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“Eat that frog” title sounds crazy, isn’t it?
The title is inspired by Mark Twain who once said that "if you start the day by eating a
frog, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that this was the worst thing you had to do
that day?"
The frog is actually a metaphor for your biggest and most important task.
Strategies of this book are similar to “The One thing”, I would recommend you watch its summary after this video.
After watching this book summary you will know all the to avoid procrastination, thereby increasing your efficiency.
Eat that frog can be divided into two Parts
First part is about importance of planning. This part will help you to avoid procrastination
at the first stage itself. Planning part includes
1- Goal Setting 2- Pareto Principle
3- The Sahara desert.
In second part is about execution strategies for avoiding procrastination from occurring
in middle of your tasks.
Let us start with Part 1
Goal Setting
The best way to beat procrastination is by “Setting Goals.” Creating list of your
goals gives the clarity which helps in prioritizing of tasks. According to your priorities, plan
your each day. Many people avoid the planning because they think it is time consuming, but
people should remember that 10 minutes spent in planning will save about 90 minutes in
execution.
Start planning by creating a list of all the activities required for achieving your main
goals. Once the list is prepared, apply Pareto Principle. Pareto principles states that 20%
of task accounts to 80% of results. Let us understand Pareto principle with an example
- Let us assume that your job is sell products to young people on social media platforms
like: 1- Facebook 2- Instagram 3- Snapchat 4- Linkedin
5- Periscope 6- Twitter 7 – Youtube 8- Tumblr 9-Pinterest 10- Vine etc.
But by observing statistics, you realize that, youngsters use more of Instagram and snapchat.
That 20% activities, will give you 80% of your income. Promotion on Instagram and Snapchat
should be done as the first thing. And if time is not available after that, it is okay
to procrastinate the promotion on others platforms.
Yes it is okay to procrastinate, but on less important activities.
One of the biggest causes of procrastination is when you feel that the task is too big
to get started. Let us learn how to tackle that by Sahara desert example.
The Sahara desert is 500 miles in a single stretch, without any food and water. More
than 1300 people had perished in the crossing of that stretch in previous years. Often drifting
sands had obliterated the track across the desert and the travelers got lost in the night,
never to be found again alive. To counter this lack of features the French
marked the track with black, 55 gallon oil drums, five kilometers apart. Because of this,
wherever you were in the daytime, you could see two oil barrels, the one you had just
passed, and the one five kilometers ahead. And that was all you needed to stay on course.
As a result, people were able to cross the biggest desert in the world by simply taking
it “one oil barrel at a time.”
Thus break your goals into smaller one and procrastination can be avoided.
Summarizing the planning part – Set your goals, once the goals are set – get the
list of activities. Make the list small by applying Pareto principle and then break your
bigger tasks into smaller one.
In next part, you will learn about execution strategies for avoiding procrastination from
occurring in middle of your task.