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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