Managing an RFE response timeline when you also have a day job

Got a 90-day RFE and immediately did the math on how little slack that actually leaves once you subtract time for gathering new evidence, waiting on people (letter writers, translators, employers) to respond, and having a final review pass before submission. Worth sharing how I broke it down, since the deadline felt a lot less overwhelming once it was a plan instead of a single scary date. Roughly: first week, read the RFE closely and categorize every objection (insufficiency vs. absence vs. final merits vs. procedural — there's a good post in this community breaking that down). Weeks two through six, gather and request everything needed, prioritizing anything that depends on someone else's response time, since that's the least controllable variable. Weeks seven and eight, draft the actual response document tying evidence back to each objection. Final two weeks, buffer for review and any last-minute gaps that show up during that review — and I mean actually leave that buffer empty going in, don't plan to use it. The single biggest time sink for me was chasing a reference letter from someone in a different time zone who took three weeks to respond to an email I thought would get a same-day reply. If I did it again, I'd send every external request in week one, not after I'd finished categorizing objections — those two things don't need to happen in order.