3 Essential Traits to Transform Your Bad Billing Habits

The Billing Coach Website

Master the 3 critical traits every attorney needs to successfully change their billing habits: resourcefulness, patience, and embracing imperfection. Learn why these traits matter more than systems or tools, and discover practical strategies to cultivate each one for lasting billing transformation.

Key Takeaways

• Three essential traits: resourcefulness, patience, and embracing imperfection
• Resourcefulness means maintaining a solution-focused mindset and making incremental improvements
• Patience accepts that progress is nonlinear and setbacks are normal learning opportunities
• Embracing imperfection prevents perfectionism from sabotaging your billing progress
• Consistent daily practice with clear intentions creates lasting change

Topics Covered

The Three Essential Traits Overview

• Why traits matter more than techniques for lasting change
• How these traits work together to support billing transformation
• The foundation for all successful billing habit change

Trait #1: Resourcefulness

What Resourcefulness Means:

• Maintaining a solution-focused mindset
• Making incremental improvements rather than waiting for perfect solutions
• Focusing on progress over perfection
• Believing in your capability to figure things out

Unresourceful vs. Resourceful Thinking Examples:

• Unresourceful: "This will never work for me"
• Resourceful: "What if I could make this work? Let's try..."
• Unresourceful: "I don't have time for this"
• Resourceful: "How can I make time for this important task?"
• Unresourceful: "I'm just not good at billing"
• Resourceful: "I'm learning to become better at billing"

The 4-Step Process for Shifting to Resourcefulness:

1. Notice unresourceful thoughts
2. Question whether these thoughts are helpful
3. Ask "What if?" and "Let's try..." questions
4. Practice new, more resourceful thoughts

Cultivating Resourceful Mindset:

• Asking solution-focused questions when faced with billing challenges
• Maintaining openness to learning and experimentation
• Focusing on what's possible rather than what's impossible

Trait #2: Patience

Why Patience is Essential:

• Progress in billing habits is nonlinear
• Setbacks are normal and expected parts of the process
• Real change takes time to become automatic
• Impatience often leads to abandoning efforts too early

Common Impatient Thoughts that Sabotage Progress:

• "I should be further along by now"
• "Everyone else seems to get this faster"
• "This is taking too long"
• "I'm behind where I should be"

Resourceful Patience Thoughts:

• "I will figure this out, no matter how long it takes"
• "Every small step forward is progress"
• "My timeline is perfect for me"
• "Learning takes the time it takes"

Embracing the Learning Process:

• Understanding that mastery comes through consistent practice
• Accepting that everyone's timeline is different
• Viewing challenges as opportunities to strengthen your skills

Trait #3: Embracing Imperfection

How Perfectionism Sabotages Billing:

• Waiting for the "perfect" time to bill (which never comes)
• Delaying billing under the false belief of having more time later
• Creating "perfectionistic fantasies" about future billing sessions
• Procrastinating until deadline fear forces action

The Perfectionism Trap:

• People complete billing at the last minute due to deadline fear, not because they finally have time
• Deadline fear feels worse than the dread of doing the billing
• This creates a cycle of stress and avoidance

The "B+" Billing Approach:

• Embracing "good enough" billing narratives in the moment
• Capturing time with B+ descriptions rather than waiting for perfect A+ narratives
• Understanding that captured time with decent descriptions beats perfect descriptions that never get recorded

Creating Internal Motivation:

• Moving away from external deadline pressure
• Building internal drive for consistent billing habits
• Focusing on progress rather than perfection

Transforming Habits Through Clear Intentions

The Importance of Clear Intentions:

• Defining your engagement level with billing transformation
• Understanding your personal reasons for wanting change
• Creating commitment that goes beyond surface-level desires

Daily Practice Requirements:

• Consistent, daily contemporaneous billing practice
• Small daily progress to rewire neural pathways
• Understanding that knowledge without application doesn't create change

The Anchoring Advantage Approach:

• Focusing attention on billing tasks
• Creating sustainable systems for daily practice
• Building momentum through consistent small actions

