The Setup: How to Prepare Your Day for Success
The magic of the eat the frog method doesn’t happen by accident. It requires a small but crucial amount of preparation. The goal isn’t to create a complex system but to make your most important decision when you are best equipped to do so: the night before.
Your single most important setup step is to identify tomorrow’s frog before you finish your workday today. Why? Because it completely eliminates morning indecision. When you wake up, you don’t waste precious mental energy debating what to work on. The decision is already made. Your brain has even had time to subconsciously mull over the task while you slept, a concept that many creatives and problem-solvers find incredibly valuable. Take two minutes before you log off to look at your task list and ask yourself one question: “What one thing, if I get it done tomorrow, will have the biggest positive impact on my goals?” That’s your frog. Write it down on a sticky note and place it in the center of your desk or make it the only high-priority item in your digital to-do list.
Next, you must create a protected space in your schedule to do the work. This is where time blocking comes in. Time blocking is the practice of scheduling specific blocks of time in your calendar for specific tasks. For your frog, you should block out the first 60 to 90 minutes of your workday. Label this block clearly: “FOCUS: Eat the Frog” or “DEEP WORK: Project X.” This visual commitment in your calendar serves as a powerful reminder to yourself and a signal to colleagues that you are unavailable. It’s an appointment with your most important work.
A related concept is timeboxing, where you set a fixed period of time to work on a task and stop when the time is up. You might give yourself a 75-minute timebox to work on your frog. This can make a large, intimidating task feel more manageable because there’s a defined endpoint. It also helps combat Parkinson’s Law, the adage that work expands to fill the time available for its completion. By setting a tight deadline, you encourage intense focus.
Finally, prepare your environment. This protected time block is sacred. Before you begin, close all unnecessary browser tabs. Turn off email and chat notifications. Put your phone in another room or, at the very least, on silent and out of sight. A single notification can be all it takes to break your concentration, leading to what’s known as context switching—the process of reorienting your brain from one task to another, which drains significant mental energy. Your frog deserves your undivided attention.
