#301 Snippets of wisdom: Eat that frog, with Brian Tracy.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

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Please note that while an effort is made to provide an accurate transcription, errors and omissions may be present. No part of this transcription can be referenced or reproduced without permission.

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Agi Keramidas  0:00  
Welcome to Personal Development mastery podcast. And this is another snippets of wisdom episode, where I select my favourite most insightful moments from previous episodes of the podcast. Today's snippet of wisdom comes from my conversation with Brian Tracy, the legendary speaker and author of 90 books. The snippet I chose to play for you from that conversation is about eating that frog, starting your day with the biggest and most difficult task. I hope this snippet of wisdom is as insightful for you as it was for me.

Brian Tracy  0:45  
I had written a book, and the book was 21 great ways to double your income and double your time off. So I sent him the, the manuscript for this. And he said he likes it because it's 21 short chapters. And he said he likes it, he said, he doesn't like the title. However, chapter 15 of this book was Eat That Frog, which is do the worst first. If you start off every day, and you do in complete your most difficult task, then it will give you a powerful start on the day. And, and one of the great writers Mark Twain said that, if the first thing you do in the morning, is you eat a live frog, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that that's probably the worst thing that's going to happen to you all day long. And he said, if you have and your and your frog, is your biggest and most difficult task, he said, if you have two frogs to eat, eat the ugliest one first. In other words, if you have two important tasks, complete the most important of those tasks, the most difficult of those tasks, the tasks that you are most likely to, to delay on or to procrastinate. And, and then the second principle is if you have to eat a frog at all, it is not a good idea to sit and look at it for any period of time. Because it's too ugly. So So I, he said, If you could take this, this idea, Eat That Frog, and you could run it through the entire 21 chapters on time management, then I think it would be attractive because already, there's a book Who Moved My Cheese. There's a book called fish. So there's books on the news and animal things. So I took it back and I rewrote it and I called the book Eat That Frog 21 ways to stop procrastinating and get more things done faster. Well, it turns out that most people feel bad about procrastinating, which of course is the opposite of self discipline. And so they want to learn how to discipline themselves to start their most important task, and then complete that task before they do anything else. So I rewrote the book. And I sent it to the publisher. And the publisher said this, this is much better, it's more interesting. We will publish it, and we will probably sell a few 1000 copies. Well, the book to be the most popular book on time management in history, we have now sold more than 3 million copies in 53 languages. It's the most amazing success in a management books. Because basically what it does is it tells you how to stop procrastinating by using self discipline to start and complete your most important tasks. And I have had countless letters I cannot even count the number of people who said this book made me rich. This book made me a millionaire. This book made me rich. This book changed my life. Many companies all over the world have bought 100 500 1000 copies of this book. Many companies have developed training programmes so everybody in the company 1000 people are trained on the idea of Eat That Frog is first thing in the morning, start with your most important task and discipline yourself to work on that task until it's complete. So this idea of self discipline, starting and completing your most important tasks, is changing the lives of people.

Agi Keramidas  5:22  
Thank you for tuning in, you can listen to the full conversation in Episode 230. The link is in the show notes. And I also have a free and useful resource to share with you a curated catalogue of the 10 best episodes of the podcast in three main categories of life. Show the top 10 episodes about money, the top 10 about health and the top 10 about mastering your personal development. To get this free ebook, go to personal development mastery podcast.com/top 10 You will also find the link in the show notes until next time, stand out don't fit in