Fantastic frogs and when to eat them

I was thinking about titling this article as 'How to have your frog and eat it, too' but then it would indicate I believe in the same for cakes and decided on a lame movie reference instead. (I think I should address my obsession for cake later at some point.)

So yes, I'm talking about Brian Tracy. He wrote a book called 'Eat That Frog!' which, even though it has a relatively small mass, contains a lot of life-progressing wisdom, the main point being this:

Your obligations of the day are like frogs - eat the fattest and ugliest one first and the rest will seem like dessert after it.

...meaning, obviously, that the best way to go about your duties is to do either the biggest or the most unpleasant one first thing you wake up in the morning and the rest of the day will feel easy in comparison.

This works out nicely since people tend to have the most willpower in the morning, right after they've woken up, and in the evening that willpower battery will have gone so low you can only do mindless things or lay on the couch. (This is not set in stone, however - you can increase the amount of willpower in your battery. You can also manage the way it behaves. But this is the subject for another discussion later. I'm just saying most people have emptied their battery by the evening.)

So if you hate loath running, but want to get it done anyway, do it the first thing after waking up. Or if you have an important issue at work that needs to be solved, do it or start doing it the moment you arrive at work and do not take a break until it's done. Or if you want to write a book - and this is a big one for it requires tons of willpower to finish - write a little, preferably a minimum word count or time, with your preferred morning beverage. Yes, even before you go to work. (If you want to both write a book and get in the habit of running I strongly suggest you get these habits established one at a time, letting the first one become easy before taking up the next. More about habit creation tomorrow.) Same goes for food. If you have a diet to follow, try to arrange it so that you have the more disgusting - I mean less delicious meals for breakfast or lunch and the more delicious ones for supper. Even if the supper is just beans and broccoli, both your body and your subconscious start to think of them as treats.

It works! How lovely and easy all the other chores, cleaning and seeing relatives and running errands seem after you've get the worst - gym session, reporting, homework - over with?

RK