Worst First

Definition

Worst First is a simple rule: do the hardest or most unpleasant work first thing in the day, before checking email, before easy tasks. The rationale is psychological and practical: left to our own devices, we procrastinate on difficult work, which creates "time dilation"—the task takes much longer because we interrupt it with easier escapes. Doing it first removes the flexibility to procrastinate and uses the psychological reward of completing it to motivate the rest of the day.

In the Book

Markovitz opens with the parent-feeding-children analogy: if kids eat brownies first, they'll push vegetables around the plate for hours. But serve vegetables first, then brownies as reward, and both get eaten faster. Adults do the same: we eat the brownie (email, easy tasks) and avoid the sprouts (hard, important work).

He tells his own story. When he started his consulting company, he dreaded sales calls. His pattern: arrive at office, check email (90 minutes), read magazines and blogs (avoiding sales calls), do administrative work, maybe try calls at 4:30 p.m.—too late to reach West Coast prospects. Result: no sales. Sales calls went undone daily, and he'd postpone them again. The problem was flexibility; he had choices about when to work.

Worst First mandated making sales calls first thing, before anything else. "It removed the flexibility. Without the opportunity to vary my work, I handled the unpleasant task first and handled it quickly. Even more important, with the sales calls out of the way, I found that I accomplished all those other tasks more quickly because I was avoiding the subtle time dilation that procrastination creates."

The book notes that knowledge workers have flexibility (unlike assembly-line workers), which permits procrastination. This flexibility leads to the waste of waiting—your customer waits while you avoid the hard stuff. Markovitz is firm: "From a Lean perspective, procrastination is unacceptable."

The benefit isn't just time saved. Markovitz adds: "You'll also feel better, and that shouldn't be ignored." Completing the hard thing first creates psychological momentum and relief.

One caveat: it's not always easy to identify the "worst" thing when work is highly variable. And carving out time first thing requires discipline. But the payoff is real: predictability in your work sequence reduces procrastination and the hidden time costs it creates.

Why It Matters

Procrastination isn't a character flaw; it's a system failure. When you have flexibility, the system produces procrastination. Markovitz's insight is Lean in spirit: redesign the system (sequence) to eliminate the failure, rather than relying on willpower. By putting the hard task first, you make procrastination impossible. And research Markovitz cites (participants doing two tasks sequentially took 1.5x less time than those doing them simultaneously) shows that serial task execution is faster than the interrupted, procrastinated approach. Worst First leverages this: you're not just avoiding procrastination, you're often finishing faster.