Now to Find a Frog to Eat

“Eat a live frog every morning,
and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”
-Mark Twain

At the suggestion of author Brian Tracy, I have been starting my day by choosing to do the biggest, nastiest, most unpleasant thing on my list of things to get done. Even if I accomplish nothing else all day, I have at least accomplished that one "bad" thing. If, on the other hand, I save the "worst" thing for last, I tend to do lots of other things that aren't even on the list in order to avoid the "worst" thing, so it keeps getting put off and put off. It is amazingly more productive to just jump in and get the nasty bad thing out of the way right up front. If it's a particularly large job, jump in and do 15, 30 or 60 minutes work on it, then move to something else for a few hours. When that time is up, go back and do another 15-60 minutes work. Repeat until the "bad" thing is done. Putting it off over and over again just causes the big bad frog to become larger and even more foul tasting. For me, it's much more productive and enjoyable to eat the frogs early, often and when they are small.

Over the past several months, I have been diligently eating frogs and also following the suggestions of FlyLady to do a little bit of cleaning every day. That's how I got through the decluttering and cleaning prior to having my aunt, uncle and grandma visit a few weekends back.

However, now that I accomplished my tasks, I am presently without frogs to eat. I think part of the reason why I have had no motivation lately is not because I'm burned out or don't want to do things. I just don't know where to start. I'm lacking structure and immediate goals at the moment. I need to spend a few hours and write out a list of things I need to work on, then prioritize them by degree of importance/urgency and also by "frogness". I certainly have a list of things I could be doing. Time to figure out what to do first, set myself some finite goals, and start making progress, one frog at a time. This sounds like a fine task for a leisurely breakfast at Perkins or a leisurely cup of coffee at the bookstore this weekend.