Phew, are you familiar with things you don’t want to do? Me, for sure!
That can have the most different reasons …
The task is unpleasant for us. We have to do something we don’t feel comfortable with or that we are not good at – or think we are not good at.
Perhaps the activity involves communication that we fear could lead to a conflict.
Or there are other things we would much rather do.
Sometimes it is quite interesting to figure out why we don’t want to do this activity.
Often such an unloved activity is simply postponed, even if it is not a low priority task. It just doesn’t matter if you transfer it from one to-do list to the next one or if you just have it in the back of your in mind, kinda threatening you that it’s still sitting there.
With one of my clients, for example, I once found out that she had been given assignments where she didn’t know exactly what to do. So there was something on the list that she couldn’t do at all – and the more time passed, the more difficult it became to ask what was actually meant by that.
There is a quote from Mark Twain with a great approach to how we can deal with these unloved activities:
“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.
Now, if we assume that we find “frogs” rather unpleasant to eat, we start with the unpleasant activity, let’s say in the morning – and if we have two of them, with the one we want to do even less.
I like to do that if it fits into my day. For example, if I have a client appointment in the morning, I don’t necessarily squeeze an unpleasant task in right before it. And I actually don’t always have unpleasant things to do 😉
Some of my clients also love to do it this way. We are often proud or relieved when we have accomplished one of these tasks.
So why isn’t this episode called “eat the frog first”? Well, maybe I don’t always speak as clearly as I do when recording my podcast … One of my clients welcomed me one morning and was very happy that she’s now doing the thing with “kiss the frog first” quite often and was totally excited. And I also think this idea is really nice: Instead of eating the unpleasant things, maybe even “choking” them down, we kiss the frog. That sounds really lovely.
Well, maybe you’d like to kiss some frogs, too!
I hope you have a lot fun when you try it.
Be happy & be light
Love Janina
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