Find my highest-value work and where my time adds little value
Maps your responsibilities to business value so you can see what to protect, what to shrink, and where time is wasted.
The prompt
Help me see which parts of my work create the most value and which consume time without much return.
My role and what I'm measured on: [e.g. "finance business partner; measured on forecast accuracy and decision support"]
My responsibilities and recurring activities: [PASTE - add rough hours per week if you know them]
Team or company goals this year: [GOALS]
What my manager or customers value most from me: [IF KNOWN]
For each activity, assess:
- Value created: revenue, cost, risk reduced, decisions improved, customer or team impact.
- Whether it needs me specifically (my judgment, relationships, expertise) or could be done by someone or something else.
- Time vs. value: high value / low time, high value / high time, low value / high time, low value / low time.
Return:
1. Value map: | Activity | Hours/week | Value created | Needs me? | Quadrant | Recommendation |
2. My 3-5 highest-value activities, and what would happen if I gave them more time.
3. Where I spend time without meaningful value, with the likely reason (habit, unclear ownership, someone else's priority, perfectionism, a broken process).
4. Three changes for next week that move at least [e.g. 4] hours from low-value to high-value work.
Rules: Don't assume meetings or admin are worthless; some prevent risk or keep key relationships healthy. Where hours are missing, estimate and label them as estimates. Judge value from what I told you; don't invent metrics.
Highlighted [brackets] are blanks to replace with your own details.
Fill in the blanks and use this promptMore Productivity & Planning prompts
What to fill in
- PASTE - add rough hours per week if you know them
- GOALS
- IF KNOWN
- e.g. 4
How this prompt is built
This prompt follows the Few-Shot structure (Few-shot prompting). A few-shot prompt includes one or more worked examples of the input and the output you want, so the model can copy the pattern instead of guessing it.
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