Balance my workload across several clients without overbooking
A capacity view of my client commitments for the coming weeks, with conflicts, what to move, and how to tell clients.
The prompt
Help me plan my workload across my clients for the next few weeks.
Available working hours per week: [HOURS, minus admin, sales, and time off]
Client commitments: [for each client: deliverables, deadlines, estimated hours, retainer hours owed]
New work in the pipeline: [proposals out, likely start dates]
Fixed time I protect: [business development, admin, learning, personal]
Where I'm feeling squeezed: [SPECIFICS]
Give me:
1. A week-by-week capacity table: client | hours needed per week | total vs. available, with overloaded weeks flagged.
2. My billable utilization target and whether this plan hits it or burns me out (most solo consultants can't sustainably bill every working hour).
3. Conflicts and options for each: move a deadline, batch work, subcontract, or decline new work. Say which client relationships can absorb a change best.
4. Short messages to clients whose timelines I need to adjust, giving new dates with a reason and no over-apologizing.
5. A rule for when to accept new work, given my pipeline.
6. A weekly 15-minute review routine to keep this current.
Use my estimates. If they look optimistic compared with how much I'm trying to fit in, tell me.
Highlighted [brackets] are blanks to replace with your own details.
Fill in the blanks and use this promptMore Productivity & Planning prompts
What to fill in
- HOURS, minus admin, sales, and time off
- proposals out, likely start dates
- business development, admin, learning, personal
- SPECIFICS
How this prompt is built
This prompt follows the RTF structure (Role, Task, Format). RTF tells the model who to be, what to do and what shape the answer should take. It is the quickest structure that still gives noticeably better results than a bare request.
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