Course: Professional Competencies

Session Number:

Part of Class Time

Objectives - Trainees will describe how poor prioritization and procrastination contribute
N/A to poor task management.
- Trainees will identify and list all tasks of someone in their family in a typical
week and rank them in terms of priority.
- Trainees will set ways of improving prioritization of those tasks for meeting
desired goals.

Competencies N/A PCE2, PCE12

Text Used N/A Time Management Matrix by Stephen Covey – Urgent vs Important
https://sidsavara.com/coveys-time-management-matrix-illustrated/

THE 4 QUADRANT WEEK PLAN - start working on what really matters | by

Stephen Covey- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z459cW8C3i0

Time Management Strategies for the Busy Faculty -

https://www.bu.edu/ctl/teaching-resources/time-management-for-faculty/

Formative N/A What: Prioritization reflection

Assessment Due when: By the end of the class
Feedback Focus:
● Creating the prioritization matrix
● Importance of prioritization
● Strategies to increase prioritization

Pre-Work N/A Identify and list all tasks of someone in your family in a typical week and rank
them in terms of priority. Think about how you can improve in terms of
priorities.

Introduction: 5 min Prioritization is something that everyone might need in daily life. To students
Framing and and/ or employees, it is an essential thing since they are always having a lot
Rationale of different tasks to deal with on a daily basis. Not being able to manage
How does this different tasks that they have, can lead to their failure. All schools and all
lesson fit into employers look for students/employees who are able to prioritize. In this class,
the broader trainees are going to discover their ability to prioritize different tasks by using
context of the different tools. They will base their learning on real-life scenarios and what
course? Why is people in their families do.
the skill helpful
to students in As prioritization is relative to the type of situation someone is in, trainees will
the long term? have to evaluate this concept in different situations. The class uses an
interactive approach and combines a few readings to build the learning of this
skill.

Warm up 5 min Prompt:

The goal of this
time is to get When was a time when you were stressed out with a big amount of tasks to
students do? What are some of the tasks that you had to do? What did you do to get
thinking/writing out of that situation without negative consequences?
and to build
stamina. Trainees will discuss with partners and the trainer will choose a few of them to
Include a share with the whole group.
prompt and
timing. There
may be some
classes where
this is not
included.

Introduction to 10 Everyone has a list of work to do every day or in a week. The work can be
New Materials min done independently or in a group. Sometimes, you feel frustrated with the
amount of work you have to accomplish in a single day or in a limited time like
a week. Work is something we all want to make our life better; to be able to
pay our bills, prepare our future, and so on. Yes, of course, you are preparing
for the future, but how can the work environment be a nice place for you?

Oftentimes in life, we have different tasks that require our attention. These
may be related to work, school, family, community, self, and so on and so
forth. Depending on the urgency and level of importance we attach to these
tasks, they become our priorities. However, these may be too many and
become overwhelming, hence the need for prioritization skills.

Turn-and-Talk: What do you understand by the term prioritization? (Ask 1 or

2 trainees before moving on). Answer: Ability to determine the level of
attention one needs to give to different tasks based on how important and
urgent they are.

Then, ask trainees to answer the following questions:

● How do you manage different tasks that you get daily?

● Do you have any tools that help you manage your task, if any, which
one?
 The above questions will help trainees to start thinking about this term of
prioritization in their own lives.

Group Practice 60 Activity 1: Prioritization Principles and Tools (20 min)

and/or min
Processing Trainer takes trainees through these principles of prioritization through a
Activities whole group discussion. You can have trainees read these principles and
interpret them in their own words to check their understanding.
Ds principles of prioritization (retrieved from this resource )
1. Do It: This refers to something that falls under your responsibility and
nobody else is supposed to, or it is something that you can do and it
won’t take much of your time - Less than 5 minutes.
2. Delete It/Dump It: This can be something that doesn’t fall under your
responsibility and it doesn’t connect to the mission and vision of the
organization or doesn’t make you happy.
3. Defer It/ Delay It: This can be something that falls under your
responsibility and connects to the mission and vision of the
organization, but it can be done later.
4. Delegate It: This can be something that falls under your
responsibilities, but someone under your supervision (housekeeper or
someone else) can do it.

