EWWWWW! No. I don’t mean literally eat your pet frog. Eating your frog is based on a quote from Mark Twain,
If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning.
What it means is that if the worst thing you have to do is eat a frog, do that first, and the rest of your day will run much smoother. If you have to eat a frog and spend all day thinking about it, the actual eating of the frog will be much worse due to the built-up anticipation. Also, you won’t be able to entirely focus on the other things you are doing.
Years ago, I shared this concept with my boys. I was working on building good work habits with their homeschooling. I found this fun rubber frog, and each morning I would toss it to them and ask them about their frog for the day.
Today, during quiet contemplation, the idea of the frog came to me again. I need to start eating my frog on a regular basis.
This is a great habit to develop the Genius Characteristic of being Action-Oriented.
This is how I’m going to do it:
I’m a list person. I create one almost daily. (An excellent tool for making lists is TeuxDeux – I love how I can check off things when I am done.)
Each day as I make my list, I will label my “frog” for the day. I’m going to use one tool to find my frog, which I learned from the book “The One Thing” by Gary Keller. In the book, he shares this defining question:
What’s the ONE thing you can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?
And then I’m going to do it.
Sounds easy, right? Join me and let’s see!