“Time, time, time, see what’s become of me

While I looked around for my possibilities”

– Simon & Garfunkel, Hazy Shade of Winter

Or that you are not in control and the fires coming into your inbox hijack your agenda every day.

It seems like an impossible task to allocate your time to everything in your life: you, your family, your work, other professional commitments, your friends, hobbies, and FUN! (Fun… do you have any of that in your life?)

Time is a finite resource.

You can make more money, but you can’t make more time.

You have to be very intentional with how you spend your time. This requires changing your thoughts and relationship with time to help you achieve mastery over it rather than feeling out of control.

Especially if you loathe the billing aspect of your job.

Today, I am going to focus on your mindset of time. Not the scheduling aspects of your time at work or the rest of your life, but the billing of your time. If your thoughts about billing stay the same and you only try to do something different, then the habit and behavioral change is less likely to stick.

Get Diligent about Recording Your Time

Do you relate to knowing you need to be diligent about recording your time, but then it just doesn’t happen?

You get done with one phone call and convince yourself that you must move on immediately to that next email or fire that’s erupting. That you can’t stop and record that time. Or that “I’ll do it later, at the end of the day” thought pops up.

When you get to the day and are completely wiped, do you want to sit and re-create your time for the day? No, you want to stop working! Or you’ve worked right up until the last minute and have to jet to the next area of life: other commitments, spouse, kids, dinner, etc.

Next thing you know, it’s Friday and your time for the week isn’t recorded. Then this compounds to the end of the month, and you have to get your time in. You spend hours and hours of the last weekend of the month scouring your emails, phone logs, trying to bill to the best of your ability – knowing that you’ve probably left lots of hours on the table because you can’t remember them.

Then you beat yourself up for having yet another month of this cycle and pattern. But, it starts over again the next month because:

1. You spent so much time over the weekend recording your time, you just want a break from it!
   
   And
   
   

2. You haven’t changed how you’re thinking about it.

What would it feel like to get out of this cycle? Close your eyes and visualize it. Tap into that emotion.

Or, what would it feel like for you to get in a place of control over your time in general?

We have to reverse engineer. Start from how we want to feel and tap into that desire. Then work backwards and start to make the thought and behavioral changes that are going to get us there.

How do you want to feel?

Explore Your Thoughts

Next, let’s explore what your thoughts are currently around just the billable time in your life.

• “I hate billing.”
• “I hate recording my time.”
• “There’s not enough time to get everything done.”
• “I know I should keep track of my time each day.”
• “It doesn’t matter if I schedule things, I never get my agenda done anyways.”
• “Emergencies always come up, there’s nothing I can do about that.”

What else comes up for you?

Explore Your Feelings

Then, explore what feelings come up about your time.

• Fear that you are not going to hit enough billable hours.
• Fear of what the senior partners are going to say about your hours. Either that it’s not good enough or not giving you feedback at all, even when it hits the target mark. (Do you know the target mark or are you operating in the dark?)
• Fear that your clients are going to push back against the bill you send them as to how much time you spent on their case.
• Fear that your clients are not going to pay the bill.
• Dreading external audits of your time cutting down the hours you did spend and record.

What else comes up for you?

We naturally want to avoid things that bring up fear or dread. Avoidance is a helluva drug, but it is not an effective long-term strategy. This leads to more stress and anxiety.

If these are your thoughts and feelings, of course time is going to be the bane of your existence.

Change Your Thoughts

Now, start to change some of these thoughts. Start with:

“Billing is a necessary part of my job.” 

Acceptance is huge. This does not mean you like this aspect of your job, but accepting it can make it less dreadful.

You can even try shifting it to, “I love billing. I love seeing the concrete evidence of my work. I love sending my bills and collecting money for my hard work.”

