Building Your Billing Capacity

The Billing Coach Website

In this episode host Molly Kremer explores the three critical dimensions needed to develop sustainable contemporaneous timekeeping habits. She provides concrete frameworks and strategies to help attorneys overcome common billing challenges like procrastination, under-billing, and time avoidance.

What is Billing Capacity?

Billing capacity goes beyond just managing time—it's about building capacity in three critical dimensions:

1. Emotional capacity around billing
2. Intellectual capacity around billing
3. Time/temporal capacity around billing

1. Emotional Capacity: The Foundation

Definition

The ability to experience uncomfortable feelings associated with billing (doubt, fear of judgment, anxiety about value) without avoiding those feelings through procrastination, under-billing, confusion cutting, or non-billable buffering.

Common Avoidance Behaviors

• Procrastinating time entry
• Under-billing time
• Confusion cutting
• Non-billable buffering (social media, phone checking, excessive coffee breaks)

The 4-Step Process: Notice, Narrate, Normalize, Next Best Thought

1. Notice: Become aware of physical sensations in your body when feeling negative emotions about billing

2. Narrate: Identify the thinking behind the feeling (e.g., "It should be less time")

3. Normalize: Acknowledge that these feelings are normal given your thought patterns

4. Next Best Thought: Deliberately shift to a more helpful thought

• Instead of: "It should have been less time"
• Try: "Maybe it should have taken me this amount of time. How do I know? Because it did."

Alternative Techniques

• Cringe and count: Feel the discomfort but bill the time anyway
• Responsibility shift: Remember that your job is to record time accurately, not to discount it—that's the partner's or client's decision

2. Intellectual Capacity: The How-To

The 3-Step Framework: Capture It, Count It, Move It

Capture It: Record the time contemporaneously (before, during, or after the task)

Count It: Determine the time amount (timers, estimation, best judgment)

Move It: Enter a B+ narrative and move to the next task

Key Resources Mentioned

• Billing Blueprint
• Billing Narrative Blueprint
• Billing Blue Book
• Available in Billing Mastery Mentorship Billing Vault
• 
  

When Feeling Stuck: "I Wonder, What If, Let's Try"

This curiosity-based approach helps shift from confusion to engagement:

• "I wonder how I could capture this time..."
• "What if I could capture this narrative..."
• "Let's try using the billing blueprint..."

3. Time/Temporal Capacity: Abundance vs. Scarcity

The Problem Thought

"I don't have time to bill" creates the very problem it describes, resulting in zero bill time at the end of the day.

The Model Breakdown

• Thought: "I don't have time to bill"
• Feeling: Time scarcity, pressure
• Action: Skip billing, prioritize only legal work
• Result: Zero bill time at end of day

Powerful Reframe Thoughts

• "Taking 30 seconds now saves me 30 minutes later today"
• "Contemporaneous billing is a time-creating activity, not time-consuming"
• "What if I were wrong that I didn't have time to bill as I go?"
• "I am choosing to believe that I have enough time to bill as I go"

Benefits of Contemporaneous Billing

• Significantly less time than reconstructing later
• Better memory of actual work done
• Ability to capture "thinking time" and intellectual work product
• Can "fold in" billing time naturally instead of separate 30-minute catch-up sessions

Key Takeaways

1. All three dimensions work together: You need emotional capacity to handle discomfort, intellectual capacity to know how to bill, and time capacity to believe you have space for it.
2. Billing should take 1-2 minutes per entry: The association that billing takes a long time comes from end-of-day/week reconstruction.
3. Make billing part of the work: Don't treat it as separate administrative work—integrate it into your workflow.
4. Start with your weakest dimension: Assess where you are in each area and focus improvement efforts accordingly.

Next Episode Preview

Breaking the procrastination cycle: Why attorneys avoid billing and strategies to overcome procrastination patterns.

