The Danger of the Eat the Frog Productivity Method (and How to Use It Right)

Using productivity techniques have changed my life. But when I first started using them, I saw no benefit. One of the most popular ones, “eating the frog,” stumped me. At first, I was motivated to do the hardest thing first (eating the nasty frog), which is what the principle teaches. But after weeks of waking up early and trying to do the hardest thing first thing in the day, I failed. My grades went down, my daily productivity plummeted, and my focus never improved.

Was this technique wrong? Why is it so popular? Does anyone actually know the difference between poisonous and venomous? No, no one knows the difference, and no, the technique wasn’t a scam. It was me, I was playing myself.

I was using the method completely wrong. When I started using the technique properly, howe…

I was using the method completely wrong. When I started using the technique properly, however, I achieved the best grades of my life (scoring in the top 97th percentile among medical students), launched a YouTube channel that changed my life, and was able to accomplish more tasks in a day than ever before.

Over the years I’ve established the must-follow principles and rules for the Eat The Frog technique that have changed my life. The golden rules. In this post, I’ll give you 7 tips to level up the Eat The Frog Technique.

What is Eat the Frog?

Mark Twain supposedly said, “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.” The idea is built on 3 premises:

Mental fatigue (it’s important to do the hardest task first)
Zeigarnik effect (unfinished important tasks create mental tension)
Momentum (when you complete a hard task, it inspires you to complete more tasks)

Because eating a frog is likely not pleasant, it’s nice to get it over with. By doing this, you crush procrastination and do your most important task first, clear your mental space, and build momentum for the day. This is good (or so I thought).

Let’s improve it.

1. Find Your Peak Hours

The first way I improved it was by personalizing it. We all operate on different chronotypes, which means our brains operate at peak performance at different times of the day. Research on chronotypes has shown that morning people taking cognitive tests at night, or night people taking tests in the morning, scored nearly 30% worse than when taking the test at their “optimal time.” Optimizing your frog time can improve your performance by 20-30% on your most important task (which is pretty good!).1

If you have the luxury of planning when you work, this can be a gamechanger. Studies have found that problem-solving is significantly improved when people work at their peak time, athletes perform better at their peak time, and professionals make more errors when working against their chronotype.2,3

You can Google the morningness-eveningness questionnaire and find your peak time.

25% of the population are larks, with peak performance early in the morning (6-10 AM), 25% are owls with peak performance at night (6-10 PM), and 50% are bears with a peak performance somewhere in the middle of the day.

Maybe you are an owl, and don’t start doing peak work until 6 PM, then you will best be able to eat the frog maybe at 6 PM, and would benefit from planning other, less important life activities for earlier in the day. This completely changed how I structured my days and helped me achieve my goals during medical school.

Bottom line: Align your frog-eating time to your chronotype.

2. Understand Your Brain’s Modes

Now, not only are there peak brain times for your individual chronotype, there are also peak brain times for different qualities of work.

A fascinating 2011 study by Wieth & Zacks found that people solve creativity problems better at their NON-optimal times. They tested 428 students on analytical vs. creativity problems at peak vs. off-peak times and found:4

Analytical problems (like math problems): Better at peak times (as expected)
Insight/creative problems (like the first draft of a paper): Better at off-peak times (surprising!)

The theory behind this is that at peak times, your brain has high cognitive control, which is great for analytical tasks, but restrictive for creative tasks.

Analytical problems are things like: practice problems, proofreading, coding, or flashcards.

Creative work might be writing first drafts, artistic design work, or project brainstorming.

This was perfect for me! Now that I knew when my peak time was, I identified whether my frog is analytical or creative. If it was creative, I did it first thing in my off-peak time. If it’s analytical, I would do it first thing in my peak time. This understanding helped me study more in less time than ever before.

Bottom line: Plan creative frogs (like Toadicelli or Vincent Van Croak) for off-peak times, and analytical frogs (like Mark Zuckerfrog or Henry… Frog… a great purveyor of the model T, for Toad, ok, I’m done…) during your peak times.

3. Find Your Peak Environment

Next, I wanted to make eating frogs a habit and easy. To do this, I took advantage of classical conditioning (Pavfrog’s lily pads… OK I’m done now really).

If every time I sit down in my frog-eating location, I eat the frog instantly, my brain will associate that location with productive work.

