The Hickensian

19.01.10 Why you can never work 'full time'

24 comments
Tagged with: articles, working

“Someone asked me the other day what percentage of my day was spent doing what. Yesterday it was approximately one third general admin type stuff, one third client liaison type stuff and one third designing type stuff. If we ignore the fact that there isn’t really such a thing as a typical day – that is a pretty much a typical day.”

Ben Terrett (Interesting Mini CEO Half Thoughts)

When I started working freelance, I worked out my rates and estimated earnings based on a ‘typical’ eight hour day. What I didn’t really comprehend at the time was the fallacy of an eight hour day of solid work. There are so many factors that eat into that supposed ‘billable time’.

Admin. The obvious one. I hire a bookkeeper and an accountant to look after this side, but you still need to do a certain amount of admin yourself. Becoming a Limited Company brought with it more forms than I could ever imagine.
Illness. Your choice of lifestyle and diet can affect this, but even the fittest get the flu.
Hardware/software failures. Kernel panics, hard drive failures, crashy software.
Meetings. Not so much with clients (which are billable), but with accountants, bookkeepers, solicitors, financial advisors…
Enquiries. This has been a big problem for me, as before I worked for Opera, the level of enquiries was such that I could spend half of most days simply replying to them.
Phone calls. The ones unrelated to active projects. “I’ve lost my login details…” or “Can you just send me…”.
Lack of motivation. It sounds lame, but you will get days where no matter how hard you try, you can’t produce anything. Usually a sign of needing a break.
Power cuts, or lack of internets (something I see happen a lot with Twitter friends cut off by poor service from their ISP).
Children!. We love them, but every working parent surely dreads the call from school or nursery, asking them to collect their poorly child.

No doubt there are many more.

The problem with setting such an unrealistic expectation is two-fold. The first is that you often feel like a failure for not achieving those core hours (sometimes you do far, far more of course, but that doesn’t always help the guilt!). Secondly, it leads to underestimating project times, where your belief of how much you can achieve is sadly mistaken.

There’s no easy way around this, it’s just one of the things I’ve got used to. Correction – still getting used to. I’m better than I was, but I still get this wrong.

Comments | RSS

No.1

∞ Paul said 52 days ago:

I couldn’t agree more. People I know can’t seem to grasp that an 8 hour day for me doesn’t necessarily mean an 8 hour day (of billable time)… and I may need to work 12+ hours to get 8 hours billable. :(

No.2

∞ chovy said 52 days ago:

I believe the generally accepted number for efficiency is 40% on the most efficient teams…it is less for mediocre peforming teams.

No.3

∞ Winnie Lim said 51 days ago:

Agreed, everyone thinks we’re all millionaires-to-be with a reasonable hourly rate. I won’t even start on days we fall sick, etc.

No.4

∞ Wolfgang Bartelme said 51 days ago:

Couldn’t agree more.

No.5

∞ Alex said 51 days ago:

signed

No.6

∞ Jamie Hill said 51 days ago:

So true

No.7

∞ Chris Garrett said 51 days ago:

Very much agreed, especially on the limited company thing.

Before we took on our first real employee, I seriously considered reverting back to being a sole trader. The added paperwork (read: threatening letters from the seemingly obsolete Companies House) every 5 minutes was just way too much effort when trying to balance work, sales, etc too.

No.8

∞ Bill Shander said 51 days ago:

Larger teams can get to 75% billable at the top end, smaller companies definitely find that to be a challenge. And the founder/CEO/chief cook and bottle washer will either work 12 hours to get 8 hours billable or resign him/herself that s/he is just 30-50% billable at best. Your rates should be adjusted to assume 30-75% billability of your team based on the above.

No.9

∞ Matt Brett said 51 days ago:

After more than 4 years as a freelancer, I find myself struggling with this more and more these days.

Of course, now I have a toddler running around, some products out in the wild, dozens of previous clients, and new people tapping me on the shoulder every day. It all adds up, and it all takes time to deal with.

I used to book projects depending on how long it would take me to complete them, but now that just gets me in trouble, as there’s not enough time for everything else.

