Where does the week go when you work alone?
Into the hours nobody pays for: email, scheduling, invoices, notes, finding the next client and keeping up with your field. Most people who work alone guess too low until they count. Count one ordinary week, hour by hour, and you’ll know which of those hours to cut first.
Four kinds of hour
- 1
Billed
A client is paying for this hour. The only kind that earns.
- 2
Admin
Scheduling, invoicing, chasing, answering “is Tuesday still OK?”. The kind to cut.
- 3
Finding work
Conversations, proposals, writing, referrals. Needed, and better in a block on the calendar than in the gaps between sessions.
- 4
Craft
Preparing, reading, training. The work that makes the billed hours better.
Count one week
Pick an ordinary week, not a holiday one. Write down what you did in half-hour blocks and put each in one of the four kinds. Add up the billed hours and divide by the total. The share is what a client pays for, out of everything you work.
Then cut admin first
Ask which admin hours a client could have done for themselves on a page: booking, moving a session, paying, accepting the terms. Those are the hours that go first.
Checked 2026-10-11.