Eat the Frog
Do your hardest task first and make the rest of the day feel easy
Overview
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time Required
- Variable (do hardest task first)
- Best For
- Procrastinators Decision fatigued workers Anyone with a dreaded task
What Is It?
Eat the Frog is a productivity method based on a simple principle: identify the most important or most dreaded task on your list and do it first thing in the morning. The 'frog' is the task you're most likely to procrastinate on — the one that will have the greatest positive impact on your life or work but also feels the hardest to start.
The logic is straightforward. Willpower and mental energy are highest in the morning. By tackling your frog before anything else — before email, before meetings, before easy busywork — you ensure your best cognitive resources go to your most important work. Everything after that feels comparatively easy.
Origin
The method is attributed to a quote often credited to Mark Twain: 'If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first.' While the attribution to Twain is debated, productivity author Brian Tracy popularized the concept in his 2001 book Eat That Frog! 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done. The book became a bestseller and the phrase entered the productivity lexicon as shorthand for doing the hard thing first.
How to Do It
Identify Your Frog
The night before or first thing in the morning, identify your frog: the single task that is most important, most impactful, or most dreaded. If you have two important tasks, pick the bigger, harder one — that's your frog.
Do It First
Before checking email, social media, or doing easy tasks, start working on your frog. Don't negotiate with yourself. Don't wait for motivation. Sit down and begin. The first few minutes are the hardest; after that, momentum takes over.
Work Until It's Done
Stay focused on your frog until it's complete, or until you've made significant progress if it's a multi-day task. Resist the urge to switch to something easier. Each time you return to the frog after a distraction, you lose momentum.
Enjoy the Rest of Your Day
With your hardest task behind you, everything else feels lighter. Tackle remaining tasks knowing you've already won the day. This creates a positive momentum that carries through to smaller tasks.
The Science Behind Eat the Frog
Eat the Frog leverages several well-documented psychological principles. Decision fatigue research by Roy Baumeister shows that willpower depletes throughout the day as we make decisions and exert self-control. Morning hours, before this depletion kicks in, are when we have the most capacity for difficult tasks.
The method also combats the planning fallacy and procrastination cycle. When we put off hard tasks, they grow larger in our minds. The anticipatory anxiety of an undone frog is often worse than actually doing it. Research on procrastination by Timothy Pychyl shows that task avoidance is an emotional regulation problem — we avoid tasks that trigger negative emotions. By building a habit of immediate action, the method short-circuits the emotional avoidance loop.
There is also a neurochemical reward. Completing a difficult task early releases dopamine, creating a sense of accomplishment that fuels motivation for the rest of the day. This is the psychological opposite of what happens when you procrastinate: lingering dread that saps energy from everything else you do.
Benefits
Eliminates the lingering anxiety of undone important tasks
Eliminates the lingering anxiety of undone important tasks
Ensures your best energy goes to your most important work
Ensures your best energy goes to your most important work
Builds momentum — if you can eat the frog, everything else is easier
Builds momentum — if you can eat the frog, everything else is easier
Reduces procrastination by creating a simple daily rule
Reduces procrastination by creating a simple daily rule
Makes decision-making easier: just do the hardest thing first
Makes decision-making easier: just do the hardest thing first
Creates a consistent sense of daily accomplishment
Creates a consistent sense of daily accomplishment
Limitations
Not all frogs can be completed in one morning session
Not all frogs can be completed in one morning session
Some people's peak energy isn't in the morning
Some people's peak energy isn't in the morning
Requires honest self-assessment about what truly matters most
Requires honest self-assessment about what truly matters most
Can feel overly simplistic for complex project management needs
Can feel overly simplistic for complex project management needs
Morning meetings or obligations may prevent early frog-eating
Morning meetings or obligations may prevent early frog-eating
Variations
Two Frog Method
Identify your two biggest frogs and commit to eating both before lunch. For high achievers who want to maximize their morning output.
Frog Scheduling
If mornings don't work, identify your personal peak energy time and eat your frog then. The principle applies regardless of clock time — match hard tasks to high energy.
Frog Splitting
For massive frogs that can't be eaten in one sitting, break them into smaller pieces and eat one piece each morning. Progress compounds over the week.
Using Eat the Frog with BuckleTime
BuckleTime makes eating the frog less painful by surrounding you with other people doing hard things. Procrastination thrives in isolation — it is easy to avoid your frog when nobody knows you're avoiding it. When you drop into a BuckleTime room first thing in the morning and declare your frog as your task, you've made a public commitment.
The body doubling effect is particularly powerful for frog-eating. Starting a dreaded task is the hardest part, and seeing others working provides the activation energy to push through those first resistant minutes. Once you're five minutes into your frog, momentum usually takes over.
BuckleTime's Focus Points create an additional incentive. Earning points for completing a hard task early in the day feels like a double win — you've done your most important work and earned rewards. Many users develop a morning ritual: wake up, make coffee, drop into BuckleTime, declare the frog, and buckle down. The consistency of this ritual removes the daily decision about whether to eat the frog.
Frequently Asked Questions
What if I have multiple equally important tasks?
Pick the one you're most likely to procrastinate on. If they're truly equal in importance, choose the one that would cause the most problems if it didn't get done. The point is to pick one and act, not to agonize over which is slightly more important.
What if my frog takes all day?
If a task is too large for one morning, break it into smaller pieces and eat one piece each day. Your daily frog should be completable in 1-3 hours. Multi-day frogs need to be split into single-session subtasks.
Can I check email before eating my frog?
The purist answer is no — email is a Pandora's box of other people's priorities. Every email you read is a potential distraction or new task that pulls you away from your frog. If you must check email, set a strict 5-minute limit and don't respond to anything that isn't truly urgent.
What if I'm not a morning person?
The principle works at any time of day. 'First thing' means the start of your productive period, not necessarily sunrise. If you're a night owl, eat your frog at the start of your evening work session. The key is doing it before easier tasks consume your energy.
How do I identify my frog when everything feels urgent?
Ask yourself: 'If I could only accomplish one thing today, which task would have the most positive impact?' That's your frog. Urgency is often an illusion — most 'urgent' tasks are actually just loud, not important.
Try this technique with BuckleTime
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