I tracked every hour I worked for 6 months. The maths was depressing.

A freelancer tracked all working hours for 6 months and found that only 24 of 41 weekly hours were billable, reducing the effective rate to 58% of the day rate. Nearly half the time went to unpaid tasks like admin, chasing payments, and quoting. The key fixes were raising rates by 40% to cover non-billable time, automating payment reminders, and charging for discovery sessions.