Will you eat that frog?
The frog in this 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 is that once the unappealing task is done, the rest of the day is a breeze in comparison. I’ve long used that image in my mentoring and consulting and have 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. 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 to tackle the big project of the day: the frog. A couple of little early successes might go a long way!
- Think about yourself,
- about your habits,
- about your successes,
- about your failures,
- about 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?
We all need to find our own best way, don’t we!