Capacity

When I’m free, and how I keep it that way.

The next eight months

Each row is a week. Blue is hours already committed. The unfilled portion is open. Amber means the week is full — no new work will fit. Hatched bars are weeks already in the past.

How I think about time

One person can only think clearly about so much at once. Four clients is the upper bound on what I’ll hold in my head well; ten hours a week is the lower bound on what I’ll take, so each engagement is meaningful enough to do real work rather than babysit a Slack channel.

A normal week splits roughly: half deep work on the deliverable, a quarter calls and async, a quarter writing — memos, briefs, threads of reasoning that survive after the call ends. The 50-hour ceiling exists because the 51st hour is reliably where the mistakes live.

What that means for you

• If there’s open space in the chart above, I can probably start in 1–2 weeks.
• If a week is amber, I won’t cram a fifth client in. I’ll quote a later start instead.
• Short engagements (one focused week, an audit, a memo) slot in faster than retainers.
• Retainers get reviewed every quarter. We re-baseline scope and hours together.

What I won’t do

• Take a fifth client to inflate revenue at the cost of the other four.
• Quote a start date I can’t actually keep.
• Add hours without telling you why first.
• Hide behind “capacity” when the real answer is “not a fit.”

$ cat capacity.txt
  target ...... 40 hr / week
  ceiling ..... 50 hr / week
  max clients . 4 concurrent
  min slot .... 10 hr / week per client
  re-baseline . every quarter for retainers