your goals than exist

today. As perhaps never before in human history, you are actually drowning in

options. In fact, there are so many good things that you can do that your ability

to decide among them may be the critical determinant of what you accomplish in

life.

If you are like most people today, you are overwhelmed with too much to do

and too little time. As you struggle to get caught up, new tasks and

responsibilities just keep rolling in, like the waves of the ocean. Because of this,

you will never be able to do everything you have to do. You will never be caught

up. You will always be behind in some of your tasks and responsibilities, and

probably in many of them.

The Need to Be Selective

For this reason, and perhaps more than ever before, your ability to select your

most important task at each moment, and then to get started on that task and to

get it done both quickly and well, will probably have more of an impact on your

success than any other quality or skill you can develop.

An average person who develops the habit of setting clear priorities and

getting important tasks completed quickly will run circles around a genius who

talks a lot and makes wonderful plans but who gets very little done.

The Truth about Frogs

It has been said that if the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog,

you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably

the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long.

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. It is also the one task that

can have the greatest positive impact on your life and results at the moment.

The first rule of frog eating is this: 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 before you,

start with the biggest, hardest, and most important task first. Discipline yourself

to begin immediately and then to persist until the task is complete before you go

on to something else.

Think of this as a test. Treat it like a personal challenge. Resist the temptation

to start with the easier task. 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. You must

develop the routine of “eating your frog” before you do anything else and

without taking too much time to think about it.

Take Action Immediately

In study after study of men and women who get paid more and promoted faster,

the quality of “action orientation” stands out as the most observable and

consistent behavior they demonstrate in everything they do. Successful, effective

people are those who launch directly into their major tasks and then discipline

themselves to work steadily and single-mindedly until those tasks are complete.

“Failure to execute” is one of the biggest problems in organizations today.

Many people confuse activity with accomplishment. They talk continually, hold

endless meetings, and make wonderful plans, but in the final analysis, no one

does the job and gets the results required.

Develop the Habits of Success

Your success in life and work will be determined by the kinds of habits that you

develop over time. The habit of setting priorities, overcoming procrastination,

and getting on with your most important task is a mental and physical skill. As

such, this habit is learnable through practice and repetition, over and over again,

until it locks into your subconscious mind and becomes a permanent part of your

behavior. Once it becomes a habit, it becomes both automatic and easy to do.

This habit of starting and completing important tasks has an immediate and

continuous payoff. You are designed mentally and emotionally in such a way

that task completion gives you a positive feeling. It makes you happy. It makes

you feel like a winner.

Whenever you complete a task of any size or importance, you feel a surge of

energy, enthusiasm, and self-esteem. The more important the completed task, the

happier, more confident, and more powerful you feel about yourself and your

world.

The completion of an important task triggers the release of endorphins in

your brain. These endorphins give you a natural “high.” The endorphin rush that

follows successful completion of any task makes you feel more positive,

personable, creative, and confident.

Develop a Positive Addiction

Here is one of the most important of the so-called secrets of success. You can

actually develop a “positive addiction” to endorphins and to the feeling of

enhanced clarity, confidence, and competence that they trigger. When you

develop this addiction, you will, at an unconscious level, begin to organize your

life in such a way that you are continually starting and completing ever more

important tasks and projects. You will actually become addicted, in a very

positive sense, to success and contribution.

One of the keys to your living a wonderful life, having a successful career,

and feeling terrific about yourself is to develop the habit of starting and finishing

important jobs. When you do, this behavior will take on a power of its own and

you’ll find it easier to complete important tasks than not to complete them.

No Shortcuts

You remember the story of the man who stops a musician on a street in New

York and asks how he can get to Carnegie Hall. The musician replies, “Practice,

man, practice.”

Practice is the key to mastering any skill. Fortunately, your mind is like a

muscle. It grows stronger and more capable with use. With practice, you can

learn any behavior or develop any habit that you consider either desirable or

necessary.

The Three Ds of New Habit Formation

You need three key qualities to develop the habits of focus and concentration,

which are all learnable. They are decision, discipline, and determination.

First, make a decision to develop the habit of task completion. Second,

discipline yourself to practice the principles you are about to learn over and over

until they become automatic. And third, back everything you do with

determination until the habit is locked in and becomes a permanent part of your

personality.

Visualize Yourself as You Want to Be

There is a special way that you can accelerate your progress toward becoming

the highly productive, effective, efficient person that you want to be. It consists

of your thinking continually about the rewards and benefits of being an actionoriented, fast-moving, and focused person. See yourself as the kind of person

who gets important jobs done quickly and well on a consistent basis.

Your mental picture of yourself has a powerful effect on your behavior.

Visualize yourself as the person you in–tend to be in the future. Your self-image,

the way you see yourself on the inside, largely determines your performance on

the outside. All improvements in your outer life begin with improvements on the

inside, in your mental pictures.

You have a virtually unlimited ability to learn and develop new skills, habits,

and abilities. When you train yourself, through repetition and practice, to

overcome procrastination and get your most important tasks completed quickly,

you will move onto the fast track in your life and career and step on the

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