Do the Worst First

Wouldn’t you love to increase the number of days when you get through your To Do list and reduce the days when you get bogged down and never finish your work? Try leveraging the Premack Principle. Behavioral psychologist David Premack recognized that an enjoyable behavior could motivate animals to engage in a less enjoyable behavior. It’s the theory behind requiring a child to clean his room before he can watch TV, for example.

Why does the Premack Principle matter? We generally work the other way around at the office. We put off the most unpleasant tasks, preferring instead to do more enjoyable work. As a result, we don’t get around to doing those unappealing things in a timely fashion. The phone call to the angry customer, the confrontation with a subordinate, the expense report we need to fill out — these are often postponed. More damaging, however, is the way in which this postponement destroys our overall efficiency. In order to put off the hard tasks, we actually slow down the pace at which we do the more pleasant jobs; subconsciously, we’re stalling. The result is that we get sucked into a seemingly endless batch of e-mails or an unusually long meeting, or end up doing other unimportant and non essential chores. When the end of the day arrives, it’s “too late” to call that customer or confront our subordinate. We’re no different from the child who eats dessert first, and then pushes the Brussels sprouts around the plate for 20 minutes, hoping that her mother will excuse her from the table before she has to eat them.

The solution? Do the “worst first.” When you arrive at the office in the morning, determine the worst task you have and do it — before e-mail, before phone calls, before coffee. When you return from lunch, do the same thing: Get the most unpleasant task out of the way first. You’ll be amazed at the difference. You’ll get your work done more quickly. You won’t “run out of time” as often. Best of all, you won’t feel the dread of that nasty task hanging over your head.