Some other options:

• “Billing is imperative for making a living and supporting the life I want and dream of.”
• “The last weekend of the month is going to be amazing when I can spend it how I want to!”
• “My time is valuable. The work I am doing is providing a valuable service for my clients.”
• “Maybe my clients won’t push back on the hours I spent on their case. Maybe the audits won’t be as bad as I am anticipating. Maybe clients will pay their bills on time.”  (As opposed to the negative side of the what-ifs.)
• “I will feel better about my hours each day, week, and month if I keep track of them and see them every day. I will not be operating in the dark hoping and praying that it’s enough by the end of the month.” This is like walking through a cave with a flashlight vs. feeling your way around in the dark.
• “Each task (email/phone call/etc.) can wait 30 seconds while I record this last one.”

How would you feel if these were your thoughts around time?

I would feel more empowered, more in control, calmer, and less resistance to doing the damn thing. And, I would feel less fear about how it will all shake out in the end.

I Can Relate

In my job as a therapist, I had to do notes for every session that I had with clients. I’m okay with the billing aspect of the job because income is necessary for my survival, paying my bills, and as a tool to live my life!

But writing the notes…for 30-40 sessions per week at some points in my career. No thank you.

I’d leave the notes until the end of the week. Or the end of the month. And then spend hours getting them done.

When I opened my own practice, I just wouldn’t do them since I had no one monitoring whether or not they are done. That’s part of being your own boss – you have to be your own accountability system.

What Changed for Me

I finally got into the habit of setting a boundary with clients to end sessions at 50 minutes (like they are supposed to) and not letting them talk for the full hour – probably as a way to avoid notes. And I coached myself through the resistance and just knocked them out. Or, I was diligent about doing them at the end of the day. They really don’t take that long – as much as I made it out to be in my head.

The stress of the notes wasn’t hanging over my head anymore. The stress of “What if I get audited by an insurance company or my clients request copies of their notes?” knowing they weren’t done was gone. I wasn’t perfect all the time, but I generally got to the point where it was automated into my workday routine.

Falling Back into Old Patterns

I also have to bill my time when I am divorce coaching. The structure is the same as how lawyers are paid on a collaborative divorce case: retainer and tracking each email, phone call, and meeting I have with clients. But, I find that I don’t enjoy tracking and have fallen into the same traps…updating the invoice at the end of month, going through my phone logs, looking at emails and guesstimating how much time those took, etc. 

Yes, the task isn’t fun. I also realized that part of my resistance was fear the clients were going to get upset about receiving the bill and needing to replenish the retainer.

Getting Back on Track

I had to do mindset work about my relationship with money. The hourly rate for divorce coaching was much higher than a therapy session. I had to get comfortable with that rate. 

I told myself, “It is what it is. These clients hired me to do this job and provide this valuable service for them. The terms were laid out at the beginning. If they didn’t want to pay me at this hourly rate, they wouldn’t have hired me.”

I recognized I was putting some of my money mindset issues onto my clients unnecessarily. 99% of the time the clients have no issue and they pay their invoice. They have experienced that my service is valuable and worth the investment of their money.

I have done the mindset work and made the habit changes.

Start Changing Your Mindset

While at the end of the day you still may not love the billing facet of your job, shifting how you think about it can help tracking your time become an accepted and necessary aspect rather than a dreaded, loathsome, fearful one.

Follow this process:

1. Pay attention to your negative thoughts.
2. Talk back to your brain and coach yourself to have more helpful thoughts.
3. Pay attention to how you feel with these new thoughts.
4. Notice how less stressed and anxious you are when you successfully track your time daily. 

Would this move you closer towards that desired feeling of how your life would be if you were in control of your time and billing was not the bane of your existence?

Start to move through those stages. One step at a time.

“Hang on to your hopes, my friend
That’s an easy thing to say
But if your hopes should pass away
Simply pretend that you can build them again
Look around
The grass is high
The fields are ripe
It’s the springtime of my life”
– Simon & Garfunkel, Hazy Shade of Winter

Will you allow this spring to be a time of possibility and get unstuck from patterns that are not serving you? If you need help wading through your muddy thoughts, book a discovery call!

Next week, I will focus on practical strategies around billing and tracking your time, as well as having more control over your workday agenda in general.