This is yet another self help book that was pressed upon me by a coworker.  I had to admit that its central tenet - "If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first" and several other frog-related mantras - is fairly sound.  It's hard to argue against the idea that you should tackle your most unpleasant task first, rather than procrastinating and pushing it around and probably never getting around to it at all.

The first problem with Eat That Frog is that it takes a fairly simple idea, then has to justify it for about a hundred pages in order to qualify as a "book."  Thus we end up with an entire chapter on "lay out your schedule for the day beforehand," another chapter on "apply the 80/20 rule to everything" (self help gurus looooove that pareto principle) another on how you should do necessary preparation ahead of time, and so forth.

It is often said that the hallmark of a truly genius idea is that in hindsight, it all seems so obvious.  The problem is that sometimes it can be hard to separate "truly genius idea" from "something that is actually obvious."  I have the feeling that "Eat That Frog" is in the latter category, but who am I to judge?  Maybe it is just so genius that it has fooled me with its seeming obviousness.

Ultimately, I feel like a lot of self help productivity books work on the same principle as sports mental imagery techniques.  

Researchers have found that if you close your eyes and imagine that you are swinging a golf club (or tennis racket, or whatever your chosen sport is), it lights up the areas of your brain that would light up if you were ACTUALLY performing the motion.  And that if you imagine yourself perfecting that technique, using the perfect golf swing, implementing the perfect tennis backhand, it increases your ability to do that in real life.  In other words, imagining that you are using the perfect golf swing is actually practice for swinging a golf club.  

Imagining is almost as good as doing.  It prepares you for the "doing," and increases your ability to do it.  I am often struck with the idea that this is why productivity books work.  Not because they have magical secrets to unlock your productivity, but because when you read the book, you imagine yourself performing tasks.  In your head, your desk becomes organized, your email inbox is reduced to a tiny handful of fresh messages, and your life falls mystically into order.

I have noticed that my own productivity gets a bump after I read any given productivity book.  Even if I later realize that the book itself was bunk.  Such was the case with Eat That Frog.  It's all well and good, but when it comes right down to it, no one actually wants to eat a frog.  That's why it gets left on the plate.  

You can psych yourself into eating it for a while, but that won't make it any more pleasant.  And eventually you lapse back into pushing it around and trying to hide it behind the mashed potatoes.  Because you're human, and that's what it means to be human.