Resources

• Billing capacity workbook and worksheet (mentioned in show notes)

This episode provides a comprehensive framework for understanding and developing the capacity needed for successful contemporaneous timekeeping, addressing both the psychological and practical aspects of billing challenges.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Welcome back to the Bill Your Time Today in a Stress-Free Way podcast. I'm your host, Molly Kramer, the Billing Coach. And today we're talking all about building your billing capacity. In this episode, I'll be talking about what I think are the three critical dimensions to building your billing capacity that you will need to develop, and I will help you develop in this program in order to create sustainable contemporaneous timekeeping habits. Okay, let's dive in. So, what is billing capacity? What do I mean by that? First of all, I want you all to understand that contemporaneous timekeeping, the bill as you go method of timekeeping, isn't just about managing your time. It's not just about creating this habit and sticking to it. It's about building capacity in three critical dimensions. And those dimensions are your emotional capacity to bill your time as you go, your intellectual capacity around billing, and your brain capacity or temporal capacity around billing. I'm gonna go through each one of these and really dive in deep with them so that you can understand why it's so crucial, that you know what your billing capacity is, where you are at, and how you can start to up level that in each of those dimensions. And I think this will be so helpful for you as you create your contemporaneous timekeeping habit, as you stop any unhelpful billing habits, procrastinating time entry, underbilling, confusion cutting, even some non-billable buffering. The first one, it's that emotional capacity. I want to start here first because I think this is the biggest one where you can see the most rewards, the biggest prizes at the end, if you really learn the skill set of creating a lot of emotional capacity. An attorney who has a really high emotional capacity around billing is able to experience uncomfortable feelings in that F line of the model we talked about associated with billing, maybe doubt, fear of judgment, maybe anxiety about the value of that billable time, without avoiding those feelings through procrastination, or without avoiding those feelings by underbilling their time or confusion cutting their time, or by engaging in what I call non-billable buffering, all the social media scrolls, all the checking your phone, all the getting another cup or five cups of coffee. When you increase your emotional capacity around billing, all I mean by that is that you are increasing your ability to allow uncomfortable feelings in your body, uncomfortable vibrations, like I had mentioned, without needing to take the action of trying to avoid those feelings by taking unhelpful actions, typically avoidance, right? Getting away from your billing, not billing your time, telling yourself you'll do it later, or by undergoing some of your time. Because you know on the other side of that, you get to feel better. You get the relief from discounting some of your time, you get the relief from feeling the negative emotion of guilt, like it's too much time, or fear that the partner will think that you are being inefficient with your time. So an attorney who has that increased emotional capacity, and that is what I want for you. And I will throughout this program show you how to do that, specifically with my processes. I'm definitely going to dive into the notice narrate normalize and next fest that. I think that's a great process to help you create and up level your emotional capacity around billing. But attorneys who can do this are much better equipped to bill all their time, to capture all their time, to do it contemporaneously, to not avoid it, to not cut it, to not discount it, and to not buffer away from it. They can feel the cringe that comes with for with billing for a substantial amount of time, if that's the case, while still counting it accurately in the moment, because they're able to allow that uncomfortable feeling of guilt that is typically triggered by it should be less time. Or they're able to not confusion cut their time. And I'm going to talk about the intellectual capacity in a bit. I think this is where that comes into play of I don't know how to bill for it. I don't if I can bill for it. So typically I don't bill for it. Right. They can feel that cringy feeling, that uncomfortable feeling, or the confusion that they feel, allow it and still feel capable enough to figure out a way to bill for it. And again, I'm going to show you exactly how to do that a little bit later in this episode. But it really does require a new skill set. And that's what I want to teach you. I want to teach you this new skill set of allowing uncomfortable emotions without trying to action your way out of them in the A-line of your model. Instead, I'm going to help you to shift that T line, that thought line of your model. So you soothe whatever that emotional discomfort is in the moment. You coach yourself, you, and I'm going to tell you about this, really dive deep in this in a second, and notice, narrate, normalize. You next best thought, you get to that next best thought, you move up that emotional scale so you feel a little less discomfort in the moment by shifting your thoughts, not by taking the action to try to action your way out of that feeling. Let's make this very concrete. Let me show you my four-step