Ripple to Wave

You’ll hear of lots of great business advice about tackling the hard things first.

Business guru, Brian Tracy has written a whole book, Eat that Frog,  about the strategy. For Tracy, ‘the frog’ is a metaphor for the most challenging item on your task list. You ‘eat the frog’ by tackling the hardest task first.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m absolutely in favour of this strategy. To succeed in life and business, you must be willing to tackle challenging, difficult or even downright onerous tasks. Successful people recognize this and are willing to do the hard work required to achieve their goals.

So I’m not advocating, ignoring or avoiding the frogs all together. However, I’d like to make the case that sometimes it’s best to start with a little taste of chocolate.

Do you have an important project that you are avoiding because there are elements or tasks that are difficult or that you are uncertain about? If so, consider the benefits of starting with the easy or fun part (a taste of chocolate), and working your way up to the hard part (eating the frogs).

I’ve been running my own business now for more than 15 years. Setting priorities and staying motivated, and focussed on those priorities is still a daily struggle.

Sometimes, I find myself avoiding projects that are very important to me because there is some aspect of the project that I find difficult. Sometimes faced with a daunting task, I avoid working on the project or goal altogether, as a way to put off the one difficult task.

Of course, if I want to make a living, and build my business, I eventually have to actually tackle the project, including the ‘frog’ task.

However, by then I’m way behind and have to do not only the hard part of the project but also the easy part too. Remember, just because a task is easy doesn’t mean it’s not time consuming or critical to the overall success of the project, and even easy tasks can be made difficult by a time crunch.

So while I do think that tackling the hard tasks first, is a great strategy, sometimes I let myself start a project with the easy part.

Starting a project with a task or tasks that I enjoy, or am good at (often the same) is a great way to play to my strengths, and generate momentum.

It also gets some tasks checked off the list. Once the project is underway and I have some successes or completions under my belt, then I can tackle the ‘frogs’ with more gusto.

The reality of most projects or goals is that they are a mix of easy and challenging, fun and not so fun. To achieve most worthwhile goals you have to tackle both.

In my experience, staying confident , motivated and moving forward is just as important to overall success in achieving your goals as being willing to work hard.

If you can’t do the hardest task first, I say do the easiest and work your way up.

So, if you’ve been avoiding a project, because you know you’ll have to eat a few frogs along the way, why not get started by looking for your project’s ‘piece of chocolate’ and taking a bite.

I’ve been thinking about a blog for years, but it’s never seemed like the right time. Or to be more precise, it’s never seemed like I had enough time. But something happened to me about a month ago; I started using Twitter.

I’ve been working on the web full time for 13 years now, and you’d think that I would have embraced Twitter earlier. But I didn’t. Without actually trying it I accepted the opinions of naysayers that portray Twitter as just a bunch of shallow people blogging about celebrity gossip and what they did on Saturday night. No doubt there is some of that. (Likely lots of that).

But, I haven’t encountered that side of Twitter (or at least not much). I was introduced to Twitter, by a couple of smart, interesting, and  web-savvy writers, Erin Thomas and Cheryl Rainfield, and one of my favourite Mac gurus, Aaron Vegh.

I started by following them and some of the people they followed–more smart interesting people. I read their tweets, blogs, and more links, and pretty soon I was following more than 100 savvy, connected people and organizations.

In the last month or so since I’ve joined Twitter, I’ve probably read more technical, web development, and business articles,  than I had in all of 2009. I’ve followed trends, learned about leaders in my field, connected with new people and had a great time doing it.

Twitter is definitely not for everybody, and it does require time, and energy.  But, and here’s a key aspect of Twitter that you may not have considered. You don’t have to expend all the energy at the same time. Twitter responds well to the ‘ripple to wave’ approach. Start small. Follow a couple of people, send a couple of tweets. If it works, you can build up from there.

However, if you run a business, or a consulting practice, I strongly recommend that you give it a try.