4.4 Prioritizing and Task Completion

• Why is prioritization important?
• What are the steps involved in prioritization?
• How do I deal with situations where others’ priorities are different from my own?
• What do I do when priorities conflict?
• What are the best ways to make sure I complete tasks?

One of the best ways to make good decisions about the prioritization of tasks is to understand the requirements of each. If you have multiple assignments to complete and you assume one of those assignments will only take an hour, you may decide to put it off until the others are finished. Your assumption could be disastrous if you find, once you begin the assignment, that there are several extra components that you did not account for and the time to complete will be four times as long as you estimated. Or, one of the assignments may be dependent on the results of another—like participating in a study and then writing a report on the results. If you are not aware that one assignment depends upon the completion of the other before you begin, you could inadvertently do the assignments out of order and must start over. Because of situations like this, it is critically important to understand exactly what needs to be done to complete a task before you determine its priority.

After you are aware of the requirements for each task, you can then decide your priorities based on the importance of the task and what things need to be finished in which order. To summarize: the key components to prioritization are making certain you understand each task and making decisions based on importance, impact, and urgency.

To better see how things may need to be prioritized, some people make a list of the tasks they need to complete and then arrange them in a quadrant map based on importance and urgency. An example of items that fit into each of the quadrants are shown in the Time Management Matrix below.

In this activity you will begin by making a list of things you need or want to do today. Then draw the four quadrants shown above. Write each item you listed in one of the four squares; choose the square that best describes it based on its urgency and its importance. When you have completed writing each task in its appropriate square, you will see a prioritization order of your tasks. Obviously, those listed in the Important and Urgent square will be the things you need to finish first. After that will come things that are “important but not urgent,” followed by “not important, but urgent,” and finally “not urgent and not important.”

Knowing What You Need to Do

As discussed in previous parts of this chapter, many learning activities have multiple components, and sometimes they must occur in a specific order. Additionally, some elements may not only be dependent on the order they are completed but can also be dependent on how they are completed. To illustrate this, we will analyze a task usually considered simple: attending a class session. In this analysis we will look at not only what must be accomplished to get the most out of the experience, but also at how each element is dependent upon others and must be done in a specific order. The graphic below shows the interrelationship between the different activities, many of which might not initially seem significant enough to warrant mention, but it becomes obvious that other elements depend upon them when they are listed out this way.

Many Tasks are Dependent on Foundational Tasks

As you can see from the graphic above, even a task as simple as “going to class” can be broken down into a few different elements that have a good deal of dependency on other tasks. One example of this is preparing for the class lecture by reading materials ahead of time to make the lecture and any complex concepts easier to follow. If you did it the other way around, you might miss opportunities to ask questions or receive clarification on the information presented during the lecture.

Understanding what you need to do and when you need to do it can be applied to any task, no matter how simple or how complex. Knowing what you need to do and planning for it can go a long way toward success and preventing unpleasant surprises.

Knowing How You Will Get It Done

After you understand what needs to be done to complete a task (or its component parts), the next step is to create a plan for completing everything.

This may not be as easy or as simple as declaring that you will finish part one, then move on to part two, and so on. Each component may need different resources or skills to complete, and it is in your best interest to identify those ahead of time and include them as part of your plan.

A good analogy for this sort of planning is to think about it in much the same way you would prepare for a lengthy trip. With a long journey you would not walk out the front door and then decide how you were going to get where you were going. There are too many other decisions to be made and tasks to be completed around each choice. If you decided you were going by plane, you would need to purchase tickets, and you would have to schedule your trip around flight times. If you decided to go by car, you would need gas money and a map or GPS device. What about clothes? The clothes you need will depend on how long you will be gone and what the climate will be like. If it is far enough away that you will need to speak another language, you may need to either acquire that skill or at least plan for something or someone to help you translate.

What Resources Will You Need?

The first part of this list may appear to be so obvious that it should go without mention, but it is by far one of the most critical and one of the most overlooked. Have you ever planned a trip but forgotten your most comfortable pair of shoes or neglected to book a hotel room? If a missing resource is important, the entire project can come to a complete halt. Even if the missing resource is a minor component, it may dramatically alter the result.

Learning activities are much the same in this way, and it is also important to keep in mind that resources may not be limited to physical objects such as paper or ink. Information can be a critical resource as well. One of the most often overlooked aspects in planning by new college students is just how much research, reading, and information they will need to complete assignments.

For example, if you had an assignment in which you were supposed to compare a novel with a film adapted from that novel, it would be important to have access to the movie and book as resources. Your plans for completing the work could quickly fall apart if you learned that on the evening you planned to watch the film, it was no longer available.

What Skills Will You Need?

Poor planning or a bad assumption in this area can be disastrous, especially if some part of the task has a steep learning curve. No matter how well you planned the other parts of the project, if there is some skill needed that you do not have and you have no idea how long it will take to learn, it can be an unpleasant situation.

