From the course: Time Management Tips

Tips for bill-by-the-hour professionals

From the course: Time Management Tips

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Tips for bill-by-the-hour professionals

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- Many professionals, including freelancers, bill by the hour. This means that you want to fill up your schedule with as many billable hours as you possibly can have. That's a good approach to take, but there's a better approach, and that is to maximize the value of those hours. Here are a few tips to make that happen. Number one, is to establish a schedule for when you're going to do the billable work. In general, I recommend 2/3 of your schedule designated for that, 66%. Next, if you ever come to that time during those billable hours that you don't really have work to do, then use that for sales or networking. Reach out to people in your network, email, call, find more work to do. All right, now that's 2/3 of your schedule, but what about the other third? The first 11%, we're going to set aside for processing. This is something I go into in great depth in Time Management Fundamentals. In essence though, processing is deciding what, when, and where for all the different email and voicemail and things that you have. This is roughly five hours per week. The next 11% is for working on your business, not in it. Now, having billable hours, that's working in your business. Working on your business is when you come up with ideas to make the business more valuable, where you do strategic work to grow the asset that you have in being a freelancer or business owner. And then finally, the last 11%, well that's buffer time. That's where you don't want to schedule anything. You want to leave a little open space in your schedule. You will be interrupted, so expect it and be prepared for it. Your goal as a billable professional is not just to fill up your calendar, but also to increase the value of your time.

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