With the start of the new year, there are bound to be new expectations for your position, team, or company. A great way to achieve these is to “Eat the Frog”.

What is Eat the Frog?
This is a tactic used to decrease the likelihood of the midday slump, procrastination, and the feeling of being overwhelmed by tasks. “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 quote by Brian Tracy, from his book Eat That Frog, displays a workplace tactic for increased productivity. For context, your frog is your large, important task of the day that you’re reluctant to complete. By working on and completing this assignment at the start of your day, the remainder of your day will be filled with easier and less stressful assignments.

Repetition is Key
By engaging in this productivity method daily, you can get a better picture of your workdays. By planning ahead and identifying your frogs, you will become less overwhelmed coming into work each day. By eating your frog at the beginning of the workday, you’re not only pushing away external distractions (others interrupting you), but you’re also dismissing internal ones (you interrupting yourself).

Achieving Success
By identifying and eating your frog each day, you’re taking a more active role in your job through identifying qualities of tasks like their importance or urgency. By being more present in your role, you are likely better representing company expectations. Eating your frog in the morning will put you ahead and allow you more time throughout the remainder of the day for other activities that come up with less notice.

Chamber staff have used project management applications like Asana and Trello to help manage their daily tasks. You could use these sites to input your assignments into calendars, create to-do lists, and folders to make identifying your frog(s) easier.

Try out this tip to increase your productivity in 2024!

This article was published in the Venango Chamber’s January 2024 VenangoWorks! Newsletter.