Post-Holiday Backlog: Frog or Fruit?

January can be a challenging time as we return from a holiday break to discover that December was not particularly productive. As I enter my office, I feel full of cheese and sweets, and suddenly notice that my desk is sagging, bloated with papers and file folders that I swear weren’t there before Christmas. It can feel discouraging.

Which fire should I put out first?

I often use a Barrier Analysis approach to score which tasks are the most important and the most achievable – but why is that? Why look at what is achievable first? Wouldn’t it be better to tackle the most difficult problem, breaking it into pieces and conquering slowly but surely.

Mark Twain once said, “if you have to eat a live frog, do it first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day.”

And that’s often been translated into the do the hardest thing on your list first, and everything else gets easier after that.