Book Review: Eat That Frog!

Rating: 4/5

Eat That Frog! is a pretty short book I read last month, among the other 13 books I read in January. It focuses on the concept of “eating one’s frog,” or tackling the thing you don’t want to do but provides a great amount of value.

Here are some key passages I highlighted¹:

“Your “frog” is your biggest, most important task, the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don’t do something about it. It is also the one task that can have the greatest positive impact on your life and results at the moment.”

“Effective, productive people discipline themselves to start on the most important task that is before them. They force themselves to eat that frog, whatever it is.”

What I Liked

• Highlighted 21, easy to understand principles for beating procrastination
• Went in-depth about how momentum is so important. Once you get into the habit of being able to cross things off your to-do list, you start getting addicted to that feeling of accomplishment and are motivated to keep moving forward from there

What I Didn’t Like

• Some of the principles were a bit oversimplified. For example, the author suggests making an “ABCDE list,” where your highest priority items are in your A list and lowest priority items are in your E list. I just don’t see this being effective. Lists need to have other factors taken into account, such as context. For instance, even if I have “Clean garage” on my A list but I’m at work, how does it help to see this on my A List. I talk more about the importance of Contexts and Tags here.

 

¹Tracy, Brian (2007-01-01). Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time (p. 2). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.