Hard Thing First
Your to-do list isn’t too long. One task on it is too scary.
Grade every task by how much it matters, then put your hardest must-do at the top of the day. It rests on one idea: do the thing you most want to avoid first, before anything else gets a turn.
- YOU PLAN
- The night before
- THE LIMIT
- One frog a day
- CORE MOVE
- Frog first, before email
The idea
Your “frog” is your most important task, the one you’re most likely to put off. Eat it first, and nothing harder waits for you. Every other task gets a grade: A is a must, B a should, C a nice-to-have, D delegate, E eliminate.
A dreaded task you put off hangs over everything else you do. Doing it while your energy is fresh lifts that weight early. And with every task graded, the list answers “what next?” for you.
How it works
Grade tasks as they come in, pick one frog each night, eat it first.
01AS IT COMES IN
Grade it
A must, B should, C nice to have, D delegate, E eliminate.
02RIGHT AWAY
Hand off, drop
Delegate the Ds. Drop the Es. They were never yours to do.
03THE NIGHT BEFORE
Pick your frog
The hardest A, the one you’d most like to avoid.
04NEXT MORNING
Frog first, then down
Before email. Then every A, then B, then C.
REPEAT EVERY DAY
Then back to step 01.
During the day: grade new things as they arrive. Don’t start a B while an A is waiting. Once a week, check on what you delegated and take back anything that’s stuck.
Signs it’s working
- After a week, your frog is done before noon on most days.
- You have one frog a day, never two.
- Nothing sits ungraded at the end of the day.
- After a month, you rarely carry the same frog more than two days.
Common pitfalls
Every task is an A
An A has real consequences if it slips. Be honest and move some to B.
Two frogs
Pick one. The other is tomorrow’s.
The same frog for days
It’s too big. Make its first piece the frog.
Quick tasks first
Small wins use up the energy the frog needs. Start with the frog.
Where it comes from
Hard Thing First is based on Eat That Frog! and ABCDE grading. Here’s the original, what we changed to make it simpler, and how to make it yours.
1 · THE ORIGINAL
Brian Tracy’s book Eat That Frog! calls your most important, most-avoided task the “frog” and tells you to eat it first. The book offers 21 techniques. One of them is ABCDE grading: A is a must, B a should, C a nice-to-have, D delegate, E eliminate.
2 · OUR VERSION
We kept the two techniques that do the most work: the frog decides what comes first, and the grades decide what comes next. The other 19 can wait until you want them.
3 · YOUR VERSION
To Do Machine starts every system with the fewest rules that still work. That’s on purpose: it’s quicker to learn, and using it shows you what you actually need. Try it as is for a couple of weeks, then change what doesn’t fit.
For example: Frog too big for one morning? Make its first step the frog.
GET THIS SYSTEM
To Do Machine can customize this system for you
To Do Machine has this system built-in, ready for you to customize to work exactly how your brain works.
