I’m not actually swallowing any goldfish

June 3, 2023 6:29 AM

I feel like I remember someone saying “If you swallow a live goldfish first thing in the morning, it’ll be the most difficult thing you’ll do all day”. It was meant as an aphorism for getting your worst, most unpleasant task done first and then the rest will seem easy. So I’ve been thinking of hard tasks as my “goldfish” ever since. I said this to my friend recently and she had never ever heard this phrase before. I would like to figure out the origin - did I just make it up?
posted by fancyoats to Society & Culture (8 answers total)

The book is called Eat That Frog
posted by phunniemee at 6:31 AM on June 3, 2023 [16 favorites]

The "Quote Investigator" site has an article about this. Briefly, the quote usually references eating a frog (not a goldfish), and it dates back to circa 1795, originating with a Frenchman named Nicolas Chamfort. Read the article for the details.
posted by alex1965 at 7:20 AM on June 3, 2023 [7 favorites]

There is a related principal that i read about on here, I'm sure, about engineering projects that was also basically "Do the hard part first." but the logic there was "if you need to make an electric helicopter that can be used in heavy rain at high altitudes" then it needs to be really light (because low air pressure) and waterproof (because rain). Waterproofing is easy. Making a battery that can power a helicopter and yet is super-light is hard. Make the battery first. Because if you spend your time building a waterproof helicotopter with a spot for the battery and THEN you go to design the battery and figure out you can't, then all your waterproof helicopter work is wasted. If you start with the battery and you just can't do it, at least you won't have wasted time waterproofing a helicopter that will never actually work.

Note: the helicopter example is just one I came up with now. I don't remember the actual example, but the general principle was called "Do/make the ____ first." where the blank was filled with the hard thing from the example.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:23 AM on June 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

Just wanted to add that at least one person (me) has heard it before with the goldfish not the frog.
posted by bricoleur at 7:36 AM on June 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

Never heard this saying, but I can't be the only person who envisaged this popular meme image when hey heard it, right?
posted by terrapin at 7:57 AM on June 3, 2023

My office uses the phrase "eat a frog" or "eat the frog" all the time. It doesn't have to done first thing in the morning, but it means to tackle a task that you've been putting off or is harder than usual.
posted by leftover_scrabble_rack at 10:42 AM on June 3, 2023

Yup, another tasty frog here.
posted by BlueHorse at 11:06 AM on June 3, 2023

Perhaps inspired by the fact that swallowing goldfish was a weirdly popular college fad in the 1930s.
posted by Rhaomi at 1:05 PM on June 3, 2023 [1 favorite]