Welcome to Design Your Life x5!

In this ongoing series, in each essay, we explore one different idea that helps you to design your life (e. g. productivity, goal setting, time management, mindfulness, tools, frameworks, etc.) in 5 main points.

Designing your life means holistically reflecting on and understanding your past, organizing and focussing on your present and shaping your future.

🐸 Eat That Frog

🗒️ #1 What is it?

Eat That Frog is a productivity method developed by Brian Tracy. We often tend to procrastinate when we need to do "ugly" and big but important tasks.

The consequence: If we don't complete them, either we don't reach our goals or they will be in the way if we want to reach our goals.

That's why Brian Tracy recommends identifying these tasks and finishing them as soon as possible with the highest priority.

✔️ #2 How to use it?

• Make a list of tasks you need to complete. You can do it in the morning for this day, or the evening before.

• Identify the frog(s). Ask yourself: Which are the biggest and most important tasks?

• Eat the frog(s) directly in the morning. When starting the day, focus on eating (completing) the frog(s) first. If you have identified multiple frogs, focus on the most unpleasant one.

🤔 #3 Why does it help to design your life?

Organize your present: It helps you with prioritization and focus on the most important tasks.

👍 #4 Pros & Cons

• ➕ Helps you to boost your motivation after you have completed this method because you ate the frog which is a good feeling.

• ➕ Many people are typically the most productive in the morning. That's why it makes sense to focus on the frog(s) in the morning.

• ➕ It forces you to prioritize your tasks.

• ➖ For some people, this can make the start of the day more difficult because we instantly need to focus on the frog(s). For some people, it's easier to start the day with easier and smaller tasks to boost their motivation.

• ➖ There is an implicit negative view of the frog(s). But why not try to see them as a positive challenge?

• ➖ In general, sometimes it might be better if we follow our energy flow (e. g. creative flow).

💡 #5 Tips

• Cut the frogs into more manageable subtasks if they are too big.

• When identifying frogs, think about the following questions: How important are they? How difficult are they? How large are they? How time-consuming are they? How unpleasant are they?

• Brian Tracy recommends always working with lists.

• When eating the frog, try to beat procrastination and work deeply on them. Of course, you can pair it with other methods, such as Pomodoro.

• It's useful if you already know the frogs the evening before, so you can get mentally aware of them.