Microdose Schedule: How to Choose the Right Protocol and Track Your Results

Choosing a microdose schedule matters more than most people realize. While our other guides cover psilocybin mushrooms basics, strain differences, and dosing fundamentals, this article focuses specifically on the when—the structured patterns of dosing and rest days that turn casual experimentation into something you can actually learn from.

A microdose schedule is a planned pattern of very low dose psilocybin use over several weeks, including which days you dose, which days you rest, and how long a full cycle lasts before taking an extended break. These schedules aren’t pulled from clinical trials or medical guidelines. They come from self-experimenters, mycologists, and researchers like James Fadiman and Paul Stamets who developed protocols based on observation and anecdotal reports from thousands of users.

At Canada Shrooms, we serve Canadian adults who want to approach microdosing psychedelics with intention. That means respecting your real-life constraints—work deadlines, parenting duties, long commutes, and everything else that fills a typical week. This guide will walk you through choosing a microdosing protocol, setting concrete goals, and tracking your progress so you actually know whether a schedule is working for you.

Before You Pick a Protocol: Clarify Your Goals and Constraints

The biggest mistake people make with psychedelic microdosing is copying someone else’s schedule without thinking about why they’re doing it. A protocol that works beautifully for a freelance designer with flexible mornings might be completely wrong for a nurse working rotating 12-hour shifts.

Before you look at any specific schedule, you need two things: a clear goal and an honest map of your weekly rhythm. Without these, you’re just going through the motions.

Common goals people bring to microdosing:

• Managing low-to-moderate anxiety or persistent low mood
• Supporting focus and cognitive function during demanding work periods
• Enhancing creativity for specific projects (writing, art, problem-solving)
• Easing into psilocybin before a larger psychedelic experience or psychedelic assisted therapy
• General exploration of how psychedelic substances affect mental processes

Vague goals like “feel better” or “be more creative” won’t help you evaluate whether a protocol is working. Translate them into something observable over 4–8 weeks:

Vague Goal	Measurable Version
“Less anxiety”	Fewer mornings rating stress above 6/10 on a stress scale
“More productive”	Complete 3 client projects instead of the usual 2
“Better mood”	At least 4 days per week feeling positive mood before noon
“More creative”	Generate 3 new ideas per dosing day, tracked in a notebook

Next, map your weekly rhythm honestly. Ask yourself:

• Do you work a standard Monday–Friday schedule, or something irregular?
• Which days involve driving, operating machinery, or high-stakes responsibilities?
• When do you have parenting duties that require full alertness?
• Are there fixed commitments (presentations, meetings, court dates) that should be dose-free?

Block out “high-risk” days before you even think about protocols. If Tuesday mornings always involve a long highway commute, Tuesday is not a dose day. Period.

Finally, decide in advance how long your first experiment will last. Most research suggests that tracking for at least 4–6 weeks gives you enough data to see patterns. Put a start date and an end date on your calendar before taking your first microdose.

Core Microdosing Schedules: Dosing and Rest-Day Patterns

Before diving into named protocols, it helps to understand the basic scheduling philosophies that underpin all microdosing approaches.

A “dose day” is exactly what it sounds like—a day you take a sub perceptual dose of psilocybin. A “rest day” is a day without any dose. The purpose of rest days is to avoid tolerance buildup. Psychedelic compounds interact with serotonin receptors in ways that can cause rapid habituation if you dose daily, meaning you’d need higher doses to feel the same effects of microdosing.

Three broad schedule families:

1. Intermittent patterns: One day dosing followed by multiple rest days (e.g., 1-on/2-off). These create clear contrast between dose and non-dose days.
2. Cyclical blocks: Several consecutive dose days followed by rest days (e.g., 4-on/3-off), then multi-week breaks after several cycles. These feel more immersive.
3. Work-focused patterns: Schedules aligned tightly with Monday–Friday demands, treating weekends as recovery or keeping them dose-free for family time.

Most psilocybin microdose experiments run at least 4 weeks to reveal meaningful patterns. One observational study tracked participants for six weeks, finding they averaged 5 doses with a mean of 6.7 days between doses—though individual variation was enormous, ranging from 1 to 34 days between doses.

For Canada Shrooms customers, scheduling often centers on Canadian work weeks. Most people dose early in the morning (7:00–8:00 a.m.) before breakfast, giving the subtle acute effects time to integrate before commuting or starting work. Late afternoon dosing is less common because it can affect sleep.

The following sections detail specific named protocols within these broad families.

Fadiman Protocol: 1-Day-On / 2-Days-Off (Classic Starter Schedule)

The Fadiman protocol comes from psychologist James Fadiman, whose book The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide first brought microdosing psychedelic drugs into mainstream awareness. It remains one of the most widely accepted starting points for beginners.

