Eat That Frog

Eat That Frog provides 21 techniques and strategies to stop procrastinating and get more done.

The summary said that the average driver spends 500 to 1,000 hours on the road each year. Holy moly!

Even if you’re not driving, chances are you still spend quite some time commuting. The world average commute is 40 minutes (that’s one-way), which means we spend an entire year of our life going back and forth between work and home.

That’s why Brian suggests to make use of this time, for example by listening to audio books, programs or language tapes.

Extend this idea, and you’ll soon find yourself taking notes while waiting in line, reading when you’re waiting for someone you’re meeting and learning Spanish while doing the dishes.

Just like the commute, these little bits of learning add up, and amount to quite a lot.

However, I’d like to take it one step further than Brian and say this: Eliminate recurring unproductive time altogether, wherever possible.

A commute has been shown to be one of the biggest destroyers of our happiness, so if you can, move closer to your work, work from home, or try to get at least one home office day per week.

Know thyself. The ancient Greek phrase has been attributed to many sources, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

Nowadays the talk is all about self-awareness, meaning you know what you’re good at, and what you’re not good at.

If you know that you can’t even walk with less than 7 hours of sleep, then make the time to get those 7 hours. You don’t know how much sleep you need? Calculate it.

Related to this is your time of day where you’re most productive. Maybe you are super focused in the morning (your circadian rhythm says yes), but some are night owls.

Extend this idea to all areas of your life, especially the ones that make your body function, like sleep, exercise and diet, and you’ll soon know all the basics you have to take care of to be productive.

Feeling healthy and fit is one of the biggest determinants of your confidence, which will in turn make you more optimistic. The summary says 95% of our emotions result from the way we talk to ourselves, so you better be nice to yourself.

The book even talks about skills and knowing your special talent, which makes you valuable to others, so this idea will help you beyond productivity to lead a successful life.

In the time management section, Brian Tracy recommends blocking your time in chunks and putting it on the calendar. I can personally vouch for this, as I have talked about scheduling your dream…