The trainer explains that Planning is the core to the prioritization concept.
● There may be many instances when we feel overwhelmed by what
we have to do.
○ We balance many different priorities - school, work, family,
friends, community, and others. On any given day, you may
have to finish your part of a team project, write a report for
work, go to the bank, and visit your aunt. You may have a To
Do list that you will never finish.
○ At work, you may be assigned a big project like putting
together a business plan over the course of 3 months. It is a
daunting project, and it’s hard to know where to begin.
○ You may be responsible for putting on an event that requires
many people to take on different responsibilities. How do you
ensure everyone does what they need to?
● Planning is a way for us to manage all of our responsibilities, making
sure that we complete the goals and commitments that are most
important to us.
● When we miss deadlines or run into time constraints, it is for 2
reasons:
○ We misprioritized so we do not work on the right activities.
 ○ We procrastinate by not doing work at all.
● Planning is the process of identifying what needs to be done, how to
do it, and when it needs to be done to meet goals and commitments. It
allows us to:
○ Prioritize our work so we focus on the right activities
○ Reduce procrastination by focusing on small tasks and
immediate actions

Trainer will bring back trainees to this question:

● Do you have any tools that help you manage your task, if any, which
one?
Ask two trainees to remind you of the tools they use if any. Then proceed.

Trainer Model: There are two different tools that are used to prioritize tasks,
one is the use of a Prioritized To-Do-List, which is a list of tasks you need to
accomplish, where each one is marked as A, B, C, or D depending on its
urgency. This helps one identify which tasks need immediate attention and
which ones may come later. Another tool is the Prioritization Matrix, which is
a table that shows which tasks are urgent, important, not urgent, and not
important. This is what we will focus on today.

Have trainees in their small groups read/watch these two resources for 10
min:
● THE 4 QUADRANT WEEK PLAN - start working on what really
matters | by Stephen Covey
● Time Management Matrix by Stephen Covey – Urgent vs Important

After the set time, have 2-3 trainees explain how the matrix works.

Notes to the trainer:

Information in each box emphasizing what needs to be done immediately

(Important and Urgent), what needs to plan for the future (Important, but Not
Urgent), what needs to be delegated (Not Important, but Urgent), and what
needs to be eliminated (Not Important and Not Urgent).

Notes:
Plan= Defer It/Delay It
Eliminate: Delete It

Ask trainees:
● How are the Ds principle of prioritization demonstrated in the use of
this matrix?
 Have 2-3 trainees answer the question and clarify for any misunderstanding
they may have.

Activity 2: Matrix Practice (30 min)

Cold-call 2 trainees in front and ask them to model how the matrix can be
used for this scenario.

how to use the Prioritization Matrix:

Let’s assume I work at Kepler but I am also pursuing my studies for Master’s
degree. In addition, I have other events outside work and academics. Now
here is the list of tasks I need to accomplish within the next two weeks:
● Supporting struggling students during Office Hours
● Preparing for a test to do this weekend
● Attending a wedding planning meeting for my friend who will get
married next month
● Creating a report for my supervisor due by the end of the next two
weeks

Which tasks should I do immediately, plan, delegate, or eliminate?

Guide for the trainer (below the table)

Trainees work in small groups to discuss these scenarios and use the
Prioritization Matrix to prioritize tasks (assign each group a scenario to work
on). Be ready to share with others what you have worked on.

Trainees will form new groups that are made of participants who worked on
each of the above scenarios. Then, they will share their scenario and the
matrix created. The trainer has to be moving around to see what trainees are
doing.

Independent 45 Independent Activity (10 min)

Practice and/or min
 Application From the list of the activities you listed in the pre-class, create the
prioritization matrix.

Peer feedback (10 min)

Put trainees in small groups of 3 and they will give each other feedback on the
matrix they created.

Exit Quiz (25 min)

Have trainees complete this exit quiz:

● What is your revised priority list or matrix of the tasks you identified in
the pre-class?
● How do poor prioritization and procrastination contribute to poor task
management? Give some examples?
● What are you going to do to improve your prioritization ability? List 2-3
strategies you are going to implement.

Trainer will have to grade these works to check for the common
misunderstanding that trainees might have.

Closing 5 Trainer answers any remaining questions that trainees might have.
min

Guide to the trainer (matrix practice)

1.Do (Important and Urgent) 2.Plan (Important, but Not Urgent)

Preparing for a test to be done this Creating a report for my supervisor
weekend (this is very important and that is due by the end of next two
urgent because I need to be ready for that weeks (this is very important, but it is
test ahead of time. Therefore, depending not urgent because I still have some
on the level of urgency and importance, I time to work on it. However, I still
need to do it now. Besides, this cannot be need to plan on when and how I will
delegated. do it ahead of time).

3.Delegate (Not Important, but Urgent) 4.Eliminate (Not Important and Not
Supporting students during Office Hours Urgent)
(this can be delegated to someone else. It Attending my friend’s wedding
could be my co-teacher or TA) planning meeting (this can be
postponed. Since there is going to
likely be other meetings, I can attend
later. In addition, I may even drop the
meetings and attend just the
wedding).