Walk through your week.

At Hyper Island, I laid out a Monday-to-Friday week on the floor with tape. Big, so you could really walk through it. And I did, stopping at different moments to notice how the week felt. It made the schedule something to experience, rather than just something to look at.

Walking it brought back the feeling of a real week. The pressure of Monday morning, when the kids have to go back to school, there is a lot to do and the roads are full. The odd feeling of Sunday, when people start thinking back on the week that was. Wednesday afternoon, when in many countries the kids are off school. You don’t just see which days are hard. You feel it.

It worked for the others in the workshop too. Walking it, they got the feeling that goes with each day.

You can do the same with a single day. The point is not to build a bigger calendar. It is to pause inside the sequence of things you normally rush through.

How do you run it?

1. Lay out the day or week. Use tape to mark a timeline on the floor. Make it big. For a week, label the days; for a day, label the main parts of the day.
2. Add the activities. Place cards for the main commitments, including travel, breaks and the work between meetings. Start with an actual schedule, not an improved version.
3. Walk through it. Move along the timeline in order. Stop at each activity instead of rushing to the end.
4. Notice the transitions. What are you coming from? What do you need to be ready for next? Where does the schedule feel crowded, and where is there room to breathe? If you are doing this with someone else, let them describe their experience before offering your interpretation.
5. Change one thing. Move, shorten or remove an activity, or make space between two commitments. Walk that stretch again. Does the change make the sequence more workable?

The walk itself takes 15 to 30 minutes. You see quite quickly what is off. Acting on it takes longer: declining or changing meetings, thinking about how you want your days to look. That part can wait for your Remote Quarterly Review.

Can you walk a customer’s week?

You can also use the exercise to explore a customer’s day or week. Build the timeline around their life, not just their interactions with your organisation.

At each stop, ask: what are they trying to get done? What else is demanding their attention? How does our request or service fit into that moment?

I have used this in client workshops too. In one about washing and cleaning products, we walked the week of a young mother. It helped some of the male managers in the room see it: so this is what a Monday looks like, this is how heavy the evenings are, this is what the weekend looks like.

A request that looks small from your side may arrive between two commitments, when someone has little time or attention left. Walking the sequence gives you a way to question the timing, rather than only improving the request itself.

Treat what you notice as questions to check with the customer, not proof that you know how they feel. Better still, invite them to build and walk the timeline with you.

Related: Design your ideal week makes a picture of the week you want; Colour in your calendar shows what actually happened.