Imagine a scenario where one of your class projects is to create a poster. You intend to use imaging software to produce professional graphics and charts for the poster, but you have never used the software that way before. It seems easy enough, but once you begin, you find the charts keep printing out in the wrong resolution. You search online for a solution, but the only thing you can find requires you to recreate them all over again in a different setting. Unfortunately, that part of the project will now take twice as long.

It can be extremely difficult to recover from a situation like that, and it could have been prevented by taking the time to learn how to do it correctly before you began or by at least including in your schedule some time to learn and practice.

Set Deadlines

Of course, the best way to approach time management is to set realistic deadlines that consider which elements depend on which others and the order in which they should be completed. Giving yourself two days to write a 20- page work of fiction is not very realistic when even many professional authors average only 6 pages per day. Your intentions may be well founded, but your use of unrealistic deadlines will not be successful.

Setting appropriate deadlines and sticking to them is particularly important—so much so that several sections in the rest of this chapter touch on effective deadline practices.

Be Flexible

It is ironic that the item on this list that comes just after a strong encouragement to make deadlines and stick to them is the suggestion to be flexible. The reason that being flexible has made this list is because even the best-laid plans and most accurate time management efforts can take an unexpected turn. The idea behind being flexible is to readjust your plans and deadlines when something does happen to throw things off. The worst thing you could do in such a situation is panic or just stop working because the next step in your careful planning has suddenly become a roadblock. The moment when you see that something in your plan may become an issue is when to begin readjusting your plan.

Adjusting a plan along the way is incredibly common. Many professional project managers have learned that something always happens or there is always some delay, and they have developed an approach to deal with the inevitable need for some flexibility. You could say that they are even planning for problems, mistakes, or delays from the very beginning, and they will often add a little extra time for each task to help ensure an issue does not derail the entire project or that the completion of the project does not miss the final due date.

Simple things, like where you are set up to do your work, can not only aid in your efficiency but also affect how well you can work or even if you can get the work completed at all. One example of this might be typing on a laptop. While it might seem more comfortable to lie back on a couch and type a long paper, sitting up at a desk or table increases your typing speed and reduces the number of mistakes. Even the kind of mouse you use can impact how you work. Using a mouse that is comfortable for you can make a significant difference.
There are many other factors that can come into play too. Do you have enough space? Is the space cluttered, or do you have the room to keep reference materials and other things you might need within arm’s reach? Are there other ways you could work that might be even more efficient? For example, buying an inexpensive second monitor—even secondhand—might be the key to decreasing the amount of time you spend when you can have more than one document displayed at a time.

The key is to find what works for you and to treat your workspace as another valuable resource needed to get the task finished.

Few things are more frustrating than trying to do work while distractions are going on around you. If other people are continually interrupting you or there are things that keep pulling your attention from the task at hand, everything takes longer, and you are more prone to mistakes.

Many people say they work better with distractions, but the truth is that an environment with too many interruptions is rarely helpful when focus is required. Before deciding that the television or talkative roommates do not bother you when you work, take an honest accounting of the work you produce with interruptions compared to the work you do without distractions.

If you find that your work is better without distractions, it is helpful to create an environment that reduces interruptions. This may mean you have to go to a private room, use headphones, or go somewhere like a library to work. Regardless, the importance of a distraction-free environment cannot be emphasized enough.

Research has clearly demonstrated that multitasking, task switching and dual tasking result in more mistakes and a lower retention of information. Our brains are not efficient in shifting from one activity to another. Single tasking produces the best quality work and better retention of information. Single-tasking is also the most effective use of time.

Most people are subject to their own rhythms, cycles, and preferences throughout their day. Some are alert and energetic in the mornings, while others are considered “night owls” and prefer to work after everyone else has gone to sleep. It can be important to be aware of your own cycles and to use them to your advantage. Rarely does anyone do their best work when they are exhausted, either physically or mentally. Just as it can be difficult to work when you are physically ill, it can also be a hindrance to try to learn or do mental work when you are tired or emotionally upset.

Your working environment includes your own state of mind and physical well-being. Both have a major influence on your learning and production ability. Because of this, it is not only important to be aware of your own condition and work preferences, but to try to create conditions that help you in these areas. One approach is to set aside a specific time to do certain kinds of work. You might find that you concentrate better after you have eaten a meal. If that is the case, make it a habit of doing homework every night after dinner. Or you might enjoy reading more after you are ready for bed, so you do your reading assignments just before you go to sleep at night. Some people find that they are more creative during a certain time of the day or that they are more comfortable writing with subtle lighting. It is worth taking the time to find the conditions that work best for you so that you can take advantage of them.

1. How do you break a large assignment into smaller parts?
2. Explain the Time Management Matrix.
3. What are strategies to deal with conflicting priorities?
4. Why is your study space important for your success?