How to Stop Procrastinating: a simple Guide to Mastering Difficult Tasks and Breaking the Procrastination Habit

Practice #4: Eat the Frog
In his classic book on how to overcome procrastination,
Eat That Frog!
,
Brian Tracy suggests that the best way to begin your day is to, well, “
eat
that frog
.” The idea stems from a Mark Twain quote:
If the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go
through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably
the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long.
Tracy’s point is if you can complete the hardest task first, then you’ll
begin with a major win that will make all the successive tasks or chores
seem less daunting. It also will be motivating knowing that you’ve already
tackled the one thing that you are most likely to procrastinate on.
This advice is perfect for anyone who frequently puts off tasks that
require focus and hard work. If you can commit yourself to just getting
started and working on your hardest task right away, then you’ll discover
that’s it probably not as bad as you thought.
Once again, let’s go back to my writing example. This is a task that I’ll
frequently dread or not want to do. But I also know that if I put it off for
later in the day, then I’ll increase the likelihood that I’ll skip it or get
distracted by another activity.
By committing myself to eat the frog first thing in the morning, I know
that after 30–60 minutes of effort, I’ve already completed the most
challenging task for the day.
Trust me: one of the most motivating experiences is knowing you’ve
already completed the hardest task before 9:00 a.m.

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Practice #5: Use the Eisenhower Matrix to Make Quick
Decisions
While it’s great to imagine a perfect workday where you’re able to work
on just your MITs in isolation, this rarely happens in the real world. If
you’re like most people, your day is filled with a steady stream of small
emergencies, random disruptions, and unexpected changes. These can
feel overwhelming if you don’t have a framework that allows you to
separate the important from the not-so-important.
That’s why I recommend using a simple decision-making strategy called
the Eisenhower Matrix, so named because Dwight Eisenhower, prior to
becoming the 34th president of the United States, served as a general in
the army and as the Allied forces’ supreme commander during World
War II.
During his time in the army, Eisenhower was faced with many tough
decisions concerning the tasks he had to focus on every day. This led him
to invent a principle that helps us today by prioritizing our tasks by
urgency and importance. If this strategy was good enough to help
Eisenhower lead hundreds of thousands of people, then it’s probably
good enough to help with your procrastination issue. (Stephen Covey,
author of
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
, further popularized
Eisenhower’s concept by supporting Eisenhower’s use of four quadrants
to determine the urgency of one’s tasks.)
The Eisenhower Matrix prioritizes your tasks by urgency and importance,
which results in four quadrants that each require a separate approach
and strategy. In addition to sorting tasks by urgency and importance, the
matrix also identifies tasks that you should either delegate or completely
remove from your life. Following is a brief overview of this system. (
If you
want a downloadable version of this matrix, then you can grab a copy by
signing up for the free companion website
.)

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