COM 1100 Unit 7 assignment: organizing your time
A two-part COM 1100 assignment: use the Time Management Calculator to record where your hours go, identify five tasks for the coming week with time estimates, then choose a prioritisation strategy from MacKay's blog post, rank the five tasks, explain the choice, and block them into a digital calendar with a screenshot of the weekly view.
Editorial process
Last reviewed · August 12, 2026
Why are audit and plan graded separately?
The two parts are audit and plan, and each is graded against a different competency, so keep them visibly separate in the document. Part one is measurement: where your hours actually go and how long five specific tasks will actually take. The value of the calculator is that it usually disagrees with your intuition, and saying so is worth writing down — most people underestimate commuting, admin and the recovery time around a shift, and overestimate how much of an evening is usable. Part two is decision-making: choosing a strategy, applying it, and defending the choice. A submission that lists five tasks, ranks them by gut feel and shows a calendar has skipped the reasoning that both competencies are actually testing. Label the two parts with the assignment's own headings and the marker can find each one without hunting, which is worth doing in every submission that names its parts.
The time estimates are where accuracy earns marks cheaply. Give each of the five tasks a number in minutes or hours rather than a vague sense, and prefer estimates you can justify — last time this took ninety minutes, so I am allowing two hours. Padding is realistic rather than lazy, because a plan built on best-case estimates fails on the first interruption and then the whole week's schedule has to be rebuilt. Make the tasks concrete enough to finish, too: read chapter four and make notes is a task, study is not, and the difference matters when you come to block time for it. Five tasks of a size you can complete in a week is the target the assignment sets, and if one of your five is really a project, break it into the piece you will finish this week and schedule that instead.
The prioritisation step asks you to choose a strategy from the assigned reading and explain why you chose it, so name it explicitly — the Eisenhower urgent-important matrix, eating the frog, ranking by consequence, or whichever of the seven methods you used — and rank one through five with one being most important. Explain the choice against your own situation rather than in general, since the strategy that suits a week with one hard deadline is not the one that suits a week of many small obligations. Then the calendar: set it to weekly view, add each task as an appointment with real start and end times drawn from your estimates, and take the screenshot with all five visible, which is an explicit requirement. Check the screenshot is legible at the size it appears in your document, because an unreadable image cannot evidence anything and the competency being marked is explicitly about creating screenshots that accurately show the work.
Likely learning objectives
Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.
- 01Separate measurement from planning in the document.
- 02Report where the calculator disagreed with your expectations.
- 03Write tasks specific enough to be completed and scheduled.
- 04Justify time estimates from experience rather than optimism.
- 05Name a prioritisation strategy from the reading and defend it against your own week.
Read the full question
Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.
Turn the brief into deliverables
- 01Time Management Calculator results by category.
- 02Five tasks for the coming week with time estimates.
- 03A named prioritisation strategy from the assigned reading, with a reason.
- 04The five tasks ranked one to five.
- 05A screenshot of a digital calendar in weekly view showing all five tasks blocked.
What makes a task blockable?
Where the time goes
Report the calculator results by category and note where they disagreed with your expectation.
Five tasks and estimates
Name five concrete tasks for the coming week with justified time estimates.
The strategy
Name the method from the reading and explain why it fits this particular week.
The ranking
Apply the strategy to produce ranks one to five, showing the reasoning.
The calendar
Blocked appointments in weekly view with a legible screenshot inserted into the document.
How do you defend a prioritisation strategy?
Recommended databases
- MacKay, The 'Everything Is Important' Paradox (assigned reading)
- Course video tutorials on digital calendars and screenshots
Search sequence
- 1.Run the calculator before choosing your five tasks, since the audit should constrain the plan.
- 2.Read the assigned post properly and pick a method by name rather than describing prioritisation generally.
- 3.Watch the calendar and screenshot tutorials the assignment links, because both outputs are graded on execution.
- 4.Take the screenshot after all five appointments exist, then paste it and check it is readable.
Reference shortlist
These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.
Nothing here is cleared for citation until you have read it.
- 01
LearnFree | Free Online Courses and Practical Skills
Goodwill Community Foundation · 2024
Tutorials on Google Calendar, Outlook and taking screenshots, for the execution half of the assignment.
- 02
O*NET OnLine
U.S. Department of Labor · 2024
Organising, planning and prioritising work as a listed work activity, if you want to frame why the skill is assessed.
- 03
Academic Integrity at MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology · 2024
The link between time pressure and academic misconduct, useful context for why planning is taught early.
Review before submission
Common mistakes
- Merging the audit and the plan so neither competency is clearly evidenced.
- Reporting calculator totals with no comment on what surprised you.
- Listing tasks too vague to schedule, such as 'homework' or 'study'.
- Estimating best-case times that leave no room for interruption.
- Ranking tasks without naming the strategy that produced the ranking.
- Explaining the strategy in general rather than against your own week.
- Submitting a screenshot in day view, or one where not all five tasks are visible.
Submission checklist
- Calculator categories reported with hours.
- One observation about where the estimate was wrong.
- Five tasks, each concrete enough to finish.
- A time estimate in minutes or hours for each.
- A named strategy from MacKay's post with a personal justification.
- Ranks one to five assigned.
- A legible weekly-view screenshot with all five appointments visible.
Use this guide to plan and review your own work. Follow your institution's rules and read our academic-integrity policy.
Written by
Aaron Bishop
MA, Education
assignment interpretation and research-methods coaching across disciplines
Aaron leads the EssayCrackers editorial desk. He works on how assignment briefs are read — what a rubric is actually asking for, and where students most often answer a different question than the one set.
Reviewed by
Dr. Nathan Cole
PhD, Rhetoric & Composition
Argumentation and thesis development
Nathan teaches first-year composition and directs a university writing center. He reviews EssayCrackers guides for argumentative soundness and citation accuracy.