The Slow Day Playbook: The Phone Isn't Ringing. The Clock Is Still Running.

A dead day costs the sample shop $1,183 — wages that go out regardless plus the day's share of rent, insurance and vehicles — whether anybody decides anything or not. You can't un-spend it. You can only decide what it buys. Spent on the ranked list, the same day buys $4,690 of future work: a 3.96× return on a day you'd already paid for.

How it works

• What a Slow Day Costs — your burn for a day with no work, computed once, so the list below feels as urgent as it actually is
• The Ranked List — nine moves, each with hours, dollars returned, and dollars per hour, sorted so 9am on a dead Tuesday requires no judgment. Quote calls at the top; preventive maintenance at the bottom; tidying the shop not on it at all
• The Standing Rule — the one-sentence rule you post in the shop, decided the day before rather than the morning of; who takes the calls; the honest part about sending people home; what a whole slow week means (triage vs cure); and the monthly count that turns three slow days into a number worth acting on

Built for

Trades · salons · shops · restaurants · any business where some days the work just doesn't show up.

What you get

One .xlsx file, four tabs, instant download. Excel, Google Sheets, Apple Numbers, LibreOffice. No macros, no subscription. Swap the nine moves for your own — the ranking method is the product.