“Eat the Frog” Book Review

ActionCOACH iNala

Brian Tracey’s: Eat the Frog, offers a powerful toolkit for using your time to be successful. Tracey lays out formulas for success, whilst simultaneously motivating the reader to act on the formulas. The message is built on the belief that there is a method to organize your actions that will lead directly to success. The grounding theory of the book was learnt by the author as a personal life lesson.

Tracey used to consider himself lesser than the other people he saw succeeding around him. Until he asked himself the question: what are they doing that I am not? He began asking successful people around him, and putting their answers to practice. Essentially he was testing the following hypothesis: success is predictable  The methods he learnt were so effective, that by the age of twenty-five he became vice-president in charge of a 95 person sales force in six countries.  Eat the Frog is a compilation of the habits he collected about getting more out of your time, that can directly lead to success.

The primary lesson we learn is how to “Eat the Frog”. The Frog is your biggest, most important task.  It is the task that will help you achieve your dream goals, it is also the task people often spend the whole day putting off.

There are two rules to eating the frog.

The first rule of frog-eating is: “If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first.” Meaning the order goes like this: biggest, hardest and most important task first, other tasks after. This ordering creates a personal discipline and habit – ensuring that you always have time and work on your most important task.

The second rule of frog-eating is: “If you have to eat a live frog at all, it doesn’t pay to sit and look at it for very long.” The way to eat the frog is to take action immediately. The Frog won’t get prettier the more time you spend looking at it. In fact it will begin to look uglier and uglier. Rather do it immediately than wait around and let it grow uglier.

This is the biggest lesson of creating success, organizing action around the tasks that are most important for your success followed by ,disciplining yourself to do that action.

The excellent thing about this book is that the theory of success, which requires hard work and discipline, is described by Tracey with passion and excitement, making it a motivating boost to get you going on your journey to success. Tracey is well aware that small, consistent actions quickly build into a massive wave of productivity.

Tracey describes how human beings are mentally designed to get massive rewards when you complete big tasks. Quickly, the habit of completing the right tasks first can lead to a “positive addiction, ramping up your  journey to success.

If you haven’t read it we at ActionCOACH iNala would encourage you to do so, its a great tool for business owners who want to get more out of their time . The tools taught  by Tracey are in line with how we encourage our clients to improve their effectiveness as business leaders, entrepreneurs and people.