Are you a creative who struggles to enter your time consistently?

Do you put off time entry until you’re two weeks behind, scrambling to remember what you were complaining about at 11:32am last Tuesday? You’re not alone! 

Across the country, creatives of all levels struggle to keep up with billable hours. It’s not your fault! Well it is, but if you follow this step-by-step guide, you too will never get another email from an angry boss (at least for time entry–I have no idea if you are a talented or hardworking employee).

Follow this guide and become the time-entering machine your account team knows you can be. 

*Please note that these stages are proprietary and original and cannot be used without the written permission of Mason F. Ahrens. 

Step 1 – Denial

No, there’s no problem with your time-entry! Sure, you’re about 4 weeks out of date, but you took really thorough logs on your notes app. Yes, it’s somewhere in between your rough outline for a Hunger Games fanfic where Peeta opens a Greek restaurant called “Peeta’s Pitas,” and your shopping list for a better, healthier, you, i.e. more vegetables, fewer non-vegetables.

Of course, when you do find those thorough logs, it has a total of 3 hours recorded, all to one print ad that you’re pretty sure won’t be approved for another month. 

Step 2 – Anger

You know what, how dare they make you enter time like a no-good time-enterer. Data input is for the uninteresting. You deal with the intricacies of the human mind! That’s the real crime here. Not your shoddy time-keeping, but the system. The system is bringing you down, man! Fight back! 

Step 3 – Bargaining 

Ok, look. You’ve made some mistakes. As you search through your work laptop’s history in hopes of unearthing some semblance of what your past 4 weeks have consisted of, you reach out to the Gods of advertising (Doyle, Dane, and Bernbach) and ask to do it all over. Just one shot to do it all again, record the time as you were doing it, and you’ll never, ever, miss another billable second. 

Step 4 – Depression

But your cries to DDB, much like the emails you sent to them as an unqualified ad student, remain unanswered. Woe encompasses you like the LED light from your laptop screen. Your ideas were never good enough to be worth money anyway. Toss away your career the way they toss away your ideas. Time to get into something more your speed–Taco Bell cashier, foam-finger salesman, the person who stands on the street corner and reminds people that the end is still nigh…

Step 5 – Acceptance 

As you enter your final time, peace envelopes you. You are worth your billable hours. Now, your agency has the money to pay you, which is all billing time has ever been. The chaos is over, you are on the other side.

Maybe next time, skip all these steps and do it at the end of the day. 

Now, time to finish your fan fiction.