Your Action Steps

1. Assess your current trait levels - Which trait do you need to develop most: resourcefulness, patience, or embracing imperfection?
2. Practice the four-step resourcefulness process when you notice unresourceful billing thoughts
3. Identify your impatient thoughts and practice replacing them with patient, resourceful alternatives
4. Implement the "B Plus" approach - start capturing time with good enough descriptions rather than waiting for perfect ones
5. Set clear daily intentions for your billing practice
6. Explore the suggested workbooks - "How to Commit" and "Contemporaneous Commitment"

Tools and Resources Mentioned

• "How to Commit" - The Workbook
• "The Contemporaneous Commitment - Finding Your Why - The Workbook 

Key Insights

• Traits matter more than techniques for lasting billing transformation
• Progress is nonlinear - expect and normalize setbacks
• Perfectionism is the enemy of progress in billing habits
• Daily practice with clear intentions creates neural pathway changes
• Knowledge without application doesn't create lasting change

Next Episode Preview

Practical tools and daily practices for implementing the three essential traits in your billing routine.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Bill Your Time Today and a Stress Free Way podcast. I'm your host, Molly Kramer, the Billing Coach, and today we're talking all about the three essential traits for billing habit change success. So in this episode, I'll be talking about how to cultivate the exact mindset that separates successful billing transformations from all those failed attempts that you may have done in the past. Okay, let's dive right in. So in our last episode, I introduced the three essential traits concepts resourcefulness, patience, and imperfection. And today we're going to dive into what these actually look like in practice and how to cultivate them. So let's start with resourcefulness. So as I said in the last episode, resourcefulness is a mindset where you are solution focused rather than problem focused. It means approaching challenges with determination and focusing on those incremental improvements rather than the perfect outcomes. So here's what resourcefulness looks like in your day-to-day billing practice. So instead of I can't do this, right? Instead of I'll never figure this out, you will think instead, I can do this, or I'm willing and open to believing that I can do this. And I'm open and willing to believe that I really can figure this out. Instead of this is impossible, right? Changing your billing habits, you can think instead, maybe there's something I haven't tried yet, right? Or instead of nothing is working, you can ask yourself, I wonder if, and then dot, dot, dot, we can try this. So I just want you to see where you may be not resourceful enough or being resourceful to try to find new ways to change your billing habits. And a lot of the mindset work comes into play, the notice, narrate, normalize, and then get to that next best thought. So right now, I just want you to be catching yourself when you are in the unresourceful mindset of I can't do this, I can't figure this out, this is impossible, right? Instead of being in that resourceful mindset of I can figure this out, or maybe there's something I haven't tried yet, or I wonder if I could try this. So the key principle in being resourceful is also that progress over perfection standard, right? It's also the everything is figure out. So I want you to start focusing on the progress, the process, and not just the results, not just the prize of getting that time entered, of getting the contemporaneous timekeeping result. I want you just to focus on the process itself and try to aim for 1% better every day. You know you are progressing if you make 1% progress every single day. Not five, not 10%, just 1%. And we're gonna talk about celebrating that 1% better every day in an episode that's titled Celebrating Your Billing Wins. Okay. So I want to give you a couple of thoughts that I want you to take away from this podcast that you can start to cultivate anytime you notice your brain being unresourceful, right? Being in that, I can't figure this out, uh, or I'll never figure this out mindset. So here are some specific thoughts that are super helpful to cultivate resourcefulness. A thought like, I have everything I need to change my billing habits or to do this program well, or even just the thought, I am capable. Or if other people have done this, I can too. Or I'm good at learning new things. Or I can guess and go from there. I love that one. I can make an educated guess about how to bill my time here and go from there. Um, I'm gonna dive into confusion cutting in a later episode. And one of the problems I see so many attorneys make is they get into that place of feeling confused about how to bill for something or whether they can bill for it. And so they take the action of just not billing for it, of not figuring it out. But when you have that essential trait of resourcefulness, you will always ask yourself that question like, what if I did know? What if I did know how to bill for this? Or what if I can take a guess and just try it out? That is resourcefulness. That will help you capture more of your time and get away from the confusion cutting. Okay, so again, resourcefulness is whenever you're noticing that you are in that mindset of I can't figure this out, I don't know how to do this, I shouldn't have to deal with this. I've tried everything and