Eat That Frog

Eat That Frog! Make a list of all the key goals, activities, projects and 
responsibilities in your life today. Which of them are, or could be, in 
the top 10% or 20% of tasks that represent, or could represent, 80% or 
90% of your results?
 
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Resolve today that you are going to spend more and more of your 
time working in those few areas that can really make a difference in 
you life and career, and less and less time on lower value activities. 
 
 
 
 
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Chapter 4 – Consider the Consequences 
 
“Every man has become great, every successful man has succeeded, in 
proportion as he has confined his powers to one particular channel.” 
(Orison Swett Marden) 
 
The mark of the superior thinker is his or her ability to accurately 
predict the consequences of doing or not doing something. The 
potential consequences of any task or activity are the key 
determinants of how important it really is to you and to your 
company. This way of evaluating the significance of a task is how 
you determine what your next frog really is. 
Doctor Edward Banfield of Harvard University, after more than 50 
years of research, concluded that "long-time perspective" is the most 
accurate single predictor of upward social and economic mobility in 
America. Long time perspective turns out to be more important than 
family background, education, race, intelligence, connections or 
virtually any other single factor in determining your success in life 
and at work. 
Your attitude toward time, your "time horizon," has an enormous 
impact on your behavior and your choices. People who take the long 
view of their lives and careers always seem to make much better 
 
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decisions about their time and activities than people who give very 
little thought to the future. 
Rule: "Long-term thinking improves short-term decision making." 
Successful people have a clear future orientation. They think five, ten 
and twenty years out into the future. They analyze their choices and 
behaviors in the present to make sure that they are consistent with 
the long-term future that they desire. 
In your work, having a clear idea of what is really important to you 
in the long-term makes it much easier for you to make better 
decisions about your priorities in the short-term. 
By definition, something that is important has long-term potential 
consequences. Something that is unimportant has few or no long-
term potential consequences. Before starting on anything, you should 
always ask yourself, "What are the potential consequences of doing