The Fallacy

“Eat the frog first“, we are told.

“It’ll make you more productive“, they say.

They are wrong.

Do What To The Frog?

If you’ve not come across the expression before, “Eat the frog first” comes from a quote from US author Mark Twain –

(An alternative version of the quote says “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”)

The idea is that if you have a big or deeply unpleasant task to complete (such as eating a frog), you do that one first so that you get it out of the way, and whatever else the day brings, it won’t be any worse!

What’s The Problem?

Now, there absolutely is logic to eating that frog sooner rather than later, of course. I’m not going to disagree. Obviously if you keep delaying and delaying eating that frog, doing whatever else you can find instead to keep procrastinating, it’ll eventually be too late to eat the frog – which, if it’s a task you need to do, is a bit of an issue.

The problem is not with eating the frog.

The problem is when you attempt to eat the frog FIRST, before doing anything else.

You see, the reason we are told to eat the frog first is to attempt to overcome procrastinating about it, to avoid doing lots of other smaller things instead, putting it off until it’s too late.

However, eating that frog is such an unpleasant task that we often find it easy to keep putting it off and to find ways to not quite get round to starting it – after all, if it were otherwise then we’d have eaten it already.

So we have a deeply unpleasant task which we can’t face and which we keep putting off – and yet somehow jumping into that task, cold, first thing in the morning is supposed to magically make it much easier and beat procrastination?

Quite the opposite.

I’ve seen many people who tell themselves that they’ll eat the frog as their first task of the working day – and then mysteriously find that they have not quite got round to starting their working day until much later in the day when it’s too late anyway, because they found all manner of other tasks to do first, tasks which were absoilutely not part of their working day, honest!

In many ways it is the perfect way to encourage procrastination and to make it even worse.

What Can We Do Instead?

IF we might be permitted to bring in another metaphor to help us out here, think about athletes running a race (or indeed any other sports people doing their sport).

They don’t just out of bed, get into their kit, and start their race or game – that way disasterous injury lies.

Instead, they will do a warm-up first, to get the muscles ready for the task ahead and to build up to the challenge.

Just as athletes will warm up before racing, so we can warm up before frog-eating, which is a really powerful way to help us get the frog eaten.

A great way to tackle eating that frog is:

• Pick 2 (no more, no less, to quote a certain film) smaller, more pleasant, tasks to get you started.
• Do the first task, celebrate.
• Do the second task, celebrate.
• Start the third task – before you realise it you are busily eating that frog (which was the third task)!

Why Does This Work?

Why is this approach more likely to help you create success?

There’s a few things going on which all help to make it work.

Momentum Builds Momentum

It is harder to start than it is to keep going; once you are underway, continuing is easier as there’s less effort required.

So by starting with a couple of easier tasks, we build up a head of steam and we are already moving, already being productive, so that when we hit the third task on our list we are already warmed up and powering ahead. Which makes it much easier to dive into eating the frog as you are already on a roll.

Success Breeds Success

Another very helpful element is the bit so many of us forget to do – celebrating the successful completion of the tasks.

Normally we will often go from task to task to task without giving any thought to the fact that we have achieved things.

When we pause or a moment to round off the completion of a task with a small celebration, we feel good, which makes us feel more positive abut doing the next task; indeed, it can even make us feel a little more eager to start the next task so that we can celebrate that too, as the celebration feels nice.

By the time we’ve completed two tasks and had a mini celebration, we’ve got some momentum going AND we’re feeling good about doing tasks, so jumping into the third one almost happens without us thinking too much about it – we’re already eating the frog before we necessarily notice. And that momentum we built up keeps us powering through.

The Power Of Three

There is something really powerful about three, especially about groups of three. We’ve touched on it in various other blogs, but deep down in our brains three is a powerful number.

Not from some mystical numismatically-minded perspective, but fundamentally much of it stems from the way in which three of something let’s you see patterns, form opinions, and make predictions about the thing.
All of which means we often feel something “complete” about a group of three.

So, we have done two tasks and we sail on into the third due to momentum, due to feeling good about our successes, and due to not wanting to leave it as just two tasks instead of a group of three.

Whereas, if we do three tasks first and then eat the frog? Well, we run the risk that part of our mind will view the group of three as a good excuse to pause, which can lead to loss of momentum, especially when another part of our mind doesn’t want to eat the frog anyway and will seize upon any excuse!

Frog-Eating Habit

In short, eating that frog early on in the day is definitely good advice – it stops it from hovering over us throughout the day, and removes its tendency to enable us to procrastinate.

But don’t’ eat it first – limber up with a couple of smaller, easier, more enjoyable tasks first (remembering to celebrate their completion), and soon enough you will find that you eat the frog without really giving it much thought because the habit you build makes it much easier to do.