It’s common sense — when cutting vegetables, always cut the onions last. The reason is simple. Cutting onions make your eyes water and the more pungent they are, the more breaks you need to take to recover from watering eyes. This inevitably delays the process. Once you’re done cutting the onions, you look at other vegetables to be cut and let out a small sigh. Instead, cut all the other veggies first and leave the onion for the last. This way, even if you take some extra time to cut the onions, it’s okay as most of the other cutting has been done.
It took me a lot of time to get this and on occasion, I still reach out for the onions first.
But when it comes to work, the exact opposite is applicable.
Begin with the biggest, most important and challenging project first. This invariably is the one that will produce the most value. Brian Tracy has written an entire book about called Eat the Frog. The title takes its inspiration from something writer Mark Twain said:
“Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”
Which basically means do the work that you have been putting off first. And we are all familiar with how easy it is to nullify our own efforts. There is a big project or pitch at hand and we do just about everything — surf, scroll, chat and finally get down to doing the big work.
Interesting how the same principle works once you change the settings.
In the kitchen, cut the onions last.
At work, cut the onions first.
