Do Your Worst

Several careers ago, I had a longish commute (although not by today’s standards; the same drive now is Much Worse).  My job had a lending library of educational tapes and I listened to a lot of them in the car because driving is not my favorite thing ever.  The tapes all focused on various business skills.  We got some kind of Brownie points for writing up what we learned.  (I wrote a stinging assessment on the one about professional dress for women as being particularly sexist and stupid.  The culture may not have caught up with my thinking, but at least I now have a career where sweats are, in fact, totally appropriate in the workplace.)

Anyway, one of these many tape series discussed various time management techniques.  There was one that I found transformative:  Worst First.  In the context of time management, what it means is that we do the most horrible thing on our lists before all the other things because once that is done, it’s all easier going.  We, in theory, procrastinate less because that awful thing is over.  I find, as bonus, it reduces my stress level to know that particular monster is slain.

This theory applies to fitness.  For some of us, it makes us work out very first thing because workouts are our Worst.  Those of us who hate cardio can check it off before we hit the weights.  Weight-haters can do a brief warm up, pump the iron, and relax (relatively speaking) into the cardio haze.  Even within a weight workout, if there is one exercise that makes us want to invent new swear words, we can put it up front.  It all gets better after that’s over.

We can get the Worst done.