Eat That Frog

 
But the fact is that you are never going to get caught up. You will 
never get on top of your tasks. You will never get far enough ahead 
to be able to get to all those books, magazines and leisure time 
activities that you dream of doing. 
And forget about solving your time management problems by 
becoming more productive. No matter how many personal 
productivity techniques you master, there will always be more to do 
than you can ever accomplish in the time you have available to you, 
no matter how much it is.
You can only get control of your time and your life by changing the 
way you think, work and deal with the never ending river of 
responsibilities that flows over you each day. You can only get 
 
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control of your tasks and activities to the degree that you stop doing 
some things and start spending more time on the few things that can 
really make a difference in your life. 
I have studied time management for more than thirty years. I have 
immersed myself in the works of Peter Drucker, Alex Mackenzie, 
Alan Lakein, Stephen Covey and many, many others. I have read 
hundreds of books and thousands of articles on personal efficiency 
and effectiveness. This book is the result. 
Each time I came across a good idea, I tried it out in my own work 
and personal life. If it worked, I incorporated it into my talks and 
seminars and taught it to others. 
Galileo once wrote, “You cannot teach a person something he does 
not already know; you can only bring what he does know to his 
awareness.” 
Depending upon your level of knowledge and experience, these ideas 
will sound familiar. This book will bring them to a higher level of 
awareness. When you learn and apply these methods and techniques 
over and over until they become habits, you will alter the course of 
you life in a very positive way. 
My Own Story 
 
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Let me tell you a little about myself the origins of this little book. 
I started off in life with few advantages, aside from a curious mind. I 
did poorly in school and left without graduating. I worked at 
laboring jobs for several years. My future did not appear promising. 
As a young man, I got a job on a tramp freighter and went off to see 
the world. For eight years, I traveled and worked, and then traveled 
some more, eventually visiting more than eighty countries on five 
continents. 
When I could no longer find a laboring job, I got into sales, knocking 
on doors, working on straight commission. I struggled from sale to 
sale until I began looking around me and asking, “Why is it that 
other people are doing better than I am?” 
Then I did something that changed my life. I went and asked other 
successful people what they were doing. And they told me. And I did 
what they advised me to do, and my sales went up. Eventually, I 
became so successful that they made me a sales manager. As a sales 
manager, I used the same strategy. I found out what other successful 
managers were doing and then did it myself. 
This process of learning and applying what I had learned changed 
my life. I am still amazed at how simple and obvious it is. Just find 
 
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out what other successful people do and do the same things until you 
get the same results. Wow! What an idea. 
Simply put, some people are doing better than others because they do 
things differently and they do the right things right. Especially, they 
use their time far, far better than the average person. 
Coming from an unsuccessful background, I had developed deep 
feelings of inferiority and inadequacy. I had fallen into the mental 
trap of assuming that people who were doing better than me were 
actually better than me. What I learned was that this was not 
necessarily true. They were just doing things differently, and what 
they had learned to do, within reason, I could learn as well. 
This was a revelation to me. I was both amazed and excited with this 
discovery. I still am. I realized that I could change my life and 
achieve almost any goal I could set if I just found out what others 
were doing in that area and then did it myself until I got the same 
results they were getting. 
Within one year of starting in sales, I was a top salesman. A year after 
I was made a manager, I was a vice-president in charge of a 95 person 
sales force in six countries. I was twenty-five years old. 
 
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Over the years, I have worked in twenty-two different jobs, started 
and built several companies, earned a business degree from a major 
university, learned to speak French, German and Spanish and been a 
speaker, trainer or consultant for more than 500 companies. I 
currently give talks and seminars to more than 250,000 people each 
year, with audiences as large as 20,000 people. 
Throughout my career, I have found a simple truth. The ability to 
concentrate single-mindedly on your most important task, to do it 
well and to finish it completely, is the key to great success, 
achievement, respect, status and happiness in life. This key insight is 
the heart and soul of this book.
This book is written to show you how to get ahead more rapidly in 
your career. These pages contain the twenty-one most powerful 
principles on personal effectiveness I have ever discovered.
These methods, techniques and strategies are practical, proven and 
fast acting. In the interests of time, I do not dwell on the various 
psychological or emotional explanations for procrastination or poor 
time management. There are no lengthy departures into theory or 
research. What you will learn are specific actions you can take 
immediately to get better, faster results in your work. 
 
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Every idea in this book is focused on increasing your overall levels of 
productivity, performance and output, on making you more valuable 
in whatever you do. You can apply many of these ideas to your 
personal life as well. 
Each of these twenty-one methods and techniques is complete in 
itself. All are necessary. One strategy might be effective in one 
situation and another might apply to another task. All together, these 
twenty-one ideas represent a smorgasbord of personal effectiveness 
techniques that you can use at any time, in any order or sequence that 
makes sense to you at the moment. 
The key to success is action. These principles work to bring about 
fast, predictable improvements in performance and results. The faster 
you learn and apply them, the faster you will move ahead in your 
career. Guaranteed. 
There will be no limit to what you can accomplish when you learn 
how to “Eat That Frog!” 
Brian Tracy