What does a weekly routine for a solo SaaS look like?

Give each product one named slot in the week and spend it on the same pages, in the same order, every time. Most weeks nothing on them is surprising, and that's the point: the slot is how you notice the week that is.

My week

• Sunday evening, about 2 hours: the document product. Its cost per customer, what failed and went round again, the pile of items that ran out of attempts, and the post.
• Every other Wednesday, about 40 minutes: the landlord tool. It used to be weekly. It had taken under 40 minutes for months, so at the first January review I moved it to a fortnight.
• Thursday evening: the 3 small products, together, on one page.

The rest of the week has nothing in it for software. I protect that as carefully as the slots. (More carefully, some weeks.)

The same pages in the same order

The order matters more than it sounds. Reading the same things in the same sequence every week is what makes a strange line stand out. A customer costing many times the others. A job retrying more than usual. A provider notice with a date in it.

Every saving and every fault-fix I can remember was found that way, by reading the page that always says the same thing, on the week it didn't.

Write it down before you fix it

When something stands out, I write it in the product's file first, with what I think the cause is, then fix it. Most weeks the file says "nothing new" and the date. Those lines matter too: they're how I know I looked.

The rule that watches the routine

If I skip a product's slot 3 weeks running, the product has to win my attention back or be wound down. Skipped slots are how products die quietly, left by a person who has stopped looking.

Ship Alone sets out the weekly loop. The Second Product shows how 5 slots fit into one week.