Spit Out the Frog
Wander around enough productivity articles and you’ll be told to eat a frog.
This concept, quoted by Mark Twain and made popular by Brian Tracy in Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time, emphasizes engaging with your most unpleasant to-do first in your dedicated work time. This is a prime way to devote your energy up front to tackling something you identify as challenging; it not only supports accomplishment early in the day, it ensures that anything else you take on won’t be as intimidating.
However, for some like myself, this process may be ineffective. To tackle one’s most dreaded task seemingly raw can be like exercising without warming up. It can feel unpleasant, painful, and could render you ineffective. It’s like facing a scripted loss in a video game when you don’t realize you’re supposed to lose. In those cases, it’s the game’s way of making sure you know exactly what you’re up against in the long run and how you need to go grind, level up, acquire something legendary, etc. in order to overcome.
Some of us need to accomplish smaller, less-challenging tasks in order to get in the zone. Simply put, sometimes you can’t eat the frog until you’ve generated some productivity confidence.
If this resonates with you, let’s spit the frog out and instead snowball our way to a productive state.
In this context, snowballing is the act of successfully moving through low-effort tasks and gradually working your way to higher-effort ones. This results in confidence building. It’s like playing Katamari Damacy where you’re literally rolling up all sorts of everyday life bits into a big sticky ball until you create a star. I’m serious, that’s the game, go play it, it’s amazing.
Gaining “easy wins” through completion of low-effort tasks boosts the brain with a sense of accomplishment that naturally fuels a desire to do more. It’s what people call being “on a roll” and it generates mental momentum to take on more challenging tasks through your day. That confidence can whet your appetite and get you ready for eating a frog.
I feel the cosmos!
Small, not insignificant
The great thing is that snowballing is highly subjective: the effort level of a task depends on the person doing the task. You could potentially achieve the readiness to move on to high-effort tasks (i.e. the frogs) in a matter of minutes, or hours.
The pitfall to avoid is only engaging with low-effort tasks, which creates a false sense of productivity. If you never eat the frog, it becomes a massively overwhelming thing that grows more difficult to complete day by day. It’s like leveling up in Skyrim by only crafting iron daggers. Dovahkiin, you’ve got dragons to slay.
Because my personal energy peak is in the morning hours, I structure my daily calendar to start with a brief 30-to-60-minute block of basic task work. After I’ve snowballed/katamari’ed my way through some low-level tasks, I’m mentally prepped to tackle something bigger.
Some of my low-effort work includes (and remember, your mileage may vary):
Processing expense reports
Updating distro lists
Performing quick chores like taking out the trash or wiping down counters
Refilling the kids’ lunch accounts online
Organizing notes for an upcoming meeting
Snacking on these small accomplishments – and notice I say small, not insignificant – feeds you a bit of confidence that lets you more effectively handle more daunting, high-effort tasks.
Katamari on the Swing
Eat That Frog is powerful and motivating for many people and the fact that it wasn’t working for me made me feel angry with myself. I kept telling myself that I needed more discipline, that I was being lazy, that I needed to just sit down and focus more. As I’ve come to understand that I cannot enter my productivity zone until I had a few wins to give me that snowballing boost, I appreciate that there’s no one-size-fits-all productivity method or tip or magical tool. We’re as different as the Katamari cousins and that’s pretty groovy.