Distribute work unevenly across the week — load…
Allocate weekly focused work hours unevenly based on predicted daily capacity levels (more hours to high-capacity days, fewer to low-capacity days) rather than distributing work uniformly across all days.
When This Fires
- During weekly planning sessions when allocating work across days
- When you notice consistent patterns in which days feel productive and which don't
- After tracking daily capacity for 2+ weeks and seeing predictable variation
- Any weekly planning context where you're currently distributing work uniformly
Common Failure Mode
Planning uniformly because it feels "fair" to each day: 4 hours of deep work per day, every day. This ignores that some days genuinely have more available capacity than others. The result: meeting-heavy days fail to hit the deep work target (guilt), and light days have leftover capacity that's wasted on shallow work (inefficiency).
The Protocol
During weekly planning: (1) Predict each day's available capacity based on meeting load, known energy patterns, and any scheduled events. (2) Allocate deep work hours proportionally: more hours to high-capacity days, fewer to low-capacity days. (3) A reasonable distribution might be: Monday 3h, Tuesday 5h, Wednesday 5h, Thursday 4h, Friday 2h — totaling 19h, the same as a uniform 3.8h/day but much more achievable. (4) Track actual vs. planned to refine predictions. After 3-4 weeks, your weekly allocation pattern will stabilize around your real capacity profile.