Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy

Brian Tracy's book, Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time offers advice on improving productivity and by doing what most needs to be done first.   The phrase eat that frog is attributed to Mark Twain who said, "Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day."  Brian Tracy advises, eat the biggest, ugliest most important frog first then focus attention on other lower priority items.

The sense of accomplishment can be addictive.  When we finish a difficult task our brains release reward chemicals and produce a good feeling.  Repeatedly tackling and completing these tasks can lead to positive reinforcement for these behaviors and it can become a positive addictive habit. 

Some of the suggestions in his book are similar to those in his book No Excuses.  This text focuses on specific strategies to tackle procrastination like using the Swiss cheese method or the small bite method.

I found his ABCDE method for prioritization to be helpful.  E in this list stands for eliminate.  I have used his early morning method to improve productivity.  The cats often wake me up early in the morning and when I am unable to go back to sleep I use the time to complete tasks requiring focused concentration and minimal distraction.  

The ABCDE method of prioritizing - 5 minutes

The Universe Within by Neil Shubin

Neil Shubin's The Universe Within: Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People takes a fascinating journey from a tooth in exposed rock on the surface of Greenland to a supernova and back to the daily rings on corral.  Trace elements in our body were created as a result of a supernova.

We share similar biologic clocks with hamsters and fruit flies.  Genetic mutations that cause altered sleep patterns in fruit flies are similar to those that cause sleep pattern disruptions in humans.

He describes the evidence for the plate tectonics and past climate change. He relays the discovery of  44 million year old Redwood tree stumps on the continent of Antarctica.  The still burnable tree stumps provide evidence for a time when that continent was much warmer than it is today.

Neil Shubin's primary work as a paleontologist involves very patient studies of rock formations for transition creatures.  Based on the fossil record they expected to find a creature bridging the gap between fish and amphibian in sedimentary rock near the end of the Devonian period.  He and a team of researchers spent five years studying exposed late Devonian (375 million years ago) rock layers in Canada and unearthed Tiktaalik (Wikipedia) a transition creature between fish and amphibian.

Neil Shubin with Tiktaalik - Mother Jones

I found this a fascinating book linking humans and what we are made of with the origin of the Universe and the creation of our solar system. 

The Universe Within - 19 minutes

Your inner fish - PBS - 55 minutes

No Excuses! by Brian Tracy

The book, No Excuses!: The Power of Self-Discipline, provides concrete advice on improving work performance.  The Pareto Principle (Wikipedia) applies to earning power.  Twenty percent of people make 80% of the money.  To be in the 20%, individuals need to model the behavior of successful people who have achieved success.  Unlike Joseph E, Stiglitz, Brian Tracy points to most of the successful people in America being first generation.  These people started from nothing and became very successful through hard work. 

Brian also offers advice on achieving health bodies and healthy relationships as they work together to form a person who has more control over their own life as opposed to being controlled by outside forces.

Brian advocates adopting specific behaviors to be successful.  Observe how other successful individuals operate.  Model their behavior and become a success.  Work more, and socialize, web surf less at work.  Get noticed by accomplishing high priority tasks quickly and competently.

Brian Tracy - The habits of success - 8 min. 

The Man Who Made Lists by Joshua Kendall

Joshua Kendall's book, The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus, describes the life of Peter Roget and the influences that caused him to create his thesaurus. 

I was surprised at the breadth of Peter Roget's experience.  He published papers that helped with the log scale on the slide rule.  As a physician, his understanding of the human eye and his observations of wheel spokes through window slots paved the way for the motion picture industry.  He also helped to organize private libraries prior to the development of the Dewey Decimal System.

His personal life was marked by tragedy dealing with deaths and a family with a history of mental illness.

His thesaurus was 50 years in the making.  He used an early draft as a tool when he was lecturing on human physiology and when writing papers.  Peter Roget's live proves that it is never too late to have a second act or leave a lasting legacy. 

Joshua Kendall - The compulsive energy that shaped America - 59 minutes

Ideas That Shaped Mankind by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto offers a tour of ideas that shaped human history through a series of lectures titled: Ideas That Shaped Mankind: A Concise History of Human Thought (The Modern Scholar) (The Modern Scholar: Great Professors Teaching You).  The audio version allows us to hear the Queen Mary University of London professor deliver the lectures in his upper class British accent.

He covers the major world religions, Buddhism, Muslim, Christianity and Judaism.  The disproportionate effect of Judaism is not unusual in that small countries like England, Greece and Rome/Italy have produced disproportional cultural impacts.  

Many of the ideas that shaped history turned out to be quiet deleterious.  These include ideas presented in Machiavelli's The Little Prince, Marxism, Communism, fundamentalism and a stew of other isms that promise utopia but deliver something considerably less palatable. He concludes that embracing cultural pluralism may be the only hope for humanity.

The Year our world began - 1492 - 7 min.