EAT YOUR FROG
www.icenimagazine.co.uk
Issue 86 2020
Eat Your Frog Or Sandwich Your Frog The energised way to a better career. What does eat your frog mean to you? Mark Twain once said that if you do your most difficult task first thing in the morning (eat your frog) then you’ve put it behind you and the rest of the day will be better. However, this evokes a strong reaction in me as a Strengths coach with a background in psychology. If we do the things we don’t enjoy first thing, this will make us feel de-energised and potentially if it's something we find difficult or really hate, it could even switch on the fight or flight response in our brain. Something we don’t need at the moment with a lot of fear around already. For example, someone may have Adherence as a weakness and may not enjoy the aspects of their role where they have to follow some kind of compliance or rules, perhaps they have to do some kind of audit checks. If this was your
weakness, this would probably be something that would be seen as your ‘frog’ and if you took on the Twain philosophy, you would do this first and get it out of the way. Or perhaps you are a procrastinator and in fact you would cherry pick all day the nice work until you HAD to eat your frog at the end of the day. The research on Strengths found that when people use their Strengths not only are they happier but they have higher performance in their roles (19187 employees studied by the Corporate leadership Council 2002) and they stay in the company longer (Stefanyszyn, 2007). When we use our strengths, we are increasing the levels of neurotransmitters in our brains, so whilst we are actually enjoying what we are doing and feeling happier, the brain is becoming fuelled and we are more productive having more energy to help us with our tasks.
PAGE
42
Twitter: @icenimagazine
Facebook: www.facebook.com/icenimagazine
Instagram: icenimagazine
