A week that will not fit

Do this on paper, or on the calendar you already use. It takes about ten minutes and does not require setting anything up.

Count the fixed things first

1. List everything that cannot move this week. Work hours, appointments, anything with other people attached, anything with a deadline set by someone else.
2. Add the travel to each one. An appointment across town is not an hour. It is an hour with two half-hours stuck to it, and the slot either side is not really free.
3. Add the recovery to any that need it. Some commitments cost something afterwards. If you know a particular one does, that time is spoken for too.

Now look at what is genuinely left. That, not the whole week, is what everything else has to fit into.

Then check for the four common collisions

1. Two deadlines in the same forty-eight hours. Very common, rarely noticed until the day. If you find one, that is the finding — this is not a week to also start something new.
2. A deadline whose work has nowhere to live. The report is due Thursday and needs three hours. Point at the three hours. If you cannot point at them, they do not exist yet.
3. The night before as your only attempt. Sometimes unavoidable. Worth knowing in advance rather than at eleven on Wednesday.
4. No unbroken rest anywhere. Half a day in one piece is a different thing from six scattered hours. If there is no pair of free slots side by side, that is a real finding about the week.

Then decide which kind of week it is

If most of it is free and the trouble is arranging it, the useful next step is arranging: a settled order, a smaller list, one thing at a time.

If the fixed things fill it before you start, no system will help, and trying more of them will cost you the little that was left. The useful questions are different ones:

• Which of the fixed things could move, even by a day? Pick the one that would free the most.
• Could anyone else take one? Not all of it. The part that does not need you specifically.
• What actually happens if one deadline is late? Sometimes very little. That is worth asking rather than assuming.
• Is this week unusual, or is it what every week now looks like?

Most of those are questions for somebody else, and that is deliberate. A week that will not fit is rarely filled by one person. The things that landed on top of each other were set separately, by people who could not see the rest of your week. Nobody chose the collision. That makes it a thing to raise, not a thing to absorb quietly.

Asking early is also easier than asking late. On Monday, a moved deadline is an adjustment. On Thursday it is a problem, and you will be asking for a favour instead of a change.

The last question is the important one. A one-off overloaded week is a thing to get through. Several in a row is a fact about the arrangement of your life, and it is not solved at the level of the week.

The line worth keeping