Eat the frog, but choose it the night before
"Do the hardest thing first" is good advice with a hole in it. At 08:45, coffee in hand, inbox open, you are not the calm strategist who chose the frog. You are a tired person looking at a list, and every item on that list is offering to be easier than the frog.
So you pick a small one, honestly intending to start the real thing at nine. By eleven you have done nine small things and the frog is still there, now with guilt attached.
The repair is not more willpower at 08:45. It is moving the decision to the night before, when you are not the one who has to do it.
One bullet above a line
Last thing in the evening, write one bullet at the top of tomorrow, with the time you chose it. Everything else goes below a visible line.
The line is doing real work. It is not decoration and it is not a priority label: it is a rule you wrote to yourself, and rules you wrote when you were thinking clearly are the only ones that survive the morning.
The note, "chosen last night at 21:40", matters more than it looks. It tells morning-you that this was a considered decision, not a mood, and it is surprisingly hard to argue with your own timestamp.
Two rules that keep it honest
One. Not two. The moment there are two frogs there is a choice again, and the choice is the thing you were removing. Two important things means picking one and putting the other under the line.
If only that happens, the day was good. Say it out loud when you write it. The point is not to do the frog and everything else; it is to make a day with one real thing in it count as a success, because otherwise you will keep buying small wins to feel productive.
Where this fits with everything else
The frog usually comes from the same place: the one quadrant nobody visits, or the key result that has not moved. Choosing it in the evening is where your weekly plan actually reaches your Tuesday, and without that step a plan is something you write and then run a different day beside.
If the frog cannot be finished in a day, the bullet is wrong. "Finish the pricing page draft" is a frog. "Launch pricing" is a project, and putting a project at the top of a day is how the whole habit dies in week two.
The agent's part, and its limit
An agent can propose the frog: it can see what is behind, what is blocking others, and what has been carried for four days. Let it propose, in the evening, in your tree.
It must not choose. The frog is a statement about what you care about tomorrow, and handing that over is handing over the part that makes the method work.
Take the shape
Open the template, press "Show in my Pando", and use it tonight. One bullet, with the time you chose it. Then look at it in the morning before you open anything else.