Couple articles I read actually recommend sort of priming the yeast by mixing it into a cup of warm sugar water a few hours before you are ready to add it to the mix.
But I’ve never done this before and am interested other folks experiences.
I double the requested yeast amount, prime in warm water with a spoonful of sugar. . . .
Figure it will overpower anything bad . . . kind of natures own bactericide.
Yes, this is the right way to do it, but make sure you use warm and not hot water. Hot water will kill the little yeasties.
What you're doing with the sugar and warm water is bringing the yeast out of suspended animation and giving it nutrients (the sugar) to feed and reproduce in a friendly environment (the warm water). That, in turn gives you a larger quantity of good critters (the yeast) to put into the malt after its done brewing. Your yeast is competing for resources with bad critters (random bacteria in the air and on your equipment) in the malt, so it's important to have as many ready to go as you can. Essentially what happens is that yeast produce good things like alcohol and good flavors and the bad critters produce bad flavors, so you want to give the good critters as much of a head start as possible in the competition for the limited food resource (the malt).
Keep in mind that after the first few days most of the malt will have been processed by the yeast and they will start dying off, so you have a limited window for them to do their work.