process. In the last episode, I think I had mentioned it. I think I even attached a worksheet on it. But it's the same process that you're going to want to apply here. Whenever you notice that, oh, this feels bad thinking about your billing. I want you to become aware. Notice is the first N in the four steps. Become aware of any physical sensations that you're having in your body that feel negative, that feel like, let's just go with the very common uh this should be less time. Like it shouldn't have taken me this long. And you're going to feel a little guilty. You're going to feel a little discouraged. You're going to feel bad. You're going to feel uncomfortable. You're not going to feel great when you're thinking it should be less time. And so the first thing I want you to do is just notice the physical sensations in your body when you are thinking about your time in a way where I call it your shooting on yourself. You're feeling guilty about it because of the thought you're thinking, which simply is it should be less time, which by the way, who says it should? But I want you to just keep reminding yourself anytime you're feeling a negative emotion, you can remind yourself I'm safe to feel this emotion. This emotion is not an emergency. All it is is an indication that I'm thinking a thought right now that is unhelpful that doesn't serve me in me creating better billing habits and me capturing more of my time. If anything, this thought is creating the unhelpful result of me likely either avoiding entering my time at all or underbilling my time. And that is just not helpful. You notice it, become aware of the sensation in your body, narrate. That's number two. Identify what is the thinking behind the feeling in your body, the sensations in your body. Narrate what's going on in your brain, just so you can objectively see that it really is just a thought that is causing you to feel this way. It's not the amount of time you spent, right? It's really just what you are thinking about, that judgment, that opinion about the time you spent. So I want you to notice that's your narrate and then normalize. So I just want you to normalize to yourself. Like, of course, I'm feeling this way. I'm thinking this thought, it should be less. I've probably been thinking this thought about a lot of my time for a very long time. And I've always felt a little guilty. I've always felt a little uncomfortable with this amount of time that I spent. I'm always going to feel a little discouraged because most people and most people have been socialized to think if it takes a quick amount of time, you must be really smart, or you must be really efficient, or you must just get it. Right. And so when something takes a longer time than it should, you feel that separation from feeling smart. You feel that separation from feeling good enough. You don't feel good because there is the standard of whatever that is for you that wasn't met, and you feel bad. So of course you're going to feel a little bit bad. But this is when you change. This is when you start to really deliberately shift your thoughts purposely, deliberately, intentionally, so that you create in your body a different feeling than guilt, than discomfort. Really, I just want you to change to get to the next best thought so that you feel a little relief. That's what you're going for. If you can feel a little relief thinking, so instead of it should have been less, you could think the thought, maybe, maybe it should have been less, but maybe not. Maybe it always should have taken me this amount of time. And if I kind of go back and look at what I was doing, and if I feel in integrity and confident that it really did take this amount of time for this work for me to do it, maybe it should have always taken me that amount of time. And how do I know it should have? Because it did. I always say, don't argue with the reality of how much time something took. As long as you can say in integrity, you weren't buffering, doing other things during that time, and say with confidence that it really did take this amount of time to the best of your estimation, then I would bill for it. Instead of shooting on yourself about all of the time and having some standard. We will get into over-billing in another episode. I do think this is a separate and distinct issue with attorneys about over-perfecting the work and spending too much time on certain tasks. But if that isn't you, if you don't have a problem with over-billing and not in a nefarious way, just in a way where you're just spending an unreasonable amount of time because you're trying to perfect the work so that you are trying to make it mistake proof, right? Instead of you being mistake ready, instead of you being able to handle if there is a mistake, if you submit your work in B plus or A minus condition and being mistake ready versus mistake proof, such a fun concept. I have been helping attorneys with for a while now. And I will get into another episode about that. But if you are not having an issue with that, if it's just oh, it should have been less time, should have been more efficient, I should have been smarter, that's when it's the problem. So notice, narrate, normalize. And then next best thought. When you truly start to shift that thought and you believe it, yeah, maybe it should have taken me that amount of time. How do I know? Because it did. And I'm not going to argue with it. Then you're going to feel a little bit calmer or more confident even. And so when you're feeling more confident, it's a lot easier to take the action in that moment of