A full week of paid work is the sheet. What remains after that sheet is cut looks like plywood offcuts: Saturday morning, a Sunday hour, the gap after dinner on one weekday. Those pieces are real. They are also short. If they stay on the floor they get kicked into sleep, the commute, and Monday.
A sawbench is a low ripping trestle. It does not hold a whole shop. It holds the board you are about to cut. Leftover hours work the same way. Write a maximum. Put that block on the beam. If an offer is longer than the trestle, it is not leftover work; it is a second job wearing leftover clothes.
What sits on the beam
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 trestle. The day job will take it.
What stays on the floor
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 bench. Those boards warp the rest of the sheet.
Sawbench 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 record. If they cannot sit still, they are not leftover.
Read next: a rate that stays after the cut and a weekly kerf of records.