Chapter 32.
Do the Worst First

The best way out is always through.

—Robert Frost

The number-one topic that leaders ask us to speak about these days is: How do you motivate others when you have poor time-management? This was true of Carlos, who headed up a team of brokers.

“With everything that’s flying at me, everything that’s coming in, all the calls that I get, all the obligations that I have, I could really use another 10 hours in my day,” Carlos said.

We laughed: “This is true of everyone, Carlos. Stop thinking you are unique. Re-program and bring yourself into focus. Reboot your mind. Start over.”

All talented people in this global market have more to do than they have time to do. That’s not really a problem. It’s an exciting fact of life.

“But it’s very, very tempting to cave in to a sense of being overwhelmed,” Carlos said. “It’s tempting to get into that victim mindset of being ‘swamped.’”

“True enough. So regroup and get the view from 30,000 feet. Rise up. Lift yourself up!”

“But the truth is, I am swamped,” Carlos almost yelled out. “There’s nothing I can do. I’m overwhelmed. How can anyone manage this team when you’ve got all this stuff going on? And right when you think you’re getting ahead of it, you get a call, you get an e-mail, you get another request, there’s another program that has to be implemented, there’s another form that has to be filled out, and I’m about to throw up my hands and say, ‘How do I do this?’”

“Carlos, listen. Get a grip for now. The simplest system that you can come up with for time management will serve you as a leader. Keep it simple.”

“Why does it have to be simple?” Carlos asked. “It seems like I need a more complex solution to a complex set of challenges.”

“Because no matter what you do, you can’t stop this one truth about leadership: You are going to be hounded, you’re going to be barraged, and you’re going to be interrupted. And there are two reactions you can choose between to address this leadership fact of life.”

Carlos said nothing.

“You could just become a victim and say, ‘I can’t handle it, there’s just too much to do.’ That takes no imagination, it takes no courage, and it’s simply the easiest way to go—to complain about your situation. Maybe even complain to other people, other leaders, other managers, other family members; they will all sympathize with you and might even say, ‘You’ve got to get out of that business.’”

Carlos started nodding in agreement.

“That happens,” Carlos said. “But that doesn’t help me enjoy my job: to have friends and family feeding back to me that I ought to get out of the business. That makes it twice as hard.”

“Right! So there’s another way to go, and this is by keeping the simplest time-management system possible in your life. This is the one that we recommend, and it’s the one that most leaders have had the most luck with. It’s so simple, you can boil it down to two words, if you have to. The words are these: worst first! ”

“Worst first?”

“Exactly. Write it down!”

We worked with Carlos for a long time to get him to see that the best way to manage his time was not to think of it as managing time, but to think of it as managing priorities. Because he can’t really “manage time.” He can’t add any more time to his day.

But he can manage the priorities and the things that he chooses to do.

“Worst first,” Carlos said. “Explain it again. What does it mean?”

“Write down on a piece of paper all the things you’d like to do in the upcoming day, Carlos. Maybe you were jotting them down last night, but these are all things that you know that you would like to do. The list doesn’t have to be perfect. It can be all kinds of shorthand, and little pictures and drawings, all over a scratched-up piece of paper. Then you choose, among all these things, the one thing that’s the most challenging and important. The one thing you wish you didn’t have to do.”

“How do I know for sure what that is? And how will this, in the long run, improve the motivation of my people? Isn’t that your area of specialty?”

“Yes it is, but until you get this down, you won’t motivate anyone. You have to have a secure place to come from. An organized place inside yourself.”

“Okay, okay, I know that, but how do I choose the one thing to focus on?”

“What is that one thing that you’re most likely to put off? What’s your most important thing to do, the thing that really needs to be done; not necessarily the most urgent thing, but the most important?”

“Oh,” said Carlos, “I think I’m seeing this. That thing that pains me most to think of. That’s what I select to do first.”

“That’s it.”

Most managers are like Carlos. They don’t have a simple system. They just respond to whatever’s most urgent. All day they wonder, “What has to be addressed right now?” And a lot of time, the urgent little things that come up as an answer to that question are really small. They’re nitpicky things, just hassles.

“But don’t the little things have to be done?” Carlos asked.

“Yeah, they have to be done, but in the meantime you’re leaving important things behind. Many times, it is even more effective to turn off your phones, get away from your e-mail, select something that’s important, and do that until it’s complete, and let the urgent go hang.”

“I do know that there’s always something that eats at the back of my mind,” Carlos said. “It keeps coming up, I keep thinking about it. It gets in the way of the things I’m doing.”

“Now you’re on the right track, Carlos! You can’t focus in a relaxed and cheerful way on the things you are doing because in the back of your mind, this important thing is there. When you go home at night, the thing that makes you the most weary, the most under-the-weather, and most gives you the sense of not having had a good day, is that one thing you didn’t do, but wish you had.”

“Right. Boy do I know.”

“So this is what you want to get into the category of Worst First: You want to pick that one thing that’s hardest to do, that you would love to have finished and behind you. You want to make it number one. First priority. Nothing gets done until that gets done.”

Weeks went by, and Carlos struggled with the system, but finally warmed up to it after a lot of practice. After Carlos had finally made the “worst first” system into a habit, he felt a freedom he never felt before. People around him were inspired by how liberated he was becoming every day from having done the hardest thing first. Carlos would handle his biggest thing as his first thing, and then live like the rest of the day was a piece of cake. His energy soared. Soon he was teaching others the same system.

He called a few months later to give an update on his newly centered life in leadership.

“I am really freed up by this,” Carlos said. “If someone says to me, ‘Will you sit down and talk to me about this issue?’ and I have done my worst thing already, I can say ‘Sure, how much time do you need? Let’s talk.’”