capturing all your time. And if this seems a little difficult at first, I do offer another technique of just cringing through that emotional discomfort, feeling the guilt, feeling the discomfort around having spent a certain amount of time on a project when you think it should be less, and just counting it anyway. Cringing and counting it. And another technique that I think is helpful for attorneys is also you are not there to discount your time. Your responsibility is not to cut your time to a certain standard. That is the responsibility of the partner or even the client. It is up to them to decide if they want to cut it. And obviously, you can go back and argue your case. If it is a client, you can, of course, go back and argue the case for why it should have been that much time, the value of it. Obviously, I want you to do that in your narratives. But it really is not your responsibility to cut your time. It is your responsibility to record your time. It's your responsibility to record all of it so that it is out there. It's an honest assessment of how long it took. And if it should have taken, if the partner or the client really believes that it is an excessive amount, then that conversation can be had. Or then the partner can write off some of it and hopefully tell you all the reasons why. Or the client can ask a question about it. And that's uncomfortable too. So you get to choose your discomfort. Do you want to feel the discomfort of not billing all your time? Or do you want to feel the discomfort of possibly a partner or your client cutting some of that time? You just get to choose. And also, you can start to change the way you think and feel about the time you spend so that you don't feel that initial discomfort billing it. And especially when we get to in these episodes about how to craft those narratives, that's a big part of this because the more you can justify your time, the more you can use the four-part framework that I offer in the billing blueprint, the more likely you will not cut your time. The more likely you will see the value and the partner or the client reviewing the billing will also see the value in those narratives. Okay. I want you to try using those four steps. Notice, narrate, normalize, next best thought. Anytime you notice yourself in that feeling of discomfort when you are going to bill your time. And I just use the example of underbilling and the shooting example, but obviously there's lots of examples of thoughts that create negative emotion, negative feelings in your body where you are tempted to take an action that doesn't serve you, procrastinating, entering your time, not doing it in the moment, putting it off, underbilling, confusion, cutting, non-billable, buffering. That is a process that I helped clients and my students through. It really helped me when I was doing this work as well, when I was a litigator and trying to not underbill my time. It's very helpful to just notice and narrate and normalize the feelings, allow them versus reacting to them by trying to action my way out of them by underbilling my time. Yes, I got relief that way, but that is not what I want you to practice, right? Getting the relief by underbilling your time. That is what we're not practicing anymore. We're going to practice shifting the thought line and not trying to change the action line, not trying to action your way out of it to feel better. What else did I want to talk about? Okay. I really think you can go from feeling overwhelmed, maybe, or what's a better one? Maybe frustration about maybe billing your time as you go. That's a big one. I have a lot of clients who are, oh, it's just so frustrating to have to contemporaneously bill, to feeling actually empowered around contemporaneous timekeeping. So common thoughts would be pausing to bill is frustrated, versus you can think the thought, I can move through feeling frustration and I'm still going to do it. I'm still gonna pause and bill my time. That feels more empowering. Or trying to think of some examples, I can handle this brief pause to bill. Even that creates a little more emotional comfort versus the discomfort of feeling frustration. I hate that I have to pause to bill. Or it's so frustrating that I have to keep interrupting my work to bill my time. That feels frustrating, annoying even. And so instead of just having that feeling be there and possibly trying to avoid it by not billing, instead, I want you to shift the thought. Pausing to billing is frustrating. What if it's possible? The pausing to bill is something I can handle all day long. Like I have the emotional capacity to handle these pauses. I have the emotional capacity to take a minute or two to bill and then get on to the next task without it disrupting anything. Or feeling anxious around billing to feeling more calm and confident. So I have a lot of attorneys who tell me they just have this anxiety about interrupting their workflow to bill. It's kind of similar to the frustration, but it goes so deep as anxiety because they want to get their work done, and I get it. But how is it possible you can feel a little anxious, but tell yourself I can handle this anxiety and a quick moment to pause and bill? And so you can also say, I've done that many times in the past successfully. Nothing's gone terribly wrong where I've been able to pause between tasks or capture my narrative before I move on to the task. So it's a part of that workflow. Okay. Talked a lot about emotional capacity. Let's talk about intellectual capacity. This is your how. It's knowing what to bill, how to describe