Vocations · Professional Development · Productivity

A full week
has no room
for Tuesday.

Take meetings and email out of the week first. The calculator measures your task list against the focus hours that are left and shows how much to move.

Check my weekWhat you get

The workload capacity calculator

The worked example is a 40-hour week with nine hours of meetings. Nothing you type leaves this browser.

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What you get

Vocations · Professional DevelopmentFree

What you finish with
Your focus hours, the share the plan books, the hours over or under your target and every task’s share, largest first. It prints as a summary to bring to a planning conversation with a manager.
Who it is for
Employees planning a week, early-career professionals learning to say what fits, and adults balancing a job with classes.
Format
Browser calculator for a phone, tablet or computer, by touch or keyboard. Prints a summary; downloads a spreadsheet (.csv); export and import a file.
Access
Free. No account, no sign-in and nothing to install. Everything you type stays in this browser; nothing is sent to Caveat.
Where it lives
The Professional Development space in Caveat Vocations.
Support
Questions, a correction or a request: team@caveatacademic.com.

How to use it

  1. Type your work hours and meetings.
  2. Estimate the admin share honestly.
  3. List the tasks and their hours.
  4. Compare the load to the target.
  5. Move work before midweek.

Check my week

How capacity is measured

Against focus time, with room left for the unplanned.

The worked example: the week of November 16Work week40 hpaid hoursLess meetings31 h9 h of meetingsLess admin25 h15% to emailTasks booked100%25 h plannedThe worked example: the week of November 16Work week40 hpaid hoursLess meetings31 h9 h of meetingsLess admin25 h15% to emailTasks booked100%25 h planned
Meetings and admin come off first; the plan is measured against the focus hours that are left, not the whole week.

Focus time, not the week

A 40-hour week is not 40 hours of task work. Meetings are fixed, and email, messages and small requests take a steady share. What is left is the time a task list has to fit into, and it is often closer to 25 hours than 40.

Why aim under 100 percent

Queueing studies show that waits grow sharply as a person or a system runs close to full: one surprise and everything slips. Planning for 80 to 85 percent of focus time leaves room for the request that arrives on Tuesday.

Sources

  1. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. American Time Use Survey, time spent working (bls.gov/tus).
  2. U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Performance management: planning work and setting expectations (opm.gov).
  3. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Total Worker Health: work organization and workload (cdc.gov/niosh).
  4. Kingman, J. F. C. (1961). The single server queue in heavy traffic. Mathematical Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 57(4), 902–904.

The estimates are only as good as the hours typed. Your entries stay in this browser. Support: team@caveatacademic.com.