I just can't change my billing habits, right? All of those thoughts really shut you down from your problem-solving capacity. And so what I want you to do is use that four-step process. Notice when you are thinking those unresourceful thoughts that when you are focused on the problem versus the solution. Narrate what those thoughts are, right? Name it to tame it. Uh normalize, right? It's always the of course, right? I've probably been practicing these unresourceful thoughts for a very long time. No big deal, right? I'm just going to get to that next best thought. I'm going to soothe that unresourceful thought and start to offer myself better feeling thoughts and next best thought that will help me feel relief, feel better, right? By empowering myself with some of the more resourceful thoughts. Again, some of those resourceful thoughts. I am capable. I have everything I need to do this. If other people have done this, I can too. I'm good at learning new things. I can guess and go from there. Maybe there's something I haven't tried, right? I wonder if. Right. So from a place of wondering and then asking yourself, what if? And maybe I could try this, right? That is a place where you are way more likely to take more action than I can't figure this out, or I've tried everything and I don't know how to do this, or nothing is working, right? It's a very different mindset, a very different approach. So I want you to take that. I wonder, what if let's try to your billing habits, right? To your billing mindset, this new resourceful mindset that you are creating so that you will try new things, try to capture more of your time, try to create better billing narratives, right? Instead of cutting your time, confusion, cutting your time, all the things. Okay, let's jump to patience. Um, the this really is an essential trait inside this program. It really is about accepting where you're at in the learning process. Mastering new billing habits does take some time, and it will not be linear, and it will not be perfect. And you need to allow some time for that change to take place. So I want you to just expect it's gonna take a little time, expect that it's gonna be nonlinear, there's gonna be ups and downs, there's gonna be billing backsides, and just expect the process to be a little bit messy. This leads into that imperfection as the third essential trait, but it ties in here, right? Being patient with things not working every single day. Being patient with yourself when you are really busy with all the legal work and you have lots of deadlines and your brain just wants to go back to, I'm too busy to bill, right? Cultivating patience for yourself is an essential trait that will really help you in this program. So here are some impatient thoughts that really will sabotage any progress you make in this program. So again, I just want you to be aware of them when they come up in your brain, right? When you hear yourself thinking them and feel some sort of negative, restrictive emotion. So thoughts like, I should be further along, right? That's a big one, especially if you've been in this program for a couple weeks and you still haven't noticed big billing habit change. That's a big one that comes up for a lot of my clients and students. I should be further along. Or why is this taking so long? I want to have mastered my billing habits. I want to feel better about my billing by now. Or I should have figured this out by now. That's another one. Very impatient, right? Or this isn't working. It's kind of like the resourcefulness, or I'm behind, right? It's a lot of time restriction, time scarcity. Like you should be somewhere where you're not, and that feels bad. And again, go back to the model, go back to the think-fill act cycle. When we are thinking these thoughts, I should be further along. Why is this taking so long? I should have figured this out by now. This isn't working. I'm behind. When we're thinking those thoughts about our progress in this program, about where we are at with our billing habits, we are going to feel some sort of unhelpful, unwanted, negative emotion in our body, right? Maybe we'll feel annoyed with ourselves. Maybe we'll feel impatient with ourselves, frustrated, defeated, whatever that negative feeling is, that constricted feeling in your body. If you're thinking these impatient thoughts, you will feel that way. And when we are feeling those kind of feelings in our bodies, those emotions in our bodies, our brain again wants to solve for them by avoiding what it thinks is causing those feelings. And our brains always think it's the circumstance causing the feelings, the billing, right? Our lack of progress that is causing those feelings. But that is not a fact, right? It is just a circumstance. Wherever you are at with your billing habits, that is a circumstance, and you get to think about that however you want. And if you're thinking about it in a way that feels impatient, that feels like you're behind, your brain again will want to solve for it and want to avoid any further progress. It's gonna want to avoid continuing to progress through the program or listen to additional podcasts or try again to contemporaneously bill. It's gonna want to avoid billing, avoid this program, avoid any further progress. And the result you will get is proving those thoughts true. It'll continue to take longer. You'll continue to not figure it out, it will continue to not work, you will continue to be behind. And I don't want you proving those thoughts