Mettl Time Management & Prioritization 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: You receive a request that is urgent to the sender but not important to your key objectives. According to the Eisenhower Matrix, you should:
- Do it immediately because it is urgent
- Delegate it to someone else if possible (Correct answer)
- Schedule it for next week
- Ignore it entirely
Correct answer: Delegate it to someone else if possible
Tasks that are urgent but not important to you are candidates for delegation in the Eisenhower Matrix (Quadrant III).
Question 2: Which metric is MOST useful for evaluating whether your time management system is working?
- The number of hours worked per day
- The percentage of high-priority tasks completed on time (Correct answer)
- How full your calendar is each week
- The number of tasks on your to-do list
Correct answer: The percentage of high-priority tasks completed on time
Completion rate of high-priority tasks directly measures whether your system is directing effort toward what matters most.
Question 3: A team member submits work late repeatedly due to poor personal time management. As their manager, your FIRST step should be to:
- Reassign all their tasks immediately
- Have a direct conversation to identify the root cause and set clear expectations (Correct answer)
- Document the behavior for a performance review without discussion
- Simply accept the delays to maintain team morale
Correct answer: Have a direct conversation to identify the root cause and set clear expectations
A direct, constructive conversation to diagnose the root cause is the first step before taking corrective action.
Question 4: Which of the following is an example of a 'time audit'?
- Estimating how long future tasks will take
- Tracking how you actually spent every hour of the past week to identify patterns (Correct answer)
- Reviewing a colleague's calendar for scheduling conflicts
- Setting a timer for each task on your list
Correct answer: Tracking how you actually spent every hour of the past week to identify patterns
A time audit involves recording actual time usage over a set period to reveal where time is being spent versus how you think it is being spent.
Question 5: Your organization uses OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). How does this framework support time management?
- It eliminates the need for daily task lists
- It provides clear priorities so time is directed toward outcomes that matter most (Correct answer)
- It replaces calendars with goal-tracking software
- It ensures all tasks are completed before new goals are set
Correct answer: It provides clear priorities so time is directed toward outcomes that matter most
OKRs create alignment between daily work and strategic priorities, helping individuals and teams allocate time to what drives key results.
Question 6: Which behavior BEST demonstrates strong prioritization skills in a fast-paced environment?
- Completing tasks strictly in the order they arrive
- Regularly re-evaluating task importance as new information and requests emerge (Correct answer)
- Focusing only on long-term strategic work and ignoring short-term requests
- Keeping all tasks in progress simultaneously to avoid idle time
Correct answer: Regularly re-evaluating task importance as new information and requests emerge
Strong prioritizers continuously re-evaluate their task list as conditions change rather than following a fixed, rigid order.
Question 7: The planning fallacy refers to the tendency to:
- Overestimate the complexity of future projects
- Underestimate the time, costs, and risks of future tasks while overestimating benefits (Correct answer)
- Fail to create any plan before starting work
- Spend too much time planning and not enough time executing
Correct answer: Underestimate the time, costs, and risks of future tasks while overestimating benefits
The planning fallacy (Kahneman & Tversky) describes our systematic underestimation of time and resources needed for future tasks.
Mettl Time Management & Prioritization 5
You receive a request that is urgent to the sender but not important to your key objectives.
According to the Eisenhower Matrix, you should: