Planning
Reading your own weekly tides
Before choosing what to do on the side, it helps to know when you could do it. Most people overestimate their free time because they picture an empty evening rather than the evening they actually have.
Draw last week, not an ideal week
Take a sheet of paper and draw seven columns, one per day, with the hours running down the side. Fill in what really happened last week: work, commute, sleep, meals, the school run, the hour on the phone with family. Use your calendar and your messages to check. An ideal week is the one where nothing goes wrong, and that week rarely comes.
Mark the water level
Shade every hour that was spoken for. Sleep counts. So does time with the people you live with, even when nothing is scheduled. What stays white is your low water. Most readers who try this find between five and twelve hours, spread over three to five windows.
Measure the depth of each window
A window has a length and a depth. Length is easy: two hours. Depth is how much attention you'll have in it. Tuesday 21:00 after a long shift is shallow water. Saturday 08:00 after a full night's sleep is deep. Write a short note next to each window: shallow, medium or deep.
Match the work to the water
- Shallow, short windows suit work that can stop at any moment, such as transcription or listing items you've already photographed.
- Medium windows on fixed evenings suit work with a regular rhythm, like tutoring at the same time every week.
- Deep, long windows suit work that needs continuity or travel, like repairs or assembly jobs.
Leave some beach
Don't fill every low-water window in the first month. Leave at least one unplanned. Weeks change, and a plan with no slack tends to fail on the first busy Thursday.
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