Monetize Your Non-Billable Time Per Bruce Allen

Bruce Allen at Marketing Catalyst suggests fee-earners "monetize" their non-billable time.  Key excerpt:

If you have the courage, keep track of any non-billable activity you do while you're at work. Then, at the end of a day look at your list and put a "$" sign next to any activity that can result in new work.

He goes on to explain the three things your list will possibly demonstrate.  It's a smart post and the advice is on target.  Fee-earners have to think past billable activities and begin (if you haven't already) to focus on development - both for the short-term and for the long-term.  Yet doing this can feel dangerous in this down economy when being as billable as humanly possible is perceived as the safe thing to do because the thinking is "if I'm billable and if lay-offs come, they surely wouldn't let me go."

No one is safe in this environment.  I suggest professionals need to be thinking about the short-term as well as the long-term.  This economy will turn around and rain-makers are always the most valued people in the room. 

So, give Bruce's idea a try.  Hopefully your firm will support it or some idea like it.  If not, do it anyway for your own career progression.

Comments

[bvgirl]

Like anything else it is a matter of balance. The trick is being able to do those future building, non-billable activities while still keeping up with the current billable ones.

It helps if rather than thinking of all your tasks as billable/non-billable, you think of them as revenue generating/non-revenue generating with no distinction as to whether the revenue is current or future. Focusing on "now" to the exclusion of "future" pretty much guarantees that you will have no "future."