I'd head into my home office around 8.15am all ready to go. I'd pop back out and boil the kettle. Open up the email, check who won the cricket, drop by a few of my favourite sites. I'd re-boil the kettle. Clear out my spam, respond to some emails and read a few newsletters. I'd finally make my coffee, ponder my non-flowering frangipani tree and check my list.
Suddenly, it would be 9.45am and I'd have achieved nothing at all!
Every time I thought, "If only I’d done an hour and a half of productive client work I’d be well into my list, feeling great and all set for a productive day". Instead I was behind for the rest of the day.
It was when I read a book on how to stop procrastination called Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy, that I realised exactly when this procrastination routine kicked in. It was whenever I was putting off working on some complex or uninteresting project.
To save you reading the book, it's essentially based on an old saying that if the first thing you do each morning is eat a live frog, you can look forward to the day knowing that it's probably the worst thing you'll have to do.
'Eat that frog' is a metaphor for tackling the most important and challenging task of your day, before dealing with the rest.
Because there's rarely time to do absolutely everything on our to-do list, productivity depends on prioritising the tasks that will make the biggest difference to your life and making sure they get done first.
Does this sort of thing happen to you? Are you procrastinating now? Do you have any good tips on how to stop procrastination? Add a comment to let us know.
After that, stop mucking about and go and eat that frog!
“ 'Eat that frog' is a metaphor for tackling the most important and challenging task of your day, before dealing with the rest. ”
Peter Crocker is a director of Flying Solo responsible for marketing and advertising. As a business copywriter he partners with digital agencies and corporate clients on websites and digital content. He’s the co-author of Flying Solo Revisited – How to go it alone in business.
