When Did Saturday Become a Workday?
For years, I did in-person tax appointments every Saturday in February and March. Every one of those Saturdays belonged to the business.
I got them back with two decisions. I stopped setting tax appointments on Saturdays, and I blocked every other Saturday as off.
Tax season is handled. The rest of the year is still a work in progress. If your Saturdays still belong to the business, you already know how it happens.
Nobody decides to give up her weekends.
They go one reasonable yes at a time. A question from the crew at 7 at night. Two estimates you promised by Monday. A Saturday morning that was supposed to be yours. Then one day you can't remember the last weekend that was actually yours.
Time margin is the hours that belong to you. It's the second of the four margins, and the one owners talk about most, because it's the one their families notice.
Where your hours actually go.
When I sit with owners and walk through a real week, the hours almost never go where they think. They go here:
Decisions only you are allowed to make. Your lead knows exactly which fittings to order. He calls anyway, because he's never been told he can spend money without asking.
Information that only lives in your head. Which customer pays slow. Where the spare key is. What you quoted the customer on the corner lot last spring. If it's not written down, it's a phone call.
Estimates done after dinner. You can't write an estimate during the day because the day is nothing but interruptions, so the estimates move to the evening, and then to Saturday.
Saying yes to every call. In my book I put it plainly: saying yes to everything is stealing your weekends. Every job you squeeze in fills another evening.
Look at that list again. Only the last one is about how much work you have. The first three are about how the work is set up.
Your time is going to the decisions nobody else is allowed to make.
This is the part that took me a long time to see, and I see it in almost every business I work with. You're the bottleneck because you're the only one with permission.
Your crew isn't calling because they don't know what to do. They're calling because the business has never told them what they're allowed to do without you. So every small decision flows uphill to the one person who's allowed to make it, and that person is on the couch at 7 at night.
That's fixable, and it costs nothing but a few decisions made once.
Decide once.
That's all my tax-season fix was: two decisions, made once. Winter is the right time to do this, because the pace is slower and the spring rush hasn't started. A few standing decisions take an evening to write down and save you hundreds of evenings after:
A spending line. Your lead can order anything under a set amount for a job that's already approved, no call needed. Pick the number. Write it down. Tell him.
A price sheet for the standard stuff. If a service call or a standard install has a set price, the office can quote it without you. You only quote the jobs that actually need you.
An estimate block in daylight. Two mornings a week, the phone goes to someone else and the estimates get written. They stop following you home.
One list instead of fifty texts. Questions that aren't urgent go on a list, and you answer the list once a day. Most of them answer themselves before you get to them.
Each one is small. Each one moves a set of questions off your phone and onto a decision you've already made.
If you're not sure where to start, keep a tally for one week. Every time your phone buzzes with a question, jot down what it was about. By Friday you'll see the three or four questions that come up again and again. Those are your first standing decisions.
Count your Saturdays, forward.
Here's an exercise I like better than counting the Saturdays you lost. Open the calendar to March, April, and May of next year. Pick the Saturdays you want back, and put something on them now. A game, a trip, a morning with nothing in it.
Then work backward. What would have to be true for you to actually keep those days? Which decisions would someone else need to be able to make? What would need to be written down? That's your winter list.
Time margin depends on profit margin, too. When the jobs don't pay enough, you take more of them, and more jobs eat more Saturdays. The margins move together. If you missed the overview of all four, read the full Four Margins framework: simplybalancedaccountants.com/news-notes/what-the-year-left-you
Tax season was where I started. This winter I'm making the same kind of decisions for the rest of the year, so Saturday can go back to being mine. You built a business so you'd have more say over your time. You can have that say back. It starts with deciding, once, which questions don't need you.
Next Friday is capacity margin: making room now for the job that calls in March.
If you want to see all four margins side by side, and which one is costing you the most, I put them in a free guide called Busy Isn't the Same as Profitable: simplybalancedaccountants.com/start-here
Leslea Burnett-Little, EA, is the founder of Simply Balanced Accountants. She works exclusively with women who own and operate contractor businesses in Michigan — helping them get clear on their numbers, keep more of what they earn, and build a business that works for their family.
