Prioritize the single task that carries the highest impact and that you are most likely to procrastinate on by completing it first each workday when willpower and mental energy are highest. Completing that task early prevents distractions, decision fatigue, and low-energy avoidance behaviors from derailing progress. The frog is defined by importance and impact, not by how unpleasant it feels. The proverb is frequently linked to Mark Twain, though the attribution is unreliable. Brian Tracy formalized the approach into a system for beating procrastination and achieving more by focusing on top-priority work first.
It's tackling your hardest, highest-impact task first thing each day-before your brain gets hijacked by email notifications and "quick questions" that somehow devour entire afternoons like a productivity black hole. You identify your "frog" (the task you'll procrastinate on but absolutely need to do), then eat the frog first while your willpower remains intact. Everything else feels like a victory lap by comparison.
The frog method is a productivity technique that puts your most challenging task, most important, or highest-impact work at the start of your workday. The "frog" represents that single task you're most likely to procrastinate on. Usually because it's complex, time-consuming, or makes you want to reorganize your desk drawer for the seventh time instead. While the attribution is about as reliable as a weather forecast (more on that later), the wisdom is solid.
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