Do your hardest task first thing in the morning
The most important skill I mastered as an Amazon VP
Welcome to this week’s free article of Level Up: Your source for career growth solutions & community by retired Amazon Vice President, Ethan Evans. If you’d like to become a paid member, see the benefits here, and feel free to use this expense template to ask your manager.
Willpower is a limited resource that drains away throughout the day.
This is why most people cheat on their diets in the afternoon or evening. They can win the fight in the morning, but as the day wears them down, they succumb.
The same is true of tough tasks.
It is tempting and easy to start your day reading a little email and then checking off some "warmup" tasks, like meetings or replying to messages.
We tell ourselves that we are getting all the "little stuff" out of the way so that we can focus on the "big task" that is waiting for us.
The problem is, between the little tasks we start with and the interruptions, meetings, messages, and emails, a lot of time goes by.
Sometimes we lose a whole day. On other days, by the time we are finally ready to tackle the big, hard, important task, it is mid-afternoon and one of three things happens:
We lack the time to finish it, so we use that as a reason not to start.
We lack the energy to work on it, so we tell ourselves we will do it tomorrow.
We lack the willpower to face the hard parts of the task, so we put it off.
I did this (I previously wrote about my struggles scaling as an Amazon Director).
Sometimes I still do.
But these delayed tasks have another cost.
Every day that they are not done, you feel guilty about it and you worry that you are not getting to it.
Such tasks become a kind of psychic vampire, draining your energy day after day as you worry about them.
The solution is actually just like the vampire stories - jump on that task in the early morning light, pound a stake through its heart, and watch it melt away into the mist.
Once we start working on them in earnest, most "hard" tasks are harder in our fears than they are in reality.
Learning to tackle them first thing in the morning stops the fear from draining our energy for the entire day, and ultimately turns us into more productive workers and leaders.
I plan my top weekly goals on Sunday evening, then daily goals for tomorrow each weekday evening.
Setting intentions and priorities is really powerful.
Readers, what are your tricks to get moving on the thing you dread? The thing you know you should do but you keep wanting to put off?
Put this advice into action: What task should you stop avoiding and go do RIGHT NOW?
Audience Insights
Additional ideas worth considering from my LinkedIn audience:
Eat the Frog by 2 PM. For those unfamiliar, the term "Eat the Frog" means identifying and completing your most important, high-impact, and difficult task first. This works because: (a) "Having to eat a frog doesn't get better as the day goes on, it actually gets worse due to anticipation"; (b) Once completed, the rest of your day is smooth sailing (like working out in the morning); (c) I extend to 2 PM because sometimes I need lunch to give me another energy jolt.
Having a time block for this in my calendar, and avoiding checking email/messages then, brings the discipline to tackle it for me. I generally have that task identified the day prior during my shutdown ritual.
Eat the Frog for your boss. A great way to build a win/win relationship with your boss. You become known as a proactive doer who pays attention, cares, and delivers. Similar to Ethan's popular "The Magic Loop" framework (also in video/podcast with Lenny Rachitsky).
One “trick” I use when I am tempted to put off a tough task is to “Just do it for 5 minutes.” We can do anything for 5 minutes, right? Once we start, we realize it wasn’t as hard as our mind made it out to be, and we can often continue on without hindrance. It’s a mental hack to overcome “emotional” static friction, which we know is greater than kinetic friction. Try it, you may like it!
It’s much easier to focus on the “important” things in my role: customer meetings and imperatives are always first. I tend to not care how difficult these tasks are. For the others, they are prioritized against the customer imperatives of the day. I’m a little fanatical about discipline, and admittedly have the least amount of energy first thing in the morning, so I’ve had to muscle through it in my own way.
Many managers are on the edge of burnout. One part of the problem is ineffective delegation. Try this one simple question with your employees: “What do you recommend?” By doing so, empower them to take action, support them to act with autonomy, and you turn them into owners. Most of the time your employees will have a good answer, or if they don’t, they may surprise you (in a good way).
Eliminate distractions. Try a different physical location with the sole purpose of finishing that task. Cafe, library, conference room, or different room in your house.
Another simple tool can be to close every other browser tab and window that might tempt you away from the one thing you really want to get done.
Concentrate your focus. Arthur Schopenhauer (German philosopher) wrote: “Intellect is a magnitude of intensity, not a magnitude of extensity.”
When Steve Jobs returned as Apple CEO in 1997, Apple had 40 products in market. He met with Jony Ive (SVP of Industrial Design) and asked: “Jony, how many things have you said no to?” Ive was confused. Jobs went on to explain: “You have to understand. There are measures of focus, and one of them is how often you say no. What focus means is saying no to something that you—with every bone in your body—think is a phenomenal idea, and you wake up thinking about it, but you say no to it because you’re focusing on something else.”
Leading a High-Performing Org & Cross-Functional Acumen — Fireside chat with Omar Halabieh (Amazon Tech Director)
Level Up Newsletter & Community paid members are invited to join us live where Omar Halabieh and Jason Yoong will discuss what it takes to build and lead a high-performing org with specific tactical tips to measure performance, implementation, altitude shift, and scale. They will also cover how to increase visibility and develop win/win relationships with cross-functional leaders, and, Omar will share what he did to grow his career.
Omar is a global technology executive with over 20 years of experience and is currently the Director of Software Engineering at Amazon, leading the Technology function for Payments across the Middle East and Africa. He has been recognized as a LinkedIn Top Voice and is ranked the #1 LinkedIn Arab World Creator in Management and Leadership.
Connect With Ethan & Jason
Ethan’s live online courses and on-demand courses.
Level Up is your source for career growth solutions & community by retired Amazon Vice President, Ethan Evans.
Laura Wheeler refers to it as "scary hour". I find a lot of my writing anxiety goes away if I am able to consistently hit my target word goal for the day first thing in the morning. It works for other "big willpower" tasks as well (though I always get the writing done first if I can!)
https://fortune.com/well/us/2023/03/24/scary-hour-productivity-hack/
I used to study late into the night because I thought that was putting me ahead. But I was actually getting much less done during those hours because I was tired from the rest of the day. I've been strongly moving in the direction of crafting a strong morning routine that focuses on time-blocking my day and allows an early-day Cal Newport inspired "deep work" session. "Do your hardest task first thing in the morning" is another development that I think compliments this nicely. Thanks for sharing! I'll try this out.