Book of the Week: Eat That Frog!

05 Nov 2016

This week I read Eat That Frog! from SmarterComics, because I wanted procrastinate by reading a book. I intended to read Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time the book, but wound up with the comic book instead. Previously I read Getting Things Done, which already put me in the mindset of doing things to become more productive. There’s no explicit list of 21 items in the comic book, so I’ll just assume each panel in the summary section is one of the 21 ways.

1. Set the table
2. Plan every day in advance
3. Apply the 80/20 rule to everything
4. Consider the consequences
5. Practice creative procrastination
6. Use the ABCDE method continually
7. Focus on key result areas
8. Prepare throughly before you begin
9. Take it one oil barrel at a time
10. Upgrade your key skills
11. Leverage your special talents
12. Identify you key constraints
13. Put the pressure on yourself
14. Maximize your personal power
15. Motivate yourself into action
16. Get out of the technological time sinks
17. Slice and dice the task
18. Create large chunks of time
19. Develop a sense of urgency
20. Take on a single task a time
21. Make a decision to practice these principles every day until they become second nature to you.

ABCDE method This is a method of classifying tasks. Eliminating things reminds me of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.

• A - something that is very important, something you must do
• B - something you should do but it only has mild consequences
• C - something that would be nice to do but for which there are no consequences whether you do it or not
• D - something you can delegate to someone else
• E - something you can eliminate and it won’t make a difference

Maybe instead of reading books, I’ll just read the comic version from now on.