The pattern: Dose on Day 1, rest on Days 2 and 3, then repeat. This creates a rolling three-day cycle that doesn’t align neatly with weeks.

Sample 4-week calendar (starting Monday, February 2, 2026):

Week	Dose Days
Week 1	Monday Feb 2, Thursday Feb 5
Week 2	Sunday Feb 8, Wednesday Feb 11, Saturday Feb 14
Week 3	Tuesday Feb 17, Friday Feb 20
Week 4	Monday Feb 23, Thursday Feb 26

Notice how dose days rotate through the week. By the end of four weeks, you’ll have dosed on most weekdays at least once, giving you data on how microdosing affects different parts of your routine.

The logic behind the pattern:

• Day 1 (dose day): Experience any subtle effects from the microdose
• Day 2 (transition day): Observe residual effects or “afterglow” that research suggests may linger
• Day 3 (baseline day): Return fully to baseline for comparison

Fadiman’s original guidance suggested doses of psychedelics around 0.1–0.3 grams of dried psilocybin mushrooms—amounts intended to produce no hallucinogenic effects or perceptual disturbances, just subtle shifts in mood or focus.

Cycle length: Most people run 4–8 weeks of Fadiman-style dosing, then take at least 2–4 weeks completely off before considering another cycle.

Who this suits: People with irregular schedules who want maximum contrast between on and off days. Also ideal for cautious first-timers who want clear opportunities to assess whether the psychedelic experience feels beneficial or uncomfortable.

Stamets Stack Protocol: 4-Days-On / 3-Days-Off

Paul Stamets, the mycologist and psilocybin advocate, developed a different approach: four consecutive microdosing days followed by three rest days, often combined with functional mushrooms (lion’s mane) and niacin (vitamin B3) in what he calls the “Stamets Stack”. We carry this stack under the product name “Focus Capsules”

The schedule itself: Dose for 4 consecutive days, then rest for 3 days. Repeat.

Sample weekly template:

Option A	Option B
Dose: Monday–Thursday	Dose: Thursday–Sunday
Rest: Friday–Sunday	Rest: Monday–Wednesday

Canada Shrooms focuses here on the schedule pattern rather than the stacking supplements. Whether you add lion’s mane or niacin is a separate decision that requires its own research—Stamets’ rationale involves theories about neurogenesis and nerve growth factor that remain largely based on preclinical rodent studies rather than human placebo controlled studies.

Typical cycle example: 4 weeks of 4-on/3-off (16 dose days total), then at least 2 weeks completely off before deciding whether to continue.

How it feels different from Fadiman: With four consecutive dose days, you spend more of your week in a microdosed state. This creates less day-to-day contrast, making it harder to distinguish between dose effects and normal fluctuation. Some users report this as more “immersive,” while others find it blurs their ability to assess what’s actually working.

Be aware that the niacin component, if used, can cause a flush side effect—warmth and redness of the skin—which some people find uncomfortable. Start with low niacin doses (50mg) if you explore stacking.

Who this suits: People working on medium-term projects like coding sprints, thesis chapters, or creative campaigns who want sustained subtle enhancement rather than punctuated contrast. Also those who’ve already tried Fadiman and want to experiment with a different rhythm.

Work-Week Microdosing: Aligning with Monday–Friday Life

Many Canada Shrooms customers organize their own microdosing protocol around standard Canadian work weeks. This makes scheduling predictable and keeps weekends flexible for family, socializing, or simply not thinking about protocols.

Monday & Thursday pattern:

Dose every Monday and Thursday for 4–6 weeks. This gives you 2–3 rest days between each dose, roughly aligning with Fadiman-style spacing while fitting neatly into a weekly calendar.

Tuesday & Friday pattern:

For those who prefer enhancement later in the week (perhaps Mondays are already hectic), dose Tuesday and Friday. This still provides adequate spacing and keeps weekends dose-free.

Creative weekend pattern:

Some users prefer keeping work days completely clear and only dosing Friday or Saturday morning. This suits people who:

• Work in safety-sensitive roles during the week
• Prefer not to experiment during professional hours
• Want to reserve microdosing for creative or personal projects

Considerations with work-week schedules:

Work-focused patterns are predictable, but they introduce a confounding variable: work stress itself fluctuates week to week. If you have a terrible Monday because of a demanding client and you also dosed that morning, it’s hard to know whether the day felt worse because of the dose, the client, or both.

Keep your dose time consistent throughout your experiment. If you dose at 7:00 a.m. before breakfast on your first dose day, do the same every dose day. Consistency makes your self-observation more reliable.

