Your real capacity, in hours

The gap nobody measures

Ask someone how many hours of deep work they put in over a week. The answer comes in around thirty-five. Have them log their hours for two weeks, and the real figure almost always sits between twelve and eighteen.

The gap is not about laziness. It comes from what never gets counted: meetings, travel, interruptions, restarting after interruptions, admin, the unexpected, and end-of-day tiredness.

Until that gap is measured, every plan is built on an imaginary capacity. And a plan built on imaginary capacity fails, which then gets read as a lack of discipline.

The capacity log

Two weeks, two minutes a day.

Each evening, note three figures: hours of deep work actually produced, hours of meetings, hours of admin and messaging. Do not note what you had planned. Note what happened.

After ten working days, take the average. That figure is your capacity. Every subsequent plan starts from it.