Blunt Math. Before you donate three weekends to a hunch.

01

Put the mess on paper.

Name the repeated thing, not the app you are itching to build. One stubborn loop at a time.

What keeps happening?

What actually happens?

How often?

Weeks this actually runsUse 52 for home-life chaos that never takes vacation.

Minutes each time

People dragged into itCount everyone doing work, not everyone annoyed by it.

How solid is this count?

Do not average away the pain. If it happens 40 times on one ugly Monday and never on Tuesday, count the 40.

02

Price what it chews up.

Time, cash, mistakes, and waiting are different animals. Keep them in separate cages so nothing gets counted twice.

Value of one dragged hour

Use loaded labor cost at work. For life, use what an hour is honestly worth to you.

Hard cash lost each occurrence

Fees, waste, refunds, missed materials. Not wages already counted above.

Mistakes + rework each month

Cost of waiting each month

Use only traceable lost revenue, late fees, rush charges, or similar damage.

How solid are the dollars?

How much saved time would become useful capacity?

0%: it dissolves into the day60%100%: every minute gets reused

Saved time is not cash unless it avoids paid work, increases useful output, or gives you time you actually value.

Annual occurrences0

Hours swallowed0

Annual drag$0

03

Make every option fight.

Your favorite fix does not get a private lane. Put it beside buy, stop, and do nothing. Let the cheap ugly answer win.

What are you leaning toward?

Payback deadline

Minimum first-year return worth chasing

Your attention has a cover charge. Name it.

Your fix

Remove, simplify, hand off, or build the thing you have in mind.

Setup cash

Your setup hours

Monthly upkeep

Mess removedPercent

Buy instead

Count setup, subscriptions, training, and the workaround that still remains.

Real option

Stop doing it

Sometimes the cheapest automation is refusing to feed the machine.

Actually possible

Do nothing is already in the fight. It costs the annual drag you counted, but it spends none of your setup cash or weekends.

04

Write the murder weapon now.

Hope gets a smaller chair at this desk. Stress the cost, bruise the expected benefit, and decide what failure looks like before sunk-cost brain takes over.

How solid is the fix estimate?

Ugly-case cost overrun

Ugly-case benefit shortfall

Cycles before judgmentTen invoices, four Fridays, thirty school mornings. Use the unit that matches the mess.

Maximum spend before stop

We suggest a number. You own it.

Minimum mess removed

One more reason to pull the plug

Kill line, written before the romance begins

After 10 real cycles, kill the fix if it has cost more than $0 or removed less than 40% of the mess.

Blunt Math decision

Worth watching

The pain may be real. The evidence is not ready to spend against.

Watch it

Annual drag$0time value + traceable cash

Claimable value$0what the fix could reasonably reach

Likely paybackNeverbest live option

Ugly-case paybackNeverhigher cost, lower benefit

Why it got stamped

The option fight

Move	Setup	Monthly	12-mo net	Payback

Operator Garage / Blunt Math

RECEIPT BM-000000

This is a decision aid, not accounting, legal, tax, or investment advice. It is only as honest as the numbers fed into it. Reopen the receipt after real use and replace estimates with actuals.

Do the blunt math.