How To Stop Procrastinating

Check out the book, Eat That Frog! For Students, adapted from Brian Tracy’s time-management bestseller, Eat That Frog, which has sold more than 2.4 million copies around the world.

This new edition addresses the specific needs of high school and college students, teaching them readily actionable time-management methods, techniques and strategies. Tracy, with Anna Leinberger also reveal 22 ways to stop procrastinating.

You’ll read the details behind the three pillars required for a successful mindset:

Self-Esteem
Personal Responsibility
Goals

Plus, you’ll discover how to effectively:

structure your own time.
apply the 80/20 rule.
study something you are not interested in.
motivate yourself into action.
practice creative procrastination.
take back your time from enslaving technological addictions.

Recently, Tracy shared his answers to the following questions:

Question: What inspired you to write this new book for students?

Tracy: Like many good ideas, this book was born of a need we saw in our readers. Amazon and Goodreads reviews were full of parents saying they bought a copy for their kids to read, and readers wrote to us personally saying they wished they could get their children to use these tools. But the original book just isn’t a good fit for a student. It was written for someone who had a workday, a long stretch of 8 hours to divide up themselves. A student’s life is completely different. They have to be in class during the day, dividing homework time between short study halls or evenings and weekends. You need a completely different approach to time management. Beyond that, most of the examples in the book were from world of business. A student isn’t going to be convinced that a tool will work for them when the example given is someone who tripled their income- the student needs to know that a tool will help them get a better grade, or help them balance school, homework, and their job.

High school and college are the perfect time to learn these skills. This is when you are growing from a child, dependent on your parents and subject to their decisions, into an adult who is responsible for and gaining more control over your own life. This doesn’t happen by magic. We all have to learn how to take responsibility, how to make choices about our time and goals and lives. Ultimately, a student’s job is to learn. And the new book is all about learning how to learn, about taking your education into your own hands, and about tools that will help you succeed beyond your wildest dreams.

Question: What are the primary reasons students procrastinate?

Tracy: Students procrastinate for the same reasons adults do! There are so many reasons, and we cover many of these challenges in the book- along with specific strategies to combat them. People often don’t recognize the real reason for their procrastination, they just beat themselves up for it. That doesn’t help anyone! Often, there is a rational reason for your avoidance. One example would be having a task where you don’t understand everything you need to in order to complete the assignment. In this case, you have to first realize that you are stuck because you don’t understand something (not because you’re lazy!), then identify what it is you don’t understand, and finally focus on learning the skill you are missing. If you do that, the procrastination will evaporate, and you will easily be able to complete your assignment.

Question: Do you find procrastination is more of an issue for college freshmen or college seniors?

Tracy: It would probably be too big a generalization to say. Hopefully seniors will have learned a thing or two about managing their own time since their freshman year, but a college freshman who has been taught excellent study skills might be better at time management than a senior who never benefited from that sort of instruction. And no matter what year of high school, college, or even graduate school a student is in, this book has tools that will teach you those time management skills even if no one has ever taught them to you. Most adults have not even learned great ways to manage their own time. If you use the tools from this book in high school or college, you will already be lightyears ahead of most other people around you.

Question: Why do you believe your original book, Eat That Frog, has been so successful?

Tracy: The original Eat that Frog! is successful for the simplest of reasons: it works. If you take the advice in the book and apply it to your own life, you will see drastic improvements in your productivity. I have been writing books and giving seminars and trainings for decades, and over that time I have seen first-hand how transformational these simple tools can be. They don’t take any special equipment or technology, and you can apply them to your life immediately. There is no greater value a book can give than the experience of trying something and seeing immediate results.

Thank you to the book's publisher for sending me an advance copy of the book.

Comments

How To Build A High Performing Sales Team

Based on Stephanie Friedman 's 20 years of sales experience, her new book, Built to Grow: A Handbook For High-Performance Sales Teams , is the perfect step-by-step, go-to-market field guide for startup founders. Friedman offers readers a structured and repeatable methodology for building a high-performing sales function from a company’s earliest days. The book is divided into three phases of startup growth— Experiment, Build, and Scale. Within each of the three phases, Friedman covers: Sales Playbook Hiring Revenue Management Customer Success Compensations Culture Internal Collaboration Some of my favorite takeaway tips from the book include: No matter how experienced your salespeople are, any high-performing sales organization should follow one simple but important rule: No call without an agenda. This helps reinforce the necessary discipline around call preparation and ensures your customers have the best possible experience when talking to your...

High-Performing Teams Are Made Of This

According to Ron Ricci and Carl Wiese, authors of the book, The Collaboration Imperative , high-performing teams have the following characteristics: People have solid and deep trust in each other and in the team's purpose--they feel free to express feelings and ideas. Everybody is working toward the same goals. Team members are clear on how to work together and how to accomplish tasks. Everyone understands both team and individual performance goals and knows what is expected. Team members actively diffuse tension and friction in a relaxed and informal atmosphere. The team engages in extensive discussion, and everyone gets a chance to contribute--even the introverts. Disagreement is viewed as a good thing and conflicts are managed. Criticism is constructive and is oriented toward problem solving and removing obstacles. The team makes decisions when there is natural agreement--in the cases where agreement is elusive, a decision is made by the team lead or executiv...

Decide

Many years ago, I worked with a person who could not make decisions. Neither big nor small decisions. That indecisiveness paralyzed our business in many ways. Unfortunately, the book, Decide: Work Smarter, Reduce Your Stress, and Lead by Example , had not been published. Had it, I would have shared it with my co-worker. Decide , published this past February, teaches readers how to make better decisions based on the real results they want to experience. The author, Steve McClatchy, explains how to use the two forms of human motivation -- Gain, or Prevent Pain , to make more effective decisions. For example, he demonstrates how inserting a Gain task in the middle of a Prevent Pain day can give you the energy you need to move forward and make the Prevent Pain tasks take less time through motivation. Deeper into the book, you'll be reminded about not only the problems with procrastination, but also about the benefits of procrastination, and, if you are ...

