It’s amazing how some of the smallest of tasks can take on a life of their own. Of course, the truth of it is that they don’t take on a life of their own – we are the ones that give them their vitality.
It could be something as simple as paying a bill, even though we have the money to pay. Or it could be responding to an email that make take 3 minutes to do if we’d just make up our mind and do it.
I’ve written about these types of things before – I call them frogs based off a quote from Mark Twain:
“If you know you have to swallow a frog, swallow it first thing in the morning. If there are two frogs, swallow the big one first.”
Someone recently commented that she didn’t much care for the violent, destructive nature of the metaphor, and I can see her perspective. So let’s change it up a bit: if you know you have to catch a frog, do it first thing in the morning; if there are two frogs, catch the big one first. The reason to catch it first thing in the morning is so that you avoid increasing the dread-to-work ratio.
The Dread-To-Work Ratio, Explained
Most tasks generally require a fixed minimum amount of work – meaning that doing it later won’t make it any easier. If it was going to take five minutes at first, then odds are, it’s going to take at least five minutes whenever you do it. The “work” part of the equation stays the same.
It’s the “dread” that increases substantially with time. The longer the tasks sits there, the more you think about it, and the amount of time you’ve invested in thinking about and putting off the task somehow gets added to the psychological “size” of the task. The frog gets bigger and wartier, and the warts themselves start growing hairs and warts. It feels that way, at least.
At a certain point, the distinction between directly working on that task and indirectly working on it blurs to the point in which it doesn’t make sense to make the distinction. If you’ve spent all day (or week) avoiding and fretting about it, then you’ve spent time and energy on it that you could have spent on other things. To think about it in terms of the “soft costs” of inaction belies the point that it’s still costly, nonetheless.
A Frog A Day Keeps Your Anchors Aweigh
My prior suggestion to catch the frog first thing in the morning is not quite fine-grained enough, to be honest. Just like time, all frogs are not the same. A frog that requires a creative solution to catch needs to be chased during creative times. When a bunch of little frogs can be caught at the same time, they should be batched and caught together. But be honest with yourself about whether you’re putting off catching your frogs because you have a more effective plan or because you really don’t want to do them.
I often advise my clients to identify their frogs and catch at least one a day (if they have any – which we all do). By doing so, three inter-related things happen: 1) the dread-to-work ratio stays pretty low, 2) they get fewer and smaller frogs, and 3) they’re able to build some pretty serious momentum with their products. These results are a bit counter-intuitive, so I’ll explain what’s going on.
Since they identify the frogs early on, acknowledge them for what they are, and catch them sooner rather than later, the dread-to-work ratio stays as low as possible. Because they start thinking about the nature of their frogs, they see trends and patterns in their workflow; once they see those trends and patterns, they can start working on eliminating the parts of their lives that are generating the frogs in the first place. Lastly, because they’re releasing a lot of negative energy and doing fewer of the things they’d rather not, they can spend that time and energy on the things they actually want to do.
But I should be clear here: there will always be frogs. They may be smaller…they may come up less often…and they may be an entirely new type of frog, but they’ll pop up nonetheless. Spot ‘em, catch ‘em, and move on to the next thing – there’s no need to increase the work by dreading it so much.
What frog is staring you down right now? Is it really that big, or can you take care of it today?
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{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Oy, Charlie – I’ve created myself a big frog over here. I’m the President/Treasurer of our high school football booster club and we’re having a fund raiser in two weeks – a golf scramble that generates a LOT of our budget for the year. I’ve been delaying sending letters to last year’s participants because:
1. I put off ever creating a mailing list on the computer from all last year’s registration forms, so the information I need is on handwritten, paper forms – yuk.
2. I don’t want to go to the dang thing because I don’t care for golf and it’s been triple digit temps here for the last couple weeks and likely it will be hot the day of – double yuk.
3. Last year one of our more red-necked coaches got wasted on beer, an empty stomach and triple digit heat and made a complete ass of himself and I just don’t need the flashbacks to my ex’s behavior – triple yuk.
So, you see I’ve made a King Kong sized frog out of this little project. Now I see that’s what I’ve done. So, it’s time to get over myself and get this frog caught, because it’s not going away. Besides, I am committed to the team, my son’s future with football and we really need the funds this event will generate.
Frog legs for dinner today!
I like the photo you use for this post, because that’s how my biggest “frogs” end up seeming to me: they not only get bigger and wartier, they eventually start going on the offensive and chasing after me.
