eat that frog

The Ivy Lee Method is a simple, yet effective half-million dollar productivity method.

Ivy Lee (1877–1934) was an American publicity expert and worked as a consultant for a number of businesses. One of those was for Charles Schwab, then president of Bethlehem Steel Corporation.

Ivy Lee

In 1918, Schwab consulted with Lee in order to become more productive. In The Unseen Power, historian Scott M. Cutlip stated that Schwab was obsessed with efficiency. Thomas Edison himself called Schwab a “master hustler”.

The story, which from my research was first popularized by Earl Nightingale, goes like this:

Schwab: “Show me a way to get more things done.”

Lee: “Give me 15 minutes with each of your executives”

Schwab: “How much will it cost me?”

Lee: “Nothing. Unless it works. After three months, you can send me a check for whatever you feel it’s worth to you.”

Then during those 15 minutes with each executive, Lee laid out the following five step method:

At the end of each working day, write down the six most important things you need to accomplish tomorrow. Do not write down more than six tasks.
Prioritize those six items in order of their true importance.
When you arrive tomorrow, concentrate only on the first task. Work until the first task is finished before moving on to the second task.
Approach the rest of your list in the same way. Don’t worry if you’ve only finished one or two by the end of the day; the others can wait. If you can’t finish them all by this method, you could not have finished them with any other method.
Repeat this process every working day.

It’s simple right? Well, Schwab and his team starting using this method. It worked well, very well.

Schwab send a check of $25,000 to Lee. In today’s dollars that would be more than $400,000!

Do you think it would be worthy of you to follow a nearly half million dollar productivity method?

I do and that’s why I’ve been using this method, with the following tweaks, every work day for the past several years.

Essentially, this is Eat that Frog, followed by Eating the Frog, five more times in order. If you’ve finished your top priority for the day, then it makes sense to then tackle your next top priority.

I do this to the best of my ability, though I can’t same I am flawless about putting it into practice. One thing that does get in the way is scheduled time slots. I write these on my list, but I’m not going to put off a ten o’clock appointment just because I haven’t finished my priority list.

Typically, I use only five items as I find that is a more realistic number. And I’m actually aiming to bring that down to four or three items instead.

Lastly, I do this first thing in the morning, as part of my meditation and journalling routine, rather than the night before.

As you can see, something very simple can also be very effective.

I am going to do a series on Personal Productivity. This applies to work, but to things outside of work as well. Right now, I have 24 topics outlined. By the time I finish it’ll likely be 50.

I have studied this topic for many years. Why? Because, being an entrepreneur, especially early on where I was doing everything, meant that the more productive I could be, the better results I would get. Even as I advance in my entrepreneurial endeavors, the same is true, though how I aim my productivity has changed. (More on that later.)

You can set goals in all sorts of areas of life. Being productive in working towards them is ultimately what allows you to hit them.

So, in this series, we start with one of the simplest, yet most effective methods. It is to Eat That Frog.

Eat That Frog

This concept, and the name for it, comes from the late, great Brian Tracy, who wrote a book by the same name.

It’s a short book, one I’ve read a couple of times, and likely will read a few more times in the future too. Well worth reading.

From the first page of the preface, Brian grabbed me. He talked about the to-do list and how this will never get done.

“There is never enough time to do everything you have to do…The fact is that you are never going to get caught up. You will never get on top of your tasks…No matter how many personal productivity techniques you master, there will always be more to do than you can ever accomplish in the time you have available to you.”

This hit me like a ton of bricks. Previously, I was always playing catchup just trying to get it all done. Now, I realized this was a pointless endeavor.

Ideas come at a mile a minute (especially when you train yourself to come up with lots of ideas). Thus, adding new things to your to-do list happens much faster than checking them off, even if you are optimally personally productive.

The idea of eating that frog, is that if you HAD to eat a frog, the best way to do it would be to just get it done. No hemming or hawing, thinking, worrying, stressing about the fact that you had to do it. Not outlining and planning different ways you could do it. Not consulting your friends, or posting about it on Facebook. Instead, you just eat the frog, finish it off and then you are done with it.

(This presupposes that eating a frog is a bad thing, that it wouldn’t taste good, or whatever. But that’s another topic we’ll cover later.)

Chances are you’re not having to literally eat frogs. But the frog is the metaphor for the thing that is important and valuable to you. Generally, it is not an urgent task.

So many people start their days checking their email or hopping on social media. These are not frogs.

Instead it is best to start your day with a routine that sets you up for success the rest of the day. That is why I meditate and journal first thing in the morning, typically followed by working out.

When I start my workday I tackle my priority, my frog first. Ideally, I do this until it is done, before moving onto anything else.

Take toady for example (I misspelled that on accident, but isn’t that awesome considering the topic)…I had to film some Youtube videos for Lost Empire Herbs. I had meant to get this done days before but things got in my way, so it was my frog today. I got it done. Then I moved onto a couple other activities before finally writing this post for you.

Sometimes you can’t possibly finish a thing in one go, like writing a book. In this case you may just block off one or two hours or so and that is your frog. Or maybe it’s a chapter so you do have a done point.

This is very much in line with the Ivy Lee Method which I’ll be covering next time…