So many frogs!

Which one first?

My husband is a voracious reader. I like to read but have found that after a day of handling emails and slack messages and spreadsheets, I don’t set aside the time for reading in my free time that I would like to. Dave does continue to suggest books occasionally, and a few years ago one of those books was called “Eat That Frog,” by Brian Tracy. The basic premise stems from the old quote by Mark Twain:

“Eat a live frog in the morning, and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”

The concept of the book is to tackle the hardest, most impactful task on your list – the one you are most likely to procrastinate on – first thing. By starting with your biggest, hardest task first, Tracy writes, you can increase productivity and achieve better results with all of your tasks. Most days, especially weekend days, Dave will start the morning with “I’m going to eat that frog and get the yard done.” Or “let’s eat that frog and get the garden cleaned up before it’s too hot.” It’s turned into a regular, everyday phrase in our lives, and we know what it means.

“The first rule of frog eating is this: If you have two frogs to eat, eat the ugliest one first.”

This morning, Dave said “I’m going to eat that frog and work on my app back in my office.” I thought to myself, ok, I’ll eat my frog first thing, too! The question is, which frog is the ugliest today? I took some time yesterday to go for a nice drive and had some alone time in the car. I decided to listen to a book I’ve been trying to find time to read that is being discussed at a book club next month that I’d like to join. The book is called “The Let Them Theory,” by Mel Robbins. I’ll admit, I started the book and after a chapter or two I thought “well, this is pretty obvious. I probably could have written this.” And, I’ll also admit, I lost interest. But I have really been wanting to get more involved with different groups of women in our community, especially as I start to think about “life after corporate life” and what I am going to have time to do for myself, and this book club seems like a great option. So, I decided to listen to the book as read by the author. OOOOF! was this ever the right decision to make for me right at this moment! I will likely write more about it another time, but one of the chapters was all about getting started and making time to do the work that others don’t. And, if you see someone doing something and you think “geez, I could have done that.” Or “this is exactly what I’ve been wanting to do, and now it’s already been done,” you shouldn’t just shrug your shoulders and be jealous or worse, resentful. You should use that person’s success as a guide and get started! Who cares if people think you are a copycat? In this world of content creation and social media marketing, everyone is copying everyone else in some form or fashion. Who cares what other people think of what I write? It doesn’t matter. The only person’s opinion that should matter to me is mine. Fear of what other people will think is a big part of what stops me from sitting down to write regularly, particularly when I’m not feeling my most optimistic, which is exactly when this outlet would be so helpful to me!

So, which frog? We have guests coming to visit next weekend and we are really excited to see them. I have a loose idea of what we want to do and what food we want to make, but I need to finalize the details and do some shopping so that I don’t have to worry about that during the week. Laundry! I don’t know how two people can generate the amount of laundry that we do, but there it is. Now that I’m more mobile, laundry and stairs are both easier for me to do so I’m playing a bit of catchup (as much as Dave did a great job of managing it while I was laid up for a couple of weeks!) Work. I have a few emails that came in late Friday that I could just go handle and be ready for the day on Monday. Hummingbird juice! The birds are here, and we love them, and the feeders are near empty. Tidy up the kitchen, make sure the guest room is ready, plan my week and what we’ll be having for dinner this week after work…the number of frogs waiting for me to eat seems endless.

“The second rule of frog eating is this: if you have to eat a live frog at all, it doesn’t pay to sit and look at it for very long.”

So, which frog did I decide to eat first this morning? It wasn’t the biggest, ugliest frog – although to be honest, none of my frogs are particularly big and ugly today, they just need to be prioritized and done. I made the hummingbird juice. And, when Dave came in and said, “I need to go to the hardware store,” I said “I’d like to go, too.” So, instead of jumping in the car and driving to the hardware store, we got in the golf cart and went the long way down the beach road, feeling the wind in our faces. We decided not to bring the dogs, which means we actually sat next to each other and had a chance to connect a bit. We stopped and talked to some neighbors who were walking that I haven’t seen since my knee surgery. As we approached the store I said, “can we drive through the country club neighborhood after and look for deer?” And so, we did. We saw LOTS of deer. We saw lots of people playing golf, enjoying the day. And then we drove back, taking another long way and drove through another neighborhood just to see what was happening. We get so busy sometimes that we don’t take time to just do some mindless things, and I’ll admit I felt exactly not one single shred of guilt about the pile of frogs I had left behind this beautiful morning.

And now, we’re home, and Mel Robbins’ words ring in my ears:

Action is the answer. Thinking about your problems will never solve them. Waiting around to feel like doing something means you’ll never do it. 

So, I sat down to write this post. I really enjoy this outlet and want to be more disciplined about it. For myself, not for anyone else who might be reading it. I managed to handle some laundry in the process, and now I’ll finish up my meal planning for the week and head to the grocery store. When I get back, I’ll set aside the ingredients for today, organize the things we will eat for the week, and finalize what I’d like to have prepared in advance of our guests next weekend. I’ll think about work tomorrow morning, when I’m being paid to think about it.

And you know what? If someone stops by and asks if I’d like to have a drink out on the dock and look at the bay? I’m going to say “what the heck, of course I would.” I’ll eat the rest of the frogs later, or maybe tomorrow!

I never said I didn’t have some work to do in the prioritization, procrastination, and productivity departments. But I’m working on it, and it’s a beautiful Sunday. I hope you are enjoying yours as much as I am enjoying mine.