Eat That Frog! – 21 Tips for Effective Time Management

Get Your Time Back with Better Time Management.

Eat that Frog! is an awesome book by Brian Tracy that my business coach referred to me to help me improve my time management. Like it or not we all procrastinate different things at some point in our lives. Some of us learn how to overcome this natural tendency. Others unfortunately get really good at it and become professional procrastinators. One of the trickiest things is you don’t always even realize you’re procrastinating. For me, I always am being busy and productive, however I now am more efficient in working on the most important things first… the big frogs!

Eat that Frog! details 21 tips to quit procrastinating and offers great insights to become a more effective and productive person. If you have a vision, you can achieve it if you actually work on it.

Below are the 21 time management tips from Eat that Frog!

Do yourself a favor, don’t just read the highlights, read or listen to the book, the details and instruction really help drive the points home.

1. Set the table and clearly write your goals and objectives.
2. Plan every day in advance by thinking on paper.
3. Apply the 80/20 rule to everything and focus on the top 20%.
4. Consider the consequences of not doing your biggest projects.
5. Practice the ABCDE method of prioritizing your tasks. This technique is my favorite.
6. Focus on key result areas. The areas that are most important in your job or career.
7. Practice the law of forced efficiency.
8. Prepare thoroughly before you begin.
9. Upgrade your skills.
10. Leverage your special talents and give it your best.
11. Identify the bottlenecks that are holding you back and resolve them.
12. Take it one step at a time.
13. Put the pressure on yourself.
14. Maximize your personal powers. Get rest and work in your optimal productive hours.
15. Motivate yourself into action by being optimistic.
16. Practice procrastination on items that are low value.
17. Do the most difficult task first.
18. Slice and dice the task into smaller pieces.
19. Organize your day into larger groups of productive time.
20. Develop a sense of urgency.
21. Single handle every task, set priorities and complete before moving on.

My Favorite Time Management Techniques:

1. Practice the ABCDE method of prioritizing your tasks.
   I had been using a project management system and actually had been doing a decent job of managing getting projects and items done. However there were some personal projects that had been stagnant for some time. I had been letting low priority items get in front of my own personal projects. Now by rating my tasks I avoid this.
2. Apply the 80/20 rule to everything and focus on the top 20%.
   When you really take a moment to evaluate the things you are doing and are honest with the results you can see 80% of your efforts don’t get much results. By really identifying this you can work towards putting more efforts into the things that get you the most results. The 80/20 rule will still naturally happen but your 20% will be much larger.
3. Identify the bottlenecks that are holding you back and resolve them.
   It is too easy to call the orders to keep working full speed ahead and then realize you’re not even at full speed. By analyzing your efforts you can identify things that are slowing you down or hindering results. Once you identify you can ratify.