Book Review- Eat That Frog!

Well I promised you a review on Eat that Frog! 21 Great Way to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time. Sounds like a pretty bold and great claim, huh? It's a pretty short and easy read. I did learn a few new tricks to help keep me on my toes. A lot of the the advise in the book focused on the business world. So my motivations to get more done are obviously different. It really doesn't matter how much I get done- my salary is not going up! I will just feel better about myself and have more time to devote to my family/ friends or a hobby. My husband now likes to "encourage" me and ask " How many frogs are you going to eat today?!" especially when I'm in a lazy mood;) The first week of the new year I whipped through so many things. It felt great. Now I don't have much on my list, so I'm settling back in to my ways and having some very lovely, relaxing afternoons while the girls sleep. Let me qualify that- I am still getting my normal list completed. I just don't have any big projects hanging over my head currently.
Ok so I'm going to give you my top five tips that I found that would be helpful to stay at home moms like myself.

1. Make a yearly, monthly, and daily list of tasks you want to accomplish. Write them out and have clear deadlines set for each one.

2. Always work from a list. It takes about 10 min. in the morning, or the night before to plan out your day. It will save you up to 2 hours in wasted time.

3. Break down the items on your list. Put them into specific step by step activities/ how you are going to accomplish this task from start to finish.

4. Do something ( Anything! He urges) everyday towards your goals. Once you start ( that is the hardest part, after all!) your momentum will keep you going to get more done than you originally thought you might do.

Trying to come up with the best 5 out of 21 was a little trickier than I thought, so here's a good number 5.
There will never be enough time to do everything you have to do! Don't use this as an excuse, rather decide on what's the most important things to be allocating your time to. Use these 3 questions as a guide for what's really important:
-"The first question is, "What are my highest value activities?"Put another way, what are the biggest frogs that you have to eat to make the greatest contribution to your organization? to your family? to your life in general?
-The second question you can ask continually is, "What can I and only I do that if done well will make a real difference?"
-The third question you can ask is, "What is the most valuable use of my time right now?" In other words, "What is my biggest frog of all at this moment?" This is the core question of time management. Answering this question correctly is the key to overcoming procrastination and becoming a highly productive person.Every hour of every day, one task represents the most valuable use of your timeat that moment. Your job is to ask yourself this question, over and over again, and to always be working on the answer to it whatever it is."

Tracy, Brian (2007-01-01). Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time (p. 31).

I hope you enjoyed my summary of this book. I'm working on another read now, Gods and Kings By Lynn Austin. Just gotta find a way to read it without falling asleep. Not that it's a sleeper of a book- Hmm.. could it be that every time I try, I am laying down to read it?!;) Do you have any other tricks that help you get more done in less time? If so, I'd love to hear them. Feel free to leave a comment.