"If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first."
Brian Tracy is a business speaker and author who has trained executives and sales teams worldwide over a career spanning five decades. Eat That Frog!, his best-known book, distills a single core idea from decades of productivity coaching: identify your most important, most difficult task — your 'frog' — and do it first, before anything else can derail you.
Our in-depth summaries and reviews of his work
Brian Tracy's system for treating time management as whole-life management: ten life categories, a seven-step goal process, and a daily habit for…
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Brian Tracy's Million Dollar Habits distills success into repeatable daily habits — money, mindset, goal-setting, and action — anyone can install starting…
Read Summary →
Brian Tracy's Eat That Frog! breaks procrastination into one daily habit: identify your highest-value task, then do it before anything else competes…
Read Summary →Tackle your single most important, most difficult task at the start of the day, before distractions and lower-priority work can eat into your energy and willpower.
Tracy argues that momentum, not motivation, drives follow-through — once you actually begin a valuable task, continuing becomes far easier than starting did.
One of the worst uses of time is doing something very well that didn't need to be done at all — prioritization has to come before execution, not after.
"One of the very worst uses of time is to do something very well that need not to be done at all."— Eat That Frog!
"If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first. This is another way of saying that if you have two important tasks before you, start with the biggest, hardest, and most important task first."— Eat That Frog!
"The hardest part of any important task is getting started on it in the first place. Once you actually begin work on a valuable task, you seem to be naturally motivated to continue."— Eat That Frog!
"Rule: Continuous learning is the minimum requirement for success in any field."— Eat That Frog!
Brian Tracy's system for treating time management as whole-life management: ten life categories, a seven-step goal process, and a daily habit for keeping both on track.
Brian Tracy's Million Dollar Habits distills success into repeatable daily habits — money, mindset, goal-setting, and action — anyone can install starting today.
Brian Tracy's Eat That Frog! breaks procrastination into one daily habit: identify your highest-value task, then do it before anything else competes for your time.