Designing Your Own Custom Microdose Schedule

Once you’ve completed at least one 4–6 week cycle with a standard protocol, you may want to customize. Experienced users often blend elements of Fadiman, Stamets, and work-week patterns based on how they personally respond.

Start from a known template. Don’t improvise from day one. Run a full Fadiman or work-week cycle first to establish a baseline understanding of how you respond to low doses of magic mushrooms.

Change only one variable per cycle. If you want to adjust both your dose amount and your rest-day spacing, don’t do it simultaneously. Run one cycle adjusting dose (say, from 100mg to 150mg), then a separate cycle adjusting schedule (say, from 1-on/2-off to 2-on/2-off). This is how you build actual self-knowledge rather than confusion.

Maximum frequency guidelines:

Plan your breaks in advance. Before starting, decide when you’ll pause entirely. For example: “After 8 weeks, I’ll take the entire month of July off regardless of how I feel.” This prevents sliding into continuous use without reflection.

For shift workers: If you work nights, rotating shifts, or safety-critical roles (nurses, trades, hospitality), your “days off” from work become potential dose days. Never dose before overnight shifts or when you’ll be operating machinery within 6–8 hours.

Setting Practical Goals for a 4–8 Week Microdosing Block

Goals drive everything. Without them, you’re just hoping something good happens—and hope isn’t a method.

Your goals should be specific, observable, and tied to your chosen schedule. Vague aspirations like “enhance cognitive function” or “improve well being” need translation into something you can actually measure.

Four goal categories to consider:

1. Emotional: Morning anxiety levels, frequency of low mood episodes, response to daily stressors
2. Cognitive: Focus duration, distractibility, task completion rates
3. Behavioral: Exercise frequency, social engagement, sleep consistency
4. Creative output: Words written, designs completed, problems solved, ideas generated

Example goals tied to timeframes:

• “By the end of a 6-week Fadiman cycle (March 3–April 14, 2026), I want at least 3 more days per week rating mood above 6/10 compared to my February baseline.”
• “During this 4-on/3-off cycle, complete the first draft of my thesis chapter (measurable: 8,000 words minimum).”
• “Track whether I hit the gym at least 3x/week versus my usual 1x/week over the past two months.”

Establish a pre-experiment baseline. Spend at least one week tracking your chosen metrics before your first dose. This gives you comparison data—otherwise you’re just guessing whether things improved.

Cap your simultaneous goals at 1–3. Tracking more than that becomes burdensome, and you’re more likely to abandon the whole process.

Remember that goals are guides, not performance tests. Discovering that a particular schedule doesn’t help you—or even makes certain things worse—is valuable information, not failure.

Daily Tracking: Journaling and Simple Metrics

A microdosing protocol only becomes meaningful when paired with consistent tracking. Without records, you’ll rely on memory and expectations, which are notoriously unreliable—especially when you want something to work and are susceptible to the placebo effect.

The minimum viable tracking habit: A daily check-in that takes under 5 minutes, completed at the same time each evening.

Core variables to rate (0–10 scale):

Variable	What You’re Measuring
Mood	Overall emotional state for the day
Anxiety/Stress	Tension, worry, stress levels (invert: lower is better)
Focus	Ability to concentrate on tasks
Creativity	Novel ideas, problem-solving fluency
Physical energy	Alertness, vitality, absence of fatigue
Sleep quality	How well you slept the previous night

Essential metadata to record:

• Was today a “dose day,” “post-dose day,” or “baseline day”?
• Exact microdose amount (e.g., 100mg, 150mg, 200mg)
• Time of dose (e.g., 7:15 a.m.)
• Any notable external events (work deadline, argument, excellent news)

Open-ended prompts (1–2 sentences each):

• “Notable events or insights today:”
• “Anything that felt off or uncomfortable:”

Some people use spreadsheets or mood tracking apps. Others prefer paper journals. The format doesn’t matter—consistency does. Pick one method and use it every day of your cycle, including rest days.

Research suggests that daily logs yield more reliable patterns than sporadic notes. One study had participants complete daily email logs rating psychological functioning, which revealed that peak positive effects often appeared 1–2 days post-dose—something you’d miss with weekly check-ins.

Weekly and End-of-Cycle Reviews: Is the Schedule Working?

Raw daily data becomes useful when you step back and look for patterns. Schedule weekly review sessions and a comprehensive end-of-cycle summary.

Weekly review practice (15 minutes, Sunday evenings):

1. Skim the week’s entries
2. Calculate rough average ratings for mood, focus, and anxiety
3. Note 2–3 things that worked well
4. Note 2–3 things that didn’t work or felt uncomfortable
5. Check whether you stuck to the schedule or deviated (and why)

End-of-cycle summary (after 4–8 weeks):

Ask yourself directly:

• Did any of my stated goals move in the desired direction?
• Were there significant improvements in any tracked variables?
• Were adverse effects tolerable, absent, or deal-breaking?
• Would I recommend this schedule to a friend with similar goals?