true. I want you to prove instead some more helpful thoughts like, and I will give you some examples of patient and better feeling thoughts that I want you to cultivate, like I will not quit no matter what. Right? I will figure this out no matter how long it takes. Or I'm committed to figuring this out no matter how long it takes. Or I'm willing to be bad at this for however long it takes me to get good. I love that one. It's a hard one, too. I'm willing to be bad at this for however long it takes me to be good. I'm where I should be. How could that be true? I'm where I'm exactly where I should be and getting better. Where I'm at makes sense. That's a big one, right? Where you're at in your billing habits makes sense based on everything you've been thinking up till now and feeling up till now, and all of the evidence that you have created in your results of not being good at billing, not being good at contemporaneous timekeeping, cutting your time, confusion cutting your time, underbilling your time, right? Where you're at makes sense, and we are getting to a better place, we're getting to a different place. Learning and growth are uncomfortable, right? They really are. When you are growing, when you are learning, it is uncomfortable because you are creating new neural networks, new neural pathways in your brain that your brain has not gone to before. And so it's not familiar with these thoughts. It'll feel different, it'll feel new. And so, of course, there's going to be a little discomfort along the way, but we can cringe and count our time anyway. I'll be talking about that strategy in a later episode. We can gag and go through the discomfort, right? Feel a little uncomfortable. 90 seconds is typically how long an emotion lasts in our bodies after it's triggered by a thought. And it will subside as long as you're not resisting the emotion, as long as you're not pushing against the emotion or reacting to the emotion. So that notice, narrate, normalize, next best thought process is all about you being the observer of the emotion versus identifying with the emotion. It is so much harder to change and feel better, to shift into a better feeling emotion if you are identifying with it, if you are feeling justified by that emotion. Trust me, I felt very justified in my bad billing habits. It's like, because billing sucks and I don't want to do it. Nobody else has to do it. It's not fair, right? Very justified. But that justified feeling continued to create more negative billing results for me. So in order to create those better billing feelings, you have to start with your thoughts and you have to start shifting into more resourceful thoughts, into more patient thoughts. And now I'm gonna talk about thoughts that will help you with that imperfection, right? All right, so embracing the third and essential trait of imperfection. So this is what I believe is actually the most important trait because perfectionism is what keeps so many attorneys really spinning in poor billing habits, quitting unnecessarily when they try to create better billing habits. And just by the nature of this career, perfectionism is a trait that so many attorneys aim for. And so they do it with their billing habits as well. And it just keeps them from gaining traction, making progress, getting better and better at creating the skill of contemporaneous timekeeping. So I think perfectionism really shows up in billing, specifically in some sneaky ways. So it's when you tell yourself, I'll just bill all my time tomorrow, right? And you rely on some future version of you, this perfect future version of you tomorrow morning, that you falsely believe will have all the time as well as all the emotional capacity to bill perfectly then. And I'm here to tell you that that version of you does not exist. That version of you will be just as overwhelmed with their email inbox, just as overwhelmed with their to-do list, have the same exact thoughts that this present version of you had, right? Where you didn't want to bill your time, or you didn't think you had time to bill your time, or you just didn't want to. So it is a fantasy and it is a perfectionistic fantasy every time you tell yourself, I'll just bill everything tomorrow. And yes, sometimes maybe you do, but I want you to be on to yourself. How many times have you told yourself that and not done it and dove right into the emails or right into the motion or right into the client deliverable and told yourself again, I'll just bill it all later today. Right? And later today I'm gonna have time and I'm gonna have capacity and I'm gonna feel better about my billing, and I'm gonna remember everything I did yesterday and all today, and it's a lie. It's a lie and it's a fantasy. So I just want you to notice when that version when that perfectionistic fantasy shows up for you. So the one other thing is that the only reason that you typically don't show up to bill your time in the moment is because likely you have created a result, an experience for you of waiting till the end of the month or whenever that billing deadline is due, some of you have billing deadlines that are at the end of the week, too. So whenever that deadline is, you have created the experience, created the result of you actually getting the billing done before the deadline. Of right, it's like when you tell yourself I'm really good, I'm really great at not procrastinating, especially when I have a deadline, right? I really laser focus in when I have a deadline. I'm