Mark Twain was once quoted as saying that if the first thing you do in the morning is to eat a frog, you can then go about the rest of your day knowing that the worst is behind you. Your frog is your worst task, so you should do it first thing. Later, Brian Tracy, in his book, Eat that Frog, used the quote to explain prioritizing and planning, “Your ‘frog’ is your biggest, most important task — the one you are most likely to procrastinate on.”
ENTER...
Brightside's OG Stuffed Frogs!
These frogs help us understand time management, planning and prioritizing. They help us better understand why we need to lift the weight of assignments and tasks that we are dreading (and maybe procrastinating on) off of our shoulders and actually get things done!
➡️ Here is an example of how we would use the frogs with students:
A student comes to the office and presents a scenario like one of these to their coach:
"I have a huge exam to study for in science. I hate science and I hate studying. It's so hard and I don't want to do it."
"I have a science exam coming up but it's so easy, I don't have to study for it, it'll only take 2 seconds."
The coach replies with something like, "Let's make a study plan to help you stay on track, it will really help you." If the student replies explaining why they don't need a study plan, indicating reasons like, "it's too much work" or "it's too stressful" or "it's annoying" or "I don't need one" or really any other reason under the sun -- that's when we take out the frogs.
We ask the student to choose a frog (yes, even teenagers choose a frog... and yes, even though they're rolling their eyes fiercely, they still do it...) and put it on their shoulder.... Although it feels strange sitting up there, it feels like and airy, nothing to worry about, right? Now, pretend that there are weights in your, show us what it would like if it was weighing your shoulder down with the weights.
Explain that the weights represent this science test, and if we break it into small parts, make a plan and deal with it actively, it will feel less overwhelming. And, if we deal with it actively, we will also carve out exactly how much time is needed to study for it (instead of forever or two seconds).
Now that we understand the weight we are carrying on our shoulders around this test (whether we feel it or not), let's make a study plan and make sure we take control of our situation instead of waiting for it to happen to us!