Coherence: The Secret Science Of Brilliant Leadership

Coherence: The Secret Science of Brilliant Leadership is the new book by author Dr. Alan Watkins . Trained as a medical doctor, Watkins is now an honorary senior lecturer in neuroscience and psychological medicine at Imperial College, London and an affiliate professor of leadership at the European School of Management, London. According to Watkins, coherence is the biological state achieved when elite performers experience maximum efficiency and super effectiveness, where body and mind are one . Coherence provides one of the most unique approaches to showing leaders how to be younger, smarter, healthier and happier -- which gives them the power to make decisions under pressure and achieve sustainable success. Prepare to spend quality time reading Coherence . It's not light reading. Kind of feels like a medical text book in parts. But, it's worth your commitment to it. I particularly found useful Watkin's discussion on culture , where he w...

5 Compelling Benefits Of Having An Ethical Culture

In Andrew Leigh's book, Ethical Leadership , he provides these compelling and important benefits of having an ethical culture in your business/organization: Customers prefer dealing with companies who put ethics at the center of their culture. Most employees would prefer to earn less working for an ethical company than being paid more and working for an unethical company. More than one in three people at work say they've left a job because they've disagreed with the company's ethical standards ( Trevino, L and Nelson, K - 2011 ) If you adopt an early warning system against misconduct it reduces the risk of you facing expensive litigation. An ethical culture helps you make your company a strong affirming place to work in. "The foundations of an ethical culture include values, attitudes, meaning, behaviors, purpose, and management practices," explains Leigh.

More Leadership Quotes From John C. Maxwell

The real gems in John C. Maxwell's book, Everyone Communicates Few Connect , book are the abundant leadership and communication quotes, such as these: To add value to others, one must first value others. People may hear your words, but they feel your attitude. All good communicators get to the point before their listeners start asking, "What's the point?" The first time you say something, it's heard. The second time, it's recognized, and the third time it's learned. In the end, people are persuaded not by what we say, but by what they understand. People pay attention when something that is said connects with something they greatly desire. Maxwell also says that: Management is about persuading people to do things they do not want to do, while leadership is about inspiring people to do things they never thought they could . The book covers five principles and five practices to help readers so they can connect one-on-one, in a group, or...

Six-pillar Roadmap For How To Move From Merely Surviving To Truly Mattering

In the new book, The Mattering Effect: Creating A Life Of Meaning And Worth , podcaster and author John R. Miles reframes today’s most common struggles and empowers individuals and institutions alike to break bad habits and reclaim a sense of worth and belonging. “Organizations have spent the last decade chasing 'engagement' and 'psychological safety,' yet global productivity is stalling and 60% of employees report they do not feel valued in the places where they spend their days,” shares Miles. He calls this “The Great Erasure”—a condition where high-achievers become highly visible to the organization while becoming invisible to themselves. In addition, Miles argues that many of today’s most common struggles—burnout, anxiety, loneliness, and disengagement—are not personal failures or mindset problems. They are the result of unmattering: the gradual erosion of felt significance within modern systems that reward performance while overlooking presence. Fortu...

Make It Easy For Your Employees To Volunteer

Start planning now for this year's National Volunteer Week, April 15-21 . That's the week when nonprofit organizations throughout the U.S. will celebrate and honor their volunteers. If you are not already volunteering, what a great time to start. Make a commitment to yourself to start volunteering before that week starts! And, if you are a workplace leader who supports a volunteer program at your business, you already know that by encouraging employees to give back to your community you are: building teamwork motivating employees attracting new hires In fact, job seekers much prefer companies that have a strong volunteer program. And, a growing number of businesses are rewarding employees who volunteer by giving them extra vacation time and other incentives. Fortunately, throughout the U.S. there are hundreds of volunteer opportunities where employees can contribute individually, or where leaders can organize teams of employees to volunteer together on a routin...

3 Things To Avoid When You Give Your Next Speech

If you don't want to get your speech off to a bad start, the communications experts at Speechworks suggest you: Don't apologize (particularly about your anxiety or lack of preparation. Apologies put your audience on the defensive. Don't start by telling a joke (which may not be all that funny, or is irrelevant, or that may even be offensive to someone in your audience). Don't beat around the bush (including, don't list off a lot of people you want to thank. Don't waste your audience's valuable time) Instead: If you need to deal with your anxiety, practice like crazy . Rehearse particularly your first line over and over. Start your presentation by laying out for your audience a key issue that they are facing in their business . If you must thank someone, do it at the end, or thank your introducer briefly, pause, and then start right into the meat of your message .

How To Make One Bold Move A Day

Shanna A. Hocking ’s new book, One Bold Move A Day , is all about meaningful actions women can take to fulfill their leadership and career potential. Specially, Hocking reveals the transformative mindsets needed to make one Bold Move a day. Those are: Gratitude Mindset And Mindset Happiness Mindset Progress Mindset “Each of these four mindsets individually plays a special role in the process of continuously showing up for yourself and others,” explains Hocking. “Each mindset contributes in a different way to your success, but they all complement each other and together they will become the foundation to your Bold Move Mindset.” Hocking explains in her book that a Bold Move is one that challenges you to grow . “Sometimes it’s about capitalizing on an opportunity, and sometimes it’s about creating that opportunity for yourself,” explains Hocking. Keep in mind, too, that a Bold Move for you might not be the same as someone else’s. ...

Eric Jacobson On Management And Leadership

Search This Blog