Interpreting ambiguous results:

If you see no clear change, several explanations exist:

Possibility	What It Means
Placebo expectations	You expected change and now can’t tell if anything real happened
External stressors	Tax season, family illness, or work chaos overwhelmed any subtle effects
Wrong dose	Amount may be too low to produce effects or too high (approaching recreational dose territory)
Wrong schedule	Your pattern may not suit your neurochemistry or lifestyle
Microdosing isn’t for you	Some people simply don’t respond; this is valid data

The mandatory break:

After each multi-week cycle, take at least 2–4 weeks completely off psilocybin. Use this time to consolidate observations, see how you feel without it, and decide whether another cycle makes sense.

Treat each cycle as an experiment, not a permanent lifestyle. Be willing to conclude that microdosing schedules are not currently useful for you—that’s a legitimate finding.

Safety, Boundaries, and When to Stop a Protocol

Detailed safety information and contraindications are covered in our Microdose Safety guide, but schedule design still requires clear stop-rules built in from the start.

Red-flag signs that should trigger immediate pause:

• Escalating anxiety that worsens over several dose days
• Sleep disruption lasting more than a week
• Any lingering perceptual disturbances (visual changes, altered consciousness, unusual auditory perception)
• Pressure to increase dose repeatedly to feel something
• Depressive symptoms worsening rather than improving
• Interference with work performance or relationships

Predetermined stop-rules to set before starting:

Write these down before your first dose:

• “If I rate anxiety 8/10 or higher for 3 consecutive days, I stop this cycle and take at least 4 weeks off.”
• “If I miss more than 2 days of tracking in a single week, I pause and reassess my commitment.”
• “If anyone in my life expresses concern about my behavior, I stop and have an honest conversation.”

Medical and psychiatric considerations:

People with personal or family histories of bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or other serious mental illness face significant risks with psychoactive substances affecting the central nervous system and default mode network. Research suggests these individuals should consult a primary care physician or mental health professional before considering any protocol. Those with treatment resistant depression or anxiety disorders may want professional guidance rather than self-experimentation.

Current psychedelic research and future research from the scientific community may eventually clarify therapeutic benefits through rigorous clinical trials, but we’re not there yet. Much of what’s widely accepted about microdosing comes from anecdotal reports rather than systematic study with proper statistical power and multiple comparisons controls.

Legal awareness:

In Canada, psilocybin remains a controlled substance outside specific exemptions. Understand your local laws and workplace policies (especially around recreational drug use and harm reduction) before planning any schedule.

No schedule is worth compromising safety, relationships, or work obligations. The protocol should fit your life, not the other way around.

How Canada Shrooms Fits Into Your Microdose Schedule

Canada Shrooms provides lab-tested psilocybin products—including standardized microdose capsules and accurately weighed dried psychedelic mushrooms—to help Canadians apply these schedules with precision.

Why consistent potency matters for scheduling:

When your capsules contain a reliable amount (say, 100mg or 200mg of psilocybin), you can meaningfully compare dose days, rest days, and different cycles over time. With inconsistent products, you’re introducing a confounding variable that makes self-observation nearly useless.

Practical logistics:

Discreet packaging and reliable shipping across Canada mean you can plan an entire 4–8 week schedule without worrying about mid-cycle supply issues. Order enough for your full planned cycle before you start, so external factors don’t force you to deviate from your protocol.

Recommendations for protocol-based experiments:

• Choose one product type (e.g., 100mg capsules) and stick with it for your entire first cycle
• Avoid switching strains or formats mid-cycle, as this introduces variables
• Store your supply properly to maintain consistency throughout

Related resources:

If you haven’t yet covered the foundations, explore our other Canada Shrooms guides on:

• Microdosing Basics
• Step By Step Microdosing Guide
• Choosing A Microdose Format
• Microdose Side Effects and Risks

Whether you’re exploring serotonergic psychedelics for enhance cognitive function, creative personality scale improvements, or simply curious about what psychoactive drugs in liquid form or capsule form might offer, starting with a clear structure matters.

Your next step:

Before taking your first microdose, design a clear start date, choose a specific protocol (Fadiman, Stamets, or work-week), set 1–3 measurable goals, and create your tracking method. This preparation takes an afternoon but transforms vague curiosity into genuine self-knowledge.

Browse Canada Shrooms’ product selection when you’re ready to begin, and approach your microdose schedule with the same intentionality you’d bring to any meaningful experiment in your life.