Chapter 2 – Plan Every Day in Advance
Planning your goals in advance is the key to accomplishing productivity and overcoming procrastination. List all you want to be a year later on paper and divide the actionable into days, weeks, and months.
Chapter 3 – Apply the 80/20 Rule to Everything
The 80/20 rule – Twenty percent effort contributes to eighty percent of the result. Find the most impactful work on your list and make it your priority. Complete them at all costs even if it means leaving the rest, because it will still contribute more to the result.
Elaborate Summary
In the previous blog, we summarised that identifying your priority tasks is crucial before actually getting them done. It helps prioritize them and adequately plan accordingly.
In this chapter, the author suggests that your preparation should begin a day in advance. To do so he shares some actionable. First, imagine a person that you want to be a year from today. Write down the things he/she has that you do not. List them in the present tense, it will help you have a sense of the person that you will be one year later.
Now write down the things you think you must do to achieve that state. It does not matter if it is effective, just needs to be practical. Divide the task further into daily, weekly, and monthly tasks, which will help you make a list of tasks you need to accomplish. Prioritize them. But on what basis? That is what we discuss in the next chapter.
The 80/20 rule
In Chapter 3 of Eat That Frog we begin by discussing an intriguing phenomenon known as the – you guessed it right “80/20 Rule.” It has often been noticed in the world that 20 percent of things have 80 percent of influence, for example, twenty percent of the world’s population holds eighty percent of its wealth, and so on.
That same applies to our physical, mental, and emotional efforts in doing a job. The best ROI on our effort will be when we single-mindedly invest our labor in the most productive work (works that are most impactful in our lives). Thus from your list find those twenty percent of tasks that produce eighty percent of your overall results. Keep them on the highest priority and follow the same rule to rearrange your list daily.
Actionables
- Begin today to plan your every day, week, and month. Make a priority list a day prior and prioritize the task. Think on paper–everything else is just your imagination.
- Make a list of all the tasks that you want to accomplish. Apply the 80/20 rule to find out the twenty percent of tasks that should be your priority and make an actionable plan to complete them ASAP.
You will be amazed at how much you will accomplish doing so. A study suggests that doing productivity work provides results 25 percent faster than your natural workflow. Test it out!!
