The Pitman schedule (2-2-3), explained

Pitman — also called 2-2-3, or the every-other-weekend-off schedule — is a fourteen-day rotation using 12-hour shifts. It is common in dispatch centres, security, manufacturing and some policing.

The cycle

Days 1–7	Days 8–14
On, on, off, off, on, on, on	Off, off, on, on, off, off, off

Fourteen days, seven worked, averaging 42 hours a week.

Why it is the friendliest rotation to live with

One feature does most of the work: the cycle is a whole number of weeks.

Fourteen days is exactly two weeks, so unlike 4-on-4-off (eight days), 24/48 (three days) or Kelly (nine days), Pitman does not walk through the calendar. Your Mondays are always the same kind of Monday. Every other weekend is fully off, permanently, and it is always the same alternate weekend.

That single property is why families cope with Pitman far better than with rotations that demand less on paper. “Every other weekend” is something a grandparent can retain. “A nine-day cycle” is not.

The trade

You are working 12-hour shifts and, on the long stretch, three in a row. Seven days in fourteen sounds light; three consecutive 12s in the middle of a fortnight does not feel light.

The other cost is the two-day blocks. Two on, two off gives limited recovery between working days, which matters if the pattern includes nights.

Day and night variants

Some employers run Pitman as fixed days or fixed nights — you stay on one and never rotate. Others alternate, typically switching between days and nights each cycle or each month.

The fixed version is considerably easier on the body, because you adapt once. The rotating version keeps the calendar predictability but adds the physiological cost of switching, which is a genuinely different job from the same pattern on days.

If you have any influence over which you work, that distinction matters more than the hours do.

Living with it

Use the three-day off block. Every fortnight ends with three consecutive days off. That is the part worth defending — long enough for a trip, and it lands on the same days every cycle so it can be planned around indefinitely.

Anchor recurring things to the alternate weekend. A fortnightly commitment works perfectly against Pitman in a way a weekly one never will. This is one of the few rotations where “every other Saturday” is a genuinely reliable slot.

Expect the third day of a run to be the hard one. Three 12s back to back is where fatigue shows, especially on nights.

Getting it into a calendar

Because Pitman repeats every fourteen days, it is one of the few rotations most calendar tools can actually express: a recurring event with a two-week interval works. It is fiddly — you need several recurring series to cover the pattern — but possible.

Anything that takes a rotation directly is simpler: set the pattern once and the days generate forward. That is what Freeish does, and what most dedicated shift apps do.

The thing worth doing either way is marking which blocks are nights, because on a rotating Pitman that distinction carries most of the information for everyone else.