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Your PM said yes. Now it's your problem 😓
Published about 11 hours ago • 8 min read
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Nov 2, 2026
Hey, Architect.
Welcome to another Q&A with your friendly neighborhood Resilient Architect.
Each month, I respond to the questions you want most about burnout, work-life balance, career development, and team management. Questions come from Architects of all experience levels, from Emerging Professionals to Mid-Career Architects to Firm Leaders.
If you have a question you’d like answered, fill out the form here
This month, three readers sent me questions about the same root problem: time.
Most Architects have no idea where their week goes, and another productivity app won’t show them.
You start Monday with a plan to finish the floor plan revisions.
By Tuesday, your PM has promised the client two new lobby options.
Wednesday disappears into two coordination calls and a code review form you didn’t expect.
At 6pm Thursday, you open the drawings you meant to finish on Monday. You worked every hour of the week and still feel behind.
I know that week well.
I’ve spent many years as a project manager, saying yes to clients and doling out the work those yeses create. In 2017, I burned out, in part because I never understood where my time and energy went. I tried time blocking and more apps than I want to admit.
Nothing helped until I looked at where my hours went first.
What we'll unpack today:
How to protect your week without losing your reputation as a team player
Which non-billable categories a 25-person firm should measure
Why time systems fail in architecture and what to do before you pick one
Let’s get into it.
Take control of your time.⌛ Take control of your Archi-Career.
As an Ambitious Architect who knows what it's like to burn out, I understand the value of how I spend my time. Self-awareness has helped me become more resilient, rise in my career, and prevent burnout from coming back.
I built a tool to help you do the same. It's called the Architect's Week Audit, and it launches tomorrow.
If you struggle with time management, this is for you. Pre-Order for only $27. Launches this Friday (11/6)
Q1: “My PM says yes to every client request and hands the work to me. How do I protect my week without looking like I’m not a team player?”
Start with what your PM is balancing.
As a project manager, every small yes to a client builds trust, and clients return to firms who don’t nickel-and-dime them.
The trouble starts when a PM gives away more than the schedule and budget allow, and the extra work lands on your desk. Most PMs lose sight of your bandwidth as part of the production team while they manage the client relationship.
The solve?
Keep a running list of the five to ten tasks on your plate, ranked by priority.
When your PM hands you a new request, bring the list and ask which current task should move to make room. The decision goes back to the person with the authority to make the call. If you work for more than one PM or partner, get them into the same meeting with your list in front of them.
Show them what you’re carrying and ask them to set the order together. Add your own preferences while the list is on the table. If you want more design time or more specification experience, say so.
The conversation also helps your PM see when the team has taken on more than the fee covers.
For Ambitious Architects: Write your top ten tasks in priority order today and bring the list to your next check-in with your PM.
Q2: “As a small firm around 25 people, we track hours for billing, but I have no idea where the non-billable time goes. What should a firm our size measure?”
Your billing rate already carries a multiplier to cover overhead and profit.
The multiplier rests on an assumption about how many hours your team spends on work no client pays for. But if you never measure those hours, you never test the assumption.
The real risk shows up inside your projects.
When staff members charge internal work to a job because no other code exists, they burn the fee you need at the end of the project. On hourly work, you end up billing the client for time outside their project, which isn’t fair to them.
Track every hour, billable or not.
Then give non-billable time its own codes, starting with three to keep it simple.
Marketing and Sales - for proposals, interviews, and anything aimed at winning the next project.
Research and Development- for improving your process and technology work.
Troubleshooting - for day-to-day friction, like an internet outage or a software crash.
Beyond those three, your office may have far more nuanced or specific codes. At my firm, a digital practice committee works on activities that are helping the firm in the background. Organizing standards, researching new technologies, creating new templates (both design- and office-management-related). You could have a designation specifically for that consistent type of work.
With these time codes in place, start tracking where the time goes each month. The split between billable and non-billable.
When someone’s billable hours drop, you can clearly see where the time went and start diverting it back toward billable activities. Or you can keep them in non-billable activities that improve the firm.
The point is you know where the time is going now, and not just guessing.
For Firm Leaders: Add three non-billable codes for the most common categories to your timesheet system this month and ask everyone to use them for four weeks.
