Eat the Frog: Why Your Hardest Task Goes First

Mark Twain supposedly said if you eat a live frog first thing, nothing worse will happen all day. It's still the best scheduling advice around.

The idea behind the frog

Your 'frog' is the most important, most-dreaded task on your plate — the one you're most likely to procrastinate. Eat it first, before email and meetings drain your willpower, and the rest of the day feels downhill. Willpower is highest in the morning; spend it on the thing that matters.

Finding today's frog

The hard part is identifying the frog honestly, because the loud task is rarely the important one. Ask which single task, if finished today, would make the biggest difference. That's the frog — usually the one you've been avoiding for exactly that reason.

Let the board reveal it

On Axtio, your Mine court holds only the actions that are genuinely yours to move — nothing you're waiting on, nothing already done. That short, honest list makes the frog easy to see. Pick the heaviest card in Mine and start there.

Eat first, coast later

Once the frog is gone, momentum carries you. The reason to go first is simple: nothing you procrastinate gets easier by waiting, and everything else gets easier once the worst is behind you.

Keep reading: how to prioritize tasks, a system to stop procrastinating.