I don’t mix work and play. Studies during COVID found that workers with dedicated home offices had better performance than those working in a bed or couch.5

Optimize Temperature, Light, and Noise

I try to optimize temperature, light, and noise also. Research suggests that temperatures in the 68-72 °F range perform best for cognitive work, proper lighting (around 300-500 LUX for office work) is important, and noise above 70 dB (like a vacuum cleaner or ringing telephone) decreases performance.6

Finally, leave your phone, and anything else distracting, away from you if possible. A groundbreaking UT Austin study had 548 undergrads take tests while randomly assigned to have their phone on the desk face-down, in their pocket or bag, or in another room. There was a 10% decrease in performance for those that had their phone on the desk versus those who had their phone in another room.7 Get that phone outa’ there man! It’s draining your abilities if it’s within your line of sight.

This is similar to what I learned when I tried minimalism for 30 days – removing distractions makes everything easier.

Bottom Line: Optimize your frog-eating spot and stick to it!

4. Pick Your Frogs Carefully (and Some Frogs Should Be Killed)

When I’m about to dedicate my peak cognitive hours to a task, my brain is at its absolute best. My environment is perfectly optimized. But here’s the question: Is this frog even worth eating?

What are the best frogs? The highest impact and the highest likelihood to procrastinate. These will #1, make the biggest impact on our lives if we finish them and #2 make us feel better about finishing.

Two Questions to Ask Yourself

I like to ask myself two questions:

What am I avoiding that makes the biggest difference if I finish?
If I could only do one thing today (or “that day” when I plan for the future), what would make that day a win?

If the frog isn’t the answer to either of those questions, kill it!

Then, I decide whether it is a creative or analytical frog, and I know exactly when and where to do it! But let’s get even more specific and good at frog-eating, no frogs can ever escape us… And what’s the difference between frogs and toads? Another question no one will ever find the answer to…

This ties directly into the 80/20 rule – focusing on the 20% of tasks that give you 80% of the results.

Bottom line: Pick your frogs carefully based on impact and procrastination likelihood.

5. Plan Your Frogs Fragmentally and Specifically

The most significant jump in my productivity came when I planned fragmentally and specifically.

Research shows that pre-deciding your specific task the night before roughly doubles your likelihood of starting it, while making that decision in the morning depletes the very willpower you need to do the task.8

Usually, I have a running list of the most important tasks (big frogs) that I need to accomplish over months or weeks. However, they are too big to accomplish in one day. So, what I do, is break the big frogs into smaller and much more tasty tadpoles.

Breaking Down Big Frogs

For example, if you want to write a book, and you just list “write a book” as your main task for the entire week, it seems insurmountable. However, if you break it down into smaller chunks, like:

Brainstorm ideas
Research
Outline the chapters
Outline the subchapters
Write chapter 1

It becomes much more manageable and likely to be done.

On Sunday night, I plan the most important tasks (frogs) for Monday through Saturday. Then, the night before every day, I double-check tomorrow’s task and list out specifically where and when I am going to do the work.

For example, because brainstorming ideas is creative, I might plan that for later in the day (I’m a morning person), but, for research or editing the book, I would plan that for earlier in the day, during my peak brain time, because it’s analytical.

Sample Calendar Entry

Here’s what that entry might look like in the calendar:

7 – 9 AM: In FancyBeans Coffee Shop, listening to Aphex Twin, researching 50-100 interesting bullets of academic evidence about my book, “Venomous or poisonous, the world will never know”

Side note: Make sure to just focus on the day at hand when it’s work time. Just compare your work to yesterday’s work. Don’t worry about months or years in advance during work time; it has no role in what you are doing right now (and can drive you crazy).

This approach has been crucial in how I transformed my life in 6 months.

Bottom line: Break your overall big tasks into reasonable daily tasks, then specifically plan what, where, and how you will complete them.

6. Have a Warm-Up Ritual

The neuroscience on warming up is interesting. Studies show that when we warm up and consistently follow that warm-up with a task, we build what psychologists call ‘behavioral chains.’ This is classical conditioning at its peak!9

Each small action automatically triggers the next. MIT’s Ann Graybiel has shown how these sequences become neurologically ‘chunked’ into single units in the basal ganglia.

Ever notice how before tennis players serve, they bounce the ball a lot? Or certain athletes have specific warm-up rituals?

Maybe you always take a certain walk before you study, or have a certain drink, or wear certain clothes, or organize your desk in a certain way. I developed my own morning routine that I talk about in my post about 9 favorite early morning habits.

Bottom line: Before you eat the frog, create a standard ritual, this will make starting the work much easier.

7. Reward Yourself

Classical conditioning is good, but what about a double smack-a-dack, ribbit-o-clock-o-pop, what am I even saying… Operant conditioning. That’s the one.