really good at that. But I want to show you why and a way out of that because I don't think it's useful and I think it will sabotage any efforts you're making at creating sustainable, uh sustainable contemporaneous billing habit. So I call this deadline fear, and this is what motivates so many attorneys and just people in general, deadline fear to get things done and to procrastinate and wait till the last minute. So think about the fear and the panic and the anxiety of not getting your billing entered and done at the end of the month, right? You feel so much fear as it's getting closer and closer and closer. And your brain is finally, as it gets closer to the deadline, it gets to this point where your brain's like, hey, this fear, this panic, this anxiety feels 10 times worse than the dread of just getting your billing done. Why don't you just go get your billing done? If you just do your billing, if you just get it all done, you're not gonna feel fear, anxiety, panic, because those emotions feel way worse than just the dread of having to like go and enter your time. So your brain's like, you're right, right? You're right. It's gonna feel 10 times worse. And there are actual consequences, right? People may, the firm may reach out to me and they may dock my pay if I don't get it done, right? That will feel even worse than just the dread of not wanting to do it. Or maybe a partner will reach out to you in an email and say, hey, you don't have your billing done by this deadline. Um, right. And that will feel worse being called out. So typically your brain just is like, all right, here we go. We're just gonna buckle down, we're gonna get it done. Even if it takes all night, we're just gonna get the billing done. And so you do, right? But you're using this fear-based motivation to get you to take the action of billing your time. And this is something that it sounds like if you're in this program, you want to change. So I just want you to generate some awareness around why, right? If you're wondering, well, I always get it done, right? Especially if your brain offers you the I'll do it tomorrow or I'll do it later. Because your brain will also say, I always get it done. But the reason you get it done is because of all the fear, panic, anxiety, stress, overwhelm that you feel at the end of the month, right? That feels so much worse. And then your brain wanting to feel better is like, okay, let's just get this billing thing done. Right. And then you start to talk to yourself, you start to talk about how it's actually not that big of a deal. You can just do it, right? Just like start. Come on, get going. You don't want to feel this fear anymore. This feels terrible. Just go get your billing done. And from there, that's why you take the action. That's why you feel so motivated at the end of the month to do it. So instead, what we have to do is create that internal motivation. And I'm gonna show you exactly how to do it. But the first step is understanding why you do get it done at the end of the month. And so why you have all this evidence your brain's gonna want to point to of look, you always get it done, you always get it done. But think about how much time you lose, how much time you lose from forgetting about what you've done all month, how much time you lose because you're way more tempted to cut your time or underestimate the time, or possibly overestimate the time, which feels icky. And all the time that you feel confused about can I bill for this? I don't know. And so you don't. So I just want you to realize all of the net negative consequences that can happen if you rely on that dead. Fear as your motivation versus relying on self-determination, relying on empowerment, feelings of empowerment, feelings of just calm and stability and confidence to enter your time as you go. And that is what I'm going to help you create in this program. So let's go back to embracing imperfection. So, what I want you to start to do is embrace B plus billing narratives, B plus, so that you can capture more of your time in the moment versus A plus narratives. Because most of the time, when you are having a standard of A plus narratives and you don't have that much time throughout the day to bill, you will likely tell yourself, I'll just do it tomorrow when I have more time. We tell ourselves that all the time. I have so many students and clients who they tell themselves they'll do it later because in their brain, they want to have that A plus billing narrative. They want to have it perfect. And so in the moment when they feel stretched for time, they tell themselves, I don't have time now to get that A plus narrative. I'll just do it later when I do have more time. And again, you're never going to have more time. Right? Yes, maybe sometimes, but for the most part, that is that perfectionistic fantasy. You're just going to be as busy later. You're still going to not have enough time. And then all of a sudden you have a huge backlog of billing that you need to do A plus billing narratives for. And your brain's like, well, I don't have time for that. Let's just do it to let's do it next week. Okay. All right. So I want you to set some really clear intentions for your billing habit transformation inside this program. So why are you here? What billing habits do you want to change? What skills do you want to develop? Maybe you're pretty good at your narratives, but you want to move uh into even better. Or maybe you want to learn how to not beat yourself up when