14/7, 21/7, 10/4: How Rotation Schedules Actually Feel

On paper, a rotation is just two numbers: days on, days off. In practice, 14/7, 21/7, and 10/4 feel completely different to live through, and picking one is as much about how you personally recover as the math of days worked per year.

14/7: the most common rhythm

Fourteen days on, seven off is the schedule most new camp workers land on first, and it has a rhythm most people adjust to within a few cycles. The “on” side blurs together fast — shift, cookhouse, sleep, repeat — which some workers find easier to push through precisely because there isn’t much decision-making involved. The catch is the “off” side: seven days sounds like a lot until you subtract travel time on both ends and the day or two it takes to actually feel human again after two weeks of 12-hour shifts. Most 14/7 workers report their functional time at home is closer to four or five real days once travel and recovery are accounted for.

21/7: longer stretch, same time off

Three weeks on for one week off asks more of a worker up front — the back half of a 21-day stretch is where fatigue tends to show up according to research on shift work, since the body’s circadian rhythm takes roughly a week to adjust to a schedule change in the first place, then gets disrupted again heading into days off. Workers who do well on 21/7 tend to treat the third week deliberately: more sleep discipline, less relying on willpower, more leaning on routine. The upside is fewer total transitions per year between camp and home, which some people find less disruptive overall even though each individual stretch is harder.

10/4: shorter cycles, more transitions

Ten days on, four off compresses the cycle — less time away at a stretch, but more trips back and forth per year, which matters if your commute to camp (see our FIFO commute guide) eats a meaningful chunk of every changeover. Some workers prefer this because four days off, while shorter than a full week, comes around often enough that home life doesn’t feel as far away. Others find the more frequent transitions between camp mode and home mode more tiring than a longer, less frequent cycle. There’s no universally “better” answer here — it depends heavily on family situation, commute distance, and how quickly you personally recover.

Making any of them work

A few things come up consistently regardless of which schedule someone is on: protecting sleep on both ends of a rotation rather than only during it, not scheduling anything demanding for the first day or two of “off” time, and treating the last day or two of “on” time as when fatigue-related mistakes are most likely, not the first. See our rotation routines guide for what a typical day actually looks like inside any of these schedules, and our rules and wellbeing guide for handling the mental side of a long stretch.

Reading roster notation: 14/7, 20/10, 24/4, and 5/2/4/3

Every rotation gets written the same way: a string of numbers separated by slashes, read left to right as consecutive days. A simple two-number roster like 14/7 or 20/10 means exactly what it looks like — the first number is days on, the second is days off, then the pattern repeats. 24/4 works the same way: 24 days at camp, 4 at home, a long-swing pattern more common on very remote or fly-in-heavy sites where the trip itself eats too much time to justify more frequent changeovers.

Four-number rosters like 5/2/4/3 describe a repeating two-week cycle rather than one continuous stretch: five days on, two off, four days on, three off — 5 + 2 + 4 + 3 adds up to 14 days total, so the whole pattern repeats every two weeks. The effect is a work week that alternates length (a five-day week, then a four-day week), which lines up every second weekend as a genuine three-day break — a pattern more associated with drive-in/drive-out (DIDO) and residential crews than long-haul fly-in camps, since it assumes you’re close enough to go home on a normal weekly basis at least half the time (SprintSuite — Most Common FIFO Rosters, accessed 2026-09-10).

Rosters vary a lot more than the handful covered on this page — 8/6, 2/1 (two weeks on, one off), 7/7, 9/5, and 4/3 all show up somewhere in the industry, and none is universally “the standard.” Whatever notation a posting uses, the read is always the same: numbers in order, days on first, then days off, repeating.

FAQ

Which rotation schedule is easiest to adjust to? 14/7 is generally considered the easiest starting point since it’s the most common and the “on” stretch is short enough that most people adapt within a few cycles — but individual tolerance varies, and some workers prefer 21/7’s fewer total transitions per year.

Does a longer rotation mean more fatigue? Research on shift work indicates the body’s circadian rhythm needs about a week to adjust to a schedule change, so longer “on” stretches like 21/7 can see more fatigue building in the back half compared to a 14/7 cycle — sleep discipline matters more the longer the stretch runs.

Do rotation schedules affect how much time off actually feels like time off? Yes — travel time and recovery time both eat into “days off” on any schedule, so the number on paper is usually a day or two more than the functional time you actually get at home. See our FIFO commute guide for how travel time factors in.

What is a 5 2 4 3 FIFO roster? A repeating 14-day (two-week) pattern: five days on, two off, four days on, three off. It alternates a five-day and a four-day work week so every second weekend is a three-day break, and it’s more common among drive-in/drive-out and residential crews than long-haul fly-in rotations.

How long is a FIFO swing? “Swing” is another word for one full rotation cycle — the on-site work stretch and the time off that follows it, not just the days worked. How long a swing runs varies enormously by employer and site, from short patterns like 10/4 up to long ones like 21/7 or 24/4, so there’s no single fixed length across the industry.