Non-billable time is holding you back
As an entrepreneur or someone who goes from being a wage slave to being a wage earner, what is the main obstacle that prevents you from earning what you deserve? If you’re like most entrepreneurs, I guess the only thing stopping you is wasting time on activities that don’t generate income. That’s why you need to start managing your time as a lawyer.
Why lawyers are so successful and how you can emulate them
If you spend time with a lawyer, you will find that they focus on one thing, billable hours. Whether it’s a private practice or a large company, the focus is always on how many billable hours can be packed into a day. Although many people do not like lawyers, this principle can be modified to help you be more successful.
How to keep track of your day
Before you begin, think about the time you have available to work on “billable” work. Here’s what a typical weekend and weekend breakdown would look like for me:
On weekdays I have four hours available outside of my day job for “billable” tasks. For me, these tasks are: time spent writing blog posts, speeches, articles, and white papers. Now use a simple time tracking tool (spreadsheet or free time tracking app) to track these tasks as “billable.”
Now spend some time figuring out what your “non-billable” tasks are. Examples from my life are: Twitter, watching TV, surfing the Internet, reading, shopping, and hanging out with friends. Now don’t get me wrong, the point is to not stop doing any of these things. The goal of this exercise is to help you track time spent on income vs. non-income activities and develop the habit of working on income-generating habits. As you transition from wage slave to wage earner, having this habit will help you stay focused on generating income for yourself.
The next step in the process is to keep track of what you are doing and the time you spend doing it. Then, at the end of the week, month, quarter, and year, you can use this data to determine how much time was spent on billable and non-billable tasks. I find this can be immensely helpful in figuring out why I’m not advancing in my dream career of public speaking, writing, and coaching.
last advice
One last piece of advice: make sure you allocate an appropriate number of billable hours to the task before you begin. For example, if you’re writing a blog post, allocate forty-five minutes of billable hours to that post. If it takes one hour and thirty minutes to research and write, bill for forty-five minutes.
Setting a standard billable time is another attorney secret that keeps them focused and generating revenue. Setting a maximum time to complete your tasks allows you to focus more and realize that you can only generate a certain amount of income from each task. To log into your time management system, take the example of the blog post. Yes, I have forty-five minutes allotted to the position, but it takes me an hour. I assign forty-five minutes as billable “task down” time and fifteen minutes as non-billable.
Setting up a system to advance income generation is the best thing you can do to generate more income in the coming months.
