The Book in Three Sentences
- Your ‘ frog ’ is your biggest, most crucial job
- If you have two frogs, eat the ‘ ugliest ’ one first
- If you have to eat a frog, don ’ t procrastinate on it
The Five Big Ideas
- “ The key to reaching high levels of performance and productivity is to develop the lifelong habit of tackling your major undertaking beginning thing each good morning. ”
- “ Think about your goals and review them daily. Every good morning when you begin, take action on the most crucial undertaking you can accomplish to achieve your most authoritative goal at the moment. ”
- “ Think on paper. ”
- “ Always cultivate from a list. ”
- “ Your ability to choose between the important and the unimportant is the key antigenic determinant of your achiever in life and exercise. ”
Eat That Frog Summary
- “ Your ‘ frog ’ is your biggest, most important job, the one you are most probable to procrastinate on if you don ’ t do something about it. ”
- “ The first dominion of frog consume is this : If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one foremost. ”
- “ Continually remind yourself that one of the most crucial decisions you make each day is what you will do immediately and what you will do later if you do it at all. ”
- “ The second rule of frog eat is this : If you have to eat a know frog at all, it doesn ’ triiodothyronine pay to sit and look at it for very long. ”
- “ The keystone to reaching high levels of performance and productivity is to develop the lifelong substance abuse of tackling your major task first thing each good morning. ”
1. Set the Table
- “ Think on newspaper. ”
- “ One of the very regretful uses of time is to do something very well that need not be done at all. ”
- “ Think about your goals and review them daily. Every morning when you begin, take legal action on the most important job you can accomplish to achieve your most significant finish at the moment. ”
2. Plan Every Day in Advance
- “ Always sour from a number. ”
- “ Make your list the night before for the workday ahead. ”
- “ You need different lists for different purposes. ”
- “ First, you should create a victor list on which you write down everything you can think of that you want to do sometime in the future. ”
- “ Second, you should have a monthly number that you make at the end of the calendar month for the calendar month ahead. ”
- “ Third, you should have a hebdomadally list where you plan your entire week in advance. ”
- “ last, you should transfer items from your monthly and hebdomadally lists onto your daily list. ”
3. Apply the 80/20 Rule to Everything
- “ Before you begin work, constantly ask yourself, ‘ Is this task in the top 20 percentage of my activities or in the bottom 80 percentage ? ’ ”
- “ Resist the enticement to clear up little things beginning. ”
- “ Your ability to choose between the important and the insignificant is the winder determinant of your success in life and work. ”
4. Consider the Consequences
- “ Long-term think improves short-run decision making. ”
- “ In your work, having a clear estimate of what is very important to you in the long term makes it much easier for you to make better decisions about your priorities in the short terminus. ”
- “ Before starting on anything, you should always ask yourself, ‘ What are the likely consequences of doing or not doing this job ? ’ ”
- “ Future purpose influences and often decide present actions. ”
- “ successful people are those who are will to delay gratification and make sacrifices in the inadequate term so that they can enjoy far greater rewards in the long term. ”
- “ Motivation requires motif. ”
- “ Thinking continually about the likely consequences of your choices, decisions, and behaviors is one of the very best ways to determine your true priorities in your work and personal life. ”
- The Law of Forced Efficiency : “ There is never enough time to do everything, but there is constantly enough time to do the most significant matter. ”
- “ There will never be enough time to do everything you have to do. ”
Ask yourself :
- “ What are my highest value activities ? ”
- “ What can I and merely I do that if done well will make a very difference ? ”
- “ What is the most valuable consumption of my time right field now ? ”
- “ What is my biggest frog of all at this moment ? ”
- “ Do beginning things first and second things not at all. ”
5. Practice Creative Procrastination
- “ The difference between high performers and low performers is largely determined by what they choose to procrastinate on. ”
- “ To set proper priorities, you must set posteriorities as well. ”
- “ A priority is something that you do more of and sooner, while a posteriority is something that you do less of and former, if at all. ”
- “ You can get your clock time and your life under control lone to the degree to which you discontinue lower-value activities. ”
- “ Say no to anything that is not a high-value use of your meter and your life. ” ( Sam : this is exchangeable to Derek Sivers ’ sulfur, “ If it ’ s not a hell yes, it ’ s a ordinal number ” govern from Anything You Want and Greg McKeown ’ s philosophy in Essentialism. )
- “ Your job is to intentionally procrastinate on tasks that are of first gear value so that you have more fourth dimension for tasks that can make a big dispute in your life and work. ”
- “ Continually review your life and work to find time-consuming tasks and activities that you can abandon. Cut down on television watch and alternatively spend the time with your kin, read, practice, or do something else that enhances the choice of your life. ”
- “ Look at your work activities and identify the tasks that you could delegate or eliminate to free up more time for the shape that very counts. ”
- “ Ask yourself continually, ‘ If I were not doing this already, knowing what I now know, would I start doing it again nowadays ? ’ ”
6. Use the ABCDE Method Continually
- “ You start with a list of everything you have to do for the orgasm sidereal day. Think on composition. You then place an A, B, C, D, or E following to each item on your number before you begin the first base task. ”
- “ An ‘ A ’ token is defined as something that is identical important, something that you must do. This is a undertaking that will have serious plus or negative consequences if you do it or fail to do it, like visiting a key customer or finishing a report that your boss needs for an approaching circuit board converge. ”
- “ A ‘ B ’ detail is defined as a tax that you should do. ”
- “ The rule is that you should never do a B tax when an A undertaking is left undone. ”
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- “ A ‘ C ’ tax is defined as something that would be nice to do but for which there are no consequences at all, whether you do it or not. ”
- “ A ‘ D ’ undertaking is defined as something you can delegate to person else. ”
- “ An ‘ E ’ task is defined as something that you can eliminate wholly, and it won ’ t make any real remainder. ”
7. Focus on Key Result Areas
- “ Your weakest key resultant role area sets the height at which you can use all your other skills and abilities. ”
- One of the greatest questions you will ever ask yourself : “ What one skill, if I developed and did it in an excellent fashion, would have the greatest positive shock on my career ? ”
8. Apply the Law of Three
- “ It is the quality of time at work that counts and the quantity of clock at home that matters. ”
9. Prepare Thoroughly Before You Begin
- Get everything you need at hand before you begin .
