Prioritizing. When dealing with many tasks, prioritizing your work becomes an important step to perform. Using the WRAP technique in prioritizing will help you start your day on the right foot. Avoid approaching your day unplanned or haphazardly. Once you take the time to prioritize the things that you have to complete in your day, you will have a sense of direction. Let’s take a look more closely at the WRAP technique. When you start your day, you should take inventory of the things you have to complete and write them on your to-do planner. You may have things on your to-do list already. That is okay, just add the other tasks on them. Once your task is in your to-do book, rank each task by importance. You may use numbers or letter, but do not exceed more than three rankings. You want to be able to keep track of the most important tasks. Making your ranking system from one to 20 or from A to Z will make it ineffective in determining which are all the important tasks. There are several questions you can ask yourself to help rank your tasks. Here are some examples. When is it due? For whom is it for? Is it related to a specific project? Can this be done later? Is another task dependent on this one to be finished before it can move on? Once ranked, anticipate how long each task is going to take. If you run out of time for all your tasks, move those tasks which should be low priority to the next day and rank them higher by one category. Once the time is set, perform each task as planned, guarding against time wasters mentioned in past modules. Your prioritized list is your guide for the day. Remember to calculate into your prioritized list the time you need to attend meetings and the time you need to make telephone calls.
