Before promising another campaign, put your marketing requests and existing obligations in the same hours budget. A weekly capacity plan shows what you can finish, whose input you need, and what will wait.
For a founder who also handles product and support, start with the hours actually available for marketing. A spreadsheet and calendar are enough to build the plan.
Calculate the hours you can commit
Look at next week’s calendar and the work you did during the previous two weeks. Start with working hours after time off. Subtract fixed obligations, recurring work, and a reserve for interruptions.
Hours for planned deliverables = available hours − fixed obligations − recurring work − contingency reserve.
Count each hour once. If reporting sits under recurring work, don’t also subtract it as administration. If you have ten hours available for marketing, start with ten and subtract only obligations that must fit within those hours.
This calculation adapts the process in Asana’s capacity planning guide: estimate demand in a common unit, account for existing workload, and compare remaining capacity with the work requested.
Choose your reserve using recent experience. If urgent requests consumed several hours last week, allow room for similar interruptions. When you have no history, make a provisional estimate and record what happens. Adjust the reserve to your workload rather than treating a fixed percentage as a benchmark.
Keep that time visible in your calendar. Filling it with optional posts on Monday leaves less room for a problem on Thursday.
Turn channel requests into work you can finish
“Do SEO” gives you little to estimate. “Update one comparison page, verify its product claims, and test its links” defines a task you can scope.
For each proposed deliverable, record the intended reader, the problem it addresses, what finished means, and the hours required. Include research, production, review, revisions, publishing, distribution, and measurement where they apply.
Separate your working time from elapsed time. A product review may require 30 minutes of your attention while taking two days to come back. Name the reviewer and agree on a review deadline before committing to publication. The reviewer’s availability is a separate dependency; it does not come out of your personal hours budget.
Use a range when the task is unfamiliar. If a page might take six to nine hours, reserve nine or reduce its scope.
Budget the full workflow when using AI, including checking claims and fixing drafts. Reduce future estimates only after observing a saving on comparable work. Contractor help also needs an allowance for briefing and review.
Choose work around a buyer problem
After protecting existing obligations, choose one main outcome for the week. For a small SaaS team, that might be helping active evaluators understand an integration or testing whether a specific audience responds to a product use case.
Find evidence for the problem in customer questions, support requests, or relevant public discussions. Keep the original wording and its source separate from your interpretation. A repeated question can justify investigating a topic; it does not establish how many people share the problem or whether a campaign will succeed.
If that evidence is scattered, use the pain-point evidence sheet guide to organize it before committing production hours.
Compare candidate tasks against the chosen problem, existing deadlines, and available inputs. Ask what useful evidence each task could produce and what other work must move to make room.
Avoid giving every channel an equal slice by default. Maintaining an active campaign may be necessary, while starting another channel is optional. Include its future replies, updates, reporting, and maintenance in later capacity plans.
Worked example: allocate a hypothetical 40-hour week
Suppose a solo marketer at an AI SaaS company has 40 working hours next week. The founder wants more qualified evaluations, and recent prospect questions suggest the product’s integration process needs a clearer explanation.
These are illustrative estimates, not staffing benchmarks or observed results.
| Weekly allocation | Hours |
|---|---|
| Meetings and administration | 7 |
| Recurring campaign checks and replies | 4 |
| Reporting and next-week planning | 2 |
| Contingency reserve | 4 |
| Planned deliverables | 23 |
| Total | 40 |
The 23 deliverable hours go to four commitments:
| Deliverable | Hours |
|---|---|
| Integration explainer page | 10 |
| Email introducing the explainer | 4 |
| Two LinkedIn posts based on the same question | 4 |
| Prospect-question review and brief for the next asset | 5 |
| Total | 23 |
The explainer’s ten hours cover the marketer’s research, drafting, review coordination, revisions, publishing, and link checks. The product lead must separately confirm time to review it. The email estimate includes audience selection and testing. The posts include adaptation and scheduling; routine replies already have an allocation in the first table.
