The Fewer the Better: Prioritize your requests to get more done

Research finds that when we ask people to do multiple tasks, with an easy one and a hard one, most people do the easy one first. Psychologists call this tendency the smaller tasks trap, which leaves people vulnerable to getting distracted before they can complete the harder one. Other research finds that asking people to do a lot of tasks can result in them doing fewer in total than asking them to do a smaller number from the start.