The short answer: "eat the frog" means doing your most important task first, usually the one you'd most like to put off, before the easy jobs fill your day. To pick yours, ask which one task would make today a good day even if nothing else got done. It fails when the frog is too big to start, when everything is a frog, when your mornings aren't yours, or when what you're avoiding is a feeling rather than a task. Below: where the saying really comes from, how to pick a frog, what research says about doing the hard thing first, and what to do when the method doesn't work for you.
The 58-second version: do the task you'd rather avoid first, find it with two questions, and pick one for today.
What "eat the frog" means
Picture the one task on your list you keep moving to tomorrow. It matters. It isn't hard to explain. But every time you look at it, you find something smaller to do first. That's your frog.
"Eat the frog" means doing that task first, before email, before the quick jobs, before the day decides for you. The idea is simple: once the worst thing is done, everything after it feels lighter, and the most important work is no longer waiting at the end of the day, when you have the least left.
It doesn't mean doing every unpleasant task first. It means choosing one: the one that matters most.
Where the saying comes from (it wasn't Mark Twain)
You'll often read that Mark Twain said that if you eat a live frog first thing in the morning, nothing worse will happen to you all day. Quote Investigator, which traces famous quotes back to their sources, found no real evidence that Twain said or wrote it.
The likeliest root is older and French. In the 1790s, the writer Nicolas Chamfort recorded a remark he credited to a Monsieur de Lassay, about spending your days in high society. In the English translation published in 1851, it reads: "we should swallow a toad every morning, in order to fortify ourselves against the disgust of the rest of the day, when we have to spend it in society."
So it began as a joke about tiresome company, not a productivity tip. The toad became a frog in English. Then, in 2001, Brian Tracy's book Eat That Frog! turned it into a method: find your most important task, the one you're most likely to put off, and do it first.
How to pick your frog
1 · Write everything down
Get every task out of your head and onto one list. A frog is easier to spot when it isn't hiding among thirty half-remembered jobs. (How to prioritise tasks has a full method for sorting a long list.)
2 · Ask: which one would make the day a good one?
If only one thing on the list got done today, which would make you glad at bedtime? Not the most urgent one. The one that moves something you care about: the application, the essay, the hard phone call, the first draft.
3 · Ask: which one am I avoiding?
Often it's the same task. If one item has been on your list for days, and you feel a small drop in your stomach when you read it, that's a strong sign it's the frog.
4 · Make it the first step, not the whole thing
"Finish the report" is a frog nobody can eat in one sitting. "Write the report's first page" is. Your frog for today should be a piece you can finish today.
Then decide when. "First" means the first stretch of time that's really yours, which isn't always 7 a.m.
Why doing the hard thing first can help
Two pieces of research help explain why the frog keeps getting pushed back, and why that has a cost.
When we're busy, we pick the easy tasks. A team of researchers studied six years of data from a hospital emergency department. When doctors had more patients waiting, they tended to take the easier cases first. On a shift, that made it look as if more work got done. But once the researchers took into account how complex the work was, the easy-first habit was linked to getting through less, and the doctors' speed improved less over time. In lab experiments that followed, people made the same easy-first choice when their workload rose, and the researchers found two reasons for it: tiredness, and the good feeling of ticking things off (KC, Staats, Kouchaki & Gino, 2020).
That's one hospital and a set of lab tasks, not a test of eating the frog itself. But it shows the pull the method works against: the easy task feels like progress even when it isn't the most valuable work.
Putting things off is often about a feeling. Psychologists Fuschia Sirois and Timothy Pychyl argue that procrastination is often a way of fixing your mood right now: you put off the task because of how it makes you feel today, and your future self pays for it (Sirois & Pychyl, 2013). That's why the frog is so often the task with the worst feeling attached, and why waiting rarely makes it smaller.
When eating the frog fails, and what to do instead
The method is simple, which is its strength. It's also why it doesn't fit every day or every person.
- The frog is too big. You sit down to "start the business plan" and nothing happens. Instead: eat one leg. Pick a first step you can finish in one sitting, like "list the five sections".
- Everything is a frog. If five tasks are all your most important one, none of them is. Instead: pick one for today. Two or three a week is plenty.
- Your mornings aren't yours. A school run, a baby, a shift that starts at 6, a job that begins with a pile of messages. Instead: "first" means the first block of time you control, whenever it comes.
- Your best hours are later. Some people think most clearly in the afternoon or evening. Instead: eat the frog in your best hours. The point is to do it before the easy jobs, not before breakfast.
- Something really is urgent. A sick child or a real deadline today comes first. Instead: handle it, then come back to the frog. Don't let a day of real fires turn into a week of them (how to prioritise when everything feels urgent).
- The frog is a feeling. A message you dread sending, or a conversation you're scared of. A better order won't fix dread. Instead: write two lines first: what you're afraid will happen, and what you'd say to a friend in your place. Journaling for overthinking has more on this.
A better system isn't a fix for stress. If dread or low mood follows you through most days, talk to someone you trust, or to a doctor or therapist.
Eating the frog for a week, not just a day
You can do all of this on paper: one frog a day, circled at the top of the page.
In Awaken Journal, a private journal app by Everything Awaken, the weekly To-Do turns the same idea into a week. You choose your Frog Tasks when you plan the week, between 2 and 5 of them (4 to start), and together they're worth half of the week's score. The limit is there for the reason above: if everything is a frog, nothing is.
Read how Frog Tasks and the Frog limit work in Awaken Journal.
Quick answers
What does "eat the frog" mean?
Do your most important task first, usually the one you'd most like to avoid, before the easy jobs take over the day.
Did Mark Twain say "eat the frog"?
There's no good evidence he did. Quote Investigator traces the idea to a French remark from the 1790s about swallowing a toad every morning. Brian Tracy's 2001 book Eat That Frog! made it a productivity method.
How do I choose my frog?
Ask which one task would make today a good day if nothing else got done, and which one you've been avoiding. It's often the same task. Then shrink it to a step you can finish today.
Do I have to eat the frog first thing in the morning?
No. "First" means before the easy jobs, in the first time that's yours. If your sharpest hours are later, eat it then.
What if I have more than one frog?
Pick one for today. The others can be tomorrow's frog, or this week's.
Does eating the frog cure procrastination?
No method does. It helps by removing the daily choice of what to start with. If putting things off comes from dread or low mood, deal with the feeling too, and talk to someone if it doesn't lift.
Where to go next
Too many tasks to choose from? Read how to prioritise tasks when everything feels urgent. Head full of worry? Try journaling for overthinking.
Sources
- KC, D. S., Staats, B. R., Kouchaki, M., & Gino, F. (2020). Task selection and workload: A focus on completing easy tasks hurts performance. Management Science, 66(10), 4397–4416. doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2019.3419
- Sirois, F., & Pychyl, T. (2013). Procrastination and the priority of short-term mood regulation: Consequences for future self. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 7(2), 115–127. doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12011
- Quote Investigator (2013). Eat a live frog every morning, and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day. quoteinvestigator.com
- Tracy, B. (2001). Eat That Frog! 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time. Berrett-Koehler.