The product lead agrees to return comments by Wednesday. Monday and Tuesday hold the main research and drafting blocks. Wednesday includes review coordination and email preparation. Thursday holds revisions and distribution, leaving Friday for the next brief and scheduled reporting. Fixed obligations, recurring work, and reserve time also need calendar space.
The plan explicitly defers a webinar, a new paid channel, and a visual rebrand. The webinar returns for consideration when someone can own preparation and follow-up. The paid channel needs an experiment brief, spending limit, and management time. The rebrand needs a scoped brief before anyone can estimate it.
The founder can now see both the week’s commitments and the conditions for reconsidering deferred requests.
Make new requests displace named work
Share the plan with whoever can change priorities. Keep the deferred list in the same document so nobody has to guess whether those tasks are progressing.
An unplanned request needs an estimate and a decision about where its hours will come from. It can use available contingency time, replace scheduled work, shrink in scope, or move to a later week.
In the hypothetical example, a six-hour launch request arrives after two of the four reserve hours have been used. Assume the email has not started. The remaining reserve supplies two hours, and deferring the four-hour email supplies the rest.
You could propose the change this way:
I can fit the launch request this week using the two remaining reserve hours and moving the four-hour email to next week. That delays email distribution of the explainer. Which delivery should take priority?
Only unspent hours can move. If two hours have already gone into the email, deferring it releases just the remaining two; another two hours must come from elsewhere. If the email is a firm external commitment, choose another adjustment before accepting the launch work.
Also limit how many deliverables you start at once. The Kanban Guide calls for explicit control of started but unfinished work and selecting new work when capacity is available. For this plan, try a limit of two substantial active deliverables, including those awaiting review. Two is a proposed starting limit to adjust, not a number prescribed by the guide.
A blocked item stays visible. Record who can unblock it and when you will follow up. If both active slots are occupied, resolve the blockage or explicitly revise the plan before starting another deliverable.
Review hours weekly and outcomes on a suitable schedule
At the end of the week, compare estimated and actual hours for each deliverable. Record the reasons for meaningful differences, such as missing inputs, extra revisions, underestimated production, or urgent requests.
Use those differences to update the next plan. If review repeatedly adds two hours, include them in future estimates. If meetings keep consuming the reserve, revise the fixed-obligation budget. Estimate the remaining effort on unfinished work and allocate it before adding new commitments.
Keep delivery measures separate from marketing outcomes. Finishing the explainer within its budget helps assess whether the plan was workable. Relevant replies, evaluator questions, and downstream actions help assess whether the content was useful. Choose the outcome and review date before distributing it, and avoid treating a handful of responses as conclusive evidence.
A weekly planning cycle does not require a weekly verdict on SEO. Google’s SEO Starter Guide says changes can take from hours to several months to be reflected in Search, and some produce no noticeable impact. Use the weekly review to manage execution while allowing a suitable observation period for results.
Copy this weekly capacity worksheet
Fill in the budget first, then add commitments that fit.
Week:
Primary buyer problem:
Evidence for that problem, with source:
HOURS BUDGET
Available hours after time off:
Fixed obligations:
Recurring work:
Contingency reserve:
Reason for the reserve:
Remaining hours for deliverables:
COMMITMENT (repeat for each deliverable)
Deliverable and intended reader:
Finished means:
Estimated working hours:
Calendar blocks:
Required inputs and who supplies them:
Reviewer and review deadline:
Delivery deadline:
Outcome to assess, evidence to collect, and review date:
DEFERRED WORK (repeat for each item)
Task:
Reason it does not fit:
Date or condition for reconsideration:
CHANGE RULE
Who decides which work moves:
How estimates, remaining hours, and deadlines will be updated:
END-OF-WEEK REVIEW
Actual hours per deliverable:
Unfinished work and estimated hours remaining:
Reserve used and why:
Changes to next week's estimates:Before accepting next week’s work
Check that the hours add up, each commitment has calendar space, and reviewers can respond before delivery deadlines. Put one requested task that does not fit on the deferred list, with a clear condition for bringing it back. Share both lists with the person who sets priorities.
