Ranking Priorities

This week I used the ranking priorities strategy to use in my WRT 105 class as well as my CLS 105 class. The ranking priorities strategy works by creating a list of all the work that needs to get done in a certain class, and then placing the letters A, B, or C next to them to signify the importance. A being absolutely essential, B being important, and C being optional. After determining the importance of each assignment, one rearranges the assignments in each letter category according to the priority of each assignment.

My writing 105 class has a lot of weekly assignments that often feel like busy work, so the ranking priorities strategy is actually quite effective for this class. Each week we are given a readings and a assignment based around that. We also had a worksheet due that week, but an essay was also assigned for the near future. To me the most obvious way to prioritize the assignments for this class was by the due date itself. The weekly assignments as well as the worksheet were categorized as absolutely essential simply because they were do in two days. The essay, on the other hand, I listed as important because it was not do for two weeks or so and as much as I would have liked to get a start on it there was no real sense of urgency surrounding it. I combined the Ranking priorities strategy with the ten minute technique with writing 105 because the work is very monotonous. It includes defining vocabulary words and other things that make me want to get up and go do something else, so the ten minute technique proved to be beneficial because it helped me power through the work I needed to do. Combined with the ranking priorities, which helped me visualize my goals, I finished under 40 minutes.

The ranking priorities actually helped less with my CLS class, simply because, the homework I needed to get done was all absolutely essential, so it was hard to really make a list and understand what truly needed to get done because it all needed to get done.

I picked the ranking priorities strategy because it is a great tool for me to use because I always find myself jumping from task to task and accomplishing a lot less in a small period of time rather than just getting all my work done at once. The ranking priorities strategy gave me a clear trajectory for accomplishment

D's Due and Don't Organizer

This week I used the D's Due and Do Organizer for my classes EDU 200 and WRT 105. I found the D's Organizer to be helpful especially for my EDU 200 class because I had a project due this week. The D's organizer helps you visualize the amount of work you have to do each day and what work is actually due in class during the week to help you prioritize. In conjunction with the fritter finder the D's organizer can be very helpful because you can find times during the day in which you have small pockets of time to do lower priority work. The only drawback of the D's organizer is that it leaves you a bit short sighted for longer projects such as the faculty interview project for CLS 105. The D's organizer should probably be used with a monthly calendar as well to be truly effective otherwise one could easily lose track of the long term.

I chose this strategy because I am a forgetful person. If I don't plan out my week and get my assignments out on paper so that they are all clearly visible something will definitely fall through the cracks. I think that the D's organizer could be used by anyone; however, I do not think it should be used on its own otherwise more challenging assignments could be procrastinated upon and become more difficult than needs to be.