PhotoCredit: BeingGreen
I was recently reminded of the saying “eat that frog!” The saying originates from a Mark Twain quote “eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day”. Um, ick! Tony Robbins has a more PETA-approved method. Robbins takes a cold-plunge every morning, or so he tells us, advising that everything else in your day will feel easy in comparison.
Somewhere between Twain and Robbins, the frog eating idea was picked up by self-help author Brian Tracy. It was the lead idea in his book of productivity hacks. I haven’t read the book (but purchased it on kindle so that’s basically like reading it, right?) Tracy’s take was that the frog was your biggest, highest impact and likely most procrastinated job. So obviously that is the job you want to do first each day. Tackle and conquer that job first and the rest of your day will be smug fueled.
The advice does work on a lot of levels. The human brain is wired for detail and focused tasks in the morning. Getting one major thing completed at the start of your day is kinda the definition of productive. Creating this rhythm over time will have you slaying your to-do list.
The problem is that the real world doesn't work like the self-help world. In the self-help world we hear great advice once and it’s embedded. Obvi. Locked and Loaded. No need to tell me twice. I am a lean, mean, efficiency machine.
In the real world we are sucked into the vortex of inbox overload, realize we forgot about that urgent deadline, slept in after the dog was barking at ghosts at 1am and feel a bit shabby because I-so-shouldn’t-have-had-that-extra-glass-of-wine-last-night.
Change is hard. Motivation waxes and wanes. Life is demanding. Ambition can be a mixed bag. We know what we should do. What we actually do is a little more variable. Ok, a lot variable.
The solution is to use that to your advantage. With any of these hacks and techniques; pick one or two and think of them more as a goal. We are humans, not robots. As my incredible yoga teacher and friend says - this is about progress, not perfection. It's more about kissing frogs than eating them. And sometimes you gotta just kiss a lot of frogs.