For the first time in a while I began to read again. I honestly struggle to remember the last time I picked out a book to read that was not for academic purposes regarding university, but Brian Tracy’s ‘Eat That Frog’ is one I began because I wanted to.

Upon reading the first few pages, I was instantly motivated to get some work done! Which in a sense is the entire purpose of the book, as it focuses on means of preventing procrastination, and getting more done in less time. It sounds easy enough, to simply put my phone done and start crossing things off my to do list, but when it’s become a habit I’ve developed and carried on for multiple years, it’s hard to break. ‘Eat That Frog’ explores this further using a frog as a metaphor. The frog is our most important task, and often the one we procrastinate on because it is usually the most time-consuming and difficult of all tasks. And whilst that it is true, it is also the task that can have the greatest impact on us – the one that can make a difference.

I’ve always thought of procrastination as something I need to aim to completely remove from my life, but Brian Tracy’s book says the opposite. He says that we have to procrastinate something, but it shouldn’t be the ‘frog’, instead it should be the tasks that hold little value to us. Tracy describes this as putting off eating the smaller and less ugly frogs, and instead eating the biggest frog first. Doing the worst in the beginning will allow yourself to feel a sense of accomplishment, which will then encourage you to finish your remaining set of tasks, which are evidently easier to do.

The book also offers many strategies which hope to help people ‘eat the frog’ more easily. For example, of all the tasks that we do in a day, only a few of them are actually necessary. The others we can either delegate to other people, or even eliminate entirely, but we often overlook them because they’ve become habits – we do these tasks not even realising how they don’t hold much value. Additionally, the ABCDE strategy is specified, which is one I now personally apply. This strategy is a way of categorising, or rather prioritising our tasks. The A would be tasks that are the most important, and have severe consequences if it is not completed. Whilst D for example would be tasks that another person could do. E tasks are ones that can be eliminated. Once applying this strategy to my to do list I found that I was spending a lot of my time on tasks that didn’t necessarily hold a lot of value for me, and therefore was able to invest more of my time into other things.

The entire purpose of the book is for people to question themselves on whether they are using their time valuably – are they using it to eat the frog, or just mere tadpoles? It asks people to question and identify the frogs in their life, and ways in which they can eat it.  This is a book I highly recommended, as it has taught me many things which I can apply to various sectors of my life.