If life obeys Hess' Law where if the "Initial" and the "End" is the same, the amount of steps or the kind of steps that is taken don't matter. Would you like your first few steps to be exothermic(Give out heat) or endothermic(Takes in heat)?

The start and the end probably is, and will be the same regardless of how the approach we take in life. Or rather, in any endeavours that we participate in. So would we prefer our first few days of the program to be easy or hard?

As a teacher, or the educator, how would you plan your schedule for your students? Would you like them to experience the hard from day 1 or the easy?

The rationale could probably be majorly divided into the following two:

By beginning with the easy things, easy sums, easy road, we encourage those involved so that when the hard part comes, they knew they were coming, had more or less a mental preparations for the hard parts, and not stop or give up halfway.

In contrary, by starting with the hard, the tough, or some might say "The Impossible", we let the participants experience the hardest, toughest things that they will experience in the program such that when they manage to pass the first test, everything else would seem easier and smooth.

It would be akin to reactants in a mixture trying to overcome the activation energy. Its the hardest, but in the transition state, the only way to go is to become the products. Success is as if a straight road ahead.