[consulting] Billing Increments

[Fred Jones]

> Do a quick search for "context switching time" or "productivity
> switching" and you'll see numbers from 5 mins to 45 mins to actually
> recover from a distraction and get back into a zone of productivity. I
> think the common wisdom is at least 15mins.

Very interesting results I found--many people have written about the
pitfalls of multi-tasking.

> On top of that you will also want to factor in your time to actually
> do the billing and other admin/overhead. For example, even something
> as simple as correcting a typo on a site's name could be a much larger
> affair that you imagine.

Well, my list would be more like:

1. Turn on timer
2. Read client email (1-2 min.)
3. Make the fix, be it typo or CSS edit (1-10 min.)
4. Email them back (30 sec)
5. Turn off timer

Repeat that every day (for one crazy client) or once a week for some
clients. Then at the end of the month I see if the time is worth
billing--if it's small, I just roll it over until next month and
eventually it's enough to bill. I have a bunch of clients like
this--some every other day and some once a month, they have a little
request.

But I do agree that it must reduce my productivity, that's why I was
thinking about billing each day's work as 15 min. instead of 6
minutes. That makes up for my loss. That's what I was thinking anyhow.

Fred