When I was picking up my child at school, I met a familiar parent who complained to me: "The teacher left too much homework, and the child started writing as soon as he came home in the afternoon, and he didn't finish writing until 10 or 11 o'clock in the evening, and the normal rest time was affected ......."”
I was surprised because my daughter only needs an hour a day to complete her homework at most, and then she still has time to review her homework and read extracurricular books, which shows that the amount of homework assigned by the teacher is quite appropriate.
I asked the parent, "Does the child start doing homework as soon as he gets home?" ”
The parent sighed: "How can it be so good? As soon as she got home, she said she was tired and wanted to play for a while; One play was an hour, and after dinner, she was asked to do her homework, and she said that she wanted to move; I finally started to write, but I was writing and playing; Sometimes she felt that arithmetic problems were not easy to do, so she threw them down to write Chinese characters, and after writing a few words, she remembered to memorize ......”
I couldn't help but shake my head and said, "No wonder this homework is always unfinished, the child has not mastered the method of time management." ”
In real life, there are not a few children like this who have no sense of time:
No matter what they do, they are slow and procrastinating, often late, and they have to write their homework all night, and their parents have to stay next to them every day to remind and supervise; They don't have a plan to do things, they always have a hammer in the east and a stick in the west, and they do whatever they want, but they spend a lot of time and can't do anything well; They don't know how to cherish their time, and often spend a lot of their precious time playing games and watching TV, and their parents tell them to do their homework, but they complain about ...... day after day
In the face of children who have no concept of time, parents can only keep chasing their children's ears and faces, and after a long time, parents are physically and mentally exhausted and troubled, but the children's learning efficiency is still not significantly improved.
So, is there any good way to change this situation where both parents and children are struggling?
Here is one of the simplest and most effective time management methods, which has an interesting name called the "Three Frogs" rule.
The proposer of the "Three Frogs" rule is the world-renowned time management master, the famous American orator Born Tracy, who spent more than 20 years studying time management problems and wrote the book "Eat the Frog", and the "Three Frogs" rule is the essence of the book.
Find the most hated "three frogs" and be brave enough to eat it.
To paraphrase the "Three Frogs" rule in the words of Brian Tracy, it is:
You have to find out the three most important things in a day, a week, a month, a year, and a lifetime, and they are the 'three frogs' that you have to eat.
If you have to eat a frog, don't stare at it for a long time.
If you have to eat three frogs in a row, remember to eat the biggest, ugliest one first. ”
You may think these rules sound a little inexplicable, but in fact, Tracy is telling us in witty and humorous words:
Start with the most important and difficult things.
Because this kind of thing can often be very annoying and tricky, it is easy to trigger avoidance. But the more you don't do it, the more you will be afraid of difficulties, and if the vicious circle continues, you can only watch time pass little by little, and as a result, you can't do anything and can't do it well.
It is precisely because of this that Tracy suggests that people should rise to the challenge and bravely eat the pesky "three frogs", and then all other problems can be solved.
This is the "Three Frogs" rule, and it's so simple and unpretentious, but it has really helped many children and adults who are struggling with time management problems, and even Tracy's own niece, Lily, has benefited from it.
Lily had just been admitted to Yale University, and the whole family was happy for her, but Lily herself was always sad and sighing.
Tracy wants to free her niece, so she takes a break from her busy schedule and invites Lily to have a conversation.
Lily has a lot of trust in Uncle Tracy, telling him, "I always thought I was very good, but when I got to school, I didn't know what it means to be talented, and even if I wanted to keep my grades at the middle level, I felt very difficult." I didn't have enough time every day, so I had to study for my homework, attend classes, do experiments, and participate in club activities, and the teacher asked me to sign up for a speech contest ......I feel like a spinning top that keeps moving, I want to do everything, but I can't do anything, it's annoying......”
When Tracy heard this, she laughed: "Kid, have you forgotten the 'three frogs' rule I taught you?" You'll have to eat the frog that gives you the most headache, and it'll be easy. ”
After hearing this, Lily said thoughtfully, "There is an important exam tomorrow, and I need to review my homework; In addition, I have an experiment report to hand in the day after tomorrow; I also want to practice my presentation skills, and I'm going to be on stage next Saturday; But the head of the club asked me to help make a poster, and at the end of the month we will have a fundraiser ......How do you think I'm going to find the 'three frogs'? ”
Tracy smiled and asked her, "Think about it, what is the most important thing for you, but also the most difficult and the most frightening for you?" ”
Lily said embarrassedly, "It's a revision homework, and I have a headache at the thought of tomorrow's exam, but I have to do it again." ”
Tracy nodded, "Very well, I'll give you two hours, let's try to eat this first 'frog' now." ”
With Tracy's encouragement, Lily set an alarm clock for 2 hours, and then she mustered up the courage to open the book, while constantly cheering herself up: "It's nothing to be afraid of, you're just a frog, I can beat you!" ”
Strange to say, when she treated the annoying task as a "frog", the efficiency actually increased a lot. After 2 hours, she successfully completed a more systematic review.
Tracy reminds her to take a break before moving on to the second and third frogs. Lily's mood was much lighter now, and she finished writing the report and practicing the speech ...... in one go
This is the wonderful thing about the "Three Frogs" rule, when you can focus on the most important and difficult things, you will get a strong sense of satisfaction and achievement, and then you can overcome more difficulties and deal with more problems.
