For small tasks, eat the frog; for huge work, eat the elephant (one bite at a time)

“Eat That Frog!”
By Brian Tracy
Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2001


Everyone is shocked and dismayed at the revelation that Justice Francis Garchitorena is sitting on 341 cases, some of them pending for more than ten years. For his procrastination – by habit or by design (e.g., the cases of Imelda Marcos, et al, are in his division) – the Supreme Court relieved him of his duties as administrative head of the graft court.

Wasn’t it Nortcotte Parkinson who said that “work expands to the time alloted to it”? If you have one week to finish work, you will finish it in one week. But, if you’re given only a day to complete it, you’ll have it over and done with in one day.

Justice Garchitorena has 90 days maximum, after submission for resolution, to promulgate the decision (source: Neal Cruz, “As I See it,” PDI, November 30), and so Garchitorena does not even fall under the Parkinson principle.

The Justice’s case is simply illustrative of many cases of procrastination that are happening everyday at home, in offices, in factories and in schools. Inspite of the fact that postponing one’s task has been a lesson we learned early in life (like, “Don’t postpone for tomorrow what you can do today”), tackling the day’s business is always the most difficult thing to do.

You come to your office, and your staffers are busy with the entertainment pages of your newspaper – and the staffers justify this by saying they are “setting themselves in the mood” for work! You check your manager’s work, and he is busy answering his emails, rationalizing that he is “doing away with little tasks” before he takes on a huge task staring him in the face.

Many pieces of advice have been offered, and thousands of books on “time management” have been published. It turns out, it’s not time we should be managing – it’s ourselves. That is if you believe Brian Tracy, author of the helpful book with a shocking title (yuck!): “Eat That Frog!”

Let me issue a warning crime reporters on television and radio with which they preface their gruesome reports: “Don’t read this while taking your breakfast,” especially when you get this unforgettable (because traumatic) line from Mr. Tracy: “If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first.” Let me quickly add: The author is talking about something else – a subject that’s more helpful than a frog. He says:
“Your ‘frog’ is your biggest, most important task, the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don’t do something about it now. It is also the one task that can have the greatest positive impact on your life and results at the moment.”

If there’s a book that should make it easy for you to procrastinate no longer, this book of 118 pages will do the job – with a bonus: you will be introduced to great thoughts from influential and powerful persons giving us tips on the principles of “focus,” “concentration,” “passion,” “achieving your single biggest mission.”

Subtitled “21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time,” the book has 21 brief sections dealing with one “great way” at a time. The first section speaks about deciding what task to tackle first. A helpful blurb goes: Here’s a great rule for success: “Think on paper.”

I remember an uncle whom I visited in the U.S., a super-salesman. He gets up early in the morning, goes to a corner with his notebook, and plans his sales calls for the day. It turns out that’s the secret of his being “super.” Mr. Tracy reveals an interesting fact: “Only about 3 percent of adults have clear written goals. These people accomplish five and ten times as much as people of equal or better education and ability but who, for whatever reason, have never taken the time to write out exactly what it is they want.”

“Take action on your plan immediately,” he advises. That’s easy. So, we ask: What about tasks that take some time to complete – like maybe a huge engineering project or writing a book? Mr. Tracy has the answer too: “Resolve to do something every single day that moves you toward your major goal.”

Now, you know why some people get more things done, while others seemingly equally busy, come up with much much less.

The few times I watched former Senate President Jovito Salonga work, I discovered how he accomplishes great tasks – not only for himself, but for the country: He writes his daily tasks on a notebook, makes his own calls when he should, visits his associates to get him to support his cause -- and then, before you know it, he is launching a book with a tour-de-force dimension or he is rallying his senators abrogating the American military bases. No mean accomplishments, if we may say so. How does he do it? He begins with the ugliest frog, if we must use Tracy’s extended metaphor.

Maybe, the more appropriate metaphor is the elephant! The author writes: “You have heard the old question, ‘How do you eat an elephant?’ The answer, of course, is ‘one bite at a time!’.” A lot of friends ask me: “How can you read one book a week?” My answer: For thin books, I eat the frog; for thick complicated books, I take on the elephant in bite-size chapters!

This book is witty, warm-hearted and helpful. Procrastinate no longer. Go to the nearest bookstore. You’ll never know when you need to speed up pending work. I don’t know about you, but some have become a sorry case of “a frog on the frying pan” – blissfully enjoying the warmth of the pan until it is fried alive.