I attended a seminar once, a life time ago in a previous industry (we will apparently change careers 2.2 times in our lives) and in that fateful hour I was taught a simple lesson.
Swallow your frog.
This phrase has nothing to do with French delicacies, but rather that single task, the most important one that sits on your desk staring at you until you finally complete it. It waits sometimes patiently, sometimes not, it greets you in the morning, it nags at you when you leave, it keeps you awake at night. It never goes away. It will not. It will stay there an eat away at you until you complete that task. Its that simple. It will stare at you from behind the piles of less important, easier-to-do-now tasks that you give yourself. Things that you do to make you feel busy, to make you feel like you are getting things done.
Are you getting what you need to get done, done? No, your frog is sitting there, watching, waiting, judging.
Just swallow your frog…
…and be done with it. You’ll feel better, and the feeling you have when you know that you have done something significant is far better than the superficial “procrastinator’s high” of completing mindless tasks and making a meal of it. Its not about getting things done or spending a lot of time doing things, its about getting the right thing done when you actually need to, not ‘later’ when you want to. Make the call. Tackle the mountain. Get it done.
So one last time:
Swallow your frog.
