And it’s only halfway through January! I’m already about a third of the way to the number of books I read last YEAR…

… but I’ve resolved to do better this year. You know, resolved as in “New Year’s Resolution,” as in “I never read, but I should, so by golly I’m going to read 50 books this year.” Ok, maybe not. But I’m aiming for two a month, and if I read at least one a month I’ll be pretty pleased.

(Side note: For those of you who thought this post was about Anna’s reading, so as not to disappoint you, let me just say she’s doing great. We’ve just started going through Starfall‘s little “books” for beginning readers and she loves it. She can tell you all about Zac the Rat, Peg the Hen, and Gus the Duck.)

Back to my book…  it was a short book (but it still counts, I tell you!) about how to stop procrastinating and get things done. Things like reading all those books I want to read. It’s called Eat That Frog! by Brian Tracy. To explain the title, I’ll just offer a quote from the introduction:

Mark Twain once said that if the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long.

Your “frog” is your biggest, most important task, the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don’t do something about it. It is also the one task that can have the greatest positive impact on your life and results at the moment.

This book is definitely geared toward those who have careers outside of the home, but much of it was applicable to little ol’ stay-at-home-mom me. At this season in my life, I’m pretty quick to blame external factors beyond my control as my primary hindrances to getting things done. However, I admit I have some internal holdups as well, and this book helped me identify them. I’ll just highlight a few things I learned:

• I need to be better about setting goals. If I’m going to spend my time on something, it needs to be getting me to where I want to be. Tracy says, “One of the very worst uses of time is to do something very well that need not be done at all.” How true!

• Advance planning is very important. Just taking a few minutes to plan out your day can save you up to two hours of time! You should have master, monthly, weekly, and daily lists to work from. Aha! I knew it! Making lists if one of my favorite things to do. Now, about getting things crossed off of it…

• Focus on high-value activities—those that will bring the greatest positive results to your family, career, life in general. The 80/20 rule applies to our activities too—20% of our activities account for 80% of our results. Yet we tend to busy ourselves with the 80% that don’t get us anywhere. Always busy, but never accomplishing anything… yeah, that sounds familiar.

• We have to choose to procrastinate on some things, because we simply can’t do everything. I’ve actually been thinking about this since before I even started the book and I’ve observed something about myself. When I have a chunk of time, I think one of my biggest holdups to using it wisely is that in choosing to do something, I’m choosing to NOT do fifteen other things I want to do. So I do nothing, or I hop from thing to thing trying to do it all, thereby accomplishing diddly squat. Pretty stupid, huh?

• Technology is meant to improve the quality of our lives by enhancing our communications with people and making us more effective and efficient. If you’re a slave to technology, it is no longer serving that purpose. Don’t become addicted.

• You can reach a mental state of high performance and productivity. Tracy writes, “You feel elated and clear. Everything you do seems effortless and accurate. You feel happy and energized. You experience a tremendous sense of calm and increased personal effectiveness.” Ok, I have felt this on occasion. But most of the time I feel sluggish, sloppy, unmotivated, and foggy-headed. I’ve long thought that people who get a lot done must think faster than I do, that my brain just isn’t wired to operate that efficiently. But you can work to achieve this state of clarity by developing a sense of urgency in getting your tasks done, by training yourself to act rather than procrastinate. And once this starts, you develop the momentum to keep it up.

There were several things about this book that really were more applicable to those pursuing a career, but I gathered a several gems from it that made it worth the read. And I learned that I can get more done. And by getting things done, I DON’T just mean housework and such. I’m also talking about personal goals, things I want to do with my family, relationships I want to nurture outside the home—things that matter. I don’t want anyone to think I’m trying to brush people aside so I can do tasks. But sometimes those things that matter take some advance planning to make them actually happen.

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