Protocols by role

The same protocols, written around a particular working day. The evidence in this field is for recovery rather than for enhancement, so none of these pages claims to make you sharper — each one protects the transitions, and each one says plainly what it will not do.

• Senior and staff engineers

  For senior engineers: protecting the transition into deep work

  A protocol for engineers whose day is interrupt-driven: protect the entry into focus, the exit from it, and the incident that arrives at 16:50.

• Executives and directors

  For executives: the decision load, and the gap before each one

  A protocol for people whose output is decisions: a gap before the consequential ones, a reset between meetings, and a hard end to the day.

• Managers and team leads

  For managers: a day of other people, and the ninety seconds between them

  A protocol for a diary made entirely of other people: a reset between conversations, a pattern for the hard ones, and a real end to the day.

• On-call and incident response

  For on-call rotations: sleeping with the pager, and the week after

  On-call sleep is worse than its duration suggests, because anticipation fragments it. A protocol for before, during and after the rotation.

• Founders

  For founders: uncertainty as a working condition

  Founders run on sustained uncertainty with no detachment. What that does physiologically, and a protocol that survives a week where everything changes.

• Doctors, nurses and paramedics

  For clinicians: shifts, nights, and the two minutes between patients

  A protocol built around a shift rather than an office day: between patients, after a resus, at the end of nights, and on the drive home.

• Traders, analysts and finance leaders

  For finance: risk decisions, market hours, and physiological state

  Risk-taking shifts with physiological state, and market hours compress the day. A protocol for the open, the drawdown and the close.

• Lawyers and advisers

  For lawyers: billable hours, adversarial days, and no recovery in them

  Legal work combines sustained concentration with adversarial pressure and a billing model that punishes breaks. A protocol built around that.