I severely dislike self-help books. They usually state the obvious, do it in an uninspiring way and do not sway me an inch into doing whatever they want people to do.
Since quite some time I have been trying to procrastinate less and do more with my time. A few weeks back when I was in a Crossword bookstore I picked up the book Eat that frog by Brian Tracy. It was a small book and the blurb on the back cover sounded very helpful and sensible.
In fact the blurb on the back cover was probably only one of the 2 useful things in the entire book. Or to be more accurate the only useful thing till about three-fourths into the book which is when I stopped reading it. The author makes a 4-page chapters out of the most obvious advice under the sun.
By the way in case you are wondering what the title means then let me tell you that a frog (looks ugly, probably tastes terrible as well but the author does not know that frog’s legs are a delicacy in Kerala 
) is used as a metaphor for that task or project in your life that is important but difficult or uninteresting and thus most susceptible to being ignored.
Now this is the thing about procrastination… most people who get away with it are smart people. They survive even though they procrastinate. They usually know what they are doing wrong… they just need some motivation to do the right thing and some specific actionable tactics to do better. Including me. And that is the one thing this book absolutely does not have.
The only 2 pieces of useful advice are – (1) Start with the most important thing and not the easiest (2) Make a list of short-term, medium-term and long-term goals, WRITE them down and make plans around it.
Well (2) is still quite obvious but I liked the way the author elaborated on it.
So my advice to you is – Eat that frog but don’t buy this book. It is not worth the Rs. 175 you will have to spend to buy it or the 3-4 hours you will have to spend reading it.
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Love the book review…you have a great style!
I think the one and only way to really deal with procastination is to just dive in. It’s to take a two minutes away from whatever your feeling – lazy, demotivated, bored etc and just tell yourself ‘it’s now or never, I’m just going to do this now’.
Procastination like everything else in life is a sublime habit…one gets used to the feeling of putting things off because the lazy, bored, demotivated feelings take over and we let them out of long drawn habit. The key is to realise it, stop oneself from being pulled down that road and simply discipline oneself into diving into the task. It gets easier with time.
I’ve been the queen of procastination for a long time…the ‘do or die’ syndrome is the only way to slowly clean yourself off the habit
My two cents!
Frogs legs are a delicacy in France as well
@Pavitra – Your comment is longer than most of my posts
he he…
@JhQ – Have you ever eaten one (two?) ?
good review. I’ve read this book and picked up a couple things here
btw, i like how you say you’ve been trying to
and there that were useful. but honestly, for professional
procrastinators like you and me Varun, these books don’t do a
thing!
“procrastinate less” rather than “not procrastinate” … !!
Ha ha! Welcome back Shantanu… missed you. Professional
procrastinators… I hope my boss is not reading this
Thanks Varun!
… btw have you used goodreads[dot]com? i’m
beginning to use it and it’s a neat way to share & list books
we’ve read. it’s like allconsuming[dot]com but i like the feel of
goodreads better. check it out, i think i sent you an invite for
that.
Hey Shantanu… I did get an invite. The invite is patiently
Things have been crazy
sitting in my inbox till I get to it
(super-crazy!) lately… I will definitely register soon
How did it cost to start up this blog…I want to start my own.
Just 2 main monetary costs – cost of the domain name (about USD
5-10 per year) plus cost of the web hosting space (about USD 3-10
per month). I strongly recommend 1and1 (http://order.1and1.com). I
have been using them for around 4 years now and am a very happy
customer.