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Eat a Frog Every Morning

Eat a Frog Every Morning

Jun 01, 2023
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Eat a Frog Every Morning
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The idea is to tackle the most challenging thing at the start of your day.

Start with the hard stuff first.

Behind Mark Twain's metaphor is the principle that you are in your best shape, most energised and creative in the morning.


If you haven’t already, you know what to do:


Rather than focus on the secondary unimportant and easy tasks, you should start with the one thing you have been putting off.

Image by wisdommadeeasy

The Frog looks like this: Things you don’t want to do, but actually must do.

Our work can take up a lot of our time and there can be an endless list of things we need to get done.


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There are always those important items which we don’t enjoy doing, procrastinate over or find difficult to action because they’re complex or we don’t have good next steps. That’s why the first thing you should do in the morning is Eat The Frog.

Leadership is not about getting 101 things done on your to-do list, that’s busy work.

It’s about working on the critical items which will make a meaningful difference to your organisation, your people and the customer experience.

“If the first thing you do in the morning is to eat the frog, then you can continue your day with the satisfaction of knowing that this is probably the worst thing that will happen to you all day”. - Mark Twain

Photo by Joel Henry on Unsplash

Top 4 tips to eating more frogs

1) First things first - eat the frog first thing in the morning before you tackle or approach any other tasks. Get that challenging task or thing you have been putting off out of the way.

2) Next Steps - set yourself up for success. Line up the next steps on that task you are putting off the day before. As soon as you hit your desk in the morning you have your next steps lined up and will hit the ground running and start strong.

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