Here’s a new task to help simplify our lives and minimizing our households.
Challenge #10 Eat That Frog
Choose something you’ve been putting off and tackle it.
How’d it go: Last fall, I made a family list of everything we needed to get done, and it sent me into an anxiety attack. No joke. Now, being a few months older, wiser and never wanting to experience that again, I keep a much smaller “Nagging Tasks” list on my refrigerator. It perpetually has one and only one item on it. When I cross off said item, I write on another.
That one item is the proverbial “frog”. As Mark Twain once 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.”
All of which means, quit procrastinating and tackle the worst job first. These “frogs”, these nagging tasks are always humming around in the back of my brain like a flock of vampire bats that drain my energy and my positivity. So, I’ve started to make them the priority, ticking off one at a time and getting more productive and brave as I go. Most of them are not even terrible tasks; they’ve simply been put off for so long that they’ve become this big mind-sore that I continually stumble and suffer over.
A couple of my recent ones were to start the title transfer process for the land we bought, to write a hand-written letter to a dear old friend, and to complete some long overdue emailing. Coming up, I have Thank You cards I need to send, mending projects to do, miscellaneous paperwork, my taxes, business billing, minimizing and organizing tasks, caved-in yard-barn clean-up, and so much more. The list is quite literally never-ending.
But, one at a time, I’m getting them done; I’m eating those frogs. At times it’s hard to know which frog is the biggest, but anxiety can be a useful tool if I don’t let it overwhelm me. It tells me exactly where I need to put my energy, i.e., which frog I need to eat first.
Give it a try. Your frog might go down easier than you think.
(Published in the March 27th issue of the Warroad Pioneer)
Kellie Knight’s “Angle Full of Grace” 
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