"Eat that frog!"

What in the world did frogs ever do to us to deserve our contempt?  Consider just one of our leadership metaphors - have you ever heard the story about the boiling frog?  Basically, we are led to believe that if a frog is suddenly dropped into a pot of boiling water, it will immediately jump out and live to tell the tale.  If on the other hand the frog is placed into a pot of cool water which is brought slowly to boil, it will not perceive the danger and will slowly be boiled alive.  The take-home message is that individuals usually react slowly, if at all, to gradual or slowly accumulating changes or threats.  These same individuals, when faced with rapid or sudden changes or threats will react appropriately to remove themselves from the dangerous situation.

Have you ever heard the fairy tale about the frog prince?  In this one, a prince is punished for his arrogance by being turned into a frog, only to be rescued when a princess comes to kiss him.  Again, we assume that frogs live such a miserable existence that turning someone into a frog is the ideal form of punishment.

Finally, do you remember hearing the nursery rhyme about the five frogs on a log?  Compared to the two earlier examples, here the frogs in the story are playing a relatively passive role.  All of these stories came to my mind when I heard something that the 19th century American writer and humorist Mark Twain (one of my favorite authors) reportedly once said, "Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day."  Here we go again - frogs are such poor, miserable creatures apparently!

Laura Blinder posted an article entitled, "We tried it: Eat That Frog (productivity system)".  The self-help guru Brian Tracy even wrote a book based upon Twain's quote, "Eat That Frog: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time".  Here, the proverbial "frog" is a difficult task that we probably should do (based upon its impact and level of importance), but one that we can't seem to get started doing.  Essentially, Blinder and Tracy are telling us that we should prioritize our lives based upon the goals we set for ourselves.  If a difficult task is one that will help us achieve our goals and priorities, then we should be doing it first before we try to tackle anything else.  

When you think about it more, Twain's metaphor makes a lot of sense.  We usually have a lot more energy and motivation at the beginning of the day, so tackling the toughest problems first (as long as they help us achieve our goals - if not, we should prioritizing other things) when we have the most motivation and energy is a smart move.  Tracy added his own version of Twain's quote, "You cannot eat every tadpole and frog in the pond, but you can eat the biggest and ugliest one, and that will be enough, at least for the time being."