Give everyone a downtime project before you need one.

A client cancels this week’s work. What does your team do on Monday?

A client of mine hit a slow stretch recently. Part of it was intentional, because they’d turned down work that wasn’t a fit. Part of it was just summer. Either way, people had nothing on their plate, and the founder wasn’t sure what to do with them. He was worried, because downtime is too easily interpreted by the team as a distressed company.

This is one of those problems that’s much easier to solve before it happens.

What I suggested: ask everyone to bring their own downtime project to the table ahead of time. Not something you assign. Something they choose.

The question is basically this. If you had a free day every week, what would you work on? Ideally it’s something connected to the company, like case studies, an internal tool, or a talk they’d love to give. But it can also be pure skills development.

At a brand studio I worked at years ago, one designer was fantastic at type design. Whenever they had downtime, they worked on a custom typeface we could sell. Nobody had to think about it. The project was just there, waiting.

That way, when a client suddenly pauses, the message isn’t “sorry, nothing for you this week.” It’s “good news, go work on your thing.”

One caution. If downtime is a gap between projects, it doesn’t really matter how much there is, as long as work is coming. But if more than about 20% of your team’s billable time is going to side projects, that’s not a gap anymore. That’s a pipeline problem.

Plan for downtime before it hits.