Time vs. Priority Review

A VP of strategy describes her top priorities as people development, strategic clarity, and external relationships. In reviewing her week, she spends the large majority of her time in operational meetings, email management, and reactive problem-solving. She knows this intellectually but has never quantified it. The knowing and the seeing are different.

'This worksheet maps your top ten priorities against the hours you actually spent on each last week. Not the quarter, not in general - last week specifically. The specificity matters. Use a recent, representative week rather than your best week or your worst one.' The instruction to use a recent week prevents the common pattern of answering based on how a good week would look rather than how the work actually distributes.

Priority lists that are aspirational - the things she wishes she were working on - rather than the things that actually occupy her attention. A priority list that includes 'people development' while her calendar shows zero 1:1s that week is a gap worth naming. Watch also for time estimates that are systematically rounded in favor of priorities over reactive work. Ask her to count meetings in the past week before she estimates.

Start with the gap question: 'Which priority has the highest importance ranking but the lowest hours?' That question identifies the top misalignment immediately. Then: 'What's the story you've been telling yourself about why that item has so little time?' Don't accept 'I'm just too busy' - push for the specific mechanism: what is actually taking that time instead, and is it a genuine constraint or a default pattern.

A founder of a technology consultancy is entering a new quarter with ambitious growth plans. In the previous quarter he committed to three strategic objectives. When asked how the quarter went, he describes the highlights - a new client, a successful proposal, team growth. He has not looked at how his time actually distributed relative to those objectives.

'Before we plan the next quarter, we're going to account for the last one. This worksheet maps priorities against hours - not what you planned to do, what you actually did. Write the ten things most important to you in the last quarter, then estimate the hours per week you spent on each.' The backward-looking framing matters here - this is a review, not a planning document. He'll be more honest about hours if it's assessment rather than aspiration.

Priority lists from founders that load up on strategic items ('business development,' 'team culture') while the time column reveals most hours in operational delivery. That distribution is often accurate for founders at his stage, but seeing it written down changes the conversation. Watch for the Reflection Notes section to become justificatory - 'I had to be in delivery because of client needs' rather than diagnostic.

After the table is complete: 'What do you see in this?' Let him read the pattern before you name it. Then: 'Which item has the biggest gap between where you ranked it and how much time it got?' Then the forward question: 'If you want next quarter to look different, which of these rows would need to change, and by how much?' That question connects the accounting exercise to a specific design decision.

A newly promoted SVP at a financial services firm is approaching his first full quarter at the new level. Previous quarters were managed from a director mindset - high execution, low strategy. He wants this quarter to be different but does not have a practice for examining how he actually uses time. He's planning into a gap.

'Before we plan forward, this worksheet will tell us what we're planning from. Fill it in for last quarter - the ten things most important to you, and the hours you actually spent on each. This is the baseline. Once we can see it, we can design against it rather than guess.' That framing makes the review instrumental: it's not retrospective navel-gazing, it's data for better planning.

First-time use of this worksheet producing entries that mix professional and personal priorities in ways that the client finds surprising - he may not have thought of the worksheet as covering the whole life, only the work. That's useful. Watch also for the Reflection Notes section to be left blank - for first-time users, the synthesis step is often unfamiliar and may need prompting in session.

For a first-time use, don't try to cover all the implications in one session. Pick one: 'What is the single clearest thing this worksheet tells you about the last quarter?' Then: 'If this pattern continued unchanged into next quarter, what would that mean for where you're trying to go?' The second question creates a consequence for staying in the current pattern without prescribing the change.