Eat the frog: make the call you're dreading before anything else

Eating the frog means doing the task you're most likely to put off, first, before you touch anything easier. Brian Tracy, who made the phrase famous, describes your frog on his own site as your biggest, most important task, the one you're most likely to procrastinate on. His rule when two important tasks compete is to start with the biggest and hardest, and to stay on it until it's done.

That's where the name comes from: if the worst thing you'll do today is behind you by 9:30, the rest of the day can only get easier.

A frog has three marks:

• You've already moved it to another day at least once.
• A deal, a client or your income depends on it.
• It costs you something every hour it isn't done, even when you're working on other things.

Clearing your inbox isn't a frog. Calling back the buyer who went quiet after you sent the price is.

Brian Tracy turned the saying into a method in Eat That Frog!, a book of 21 ways to stop procrastinating and get more done in less time. Its publisher, Berrett-Koehler, now sells a fourth edition with a new chapter called "Form New Habits, Become a New Person".

The quote at its centre is shakier. Tracy credits Mark Twain with the idea that if you eat a live frog first thing in the morning, nothing worse will happen to you all day. Quote Investigator found no substantive evidence that Twain said or wrote it. Its research traces the line to Nicolas Chamfort, a French writer whose collected works came out in the 1790s. In them, a Monsieur de Lassay says a person should swallow a toad every morning. The link to Twain turns up in print by 1988, long after his death in 1910.

People say "eat the frog" and Tracy's title says "eat that frog". It's the same method.

Ask four questions of each task on tomorrow's list:

1. Have I moved this to another day more than once?
2. Does a client, a deal or my income depend on it?
3. Do I feel a small knot in my stomach when I read it?
4. Would the rest of the day be lighter with it done?

Two yeses make it a candidate. If two tasks tie, take the one with more money or more dread attached. Tracy's rule is biggest first, and the second frog looks small once the first is gone.

Sellers' frogs repeat. Here are the common ones, each with a first bite you can take in five minutes.

If your frog would take more than a morning, it isn't a frog yet. Cut off the first piece, and that piece is tomorrow's frog. The 80/20 rule in sales helps when the list is long: the frog is usually sitting with the few clients who bring in most of your revenue.

1. Name it the day before, as one action with a name in it: "Call Dana about the renewal price", not "sort out renewals".
2. Size it. If it won't fit in your first block, write down the first bite and nothing else.
3. Get it ready. Open the client's record, find the number, put the draft or the figures on screen, so tomorrow's start needs no thinking.
4. Block the first hour on your calendar before anything else goes in, and before email.
5. Start with chats and email closed, because a quick look at messages is how the first hour turns into the first three.
6. Log what happened and set the next date before you stop. Then move on to easier work.

To run this every morning, copy the steps from the eat the frog planner into your task list. If something urgent lands at 8:55, deal with it, then eat the frog straight after. Not after lunch: by then you'll have a dozen reasons to skip it.

Three things did the work: naming the frog, shrinking it to one bite, and having everything open before bed.

Two frogs: do the bigger one first. That's Tracy's own advice, and the smaller frog feels easy after it.

No obvious frog: some days the list is all routine, so don't invent one. Use the first hour for your call block instead, because prospecting calls are what most sellers put off when nothing forces them. On those mornings, make five calls before you open email, then decide whether to keep going.

A 9:00 meeting: eat the frog in the first free block after it, before you open messages. First means the first thing you choose to do, not the first minute of the day.

Not a morning person: put the frog in your sharpest hour, wherever it falls, and guard it the same way. If the frog is a call, your buyer's hours count too. A 7:30am frog call to someone who starts at 9:00 doesn't get eaten.

It isn't a rule for every day. If a day is full of quick, easy work, skip it, and save the method for the task that's been nagging you for two days or more.

Handle the quiet chat with care. Eating that frog means one personal message to one person about what they told you, not a round of messages to everyone who went quiet. Sending more to more people doesn't make the dread go away, and it rarely gets the reply a personal note gets.

A manager can use the frog without turning it into a ritual. In a 1:1, ask one question: what have you been avoiding this week? Most reps know straight away. Agree when they'll do it, and ask how it went next time. The one-on-one meeting template has room for that question.

The pipeline review finds the team's frogs. A deal with no next step for three weeks is usually one, a call nobody wants to make, often because the last one went badly. Give it an owner and a date, and put it first on that rep's next morning.

The method only works if tomorrow-you finds the frog before the inbox does. A note on paper works. So does a calendar event called "FROG: call Dana" at 8:30.

In ActivityTracker, type the frog into the follow-up list in one line with "tomorrow" in it, and it's dated for tomorrow; add a time and a reminder is set 30 minutes before. From the task's menu, Focus on this now starts a timed session of 15, 25, 50 or 90 minutes, or a length you set. When the session finishes, the task is ticked off.

• Brian Tracy, Eat That Frog: Brian Tracy Explains the Truth About Frogs, read 26 October 2026
• Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Eat That Frog!, Fourth Edition, read 26 October 2026
• Quote Investigator, Eat a Live Frog Every Morning, and Nothing Worse Will Happen to You the Rest of the Day, read 26 October 2026