As a business owner or entrepreneur, it is easy to feel overwhelmed by never-ending to-do lists. In fact, the big, daunting tasks on these lists may be the source of your business paralysis preventing you from finding real success.
Mark Twain wrote, “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”
Stay with me… the frogs Mark Twain is speaking of is a metaphor for those huge, boulder tasks. In fact, this quote became the premise for author, Brian Tracy, to give you a plan to “Eat That Frog.”
Brian Tracy leans into the idea of “eating that frog” providing you insight on how to overcome procrastination and accomplish your goals. Lessons that benefit every business owner.
Identify and Tackle Your Biggest Task First:
The first step in prioritization is knowing what your most important tasks are. I get it, they’re all important, but which one will actually have the most impact if you take care of that one first? Which task will create a positive domino effect for other tasks going forward? Which one, if crossed off, will free your mind to think about other tasks clearly?
Identifying this “frog” task is pivotal for setting yourself up for success. Once you accomplish it you build momentum for the rest of your day. In fact, after you “eat that frog,” nothing else seems so bad. It is a snowball effect of maximum productivity and empowers you to conquer your next challenges.
Prioritize and Focus on High-Value Activities:
There’s a good chance you’ve heard of the 80/20 rule, as it has become a staple in explaining so many aspects of our lives. This rule, or Pareto Principle, teaches us that 80% of our results will come from 20% of our input.
Said another way, this means that 20% of our tasks will actually have the biggest or 80% of our desired outcomes.
Operating under this truth allows us to sideline those less important tasks or busywork, and focus on the high-value to-do’s that will have the most impact in our business and lives. Focusing on this 20% will optimize your time and energy while maximizing success.
Tools to Master Time Management and Avoid Procrastination:
The ideas of “eating that frog” and focusing on our 20% are cornerstones for our best time management practices. However, just knowing the principles is not enough, we must be able to take action.
Having effective tools at our side will allow us to wage war against procrastination. These tools can be as simple as task lists or calendars. Having what is most important written down gives you a prompt to complete it. With practice, these tools will allow us to complete our most important tasks before they also become our most urgent because we put them off for far too long.
We can even use goal setting devices to break bigger tasks into smaller, manageable steps. That way each part of the task feels like an accomplishment as we inch towards “eating that frog.”
Starting these tasks immediately will empower us with momentum to take on the next task. Working these habits is like exercising a muscle that will ultimately be the driving force behind maximizing our productivity, mastering time management, and finding business success.
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