Where Your Week Actually Goes
Module 1 · The Owner Trap · Play 3 of 10
In a hurry? ↓ Do this this week
The problem in one breath
You are busy every single day, but if someone asked you Friday where the week went, you could not tell them. You know you should hand things off. You just do not know what — so you keep doing all of it, and the week runs you instead of the other way around.
Why it happens
Nobody hands a roofer a tidy calendar. Your day is phone calls, jobsite runs, a supplier who shorted the load, a homeowner who is hot about a stain on the driveway. By Friday it is a blur. You cannot fix a week you cannot see — and "just work less" is not the fix. The fix is seeing which hours to cut and which to hand off, so the hours that are left are the ones only you can do.
The play
One exercise. Track a real week — a messy, honest one — in half-day blocks. You will not sit down to journal from a jobsite, so capture on the fly and sort it out later.
- Three phone notes a day. Set three alarms: mid-morning, after lunch, end of day. When one goes off, open your phone notes and thumb-type one line — what ate the last few hours? Ten seconds. That is the whole capture.
- Sunday, drop the notes into blocks. Split each day into two blocks, morning and afternoon, five or six days. Write one line per block: what you actually did.
- Mark each block twice. First mark — did it drain you, sit neutral, or fuel you? Second mark — could only you have done it, or could someone else?
- Read the two marks together. The blocks that are both drain and someone-else are your trapped hours — work that wears you down and did not need you at all. That is the pile to hand off first. The blocks that are fuel and only-you are your best-use hours: the selling, the tricky bid, the relationship that lands the next ten roofs. Protect those. That is where you earn.
- Make the hand-off list. List your trapped blocks; the top three become this month's targets: who takes each one, and the first small step to move it off your plate.
The point is not to work more hours. It is to trade trapped hours for best-use hours — and hand the rest to someone whose whole job it should be.
Do this this week
Set the three daily alarms right now — mid-morning, after lunch, end of day. When one goes off, thumb-type one line into your phone: where did the last few hours go? Do it for one week. The tool does the rest.
The tool
Or fill it in here — no download →
Opens in Excel, Google Sheets, Numbers or LibreOffice. Grab it on the phone now — it’ll be waiting on the computer at the shop.
where-your-week-actually-goes.xlsx — the week grid. Fill in each half-day block, then mark it drain/neutral/fuel and only-me/someone-else from the dropdowns. The sheet adds your trapped hours, shows what percent of your week is trapped, and lists your top three hand-off candidates automatically. One day is filled in as an example so you can see how it reads before you start. See the sheet notes below for what each column and formula does.
If your crew is 1099
Nothing to adjust — this play is about your own time, not directing a crew.
M1-03 · Where Your Week Actually Goes — Roofer MBA, https://roofermba.com/plays/owner-trap/diagnose-your-week
The sheet notesHow the sheet works — the columns and the formulas
The columns, the formulas behind them, and the judgment calls — so you can rebuild it by hand if you ever need to.
What it does
You track one real week in half-day blocks. For each block you write what you did and give it two marks. The sheet reads the two marks together and tells you three things: how many trapped hours you have, what percent of your tracked week that is, and your top three things to hand off first. One day (Monday) is filled in as an example — delete that text before you start.
How to use it
- Set Hours per half-day block (cell B2). Default is 4. Change it if your blocks run longer.
- For each block, type What I did (column C).
- Pick Drain / Neutral / Fuel (column D, dropdown) — did that block drain you, sit neutral, or fuel you up?
- Pick Only me / Someone else (column E, dropdown) — could only you have done it, or could you have handed it off?
- Read the YOUR WEEK box on the right. The top three list is your hand-off plan.
Columns
| Column | What it is |
|---|---|
| A Day / B Block | Mon–Sat, AM and PM (12 blocks). Didn't work a block? Leave its row blank — blank blocks don't count. |
| C What I did | One line per block. A block with nothing written in it counts as untracked, not as trapped. |
| D Drain / Neutral / Fuel | Energy mark (dropdown). |
| E Only me? | "Only me" or "Someone else" (dropdown). |
| F Trapped hrs | Auto: block-hours if the block is written in AND Drain AND Someone else, else 0. |
| G _score (hidden) | Auto ranking helper — 1 if trapped, else 0, plus a tiny position tiebreaker so the top-three list reads first block to last and never picks the same row twice. |
Formulas (so you can rebuild it by hand)
- Trapped hrs (F5, fill down):
=IF(AND(C5<>"",D5="Drain",E5="Someone else"),$B$2,0)— theC5<>""is what keeps a block you marked but never wrote in out of the count. - Ranking helper (G5, fill down):
=IF(AND(C5<>"",D5="Drain",E5="Someone else"),1,0)+(100-ROW())/10000— the second half is the position tiebreaker: earlier rows score a hair higher, so the top three come out in week order. - Trapped hours (I5):
=SUM(F5:F16) - Total tracked hours (I6):
=COUNTA(C5:C16)*$B$2— counts only the blocks you filled in. - % of week trapped (I7):
=IF(I6=0,0,I5/I6)— this is percent of the hours you logged, not of a 168-hour week. Both halves count the same blocks, so it can't read over 100%. - Top 3 to hand off (H10–H12):
=IF(LARGE($G$5:$G$16,k)>=1,INDEX($C$5:$C$16,MATCH(LARGE($G$5:$G$16,k),$G$5:$G$16,0)),"—")for k = 1, 2, 3. Shows "—" when you have fewer than that many trapped blocks.
Only universally-supported functions are used (IF, AND, SUM, COUNTA, LARGE, INDEX, MATCH) — no Excel-365-only dynamic arrays, so it opens and computes in old Excel, Numbers, and LibreOffice.
Notes / judgment calls
- The top three aren't ranked. Every trapped block counts the same (drain + someone-else is yes/no), so the top-three list reads in week order — first trapped block to last, not worst to best. All three are equally worth handing off — start with whichever you can move first.
- Write the block in, or it doesn't count. Marking the two dropdowns but leaving What I did blank leaves the block out of the trapped hours, the percent, and the top three. That's on purpose: a block you can't name isn't a block you can hand to anybody.
- Don't delete rows — the box sits on them. The YOUR WEEK box shares rows 5 through 16 with the grid, so deleting a grid row takes a summary formula with it. Leave blocks you didn't work blank instead. The sheet counts rows 5 through 16; if you need more, insert them INSIDE the block (above row 16) so the ranges stretch with them, then drag the F and G formulas down one row — a row typed below row 16 is not counted at all.
- The sheet ships with the numbers already saved in it, so a phone preview shows real figures; they recalculate as soon as you type in it.
The one thing
Do this this week
Set the three daily alarms right now — mid-morning, after lunch, end of day. When one goes off, thumb-type one line into your phone: where did the last few hours go? Do it for one week. The tool does the rest.
Take it with you
One email unlocks this and every other sheet and card on the site. The plays stay free.
Same fire
You're working nights and can't say what ate the day
- M1-03where your week actually goes — you’re here
- M1-04who you can hand it to
- M5-05where the hour belongs
Fixed this?
The day gets eaten by decisions only you're allowed to make.
The fire right behind it is usually Every decision waits on you.