Week 4 Review: What Your Time and Experiments Actually Revealed
This week you tracked how you actually spend weekend time and ran a small professional experiment testing one specific hypothesis. Now you review what both revealed about your capacity and your direction.
Today you identify whether you have time to build alternatives and whether your experiment pointed toward something worth pursuing.
What to review:
Pull out the work you completed this week:
Day 22: Your complete weekend time tracking in 30-minute blocks showing where discretionary time actually went
Day 23: Your seven-day small experiment testing a professional hypothesis with real market exposure
Day 24: Your analysis of experiment results including quantitative responses, qualitative feedback, and your own reactions
The time reality check:
Review your weekend tracking from Day 22. Add up the 30-minute blocks you categorized as discretionary time where you controlled what happened.
How much actual discretionary time did you have? Most professionals expect 10 to 15 hours across a weekend and discover they have 4 to 8 hours after accounting for obligations, maintenance, family logistics, and necessary rest.
Now look at how you spent those discretionary hours. Calculate what percentage went to:
Activities that build capacity: learning, creating, experimenting, developing skills or relationships
Activities that provide rest: genuine recovery that leaves you restored rather than just distracted
Activities that consume time: scrolling, passive entertainment, transitions between tasks, low-value busy work
If more than 60% of your discretionary time went to activities that consume time without building capacity or providing genuine rest, you have time to build alternatives. You're currently spending it on things that don't serve your goals or restore you.
If most of your discretionary time went to necessary rest because your week exhausts you completely, your capacity problem is not time management. Your capacity problem is that your current work drains you to the point where weekends exist only for recovery.
The experiment results interpretation:
Review your Day 24 analysis of your seven-day experiment. What did you conclude?
Continue with minor adjustments: your hypothesis received validation but execution needs refinement
Pivot significantly: responses revealed interest in something adjacent but not what you proposed
Abandon this direction: no meaningful validation or fundamental misunderstanding of market conditions
Now test whether your conclusion matches the actual data or whether you're interpreting results based on what you wanted to find.
Common interpretation errors:
Declaring success based on one or two responses from people who know you socially
Abandoning after one test because results weren't immediately strong
Confusing curiosity ("that's interesting") with commitment ("I'll buy that")
Over-interpreting limited data to support continuing something you're emotionally invested in
The capacity versus direction question:
Look at your time tracking and your experiment results together. They reveal two different things that both matter.
Time tracking reveals capacity: do you have discretionary time available to build alternatives, or do you need to solve a different problem first?
Experiment results reveal direction: if you have capacity, is this specific direction worth pursuing or do you need to test different hypotheses?
Four possible combinations emerge:
You have capacity and your experiment validated direction: continue with adjusted approach starting Monday
You have capacity but your experiment invalidated direction: design new experiment testing different hypothesis
You lack capacity but your experiment validated direction: solve the capacity problem before pursuing this opportunity
You lack capacity and your experiment invalidated direction: focus on building capacity before testing new directions
What your own reaction revealed:
Review how you felt during and after your experiment. Not whether you felt successful. Whether you felt energized or drained by the work itself.
An experiment that generated modest market response but energized you points toward something worth developing. You're in early stages with validation that suggests continuing.
An experiment that generated strong market response but exhausted or bored you points toward work that has demand but doesn't fit you. Either adjust the approach to make it more engaging or acknowledge this isn't the right direction regardless of market validation.
Your subjective experience matters as much as market response. Building alternatives requires both market demand and work you're willing to sustain.
The adjustment versus abandonment decision:
If your experiment produced mixed results, you decided whether to adjust and test again or abandon this direction. Review that decision now with one day of distance.
Does your decision to continue or abandon reflect actual data or does it reflect your emotional attachment to being right about your original hypothesis?
The most common error at this stage is continuing to test variations of an idea that received no market validation because you're invested in making it work. The second most common error is abandoning ideas too quickly after single tests without understanding which specific element failed.
What difficult moments revealed:
Think about the hardest moment this week in your resilience experiments. The moment when you felt most uncertain about your capacity, your direction, or your ability to build alternatives.
What triggered it? Seeing how little discretionary time you actually have? Discovering your experiment revealed zero market interest? Recognizing that you're exhausted by your current work to the point where building alternatives feels impossible? Admitting you don't know what alternative to build even if you had capacity?
Difficult moments reveal obstacles faster than planning. What did yours reveal?
The integrated assessment:
Combine what you learned about time, capacity, and direction into one assessment.
Best case: you have discretionary time, you're spending it on low-value activities you can redirect, and your experiment validated a direction worth pursuing. Your path forward is clear.
Common case: you have limited discretionary time, you need it for genuine rest, and your experiment produced ambiguous results that require further testing. Your path requires solving multiple problems simultaneously.
Challenging case: you have minimal discretionary time because your current work exhausts you completely, and your experiment revealed no clear direction worth pursuing. Your path requires difficult decisions about current work before you can build alternatives.
What you'll do differently:
Based on this week's examination of time and experiments, identify one specific change starting Monday:
If you have discretionary time going to low-value activities, commit to redirecting two hours next weekend to capacity-building work.
If your experiment validated direction with adjustments needed, design your second test incorporating what you learned.
If your experiment revealed you're testing the wrong hypothesis, identify a different specific question to test next.
If your capacity problem is exhaustion rather than time management, identify one aspect of current work you can adjust to preserve energy.
Pick one change. Specific. Actionable. Starting Monday.
Next step:
Complete this resilience review today. Tomorrow and Sunday you'll integrate findings across all four capability areas to create your Week 5 plan. This weekend builds your understanding of where you actually stand and what needs to change.