it, and how to capture it efficiently and justifiably, like I said, in your billing narratives. When your brain gets a little confused about what to do, how to bill for something, I want you to think about this simple three-step framework. We had the four-step, notice, narrate, normalize, next best thought. Also, what if you could capture it, count it, move it? Capture it, count it, move it. Capture it means getting the time recorded contemporaneously. And again, that just means either before, during, or after the task, entering your narrative either before, during, or after. Count it means determining how much time, how much time it is, either timers, estimation, your best judgment. And then move it means just enter that B plus narrative and then release it if you can, or if not, then move on to the next task. So it's this quick, capture it, count it, move it, capture it, count it, move it. I want billing to be very quick, easy, effortless. The reason most of you think it takes so much time is because you are waiting till the end of the day, or the end of the week, or the end of the month to do it. And yes, that takes so much time versus doing it in the moment where it's like a minute or two. So if you do have a strong association where billing takes a lot of time, it may be harder for your brain to latch on to billing just takes a minute or two. Because you're like, no, no, no. Typically it takes 30 minutes, 40 minutes at the end of the day, or a couple of hours on the weekend to get it done. Giving yourself evidence, showing your brain evidence that you can take a minute or two to bill. As you start practicing that, your brain will see a big pile of evidence at the end of the day that, yeah, it only did take a minute or two here and there. And I really could bill for billing. And I can't bill for, you know, 30 minutes at the end of the day trying to catch up on my time entries, but I can fold that time in to my time entries if I bill as I go. Really, the key is making this process, the capture it, count it, move it process really brief, one to two minute stops, so that you do keep the momentum of your legal work going, and you are also having that momentum of the billing work. The intellectual capacity that I want you to be increasing around your billing includes how to write justified narratives, what constitutes billable time in your practice, how to bill for certain billing scenarios like emails, phone calls, client communication. But this is where my written billing resources are super crucial. They're inside my billing mastery mentorship. If you're listening to this podcast, you are likely a member in there. But if not, I would highly recommend becoming a member of my billing mastery mentorship, where you get access to all of my billing written resources, my billing blueprint, my billing narrative blueprint, and my billing blue book. Those are really good hows that you can turn to when your brain is, I don't know, how do I bill for this? Feeling confused, or I don't know if I can bill for this, more confusion, doubt. Those are really great resources for you on the how. And I also want you to become your best billing expert. As you get better at practicing, capturing your time in your narratives in the moment. Like I want you to be able to rely on yourself to know how to bill for something. Or if you could bill for something. So if you do feel stuck, I just want yourself to I want you to ask yourself these three questions. Or it's more a phrase too. My capture it, count it, move it is I wonder what if let's try. And I took it straight from Sesame Street. So I wonder how I could capture this time spent doing this task. What if I could capture this time narrative, wondering? And what if? Let's try. Let's try something. Let's try using the billing blueprint. Let's try using the billing blue book. Let's try just something for my head. Versus telling yourself, I'll just figure it out later, which never happens. Later comes and you're just as confused about how to bill for something, or more confused than right now when what you just did is fresher in your mind. You will definitely create more confusion as time goes by. Your memory fades. So I wonder, what if? Let's try. It's a really great action to take if you're trying to find the action to take. That is the action, literally pondering. I wonder if I could. What if? Let's try. It puts you in a place of curiosity versus confusion. It puts you in a place of interest or intrigue, of engaging with your billing versus confusion, which everybody hates to feel confused. And so I want you to get to that emotional space of curiosity versus confusion. I wonder what if, let's try. Okay. Finally, time capacity. This is where I want you to be shifting from time scarcity to more time abundance around your billing. Most billing resistance that I have seen and I used to have comes from the belief that you don't have time to bill. But this thought is creating the very problem it describes. So, in other words, your results of not having any bill time at the end of the day is because you have been telling yourself over and over and over, I don't have time to bill. I don't have time to bill. And it may be quicker. It's like, don't have time. Don't have time. Oh, I should bill. Nope, don't have time. Got to get to the next task. Got to get to the next thing. This thought creates so much zero build time at the end of the day. If you can just work on this one thought, I promise you will be able to capture at least three-fourths of your time throughout the day. But I just want you to see