This post actually goes well with your post about getting distracted by Google’s shiny gizmos because distraction–especially distraction that I rationalize to myself in some way, like you did with the free-versus-paid reasoning–is my number one avoidance mechanism. When I’m dealing with a Big Frog, I don’t tend to busy myself with other productive tasks; I tend to busy myself with Shiny Gizmos instead, making my overall time investment in avoiding the Big Frog about 37 times larger than the time it would take to just eat/catch/conquer the Big Frog.
Brilliant insights as always!!
Aha! Thank you for providing the visual and the terminology so I can talk to myself (it’s otherwise difficult to find my equal nearby) about taking care of the big frog first. Except I think I will stick with eating rather than catching. Then maybe I will feel full and not order too much food for lunch.
Today my big frog is an excess inventory project I’ve been toying with for too long. Down the hatch!
So you’ve never heard of the wildly popular book “Eat that frog” that was published almost 10 years ago? By the well-known productivity and self-help guru Brian Tracey.
I can’t believe that you think you came up with this! This is like Al Gore taking credit for inventing the internet. Except people know who Al Gore is. LOL
At least give Mr. Tracey a little credit for coming up with your idea.
Twitter: CharlieGilkey
July 7, 2009 at 9:37 am
@goob: Never attribute to malice what ignorance adequately explains. Prior to today, I’d never heard of “Eat that frog” or Brian Tracey. I also didn’t say I came up with it on my own – my inspiration was Mark Twain. Thanks for taking more time to attempt to discredit me than to actually read the post.
There is such a thing as independent development. That said, maybe an approach that said “this is similar to Brian Tracey’s “Eat that frog”" would have been received better. But I somehow doubt that’s one of your concerns.
@goob, I recommend that you get your own house in order before turning the criticism firehose on others. You might want to start by learning to spell Brian Tracy’s name correctly – there’s no e in his surname. Given the Mark Twain quote, Brian Tracy was not the first to come up with the idea either. Most good ideas are recast and repackaged through the years. Let’s give Charlie credit for reminding us of a good productivity concept and leave it at that.
And Charlie, thanks for the reminder – although I have read the Brian Tracy book, it’s always good to get a reminder that knocking out the day’s most difficult task first thing is a great momentum builder.
Actually, I thought of Brian Tracy as soon as I read the article. But it is nice to see another take on the same concept. Ignore the haters. They just want to start controversy where there is none.
By the way, congrats on being named in the top 50 productivity blogs: http://www.evancarmichael.com/Tools/Top-50-Productivity-Blogs-2008.htm
You’re number 13.
It’s deserved. Your worksheets have done more for my writing output than all the PD books in my personal library.
Hmm…interesting. I want to get my voice out there so bad sometimes I want to cry, but what stops me is the idea of being a target for vitriolic fueled ignorance as I have just read from goob. It seems especially true if you are saying something noteworthy or transformative as you are likely to trigger somone as you have said in another post. How do you deal with this Charlie?
Twitter: CharlieGilkey
January 16, 2010 at 6:30 pm
It’s hard sometimes, but luckily, more people remind me that I’m doing good in the world. The haters tend to be much more intense, and it’s just our nature to focus on them more, but it’s just a matter of remembering that they’re the minority.
Sharing your gift with the world will trigger the critics and haters – there’s nothing you can do about it. But don’t let them keep you from sharing or they win.
Hi Dawn,
I know you were addressing Charlie, but as I get plenty of comments that range from dumb to malicious, thought I’d weigh in.
You’ll be surprised how much Internet vitriol *doesn’t* bother you when it happens. It’s a lot harder to take when it’s addressed at somebody else. When it’s you – well, you know the person is wrong. You just don’t get worked up about it. Sometimes it’s a good idea to respond, sometimes you ignore it or, if the comment is on your own web space you delete it, but it doesn’t bother you as much as when it’s your friend being vilified.
If you’ve got something to share, go ahead – the rewards are far more significant than the setbacks.
Hmm, so when I’m avoiding my frog (whose name is Thesis), its warts grow warts, and it gets bigger, badder, and uglier. I’d heard of this before, but somehow your way of explaining it makes it sound like it’s totally reasonable to just pick up the ugly thing and do something about it (and I don’t have to eat it, thank goodness!)
My problem is that even if I do something about my frog, it’s still the same frog every day, perhaps a little uglier and wartier, but always with the same snarky expression.
What JUST occurred to me is that perhaps the frog analogy has another aspect to consider: what would happen if I give the frog a kiss? Perhaps I’ll see its more princely aspects, and start to learn to appreciate spending quality time with it. Here’s hoping!
.-= Qrystal´s last blog ..Resolving to Overcome My Stuckness =-.
Frogs eh? Well we just need to boil those frogs. I heard if you put the frog in hot water it will jump out but if you turn up the heat slowly you get frog soup. I have no idea how that applies to your story but there must be some connection.