Aug 25, 20202 min read

Eat a live Frog every morning!

Updated: Jun 25, 2021

In this article you will learn about eating the frog and how this can help you to stop procrastinating and focus on the day ahead with the ABCDE method. This is a technique I learnt from watching Brian Tracy’s videos on YouTube.

My Video

What is Eat that Frog?

Eat that Frog comes from a quote by Mark Twain:

If you eat a live frog every morning nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day.

The idea is start with the difficult or critical tasks first and then your day will only get better. This is where the ABCDE method comes.

ABCDE Method

Create a list of all the tasks you need to complete today. This is something I do most mornings before I start work and this helps me to keep focused...and more importantly, not miss anything!

Then next to each task you need to label them from A to E.

A

These are the frogs. The horrible tasks you keep putting off. They can also apply to difficult or critical tasks. If you find that you have more than one A, then number these in order of priority, for example, A1 for your first priority, A2 for the next one and so on.

B

These are for the tadpoles. These are for the important tasks on your list but not as critical as the ones above.

C

These are for the non-essential nice tasks. Like meeting or messaging a friend.

D

If there is a task on your list that someone else can deal with, then label it as D for delegate. If you have an email that another team should be dealing with then pass it on to them to follow-up on.

E

This is for eliminate. Are there any tasks on your list that can be deleted off? Perhaps these can be saved for another day or are no longer practical, like I was planning to wash the car today but now that it’s raining I’m going to save it for another day.