It’s extremely important that you prioritise each task set out before you. Generally speaking, there are three criteria which you should use in order to prioritise your tasks:

1. Urgency – The closer the deadline, the sooner it needs to be done. As a rule, you shouldn’t leave any of these tasks until the last minute, because you never know if another task might appear and take precedence. Complete tasks based on their urgency as much as possible.
2. Size and Complexity – The bigger a document, or the more complex a task, the more time it’s going to take to complete it effectively. You should try and complete the bigger tasks as soon as possible so that you can get them out of the way, making room for the smaller tasks.
3. Importance – This is slightly more abstract than the other criteria, since the importance of a task will depend on your scenario. For example, if you receive a task from the director of the company you’re working for, then it might take precedence over a task assigned by a team-mate. There’s no real trick to this: just use your own judgement to figure out which tasks are more important than others.

While a lot of the key information will be supplied in the background information document, there might be more key details in the other items for the entire exercise. Therefore, it’s important that you read every document before you get started, since some new information in a document could change everything about how you approach the tasks.

In addition, reading every item before getting started allows you to prioritise everything effectively. You don’t have to read each piece closely before starting since you’ll do that later, but at least skim through each document for important details before starting on anything.

You don’t have to complete every task yourself. In some cases, you’ll have the opportunity to delegate tasks to other ‘members of staff’. Of course, these aren’t actual people, but if you can justify why you’re assigning the task to them then this is acceptable.

As part of the background information package, you might be given a chart listing relevant staff members at the company. While this can be used for completing tasks (such as figuring out who to forward a letter to), you might also be allowed to assign a task to a relevant staff member.

For example, you receive a note asking you to deal with a refund request. The company policy states that all refund requests must be processed by Katie, the Head of Quality Assurance at the company. In this case, it would be completely acceptable to delegate the task to her to complete.

In some cases, you will be asked to find a suitable individual to assign a specific task to. For example, your manager might have noticed that there was an issue with the office printer, and someone is required to get in touch with the manufacturer to resolve the problem. Your manager may specifically ask you to deal with this, or they might suggest that you find someone else to do it. In this case, you would try to find an individual with the clearest schedule as well as the best qualifications for the role.

In other cases, you might not be asked to delegate a task, but it’s appropriate given your workload or qualification. If this is the case, try to find an individual who is most suited for the task.