Eat That Frog

Eat That Frog!  Select any goal, task or project in your life where you 
have been procrastinating and take just one step toward 
accomplishing it immediately. Sometimes, all you need to do to get 
started is to sit down and make a list of all the steps you will need to 
take to eventually complete the task. 
Then, just start and complete one item on the list. And then one more, 
and so on. You will be amazed at what you eventually accomplish.
 
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Chapter 13 - Put the Pressure on Yourself 
 
“The first requisite for success is to apply your physical and mental energies 
to one problem incessantly without growing weary.” 
(Thomas Edison) 
The world is full of people who are waiting for someone to come 
along and motivate them to be the kind of people they wish they 
could be. The problem is that, "No one is coming to the rescue." 
These people are waiting for a bus on a street where no busses pass. 
As a result, if they don't take charge of their lives and put the 
pressure on themselves, they can end up waiting forever. And that is 
what most people do. 
Only about 2% of people can work entirely without supervision. We 
call these people "leaders." This is the kind of person you are meant 
to be. 
Your job is to form the habit of putting the pressure on yourself, and 
not waiting for someone else to come along and do it for you. You 
must choose your own frogs and then make yourself eat them in their 
order of importance. 
 
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The standards you set for your own work and behavior should be 
higher than anyone else could set for you. 
Make it a game with yourself to start a little earlier, work a little 
harder and stay a little later. Always look for ways to go the extra 
mile, to do more than you are paid for. 
Your self-esteem, the core of your personality, has been defined by 
the psychologist Nathaniel Brandon as “your reputation with 
yourself." 
You build up or pull down your reputation with yourself with 
everything you do, or fail to do. The good news is that you feel 
terrific about yourself whenever you push yourself to do your best, 
whenever you go beyond where the average person would normally 
quit. 
Imagine each day that you have just received an emergency message 
and that you will have to leave town tomorrow for a month. If you 
had to leave town for a month, what would you absolutely make sure 
got done before you left? Whatever it is, go to work on that task right 
now.
Imagine that you just received all-expenses paid vacation as a prize, 
but you will have to leave tomorrow morning on the vacation or it 
 
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will be given to someone else. What would you be determined to get 
finished before you left so that you could take that vacation? 
Whatever it is, start on that one job immediately. 
Successful people continually put the pressure on themselves to 
perform at high levels. Unsuccessful people have to be instructed and 
supervised and pressured by others.
One of the great ways for you to overcome procrastination is by 
working as though you only had one day to get all your most 
important jobs done before you left for a month or went on vacation. 
By putting the pressure on yourself, you accomplish more and better 
tasks, faster than ever before. You become a high performance, high-
achieving personality. You feel terrific about yourself, and bit by bit, 
you build up the habit of rapid task completion that then goes on to 
serve you all the days of your life.