Plan mentorship sessions.
Mentoring commitments are usually agreed one mentee at a time and then discovered in aggregate. Including preparation and note-taking in each session — typically a third again on top of the contact time — gives an honest figure. Three mentees at fortnightly hour-long sessions is around thirty hours a quarter, which is a real commitment that needs protecting in a calendar rather than absorbed informally.
Mentoring load per quarter
Sessions = mentees x sessions each; minutes per session = contact time + preparation; quarterly hours = sessions x minutes / 60
Three to five at a meaningful cadence. Beyond that, either the cadence stretches to the point where continuity is lost or preparation is dropped, which is what turns mentoring into unstructured chat.
Fortnightly for active development, monthly for steady-state support. Weekly rarely leaves enough time for the mentee to act between sessions, which is where the value actually accrues.
It is what distinguishes mentoring from conversation. Fifteen minutes reviewing the last session's commitments and capturing this one's makes the relationship cumulative rather than repetitive.