Why six weeks is the right planning horizon

Studios tend to plan at one of two extremes. Either everything lives in a quarterly spreadsheet that is wrong by week three, or the team plans one week at a time and discovers a three-project collision on the Friday before it happens.

Six weeks works because it matches how client work actually arrives. A signed project usually starts within two to four weeks. A pitch resolves in three to six. Leave requests come in a month ahead. Six weeks is long enough to see all of that and short enough that the detail is still real.

The mechanic matters as much as the window. Plan in named phases with a start, an end, and an owner — not in vague monthly allocations. A phase you cannot draw on a calendar is a phase nobody can be held to.

Then keep two versions of the future visible: confirmed work and probable work. Studios that blend the two into one number either over-hire on pitches that never land, or refuse work they had room for. Tempo keeps pitch capacity in a separate lane with a win-probability weighting, so you can answer 'can we take this?' without a spreadsheet detour.

Roll the window forward every week rather than replanning from scratch each month. The plan should feel like a conveyor belt, not an annual event.