Eat The Frog!
February 18, 2020
Improving time management is at the top of our company objectives list in 2020. We work in a contingent business model, and effectively managing our time to focus on revenue producing activities is critical to our success.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been reading the book Eat The Frog written by Brian Tracy which details a number of useful tips for managing time wisely. The title is in reference to the Mark Twain quote, “If the first thing you do in the morning is eat a live frog, you can go through the rest of the day knowing the worst is behind you.” Translated into time management speak —– if you complete your hardest and most difficult objectives first, you’ll find yourself more energized and productive the rest of the day to tackle your other tasks.
Procrastination is an issue for all of us, whether it’s a job function we don’t particularly enjoy or a project we just don’t know how to start. If a task is not mission critical, we can generally get by with an “I’ll get around to it” attitude. That dynamic changes quickly however when procrastination prevents us from achieving our stated goals and objectives. As we enter a new decade, we’ve adopted the Eat The Frog mentality at TEWS. Our goal each morning is to identify and focus on our most challenging tasks that result in our most significant outcomes when completed successfully.
While we’re Eating The Frog each morning, we’ve also started to focus on what is important in our work schedules versus what is urgent. Important tasks are defined as those that directly contribute to our long-term mission, values and goals. Urgent tasks on the other hand put us in a reactive mode and a narrowly focused mindset. These are generally issues that distract us from what is important and can many times be delegated, outsourced or focused on after mission critical tasks have been completed.
So check back with us for periodic updates on our quest to improve managing our time in 2020. And whatever is on your list of important items today —– stop procrastinating and Eat That Frog!
