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    Interactive assessment

    Prioritisation Style Audit

    Assess your approach to prioritisation across four dimensions: urgency versus importance, strategic clarity, decision confidence, and focus and follow-through.

    Prioritisation research consistently shows that most people spend the majority of their working time in urgency, responding to what is pressing rather than what is important. This pattern is the single greatest driver of busyness without progress. This audit identifies where your prioritisation is strong and where urgency, reactivity, or lack of a clear system is pulling your effort away from the work that matters most.

    Questions or items
    20 questions or items
    Completion time
    Around 10 minutes
    Dimensions
    Urgency vs Importance, Strategic Clarity, Decision Confidence, Focus and Follow-Through
    What you receive
    Personalised results with result bands, section scores and development guidance.

    What it covers

    • Urgency vs Importance
    • Strategic Clarity
    • Decision Confidence
    • Focus and Follow-Through

    Rate each statement from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 5 (Strongly Agree) based on how consistently and accurately it describes your current practice. Rate what you actually do, not what you intend to do.

    Results: Personalised results with result bands, section scores and development guidance.

    How this interactive diagnostic works

    Read what it covers here first. Nothing is saved or sent until you continue. Your result is calculated once every required item is answered.

    If it asks for your first name and work email, you enter them in the diagnostic itself. This page sends nothing.

    Statements in this diagnostic

    Statements are grouped by section. Answer each one for the situation named in the instructions, using the scale shown.

    Urgency vs Importance

    Whether you consistently work on what matters most, or whether urgency is driving your attention more than importance. This is the foundation of effective prioritisation.

    1. I regularly work on tasks that matter to my longer-term goals, even when urgent requests are competing for my attention
    2. When my task list is full, I evaluate items by their importance, not just by when they arrived or who is asking
    3. I am comfortable letting a non-critical request wait, even when the person asking wants it immediately
    4. At the end of most weeks, I feel I have made real progress on important work, not just cleared my inbox
    5. I can consistently distinguish between what is genuinely urgent and what merely feels urgent

    Strategic Clarity

    How clearly you have defined what matters and how well your daily choices reflect those priorities. Without clarity on what is important, urgency fills the gap.

    1. I know my top three priorities for the current week before Monday begins
    2. I can explain how my daily tasks connect to my broader goals or team objectives
    3. When new requests arrive, I can quickly assess where they sit relative to my current priorities
    4. I make deliberate choices about what I will not work on, not just what I will
    5. I review and reorder my priorities regularly rather than just adding to an ever-growing list

    Decision Confidence

    Your ability to make clear priority decisions quickly and to communicate and defend them. Indecision and reactivity are as costly as the wrong choice.

    1. I make priority decisions quickly and without excessive second-guessing
    2. When I have to choose between two competing priorities, I use clear criteria rather than going with whichever feels more pressing
    3. I communicate proactively with others when I am deprioritising their request in favour of something more important
    4. I can defend my priority choices clearly to colleagues, managers, or stakeholders when needed
    5. I rarely reprioritise reactively based on the last conversation I had or the last email I received

    Focus and Follow-Through

    Whether your stated priorities actually get done. The best prioritisation system fails if you cannot protect time and attention to act on it.

    1. Once I have identified my top priorities for the day, I protect time to actually work on them
    2. I complete my most important task of the day before moving to secondary work
    3. I review what I actually spent my time on each week to check it matched my stated priorities
    4. I have a system for tracking my commitments that I trust and use consistently
    5. I rarely end a working day having been very busy while making little progress on what matters most

    How the result is read

    Your answers are totalled for each section and overall. Each total falls into one of the bands below.

    • Urgency-Driven, 20 to 44: Your time and attention are being driven by urgency more than importance. This is the most common pattern for busy professionals, and it is also the most costly: you are likely to feel productive whilst making slower progress than you could. The first move is clarity: define your top three priorities for the coming week before the week begins, and treat them as fixed before anything else fills your diary.
    • Reactive Pattern, 45 to 64: You have a sense of what matters but urgency is still winning more battles than it should. Your instincts are right, but your systems are not yet strong enough to protect your stated priorities under pressure. Focus on your lowest-scoring section first: that is where the gap between intention and practice is largest.
    • Developing Prioritiser, 65 to 82: You prioritise well in most situations. You have clarity on what matters and good habits for protecting it, though pressure or volume occasionally pulls you off course. Look at your lowest section for the specific dimension to develop next.
    • Strong Prioritiser, 83 to 100: You have a well-developed prioritisation practice. You are clear on what matters, make decisions confidently, and protect your focus effectively. The risk at this level is assuming others share your approach: as a manager or collaborator, your clarity is only as valuable as your ability to help others develop the same capability.

    Sources named in this diagnostic

    • Covey, S.R. (1989) The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. New York: Simon & Schuster.
    • Eisenhower, D.D. (1954) Address to the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches, Evanston, Illinois.
    • Newport, C. (2016) Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. New York: Grand Central Publishing.
    • Morgenstern, J. (2004) Time Management from the Inside Out. New York: Henry Holt.

    Where to take the next step

    Our management development programmes build practical skills for focus, conversations and delivery.

    Explore Management Development

    Frequently asked questions

    What does the Prioritisation Style Audit measure?

    Prioritisation research consistently shows that most people spend the majority of their working time in urgency, responding to what is pressing rather than what is important. This pattern is the single greatest driver of busyness without progress. This audit identifies where your prioritisation is strong and where urgency, reactivity, or lack of a clear system is pulling your effort away from the work that matters most.

    How many questions are in the Prioritisation Style Audit?

    It contains 20 questions grouped into 4 dimensions: Urgency vs Importance, Strategic Clarity, Decision Confidence, Focus and Follow-Through.

    How is the Prioritisation Style Audit scored?

    Responses are totalled within each section and across the diagnostic, and each total falls into a result band.

    What happens after I complete the Prioritisation Style Audit?

    Once the required items are answered, you enter your first name and email to see your results: an overall interpretation, section scores and development guidance.

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