A second full ledger for side work often eats the evening it was meant to protect. The fence only needs a short mark: hours used, money in, costs out, and one line about whether the parallel cut leaned on the main week.
Write it while the week is still warm — Sunday night or Monday morning — and stop. The mark is a rail stop, not a new project.
What belongs on the mark
- Hours actually used, including unpaid setup.
- Gross money in and the costs that came off.
- A yes or no: did leftover work steal from sleep, family or Monday focus?
What does not belong
Dashboards that take an hour to update. Spreadsheets with twelve tabs. Goals that need a second personality. Those tools wander off the fence and become unpaid side work of their own.
Ripfence makes no earnings promises. The weekly mark is a memory aid for the next cut, not a scoreboard.