Eat the frog
Pick the one task you are most likely to avoid, and do it first thing. A priority, a saved view and a reminder make the frog hard to miss.
Last reviewed
“Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” The method is exactly that: each evening you choose the task you most want to avoid tomorrow, and in the morning you do it before email, before the Inbox, before anything that feels urgent and is not.
Why it works
Willpower is highest early and avoidance grows through the day. One frog, chosen in advance, removes the decision at the worst moment to make it. Everything after it feels lighter, because it is.
Set it up in OpenTodo
- Choose tonight. Open Today or Upcoming, pick tomorrow’s frog, and set its priority to P1: select it and press 1. Keep P1 for the frog alone, so it means something. Quick changes from the list
- Pin a “Frog” view. In Filter, type
p1 & due <= today, press s and name it Frog. It sits in the sidebar with a count that should read 1. Saving views - Make it the first thing you see. Set that view as the start view on your laptop in Settings → Preferences → Start view. The app then opens on the frog, not the Inbox. Choose where the app opens
- Give it the first slot. Press s and place it at the start of your day on the calendar, with an honest estimate. Place a task on the calendar
- Add a reminder at the start of that slot, so the morning does not drift into email first. Add a reminder
Make it stick
- Choosing the frog is part of the weekly review and of each evening: a repeating task “Choose tomorrow’s frog” at 17:30 does it. Make a task repeat
- A frog that keeps slipping is too big. Break it into subtasks and make the first one tomorrow’s frog. Break a task into subtasks
- Two frogs is none. If the Frog view shows 2, demote one to P2 tonight. Filter queries