Eating that Big Elephant / Frog

In this fast moving world, most people forget or wrongly manage their work and time. The most important thing is to finish the toughest work first which gives the majority of results. We should keep in mind that 20% of our work will give the 80% of the results or benefit. So, it is important to concentrate on that 20% of the important work. It is even more better if that 20% of that work is completed fast

Write down the task

To identify the important task and to complete that fast, it is very important to write down all our tasks. When we write down the task we can identify the item by priority. Priority should be given in the order that the first task completed will give the maximum benefit. It is not necessary that the small task which can be done easily to be completed first. Most of the time, the small task which can be completed fast will not add any value to our gains. Those will be just a good to complete tasks

We should also understand the importance of delegating the less important work to someone who can help us or to someone who has more time. When we start delegating the less important work to someone, we will tend to focus more on the important job and that will give the maximum efficiency and benefits

Eat the elephant / frog sooner

I definitely don't mean of actually eating the elephant. Elephant here is referred to the toughest job in front of us which would give the maximum gain / benefit to us

When we are able to complete that most important job in the first half of the morning, we will have more time to focus on family and friends. This on time give better results and help to have a balanced life. Let's compare the toughest or the more time consuming job to a big frog and we need to eat that frog as the first job in the morning. In that case everything except eating that frog will be more easier. When we commit to eat that frog sooner, we are ready to do any job easily that day. So it is important to eat that big ugly frog as the first thing in the morning. This is nothing but what we think as toughest and time consuming job should be completed first. This would also give the 80% of the total benefit which we might get

It is also advisable to build sub task in the big tasks and start focusing on the sub task. By this was the big task can be completed faster one by one. This is nothing but eating an elephant story which we might have heard of. Elephant / Frog here is referred to the job we come across everyday. How to eat an elephant ? It can be done bite by bite. No one can eat an elephant in an single bite. Similarly, we can complete the bigger task slowly by segregating it into multiple sub tasks. We should never ignore the big tasks as that looks bigger to us. This is the common mistake done by most of us 

Once we built the habit of finishing the toughest job earlier in the morning, we will soon notice that we are getting better in our work and we will reach to a position that we are the expert in the job what we are doing. This will also be notice by the senior management in the office and our work will be appreciated over time. We would have noticed in our office that only the person who completes the toughest job always gets the appreciation not the one who completes the bulk of small and easy work

We should never procrastination our important work. We should procrastinate the less important work. We should know how to manage these to be the best in our work. Whenever we see a big elephant (work) in front of us, it is better to approach it as an opportunity to grow and break that into minor parts and complete that sooner to get better results.

Have a Great Day

B G Nareshkumar