A rotation schedule protects a fixed slice of each person’s week for their secondary skill, so that cover is actually practised and not merely planned. The corpus offers three schedules that do not agree, from a half-day a week to a full day a week, so choose one, write it down, protect the slot, pause it in the peak farming seasons and never let it put an unqualified person alone on a hazardous task.
Part of Cross-Training Program
How practice time for secondary skills is scheduled alongside primary work, community service and the farming year.
The Corpus’s Schedules Differ
Three schedules appear in the corpus:
- The carrier article: primary craft 4 days a week, secondary craft 1 day a week, plus a periodic community service rotation for everyone (cooking, cleaning, guard duty), which the carrier says prevents guild-like separation.
- Division of Labor: one half-day a week in a secondary role, a full week each quarter in a tertiary role, and an annual skills assessment.
- Cross-Training: job shadowing of one day a month or a week a season, rotation stints of one to two weeks, and periodic solo trials in which the primary goes away for a day or a week.
The Arithmetic, With Assumptions Stated
To compare them, assume a five-day working week and 52 weeks with no breaks. These assumptions are mine and are not in the sources.
| Schedule | Secondary time per year |
|---|---|
| Carrier: 1 day a week | 52 days |
| Division of Labor: half-day a week | 52 × 0.5 = 26 days, plus 4 quarterly weeks of 5 days = 20 days in a tertiary role |
| Cross-Training: one day a month | 12 days |
| Cross-Training: one week a season | 4 weeks of 5 days = 20 days |
So the secondary skill gets between 12 and 52 days a year depending on which source is followed. They cannot all produce the same competence. The carrier’s four days plus one day also fill the whole five-day week, leaving no day for the community service rotation it also requires, unless the week is six days or the service comes out of the other days. The carrier does not say which.
The seasons matter as well. Division of Labor shows 80% of labour on agriculture in spring, with specialists keeping operations minimal, so a flat weekly schedule will collide with planting and harvest.
What You Need
- A written schedule, one of the above or a variant.
- A named supervisor for each secondary day, who is the primary holder of the skill.
- A rule for peak seasons (Labor Allocation).
- A log of hours or days actually spent.
- A test that ends the learning (Milestone Definitions).
Method: Building A Schedule
Step 1: Pick the target depth. Practitioner level for the secondary skill, with a test.
Step 2: Choose the slot. A fixed day or half-day each week, written down, not squeezed in.
Step 3: Add the stints. A longer block each season or quarter lets the person run the role for days at a time, as the Cross-Training article describes.
Step 4: Mark the exceptions. Pause in planting and harvest; resume after.
Step 5: Keep the community service rotation separate and counted.
Step 6: Set a rule for hazard. A person on a rotation stint in a hazardous trade works only under the primary holder until they have passed the safety tests.
Step 7: Check at the quarter that the days were actually worked, using the log.
Common Mistakes
- Cancelling the secondary day whenever work is busy. Then it never happens.
- Counting the same day twice, as both secondary practice and community service.
- Rotating people into a hazard unsupervised.
- Copying a schedule from one source and ignoring the farming year.
- No log, so nobody can say how much cover exists.
What’s Next
- Learn next: T-Shaped Skill Profiles — the pattern of broad basics and one deep skill
- Combine with: Primary vs Secondary Skills — who is rotated into what