that this thought, what it's creating for you and your experience is zero build time at the end of the day. This model, this think, feel, act cycle. If you run it through the model, I don't have time to bill. You're feeling that pressure, you're feeling that time scarcity. Of course, your brain's like, ooh, don't have time to bill, feeling time scarcity. So whenever we feel time scarcity, we're only going to try to prioritize the things that are of the utmost importance, like the legal work, like the next email. Billing is an important business. Billing goes on the back burner. And part of this work too is to see billing as just as important as the legal work. But in your minds, it's a really hard sell. I've been trying to sell that one to attorneys since I started this billing coaching program. But over time, I promise you really can see the billing work just as important as the legal work. Once you start to actually show yourself that. So once you start actually capturing your time as you go and you are doing the legal work, you will literally create the result of billing being just as important as the legal work. So you're going to prove that thought true. But in the beginning, you're like, nope. Definitely not as important as this motion I gotta get out. It's definitely not as important as this brief. It's definitely not as important as the legal work, as getting to the clients. But yes, maybe it's not as important to them as the billing work, but the billing work is very important to you. So I just want you to mull that over. Contemplate that how is it possible billing could be just as important as the legal work I am doing? Okay, so going back to time capacity. So, oh, I want to fill out that model. So if you're thinking I don't have time to bill, you're feeling that time scarcity, lots of pressure, the action you're gonna take is to not do the billing and to do the legal work in front of you that you feel like is way more important than needs to be done. And the result you will create is zero bill time. So that model, over and over, when you think it over and over all day long, in many years for some of you, that creates a very strong neural pathway, a very strong time shortage around billing. And so, of course, it's gonna feel uncomfortable when you start to capture your time as you go. Of course, it's gonna feel uncomfortable. Your brain's gonna be like, no, no, no. What are we doing here? This isn't important. You know what's important that I get this email out, that I get this deliverable out, that I get this, that I get this. But if you really think about it, again, billing just takes a minute or two. You will get that client deliverable out. If you subtract one or two minutes from it coming out, is that going to be the make or break moment? 99% of the time, no. But our brains think it, think it will. Our brains are constantly in urgency mode around our work for good reason. We get a lot of work. I remember being, again, a litigator, lots of work, lots of deadlines, lots of people needing me to get things to them in a timely manner. And emails only sped it up. And this AI is speeding it up, everything is getting sped up. And so it makes it even harder to do quote unquote administrative work like capturing your time. And especially if it's time that's just for you, not for anyone else. Obviously, your firm, but you do the contemporaneous timekeeping for you. The firm doesn't care if you contemporaneously, obviously, they want you to, but as long as you get your billing in by the deadline, they're happy. But are you happy? Are you happy waiting till the deadline to go and try to get all your time in? No. So stressful, so much anxiety, so much dread. All they get is like, oh, good, they got it in on time. And they get the result of it. I don't care how you got it, they just get the result. But for you, think about all the stress and trying to recreate all your time. Time scarcity, time abundance sounds like, what if I did have enough time to bill right now? Or taking 30 seconds now saves me 30 minutes later today. I like that one. Somebody, I had an attorney who gave me that one. If it usually takes you 30 minutes to at the end of the day to capture your time to get to reconstruct your time. So it's like, okay, well, what if I just took 30 seconds now? It's gonna save me 30 minutes later. Obviously, that doesn't totally add up, but when you take 30 seconds, 30 seconds, 30 seconds, 30 seconds, when you keep telling yourself that thought, that will really create the result of saving you 30 seconds at the end of the day, or 30 minutes at the end of the day. Contemporaneous billing is a time creating activity, not a time consuming one. Oh, that's so good. Time creating activity. Think of all the time that you will have at the end of the day that now you get to use for your own purposes. I read an article, sidebar, an article the other day that they had done, they just finished a study in New Zealand about work from home workers and all of the benefits. Mike dropped benefits from working from home. And basically it conclusively showed through, you know, this four-year study that working from home increased the workers mentally were better. They felt positive effects more mentally. Physically, they were able to obviously work out and do things at home. And then financially, they were saving money on you know, the commute and all of that. The commute was a big one. It was four and a half hours they got back from that commute. So if you think about billing, let's say it takes you 30 minutes at the end of every day to