you have a backslide, right? So that you are more likely to start where you're at and then bill from there, gain momentum instead of continuing the slide. Also, I want you to define your level of engagement with this program. If you want to make real billing habit change, you need to commit to consistent daily billing practice. Consistent daily contemporaneous billing practice. And remember, contemporaneous timekeeping isn't just right after the task is done. Contemporaneous timekeeping is either before, during, or after. And it's not perfect, right? Sometimes you'll miss one. That's okay. But as much as you can, writing out the narrative before and then getting into the task and then capturing the time or even during when you're like, oh, I let let me remember to bill for this, capturing your narrative in the moment. And then of course, after. I want it to be a flow through your day like a wave, right? Doing the legal task, billing, doing the legal task, billing, either before, during, or after. I just want it to be this interwoven part of your day so that you're not starting and stopping, starting and stopping, starting and stopping. And I'm going to talk about my anchoring advantage approach that has worked so well with so many attorneys in a later podcast episode. It is so helpful to start that narrative before you jump into the legal work so that it really does feel like it's a part of the legal work itself when that's the first thing you do, and then you get into writing the brief or writing the memo or writing the email. That's that anchoring advantage. You also get the advantage when you have that billing narrative, it really laser focuses you in on what the task you're about to do is. So you get more intentional, right? You make it easier on yourself so you don't feel overwhelmed, right? Especially if you're breaking up your tasks into separate chunks, into separate billing chunks. And it's just really, really helpful. And if you want to find, you can jump to that episode. I'm not sure which one it is yet, but um it'll be labeled the Anchoring Advantage approach. And that'll be that's really helpful for a lot of attorneys to start the narrative first and then get into the task. Um, so I want you to define your level of engagement in this program. I want you to uh definitely check out some of the workbooks, the worksheets. Um, I have a workbook entitled How to Commit inside the membership vault, and I will uh link to it in the episode show notes. I also have a really good workbook called The Contemporaneous Commitment, Finding Your Why. And that one is such a good one to go through and really get clear on what are all your whys for wanting to create this new habit, this new skill set, changing into better billing habits, getting very clear so that when you do run into your obstacles, right? When you do run into the I'm too busy to bill, you can go back to your why and all your whys if you filled out the worksheet, and you can really start to deliberately and intentionally tell yourselves all the reason why you're doing this, so that you can feel that commitment. You can feel that empowerment, and you are way more likely to take the action of, again, billing your time instead of putting it off till later. I think it's super important to have all of your whys and to continue to offer yourself all of the reasons why, so that you'll feel that commitment, you'll feel that confidence, right? You'll feel that empowerment. So you get to decide how much you engage with this process. There really, there's no right or wrong way, but there has to be some level of engagement. Knowledge, everything I teach you in this program without application really won't change your billing habits. You're gonna hear some super helpful, I hope, content, right? Information, knowledge about billing, about how I change my billing habits, about how I help my clients do that, all of my students out there. But without you actually doing the work, without trying it out, without doing the four-step process to change, without modeling out what your current unhelpful billing thoughts, feelings, actions, results are, and then getting to that more helpful model, thought, feeling, action, result, without you actually doing that work, nothing will change. Okay, so the key really is to show your brain consistent 1% progress every day so that your brain will start to naturally think, hey, this actually could be working, or I am getting better at this, right? Those are the thoughts that will help you to continue this progress, continue this work. Again, versus this isn't working, or I'm not getting any better at this. You want to keep giving your brain evidence that it is working, even if you can't see it just yet. Even if maybe you don't even have that 1% progress, I want you to tell your brain, I am consuming the information, the content, right? These episodes, so that I can start making 1% progress. If you want to go that route, you can do that too. Right? Things are actually working behind the scenes even when you can't see them. I love thinking that thought. Okay, progress, not perfection. Always. All right, so that's it for today's episode. In the next episode, I'm gonna be diving into understanding your billing mindset and the two core components that control all of your billing behaviors, and that is your relationship with billing and your identity as a billable timekeeper. All right, I'll see you all then.

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Bye.