Use the "three frogs" rule to manage time efficiently and improve children's learning efficiency.
We can teach the "three frogs" rule to children, when they are procrastinating in their homework, when they are unplanned, when they are unconsciously wasting time, we can work with them to find out the "three frogs" that bother them the most, and then focus on "eating the frogs", so that we can continuously improve the learning efficiency.
Let's learn the specific application steps of the "Three Frogs" rule
Step 1: Instruct your child to make a time list.
The so-called time list is not a simple list of tasks in the "journal", because the journal cannot allow children to find the most important things in it, nor can they develop a good habit of "focusing on the important things".
So, what does a real time list look like?
It must have a ranking of the importance and urgency of things, so that the child can clearly prioritize things and know what he should focus his main energy on.
Therefore, we can instruct the child to order the things to be done according to the following criteria:
Something important and urgent. Matters that are very important and cannot be delayed can be classified in this category. For example, "completing the homework assigned by the teacher" is the most important and urgent thing to do every night. The child should carry out this matter decisively and neatly, without evasion or procrastination. In fact, if your child is able to maintain a high level of concentration and be at his best, he or she will be able to complete the task in a short period of time.
Something important but not too urgent. Although very important, things with a certain amount of leeway in time can fall into this category. For example, if the child is short of time and low energy that day, do not force the child to complete the task, but can choose to perform it on weekends or when the child has enough energy and high interest in learning.
Less important but more urgent things. This kind of thing may be time-sensitive, but it is not particularly important, and parents may wish to help their children share some tasks. For example, the teacher asks the child to "hand in a hand-copied newspaper", considering that the child's learning task is relatively heavy, parents can help find good information, draw a good and detailed edge, and help the child reduce some pressure, but the main creative design work and text writing work are still responsible for the child.
Something that is neither important nor urgent. Among the things that children have to do every day, in fact, many of them are such irrelevant things, such as reading a comic book, playing a mobile game for a while, watching an episode of cartoons, etc., and this kind of recreational thing will not cause adverse consequences if it is not completed on the day, so there is no need for children to spend too much time and energy on it. Parents can guide their children to complete the first few types of tasks, and then fill such things into leisure time and fragmented time to complete.
Step 2: Have your child identify the "three frogs" from the list
Now that your child has prioritized all the things he wants to do in order of importance and urgency, he or she can now pick and choose from the "most important and urgent" areas to identify three important things that are important and require your child's focus to complete.
These are the "three frogs" that the child has to deal with, and the child should do his best to get rid of them at the beginning and then do other things, and it will feel very comfortable.
This situation can also be explained by the "flywheel effect" in psychology:
When you want to turn a stationary flywheel, you have to spend a lot of effort initially. But when you focus on pushing force and reach a certain tipping point, the weight of the flywheel itself becomes part of the driving force, and you don't have to exert too much effort to make the flywheel spin quickly and continuously.
The "three frogs" rule is actually the same reason, once the "three frogs" are eaten, after a good start, the follow-up work will be like a spinning flywheel, running naturally, the key is to see whether the child has the determination and courage to drive his "flywheel".
Step 3: Encourage your child to face the "biggest, ugliest frog".
After going through the above steps, the most important things have been reduced to only three, but there will still be differences in importance and difficulty between these three things, and all the children have to do is focus on the one thing they least want to face, which is also called "the biggest, ugliest frog" by Brian Tracy.
Although children hate it, they can't avoid it, so instead of running away from procrastination, it is better to face it with one mind.
When a child has the courage to throw his or her full attention into it, it is likely that "this frog" is not really powerful, and this will definitely surprise the child.
Step 4: Remind your child to make effective use of "frog time".
Of course, "eating frogs" is not an easy thing to do, and parents should remind their children to leave enough "frog time" and ensure that they can make full use of this time, and do not let it be wasted for various reasons.
To this end, parents should pay attention to the following:
You can arrange a very quiet environment for your child to avoid being disturbed by the sounds of family members talking and walking.
You can temporarily remove your child's phone, tablet, comic book and other things that may distract from their attention to prevent a situation of "learning and playing".
Remind your child that they can only deal with the next frog if they eat it completely. This will prevent them from being half-hearted in their homework and not thinking about this subject while thinking about other subjects.
Expand the "three frogs" rule and let the child be the master of time.
When children learn to use the "three frogs" rule to deal with things like homework and pre-revision every night, parents can also work with them to try to deal with daily, weekly, and monthly affairs, and these things can be extended beyond the learning area to the child's life area.
For example, in the morning, your child can use the "Three Frogs" rule to plan the day's activities and identify the three most important things that need the most attention, so as to ensure that they do well in these three things, rather than wasting too much time on trivial things.
For example, each week, children can use the "three frogs" rule to plan their learning activities for the week, identify the three most important subjects that need the most attention, and make sure that all three subjects do well throughout the week, rather than failing to do well in any subjects during the week.
For example, each month, children can use the "three frogs" rule to plan their activities for the month, identify the three most important things that need the most attention, and make sure that all three things do well throughout the month, rather than doing nothing well in a month.
Through such attempts, children can not only gain certain experience and skills in time management, but also gradually develop a good learning and living habits, so that they can better deal with various problems and improve their overall quality. At the same time, it also allows children to gradually become the masters of time, rather than the slaves of time, so as to better meet the challenges of the future.