I’m trying a new scheduling technique, or tacking on an extra day for every 5 days of actual work.

No.10

∞ Simon Bouchard said 51 days ago:

It’s a reality that we need to deal with. Excellent article!

No.11

∞ Paulo Pereira said 51 days ago:

Jon, you got me scared now, as I’ve been thinking about going freelance.

No.12

∞ Michael Locke said 51 days ago:

You had me with the last one, children. I love my two beautiful kids, but it’s impossible to get work done while my 3yr old is asking me if he can watch The Wiggles on Youtube. As someone who maintains a full-time job and runs a consulting biz part-time, I generally get in about 3 to 4 hours in on a good night (generally from 10pm to 2:30am) when the kids are asleep. Using Freshbook’s time tracking clock allows me to be honest with my clients and bill them accurately.

No.13

∞ Mark McCorkell said 51 days ago:

All of the above is so true. For me… some days my design’s just don’t blossom due to a number of the above points! Replying to emails, and making “changes” for clients, which really do become taxing on the soul!

No.14

∞ Jeremy Douglas said 51 days ago:

Then there is the time at work that I (we?) get sidetracked by a well written blog article, such as the above :)

No.15

∞ Jody Shyllberg said 51 days ago:

So true!! So far today has all been spent on admin and trying to circumvent server issues. And then, of course, there’s reading all the blogs…!

No.16

∞ Octavio Corral said 51 days ago:

Great Post! This is something I learned very quickly for sure. Unrealistic expectations on work hours can seriously dampen your mood if you aren’t ready for it.

Also, this helps when planning out client project time lines. Be realistic with yourself in how long things take.

No.17

∞ J.T. Shaver said 51 days ago:

I have always heard a good starting point is to assume 50% billable time and adjust from there. If you are working on salary somewhere then you may have to essentially double your rates when going freelance if you want to earn the same amount annually.

No.18

∞ Brian Warren said 51 days ago:

Agreed! One of the biggest shockers to me when I started full-time freelancing was how much time it took to run the business. And that’s the thing I tell people, you’re not just a freelancer — like it or not you’re starting your own businessness, with all the work that implies. If you have any kind of natural ability in the business realm (or are willing to learn!) then you’re in good shape, I say.

No.19

∞ Kev Adamson said 50 days ago:

Good, honest insights as always Jon :)

No.20

∞ Dena Jacobs said 49 days ago:

On the up side ! Being a freelance is the best way of never being sick ! Can’t afford to take a siki !

No.21

∞ Emily H said 49 days ago:

It is reassuring to hear that you struggle with this too Jon. I disagree with the statement you make in the title though – I think it is important to realise that most of those ‘factors’ preventing you from doing billable work are integral parts of the job. You couldn’t run a business without the Admin, IT, meetings, enquiries and phone calls. Those are still ‘work’. Just not the fun creative stuff that drives us. I still have a ‘full time’ job even though only 30-50% of the tasks I do on a daily basis are billable.

I’ve just published a blogpost on how (and why) I’m using a time-tracking application to capture and identify exactly what I am doing for 50-70% of my time. I’ve called it Reclaim ‘unproductive’ work time with time tracking

No.22

∞ Lucy said 48 days ago:

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Lucy

http://dataentryjob-s.com

No.23

∞ Daniel Nordstrom said 46 days ago:

I agree. All we can do is try—with the right routines, tools and procedures—to minimize time not billable.

I have a set of tools I always use to allow for very simple collaboration. I’ve got a wiki for all my clients where they’ve got screencasts on everything. (Well, not yet but some of it.)

Every single tool I choose is carefully picked by considering most of all simplicity and efficiency. The same goes for CMS or building bespoke solutions—make it simple enough to absolutely minimize help and hand-holding.

It’s a good thing to explain to clients, in a very nice way, that communication through the right channels make everything flow smoother and get things done faster.

Proactive attitude is also important. For example, constant backups with time-machine. Ready to restore the whole system in case of emergency. As well as other backup drives and iDisk/MobileMe to transfer Transmit favorites, bookmarks etc between machines.