“Eat a live frog first thing in the morning, and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”

I find I often focus my posts on areas where I need improvement. This week I’d like to celebrate what I believe is one of my best characteristics: I get stuff done. I don’t procrastinate or get overwhelmed by the difficulty or size of a project.  I can break it down into doable pieces and motivate myself to start.

Apparently, there is a productivity method for this: eat the frog.  Who knew? I only recently learned of this term and after a bit of research, I’m pleased to see I’m an expert frog eater.

What does it mean? Motivational speaker Brian Tracy coined the term in 2001 and it means to complete difficult, frustrating or tedious tasks before the ones you’d rather do. Why are these tedious task called ‘frogs’? No one is quite sure but the quote above may be attributed to Mark Twain. See the article, Eat the Frog Meaning: Why Finish Complicated Tasks First, for more information on the origin and technique.

And since we all have room for improvement, even in the areas in which we think we excel, I’ve found  this recent Harvard Business Review Article, Stop Procrastinating and Tackle that Big Project, to help us eat that frog.  The author lays out strategies we can use to trick ourselves into getting started on those ‘frog’ projects – that is ones that feel onerous or overwhelming. Strategies include:

• Start with Easy Behavior Change: Instead of focusing on the enormous task ahead of you, create tiny habits that are so minuscule and doable that they’re impossible to resist. Lower the bar and find a small way to begin. I’m currently revamping a large internal policy for my organization and was sent reams of feedback to go through and incorporate. I started my day by doing simple edits on the document (for example, replacing the word ‘supervisor’ with ‘manager’ throughout) as it was fairly mindless to do. It primed me to then review the more substantive changes.
• Commit to a Deadline: Put your start and completion dates in your calendar – and stick to it. If not, life will get in the way and other priorities will keep moving the project to some undetermined future date. In other words, it will never happen. I map out my week, month and year. Sure, things need to move around and I need to be flexible to accommodate unplanned, urgent matters, but nothing gets forgotten or pushed off indefinitely.
• Make It An Experiment: Remember that most decisions aren’t as critical as we believe they are and almost none are irrevocable. Try reframing our actions as an experiment that could potentially fail. If not as successful a path as we initially hoped, rethink your approach. That way you’re not paralyzed by your fear of making a mistake. Any ‘mistake’ is just a learning experience and at least you’ve moved the project forward.

So today and moving forward, just eat it – the frog that is.