Our brains, whether we realize it or not, are being programmed 24/7 by operant conditioning, or positive or negative reinforcement or punishment. See a funny video on Instagram? POP, dopamine, positive brain response. You are more likely to swipe up again. Put your finger on a burning stove, POP, that hurts! You are less likely to do that again.

Rewarding myself for the positive things I do has dramatically increased the amount of tough stuff I do.

My Reward System

For example:

If I complete my hard task for the day, I’d usually give myself a fancy coffee (as long as it’s before 9 am)
If I read for an hour, I reward myself with 30 minutes of video games
If I complete my entire week of frogs, I book myself a massage
If I do it for an entire month? I buy a new video game and spend an entire weekend, yes an entire weekend, just playing the video game AND buy myself a cool piece of clothing

Be honest with yourself. Reward yourself. And watch your streaks grow. This is part of building habits that changed my life.

Bottom Line: When you eat the frog, reward yourself!

Bonus: Why Is It a Frog?

In the end, the end the end, when frogs have overthrown the squirrels and truly rule the world, none of this will matter. 100 years after you die, likely no one will remember you, and we all are going to die and frogs will rule the world. And no one knows the difference between venomous and poisonous. These are known facts.

So why are you doing what you are doing?

What I wish I had thought about sooner was why is this thing a frog? Why do I need all these techniques and strategies and methods to complete the work? Maybe, because I really don’t like the work that much. Maybe, because I want to actually do something different.

I have noticed that my best work is the work I am genuinely excited about, and during that work I don’t care that it’s 5 am or 8 pm, I just really want to do the work.

Life is full of frogs – taxes, editing the 170th video script, or filming myself for the 19th time working on a computer or getting hit by a book. The techniques still matter and help me during those tasks. But when every single task feels like a monstrous frog, maybe it’s a sign that something isn’t working.

This realization led me to make some big changes, which I wrote about in my life plan after quitting medicine in my 30s.

Bottom line: Why do you do what you do?

Summary: The 7 Golden Rules

Here’s everything you need to master the Eat The Frog technique:

Find your peak hours by figuring out your chronotype
Assign analytical frogs to the first peak hours and creative frogs to the first off-peak hours
Optimize the light, sound, and distractions of the environment you work in and link that environment to your hard work
Pick the most impactful and likely to procrastinate tasks as frogs
Plan your frogs fragmentally and specifically as possible per day
Have a warm-up ritual before you start your work
Reward yourself when you eat the frogs

The Eat The Frog technique isn’t just about willpower – it’s about understanding your brain, optimizing your environment, and working with your natural rhythms instead of against them. When I stopped trying to force myself into someone else’s productivity system and started customizing it to my own chronotype and work style, everything changed.

If you’re interested in more productivity strategies, check out my posts on the secret to accomplishing more and how to get ahead of 99% of people.

Thank you for reading!

Zach

Works Cited

Facer-Childs, Elise R., and Roland Brandstaetter. “The Impact of Circadian Phenotype and Time since Awakening on Diurnal Performance in Athletes.” Current Biology, vol. 25, no. 4, 2015, pp. 518-522. Cell Press, https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(14)01682-9.
“Time of Day and Chronotype in the Assessment of Cognitive Functions.” PMC, National Library of Medicine, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10683050/.
“The Effects of Time of Day and Chronotype on Cognitive and Physical Performance in Healthy Volunteers.” PMC, National Library of Medicine, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6200828/.
Wieth, Mareike B., and Rose T. Zacks. “Time of Day Effects on Problem Solving: When the Non-Optimal Is Optimal.” Thinking & Reasoning, vol. 17, no. 4, 2011, pp. 387-401. Taylor & Francis, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13546783.2011.625663.
Xiao, Yijing, et al. “Impacts of Working From Home During COVID-19 Pandemic on Physical and Mental Well-Being of Office Workstation Users.” Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, vol. 63, no. 3, 2021, pp. 181-190. PMC, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7934324/.
“Subjective and Objective Survey of Office Lighting: Effects on Alertness, Comfort, Satisfaction, and Safety.” PMC, National Library of Medicine, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9437655/.
Ward, Adrian F., et al. “Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity.” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, vol. 2, no. 2, 2017, pp. 140-154. University of Chicago Press, https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/691462.
Gollwitzer, Peter M., and Paschal Sheeran. “Implementation Intentions and Goal Achievement: A Meta-analysis of Effects and Processes.” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 38, 2006, pp. 69-119. ScienceDirect, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0065260106380021.
Graybiel, Ann M. “The Basal Ganglia and Chunking of Action Repertoires.” Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, vol. 70, no. 1-2, 1998, pp. 119-136. PubMed, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9753592/.