Eat That Frog Now or Later?
The frog in the Mark Twain quote has been long adopted by the business community and by productivity advocates to represent the one task or activity you are least looking forward to completing over the course of your day.
The idea being that once the unappealing task in done, the rest of the day is a breeze in comparison.
I’ve long used the image in consulting and mentoring and even brought chocolate frogs to sweeten up a staff meeting to make my point!
And, oh dear, what if dealing with frogs is your job? Mark Twain says something about that too!
But recently I’ve come across a minor alteration that asks “is there a benefit to eating the frog second, or even third?”
An article in the Harvard Business Review describes something called The Progress Principle: that of all the things that can motivate folks during a workday, the most important is making progress in meaningful work.
So…in order to feel good about our day, we most likely need to feel that we made good progress.
So…setting ourselves up for early wins with one or two quick successes in the morning might well create the momentum we need to tackle the big project of the day-the frog. A couple of little early successes might go a long way!
Think about yourself and
- your habits,
- your successes,
- your failures,
- your track record.
What do you think works best for you?
Do you prefer getting the hard stuff done first thing?
Do you prefer clearing a few easy items off first to gain momentum?
7 Comments
You taught me well and I’m still sticking to it! Eat it first thing then move on!
Tish, thanks for the complement! I think sometimes I will eat the frog first and sometimes I am just not up to it so then I’m comfortable to defaulting to the Progress Principle to gain some momentum.
Leave it to Mark Twain for nonsensical logic. As for eating the frog, I think I will pass. At this stage of my life, I’m for taking the day as it comes, having confidence that I can handle whatever comes up with help from my angels and the higher forces.
Altho I am not into eating frogs (maybe choc. ones) I usually like to do the hard stuff first. Brain works better in the morning. I tend to do the hard physical stuff first also. DJ
DJ, I think there’s a reason all those productivity experts over the years have said eat the frog first. Otherwise, many frogs would just get older and uglier and we’d be even less likely to tackle them!
For me, I found a solution when I was still a full time stay-at-home mom. I like to tackle the first easy step in larger projects. For example, when faced with an over flowing kitchen sick, I put away clean dishes first. That seems to get the ball rolling. I still hate cleaning the kitchen, but this gets the job done. At work, this has translated to checking email first thing each morning, then organizing my day and away I go…
Carol, when the tasks seem intimidating (ugly frog), I too would often look to do something with immediate satisfaction to get myself going!