Eating the frog is one of the most commonly mentioned productivity techniques in the last few decades.
Its premise is simple: do the most challenging thing early in the day, and all the remaining tasks will come by much easier in comparison. As a bonus, you will feel more motivated, energetic, and focused.
But what barely anyone talks about is that if you “eat” the wrong frog, or “eat” it not the right way, the whole concept will backfire spectacularly, leaving you unmotivated, drained, and overwhelmed.
We wrote this guide to make sure that never happens and you get the most out of this helpful technique.
1. Properly Identify Your Frogs
Properly identifying frogs is key to successful implementation of the technique.
Not all big, critical, and challenging tasks are frogs.
Here’s a proof: find a big task on your to-do list and try labeling it as a frog, an unpleasant task you have to do tomorrow in the morning. Notice how your perception immediately changes: you start seeing the task as more challenging, more demanding, more energy-consuming.
That was the chain:
Label as a frog – > discomfort
So let’s do it the other way around: don’t frame tasks as frogs until you absolutely have to.
How do you do that? Reverse the chain
Discomfort -> label as frog
The easiest way to identify frogs is your gut feeling. Take a look at your list of tasks. Create this list if you have to with all the tasks for the week. Now think about what tasks you’ve been avoiding doing for quite some time. Think about the most discomforting tasks on the list.
“I feel uncomfortable while having this task on my to-do list, but I’m hesitant to do it now”
If you already feel some discomfort about the task before you label it as a frog, then do it and label it as such.
Some secondary traits if you are not sure if the task is frog are:
- The longer you delay doing this task, the worse you feel
- You can’t break this task into smaller, simple tasks
- You can’t delegate this task to anyone, only you can do it
- You would feel really good if this task vanishes from your to-do list
Tip: if all tasks on your to-do list are frogs, none of your tasks are frogs.
2. When You Have Multiple Frogs, Use Eisenhower Technique For Prioritization
Having several frogs on your to-do list can be devastatingly demotivating, even paralyzing.
You don’t know where to start, and you feel helpless because even if you spend a lot of effort to complete one frog, the other tasks remain.
To get out of this mode, let’s use visual prioritization.
Draw a graph with just two axes: horizontal will mark urgency, vertical – importance.
Now put all your frogs on a graph, according to their importance and urgency. The more urgent the task seems to you, the more to the right it should be. The more important things will be higher. So, the most important and urgent tasks will be high to the right.
It’s best to use Canva or some digital whiteboard for this, because in the beginning you will be moving and rearranging your dots quite a lot.
Even though most of your frogs seem urgent and important, there will be a slight visual difference.
Now, in the upper right corner, draw a giant black circle:
The task that is the closest to the circle, or, as we call it, “black hole of urgency”, is your frog for today (or tomorrow).
Gradually complete all the frogs one by one, until you have none left. Don’t try to complete all frogs in one day. You should be satisfied with completing just one.
3. Block Specific Number of Hours to Each Frog
“Work expands to fill the available time” – Parkinson’s Law
What that means is that if you allocated 4 hours to complete a task. You will likely spend 4 hours completing it even if you theoretically could do it much sooner.
This very important phenomenon affects how we deal with frogs. By definition, frog tasks seem more challenging and uncomfortable to us than other tasks. That’s why we tend to overestimate how long frog tasks take to complete.
Sometimes, in our mind, that means a single frog task can take up the entire morning or even a day.
Fortunately, the law can work to our advantage as well. If we estimate the same task as “2 hours” of work, we will be more focused on completing it within 2 hours. So try to always estimate your frogs in hours (or minutes), the fewer, the better, but stay realistic.
With some experience you will learn to complete frogs faster and in a more energetic manner by simply allocating less time for their completion.
4. Tackle Toughest Frogs With Pomodoro Technique
One of the most effective techniques to complete frogs is pomodoro technique.
Why?
Because it provides an external motivation and pleasantly simple structure, and frog tasks usually lack both.
We have a detailed article on Pomodoro technique, but here’s a short version:
- Set up a kitchen timer with alarm after 25 minutes (or use digital pomodoro app)
- Start working on your task and relentlessly block any external distractions (messages, emails, calls, colleagues)
- After 25 minutes of work, set up a 5 minute rest period.
- Do not do any work during the 5-minute rest, and instead relax, do some breathing exercises or listen to the music. Avoid talking to other people.
- Set up another 25-minute work session
- After 4 work sessions, set up a longer break (from 20 to 40 minutes), and repeat the cycle
- For added motivation, track how many pomodoros you completed in a row today.
You can combine pomodoro technique with time blocking technique, estimating frog tasks in pomodoros, i.e. task #1 = 5 pomodoros, task #2 = 4 pomoros etc.
5. Reframe Recurring Frogs / Beware of Mislabeling Tasks as Frogs
Often the same frog task keeps popping up in your to-do list, over and over, and over.
And every time we have to deal with it. It’s always hard, and always exhausting.
But there can be another way, even two ways, to deal with recurring frogs.
1. Reframe frog
We don’t like frogs, but why? For a long time a frog on my to-do list was writing anything: a newsletter, a blog, a social media post. That, until I’ve asked myself: why do I treat any writing as a frog?
That was until I learned freewriting technique. The joy of writing without constantly editing every word on the paper evoked the joy of writing. Suddenly, any writing frogs were no more.
3. Transform frog
There are many ways of transforming a frog into something that is no longer a frog. Conduct a retrospective. What makes this specific recurring task a frog? Is it because it’s daunting and involves many manual actions? Or is it because you have to rely on other people’s work?
Whatever that is, search for ways to improve the process. Perhaps you can employ some automation. Perhaps you can set up a dashboard or a table and share it with other people for tracking the status of their part of the work. Or maybe you may try finding alternative tools with features that simplify your workflow?
Whatever it is, frogs can be transformed if you start with these questions:
- What tools can I use to complete these tasks faster?
- Can I delegate this task or parts of it to someone else?
- What’s the least favorite part of this task and why don’t I like it?
Bonus: Eating Frogs Is Not For Everyone
Eating frogs, the daunting, most exhausting tasks first thing in the morning, is not for everyone.
You might find that it constantly demotivates you starting your day with these kinds of tasks. And that’s fine.
Here’s what you can try instead:
- Break a frog task into smaller parts and identify what parts make it “the frog”
- Start your day with bigger tasks that you like, to achieve the sense of accomplishment early in the day, and then try and take a stab at some smaller frogs
- Try delegating frog tasks to someone else
- Do frogs once per week, not every day
- Start day with smaller tasks that you enjoy doing to gain some momentum
We hope this article was a useful read and helped you tackle your frogs more efficiently. Feel free to let us know other techniques you employ with challenging tasks!
Sometimes meetings, especially in remote teams, are the frogs: they take away energy and time, but are often mandatory to visit.
If you and your team have to regularly attend unproductive meetings (we sure were like that), try asynchronous standups with Geekbot. They are short, productive, and fun, and can be run directly in your Slack or MS Teams messenger.
Right now we’re offering a completely free version for small teams, so try and see how impactful these can be to your remote team productivity and morale!