A full week of paid work is the steel. What remains after that week looks like free hours waiting for a light pass: Saturday morning, a Sunday hour, the gap after dinner on one weekday. Those pieces are real. They are also short. If they scatter across the week they grind sleep, the commute, and Monday.
A leather strop keeps an edge keen without removing metal. It does not remake the tool. It takes a pass. Leftover hours work the same way. Write a maximum. Put that block on the strop. If an offer needs every weeknight, it is not leftover work; it is a second job wearing leftover clothes.
What sits in one stroke
Start with one visible block. Saturday morning is the default used on this desk because it does not steal weeknights by default. A person can add a Sunday hour or one weekday evening. Adding every evening is not leftover time. That is a second shift.
Write the start and the stop before the week begins. A block that is only "when I have energy" slides off the leather. The day job will take it.
What wears the main steel
Unpaid setup that has no end date, learning that is sold as a condition of the first invoice, and work that needs a weekday night every week do not belong on this strop. Those strokes wear the rest of the week.
Strop Pad does not publish earnings promises. The question is whether leftover hours can sit still long enough to be counted, priced after costs, and marked in a weekly note. If they cannot sit still, they are not leftover.
Read next: keeping an edge without grinding the week and compound for the evening stroke.