#85: how to design a minimum work season

you don’t have to be in peak performance mode to be a working person

Good morning,

Over the years, I’ve shared essays on how to shape work through seasons, systems, and care—like:

• How to Design a Deep Work Sprint (#79)

• How to Design a Sabbatical (#61)

• Seasons of Delivery vs. Data Collection (#59)

These now live together in a new Library module in progress: 📦 Designing Containers for Your Work (and Life)

Today, I want to share about the newest chapter in this line of thinking: how to design for MVP mode.

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What is MVP mode?

For the past three months, I’ve been in a deep work sprint—focused, time-bound, and intense. I finished a full (very rough) first draft of a book that’s been in my head and spent a good amount of time figuring out what work looks to me in early parenthood. But not every season can be like that. In between deep work sprints and full maternity leave, I’ve been realizing I need something gentler and sustainable—something that doesn’t halt all momentum but does create space for other obligations around care in my life.

In this sense, I found myself wanting to design a container for a soft approach to work—an anti-productivity productivity tool that still lets you keep moving gently forward when life demands more of you elsewhere.

I literally labeled it on my own calendar as MVP mode so I’m going with it. As a parent of a young child, I think of it as the most reasonable default setting between deep work and full leave. A humane pace that protects the essentials—and lets everything else either rest, or squeeze in without pressure.

MVP, in business, refers to a “minimum viable product”—the simplest version of something that still works. For me, it’s a season of minimum viable progress—a way to protect momentum when my attention needs to be elsewhere. If deep work mode looks like a calendar full of boxes asking you to push, MVP work mode looks like a calendar with lots of space and no pressure—just a nearby list of what matters most, both to you and to anyone you’re accountable to, ready for when time does show up.

Maybe you’ve had one of these seasons too? When caregiving takes over, health derails your schedule, an emergency sets in…or you just need to rest? Imagine we could plan ahead for such seasons, instead of reacting to them as emergencies.

Let’s try together.

how I’m trying to work these days: MVP mode sits between focused sprints and full breaks, offering a sustainable pace when life demands more elsewhere

Designing a Minimum Work Season

Here are some questions to answer if you’d like to be ready for your next minimum work season. Rather than a strict template, think of this as a sketch—a way to visualize your season before it arrives. The goal isn’t to predict every detail, but to have a sense of what matters to you before your time goes out the window.

Step 1: Name what matters

Question 1: In an emergency, if you had to drop everything except the basics, what would you keep on your work plate?

Question 2: In a season of reprioritization (not an emergency, but when you’re just not feeling up for it for whatever reason), what work things would you wish you could sustain because losing momentum would be hard to deal with? What would you drop?

Question 3: Of the tasks or commitments you chose, which ones feel like they belong in an “MVP” work season?

Step 2: Map the time

Question 4: When in this “low energy” season, whatever the reason, how much can you work?

Question 5: How much of that work time is protected for focus vs. distracted?

Step 3: Mix and Match!

Question 6: Begin to imagine how your MVP work might fit inside your week. Try gently placing your essentials in the time you realistically have. If the puzzle doesn’t quite work, it’s okay—that’s a signal to edit.

In my case, for example:

1. If I had to drop everything, I’d probably lose most of my creative work and just have to keep client work going to pay the bills.

2. If I reprioritized, I would want to keep my research going, because it’s really hard for me to jump back into research after I’m “out of it” for too long, and this newsletter is an aspect of that. I’d probably drop longer form writing, like book work.

3. MVP mode for me, ideally, would be: essential client work, research, and nothing else.

4. I could probably realistically work 1-2 days a week, because the other days I have caregiving responsibilities almost full-time.

5. Of those days, I would say 1 is protected solo focus time and 1 is pretty distracted.

6. Where I landed: 1 protected day for research + harder client work. 1 distracted day for tying up loose ends, email etc. And if I’m lucky, a few containers for the invisible parts of work that allow me to still feel like… me.

Step 4: Now, consider what got left behind.

I’ve noticed that when crisis or burnout strikes and you’re forced into an unplanned MVP mode, the first things to vanish are:

• the chance to drift (unstructured thinking that sparks ideas)

• and overflow (the small loose ends that restore a sense of order)

But what if we planned for them?

What if you held one block a week not for productivity—but for holding space for these two processes? I’ve been testing it out for myself, and I’m realizing that if I have even one time block on my calendar to think with myself—about those bigger, foundational questions that power everything else—I feel so much less stressed the rest of the week. Similarly, if I have a night that I can just cuddle up on the couch with my laptop and look at what fell out of the cart recently, I can catch up on overflow when the day is over.

So, in my own MVP mode, I’ve blocked 2 hours for these very things: a morning to drift and a night to catch up. It’s not much time, but it gives just enough lift when I’m already feeling low or lost.

Which brings us to:

Question 7: If you could add back in the things that lift you, what would they be? Save them on a list so that when pockets emerge, you know what to reach for.

The case for having a plan for MVP seasons

Now, the point here is that an MVP season is an “I can’t work much right now season.” We don’t always get to know ahead of time when one of these comes up because it’s usually an emergency — medical leave, caregiving leave, grief, depression striking, or anything else.

But, if the general map exists of what you would do in these times, it’s incredibly useful to check in with, because at least for me, the first thing I lose the ability to think about when I have to switch into triage mode, is what my priorities are or any other meta-level thinking about myself or my work.

In the past, I’ve lost work and momentum on projects because I wasn’t ready for such a season. Now, I’m trying to build an ecosystem that flexes with me: deep work when I can, MVP mode when I must, and full rest when it’s time.

You don’t have to be in peak performance mode to be a working person. You just need a rhythm that honors what matters most, in any season. So if you ever find yourself there—grieving, caregiving, depression, stretched thin—I hope this sketch gives you a container for what matters most.

When that time comes, think of this exercise as a letter from your past self. I hope you save it somewhere you can pull out when you need it, even if you need to ask someone else to help you implement it.

Happy Tuesday,

Jihii