Eat That Frog!

To start of the New Year, I decided to re-read Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time by Brian Tracy.

There’s an old saying: if you eat a live frog first thing each morning, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that it’s probably the worst thing you’ll do all day.

Tracy lays out 21 principles to stop procrastinating and get things done. Two of them really stand out to me:

• Forced Efficiency – there’s never enough time to do everything, but there’s always enough time to do the most important things. What are they?
• ABCDE Method –think on paper and place a letter next to each before you perform the first task
  • A – “must do”
  • B – “should do”
  • C – “would be nice to do”
  • D – “delegate to someone else”
  • E – “eliminate all together”

While the concepts are not earth-shattering, it always helps me to be reminded of the power of focus. By planning your day around the most important tasks and getting those out of the way, you always put yourself in the best position to succeed. Secondly, by learning to delegate or “outsource” tasks, you can free up even more of your time to further focus on the things that really advance your goals.

All of this coincides well with my 2012 plan of creating a “default calendar” – scheduling my weeks on purpose before they happen and then just filling in the details as they happen.