Q3:“I’ve tried time-blocking, Pomodoro, and three different apps. None of them stick. Why does every system fail for me?”
I’ve been there. Most of these systems fail in architecture because our work runs in three modes, and each work mode needs a different kind of time.
Creative work, like design and problem solving, needs long stretches of unbroken focus.
Technical work, like specifications and detailing, holds up in shorter, steady sessions.
Admin work is the real disruptor. Forms, code reviews, meetings, and email arrive on someone else’s schedule and break your day into fragments.
You may be using the wrong tool or method for the work in front of you.
Let’s consider two you mentioned: Pomodoro and Time Blocking.
Both help you manage time, but each comes at it from a different end of the spectrum.
Techniques like Pomodoro work for quick bursts against specific tasks. They work for simple, one-off activities you can focus on for one sitting. Not necessarily to complete the task entirely, but to focus on completing it.
Time Blocking works better for the opposite type of work as Pomodoro. It groups activities that require a common mindset but involve multi-step processes or communication efforts.
A standard Pomodoro session runs 25 minutes (”Pomodoro” is Italian for tomato and refers to the famous tomato-shaped timer used in cooking). Once the 25 minutes are up, you take a short break, then start the timer again.
Organic, multi-tendril activities work better for Time Blocking.
For example, the act of checking your email may take you down a rabbit hole where you start with one that forces you to search for a file, call a contractor, sift through past meeting minutes, text your team, and email the owner all in a 45-minute period.
That context switching isn’t built for the Pomodoro. But when you give yourself a window of time, like say 1 hour, to go through all of your email (regardless of what that email results in), you can shift your mindset fluidly to work through multiple steps until you complete it to a satisfactory level.
Rather than context-switching throughout the day from design to email, back to detailing, then back to calls, time blocking sets aside time to remove email chaos from creative work.
Beyond the use cases for these tools, how you use these techniques may also vary wildly depending on the career season you find yourself in.
Your mix depends on your career season.
A drafter spends most of the week producing documents and coordinating with vendors.
As you move into project management, schedules and meetings take over more of your hours, and senior technical roles shift toward specifications and project manuals.
Partners spend much of the week on client relationships and sales.
Before you pick a system or tool, find out where your hours and energy go right now.
Track your time for a week and see which activities take up the most time.
Short bursts of simple tasks
Long, uninterrupted design sessions
Chaotic communication between stakeholders
Then repeat the check every three to six months, or at least once a year, because your season will change. Checking will help you better understand what tools to lean into most.
For Ambitious Architects: Before you download another app, write down which mode filled most of your hours last week.
Final Thoughts
Three different questions came back to one root cause: Nobody protects a week they’ve never measured.
The Architect opening Monday’s drawings at 6pm Thursday needs a record of where the hours went. With a record in hand, the talk with the PM gets easier and the right system becomes obvious.
Here's what you learned today:
Hand prioritization back to your PM with a ranked task list.
Give non-billable hours their own codes so they stop eating project fee.
Match each time system to the kind of work in front of you.
Time is our most important asset.
Understanding how you’ve used it will help you better control how you shape it through your career and stop you from burning out.
Your Next Resilient Step
Take control of your time. Take control of your Archi-career.
The Architect’s Week Audit launches November 6.
You get a five-day tracking sheet built for architecture practice, with 16 categories that include rework from late direction and redlines from rushed CDs.
You log your hours four times a day in under 90 seconds.
The sheet scores every hour into three buckets: inside your control, needing one conversation, and needing firm-level change.
On day five, you get a one-page report with your recoverable hours and your three biggest leaks by name. Tutorial videos and a completed sample week show you how to read your results and pick your next move.
You walk into your next talk with your PM or principal holding the hours you lost and where they went.
Pre-order today for $27, less than one night of takeout during a CD deadline. Complete with free future updates for the life of the product.
Your access email arrives on launch day, November 3.
That's all for now. Stay resilient, my friend.
Mike LaValley AIA, LEED AP BD+C
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Speaking at Your Firm or Event: Bring these conversations to your workplace with workshops tailored to your team's specific challenges
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A free, burnout resilience newsletter for Architects. One actionable tactic each week to help you overcome chronic burnout, engineer self-awareness, and build a thriving career in architecture.