The key ideas

Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time

Brian Tracy, 2001

Why does the most important task of the day almost always feel like the most unpleasant one? Brian Tracy calls it your frog and shows how to find it and why you should eat it first. You will learn how to pick what matters among dozens of tasks, and how to finally start the thing you have been putting off for weeks.

Who it is for

For anyone who looks at the list in the evening and sees the one big task they put off that morning. And for anyone who works hard but feels busy with the wrong things.

If you have to eat a live frog at all, it doesn't pay to sit and look at it for very long.

The worst task, first thing in the morning

The morning begins, and there is one task on your list that makes your stomach tighten. A hard phone call, a report people have been waiting for, an awkward conversation. Your hand reaches for your email, for small messages, for anything but that. By evening it is still on the list, and it still weighs on your mind. This is procrastination: putting off the thing that matters most, not the small stuff.

Brian Tracy has spent many years advising companies and teaching people to work more effectively. His book came out in 2001 and is built around an old joke. If the first thing you do each morning is eat a live frog, you can go through the rest of the day knowing the worst is behind you. Tracy's frog is your biggest, most important task of the day, the very one you are most likely to put off if you do nothing about it.

The book's main idea is simple. Success depends not on how many things you get done, but on picking the most important one and starting on it right away. Tracy believes this is not a personality trait but a skill, and you can learn it like any other.

Next you will see how to find your frog, why you want so badly to put it off, and how to start eating it before anything else.

If there are two frogs, start with the uglier one

Tracy draws two rules from his metaphor. The first: if you have to eat two frogs, start with the uglier one. In other words, of two important tasks, take on the bigger and harder one first. The second: if you have to eat the frog anyway, there is no point staring at it for long.

The second rule describes what putting things off usually looks like. You do not refuse the hard task. You sit across from it and look at it: you reread the brief, check your email, work out one more time where to begin. Every minute of staring only makes the frog scarier.

For Tracy, what sets apart people who get a lot done is the habit of starting the day with the most important task. Not talent, not exceptional willpower, just the same morning decision made again and again. At first it takes effort. Later it becomes automatic.

Usually it goes the other way. The morning is spent on easy things, because they make a pleasant warm up, and the frog is left for later, when you have less time and energy. By evening you have a dozen reasons to move it to tomorrow. Tracy says not to trust that logic: warming up on small jobs is exactly what tends to swallow the whole day.

This habit has a reward people rarely mention. When you finish an important task, you feel a surge of energy and self respect. Tracy puts it down to a release of endorphins: finishing something that matters feels good in itself, and you want that feeling again.

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About the author

Brian Tracy is a Canadian American business consultant and speaker, and the author of dozens of books on personal effectiveness, sales and management.

All books by this author: Brian Tracy

Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time Quiz

Terms from the book

  • Endorphins
  • Procrastination
  • Pareto
  • Harvard
  • Banfield: Edward Banfield (1916 to 1999), an American political scientist and Harvard professor, author of The Unheavenly City (1970), a book about life in big cities.
  • Time horizon: How far into the future a person looks when making decisions today. Banfield called it "time perspective".
  • ABCDE Method: A technique from Tracy's book: you give every task on your list a letter from A (must do) to E (can be crossed off) and start with the most important ones.
  • Creative procrastination: Tracy's phrase for deliberately putting off low value tasks to free up time for important ones.
  • Law of Forced Efficiency: Tracy's own formula, not a scientific law: when time is short, you are forced to choose what matters most and do it faster.
  • Key result areas: A concept from Tracy's book: the few main parts of your work whose results you are truly responsible for.
  • Sahara: The largest hot desert in the world, in North Africa.
  • Salami: A dry cured sausage. For Tracy, slicing salami is an image: you cut a big task into thin slices and do them one at a time.
  • Swiss cheese: Cheese with big holes. For Tracy it is an image: you do a small piece of a big task, as if punching a hole in it.

All terms

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