I have recently been book-worming through several very interesting books and audio books.
One that I enjoyed was “Eat the Frog: 21 Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time” by Brian Tracy.
As the author recounts one of Mark Twain’s musings, (I will paraphrase) “if you start each day by eating a live frog, you can pretty much bet that’s about the worst thing you will encounter for the rest of the day.” In other words, get your most important and most difficult task done first, and everything else after that should flow easily. If you sit there and stare at the “frog” all day, your apprehension and stress will just increase and it will psychologically be harder to start the task.
Living in New England as a child, I remember my Dad would encourage me with his tongue-in-cheek wisdom when it was time to shovel the driveway to simply “pick up the shovel and only shovel one end of the driveway at a time”. In other words, “don’t complain about it or delay, just start on one end and keep moving.”
This is how I try to keep moving when it seems difficult and I feel stuck in the ‘inertia of fear’. Whether it is a phone call I don’t feel like making, or a task I am dreading, I try to think of it as a frog I have to eat, and it is sitting on my desk staring at me and getting bigger and bigger the longer I wait.
Great words of wisdom! I think I’ll start with the yummy frog legs…uh, on second thought, after looking at your frightened friend in the pond with the bulging eyes, maybe I’ll just opt to get out of my pajamas and start my day. Thanks, Dave!