bill your time. What if you got that 30 minutes back? It's just that commute. For those of you who are remote, think about how amazing your life became when you didn't have to commute to the office. My hand is raised because that was me. I all of a sudden had an extra hour that I could devote to like working out or whatever it was. It was just, oh my God, I created this hour or COVID did. But it was so amazing to have that time and not to spend it on driving or hear billing. For you, what can you do with creating that 30 minutes? Or what do you want to do with that half hour at the end of every day instead of catching up on your billing? Fun. Okay. Here are some other really powerful thoughts that I wanted to leave you with as we end this episode. More powerful thoughts to help you increase your temporal capacity to bill. I am becoming an attorney who finds small moments throughout my day to bill contemporaneously. I am choosing to believe that I have enough time to bill as I go. I notice I'm thinking I don't have time to bill, but I recognize this is just a thought. It's actually not the reality. I like that one because remember, you're creating your reality. You're creating your experience of your life and your result line, of your models. And the I don't have time to bill is your truth now, but it doesn't have to always be that way. It really doesn't. You can start to shift that by what if it's possible if I do have a little bit of time to bill? It's possible that I actually do have time to bill, but my perception right now is making it seem impossible. There really is a possibility, but because of what I am experiencing in this moment when I'm thinking I don't have time to bill, that's why it feels impossible. What if I believe that contemporaneous timekeeping actually gives me more time rather than takes it away? It's a good one. What if I were wrong that I didn't have time to bill as I go? I love that. What if I were wrong? The truth really is that billing as you go takes significantly less time than reconstructing later. You're spending seconds billing as you go throughout your day. When you reconstruct your time, there are so many downsides. You're spending time trying to remember what you did, second guessing the time you spent on everything, because now it's so remote, depending on when you do catch up on your billing. So there is this greater tendency to either underbill or overbill. Also, you forget a ton of time because you just your memory vanished, it's gone. Or you don't capture that thinking time because now, in retrospect, it doesn't seem as substantive as what it when it when you were thinking it in the moment. So part of this program, I'm going to show you how to capture capture that thinking time or what I call that intellectual work product, because I think it's so important. But later, it's so much harder to capture it because you're like, what? Yeah, I was just thinking. But in the moment when you're evaluating, when you're strategizing, you're like, yeah, this is valuable. This is important. I want to make sure I capture this time. You're much more likely to capture that time in the moment versus later. And then also you just can't bill for billing if you take that extra time at the end of the day to bill your time. Can't bill for that 30 minutes. Or at least I don't know anyone or any firms that allow you to bill for 30 minutes to bill. I don't know who you'd bill. What client can I bill this to? But you can fold in that time when you bill as you go. It just naturally folds in as you are going. So all three of these dimensions work together. You need the emotional capacity to allow some uncomfortable feelings around billing as they come up instead of resisting them or reacting to them by avoiding your billing. You need the intellectual capacity to know how to do it, how to bill for more of your time, and the time capacity, the temporal capacity to believe you have the space for it in your day, to create that more abundance in your day to bill for it. I do have a workbook on this. I will put it in the show notes of building billing capacity. I think I have a worksheet too. So you can work through that. But I want you to start assessing where you are at in each one of those dimensions. So we can really focus on which one of those that needs to really be developed that you need to be working on. And if it's all three, it's all three, right? But if there's one that you're, oh yeah, I'm always telling myself I don't have time to bill, maybe you start working on that temporal capacity first and start making progress there. And then you go to maybe the emotional capacity. Or if it's the intellectual, like I just, I'm always telling myself I don't know how to bill for this. Then maybe work on really creating better billing narratives and using that. I wonder what if let's try doing that framework as well. Okay. So that is it for today. In the next episode, I'm gonna dive into breaking the procrastination cycle. Why you avoid billing and all the strategies I have to overcome that procrastination pattern around your billing. All right, you've got this. I'll see you in the next episode.

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If you're ready to dive deeper into this work and want support in transforming your billing mindset so you can start capturing and counting more of your time every day in a stress-free way, visit the billingcoach.com for more information about Molly's billing coaching programs, including one on one coaching support, group coaching, and law firm billing workshops. It's time.