Eating The Frog 2: The power of lists

November 29, 2011 — books, Brian Tracy, Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time, listography.com, lists, motivation, planning, procrastination, time management, weight loss

Yesterday I continued a series of posts that started by my reading Eat That Frog! 21 Great Ways To Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time by Brian Tracy, a self-help author and motivational speaker earlier this month. I talked about writing down my goals, reviewing them and selecting that one goal that would have the greatest impact on my life, which was to lose 60 pounds by the end of June 2012.  Today, I want to talk about the power of lists.

In the second chapter of his book, “Plan Every Day In Advance,” Tracy explains how to do that: primarily by using lists, specifically different lists for different purposes. Tracy says you begin with a master list, a monthly list, a weekly list and then finally…yep, you guessed it, a daily list.

“As you work through the day, tick off the items on the your list as you complete them. This activity gives you a visual picture of accomplishment. It generates a feeling of success and forward motion. Seeing yourself working progressively through your list motivates and energizes you. It raises your self-esteem and self-respect. Steady, visible progress propels you forward and helps you to overcome procrastination.”

So I’m going to do this, mainly using my own private lists on listography.com. I’m starting small by only listing the basics, for example, today:

• blog
• walk
• work at library
• listen to new music today

and transferring some items from month to month, week to week and day to day. Many things are going to be ongoing, and that’s as it should be. Others, as projects come up at the library, I will get done on that day. I probably will get more specific as I go, but I thought this would be a good place to begin.

I’ll let you know my progress on this project of eating frogs daily, weekly, monthly and annually here on the blog.

Note: I could continue to blog about the book here in detail, going through the next 19 chapters (in the edition I have anyway), but I won’t. I might highlight things from the book as I go along, but to learn more about eating frogs, I encourage you buying the book yourself. It can be found online in various locations.

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