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“An average person who develops the habit of setting clear priorities and getting important tasks completed quickly will run circles around a genius who talks a lot and makes wonderful plans, but gets very little done.”

Brian Tracy
Eat That Frog!

In his simple yet powerful book, Eat That Frog!, Brian Tracy shares the wisdom of unstoppable success with us. His formula is one you are familiar with:

1. Be a hundred percent clear about your goals—the things you care most deeply about accomplishing.
2. Write them down—only about three percent of adults have written goals and they accomplish five to ten times as much as their equally educated and talented peers who don’t bother to write their goals.
3. Set timelines—if you don’t they are still just ideas.
4. Make a plan with prioritized actions—this prevents indecision and wasting time later.
5. Take action—do something right now, today. Actions can be adjusted as you go along, but, if you don’t start, your plan is just a wish list.

We all know that the two biggest culprits contributing to procrastination are lack of clarity (the way forward is fuzzy and unclear) and lack of focus (we allow our attention and energy to jump from important things to low impact tension-reducing things we can check off our to-do list). Take ten minutes right now (right now!) and make your plan for the next month. If you did it, you are already feeling a greater sense of energy and confidence.

Now that you have your plan, the way to ensure that it happens is to identify the biggest, ugliest frog you have to eat today (calling your most important prospect, writing an article for your local business chronicle, analyzing your marketing efforts in terms of ROI), and doing it. If it can’t be done in one chunk of time, chunk it down and do the first “doable” chunk.

I have used this book/concept with many of my clients over the years and it has been life changing for some. The idea of eating the biggest, ugliest frog you have to eat today, first thing in the morning, continues to help master procrastinators everywhere. The rest of your day is now downhill and you have demonstrated to yourself that you are powerful and in charge.

Reflection Questions:

1. What is your habitual level of procrastination? (1-10)
2. What is the level of clarity of your goals? (1-10)
3. What is the resistance you have to writing your goals and how might you overcome it?
4. What is your biggest, ugliest frog? Will you eat it today?

The Book: Eat That Frog!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 at 7:29 AM and is filed under Self Coaching Tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.