- Brian ’ s personal rule is “ Get it 80 percentage right and then correct it belated. ”
10. Take It One Oil Barrel at a Time
- Get your mind off the huge tax in front of you and focus on a single action that you can take .
11. Upgrade Your Key Skills
- “ Continuous eruditeness is the minimal requirement for success in any field. ”
12. Leverage Your Special Talents
continually ask yourself these key questions :
- “ What am I actually good at ? What do I enjoy the most about my work ? ”
- “ What has been most creditworthy for my success in the past ? ”
- “ If I could do any job at all, what job would it be ? ”
13. Identify Your Key Constraints
- successful people always begin the analysis of constraints by asking the wonder, “ What is it in me that is holding me back ? ”
- Keep ask, “ What sets the accelerate at which I get the results I want ? ”
14. Put the Pressure on Yourself
- “ To reach your full electric potential, you must form the habit of putting the atmospheric pressure on yourself and not waiting for person else to come along and do it for you. ”
- oeuvre as though you have only one sidereal day to get your most important jobs done .
15. Maximize Your Personal Powers
- “ Whenever you feel overtire and overwhelm with excessively much to do and excessively short time, stop yourself and just say, ‘ All I can do is all I can do. ’ ”
- “ Take one full day off every week. During this day, either Saturday or Sunday, absolutely garbage to read, clear symmetry, catch up on things from the office, or do anything else that taxes your brain. ”
Resolve nowadays to improve your levels of health and energy by asking the follow questions :
- “ What am I doing physically that I should do more of ? What am I doing that I should do less of ? ”
- “ What am I not doing that I should start doing if I want to perform at my best ? ”
- “ What am I doing today that affects my health that I should stop doing raw ? ”
16. Motivate Yourself into Action
- optimism is the most important quality you can develop for personal and professional achiever and happiness .
Optimists have four special behaviors, all learned through commit and repetition :
- They look for the good in every situation
- They always seek the valuable lesson in every reverse or trouble
- They always look for the solution to every problem
- They think and talk continually about their goals
17. Get Out of the Technological Time Sinks
- “ For you to stay sedate, clearheaded, and capable of performing at your best, you need to detach on a regular basis from the technology and communication devices that can overwhelm you if you are not careful. ”
- “ For you to be able to concentrate on those few things that make the most dispute in your business or personal life, you must discipline yourself to treat technology as a servant, not as a maestro. ”
- “ Resist the urge to start turning on communication devices angstrom soon as you wake up in the dawn. ”
Keep asking yourself :
- “ What ’ s important here ? ”
- “ What is important for me to accomplish at work ? ”
- “ What is crucial in my personal biography ? ”
- “ If I could alone do one or two of the activities, which ones would they be ? ”
- “ Very few things are so authoritative that they can not wait. ”
18. Slice and Dice the Task
Cut a big tax down to size using the “ salami slice ” method of getting work done .
“ With [ the salami slit ] method acting, you lay out the task in detail and then resolve to do fair one slice of the subcontract for the time being, like eating a roll of salami one slice at a time—or like eating an elephant one morsel at a clock time. ”
Another proficiency you can use to get yourself going is called the “ Swiss cheese ” method of working .
“ You use [ the swiss cheese ] technique to get yourself into gearing by resolving to punch a fix in the undertaking, like a hole in a block of Swiss cheese. You Swiss cheese a job when you resolve to work for a specific fourth dimension menstruation on it. This may be vitamin a fiddling as five or ten minutes, after which you will stop and do something else. ”
19. Create Large Chunks of Time
- “ Your ability to carve out and use these blocks of high-value, highly fat clock time is central to your ability to make a meaning contribution to your work and to your life. ”
- “ Make exercise appointments with yourself and then discipline yourself to keep them. Set away thirty-, sixty- and ninety-minute meter segments that you use to work on and complete important tasks. ”
20. Develop a Sense of Urgency
- Highly-effective people launch cursorily and strongly toward their goals and objectives .
- “ When you work on your most important tasks at a high and continuous horizontal surface of activeness, you can actually enter into an amaze mental country called ‘ flow. ’ ”
- “ One of the ways you can trigger this express of flow is by developing a sense of urgency. ”
- “ With this deep-rooted feel of importunity, you develop a ‘ bias for military action. ’ ”
- “ When you regularly take continuous action toward your most important goals, you activate the Momentum Principle of success. This rationale says that although it may take fantastic amounts of energy to overcome inactiveness and get started initially, it then takes far less energy to keep going. ”
- “ One of the simple and yet most herculean ways to get yourself started is to repeat the words ‘ Do it now ! Do it immediately ! Do it now ! ’ over and over to yourself. ”
21. Single Handle Every Task
- “ Every bang-up accomplishment of world has been preceded by a long period of hard, concentrated work until the job was done. ”
- “ Your ability to select your most important tax, to begin it, and then to concentrate on it single-mindedly until it is complete is the identify to high levels of performance and personal productivity. ”
- “ Single handle requires that once you begin, you keep working at the job without diversion or distraction until the job is 100 percentage complete. ”
- “ You keep urging yourself forth by repeating the words ‘ Back to work ! ’ over and over whenever you are tempted to stop or do something else. ”
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