People with ADD often times have issues with time management. There are almost as many books out there to help you be more organized and procrastinate less as there are books to help you lose weight. For adults with ADHD, they can have very different value.

ADHD Eat That Frog

The book Eat That Frog is an organization and time management book built around the semi-funny premise of eating a frog. The idea is that as you plan out your day, there are different tasks. Each task takes a varying degree of time and effort, but typically, there is one task that is your biggest, perhaps least pleasant task. The idea of eating that frog is that you should do that task first.

The title comes from the hypothetical situation in which your to-do list contains the task of eating a frog. Clearly this isn’t pleasant, but if it must be done, then the idea is that if you do it first, you get it out of the way, and then you can go about your day with your most onerous task already completed and done.

But, does the Eat That Frog methodology work well for people with ADD?

I believe that you should, whenever possible, play to your strengths, and when you can turn your weaknesses to your advantage. As someone with ADD, my problem isn’t that I never get to one task, or that procrastinating on a single task causes my issues.

Instead, my problem is the inability to “force” myself into most anything to-do list wise. And yet, the whole premise of this book is to go against whatever your nature is and instead suck it up and do that one big task first. In a lot of ways, this is “Just Do It” in a different wrapper, and you know how I feel about that little gem.

So, does that mean that people with ADHD can’t use the Eat That Frog book?

Not at all, but remember that where a book like Eat That Frog is asking normal people to go against their nature and do something, it might actually be asking more (too much?) of people with advanced structural organizational issues like those of us with ADD have.

There is increasing evidence that willpower is a finite resource in the human body, and if you use it all up getting through just one task, is that your best move?

I suppose like all fixed ideas, it can only do so much. For me, I suppose I might try it when I have one of those days where there really is only one thing that matters. In that case, eating that frog makes perfect sense. But for me, most days are a maze of deadlines, milestones, and projects that all need attention. Simply getting the biggest, or least pleasant one, out of the way wouldn’t make the day a success for me.

How do you feel about Eat That Frog? Success? Bust? Useful, but modified? Let me know.