Busy at work?

Alot of people like to ask me whether I am busy at work. Alot of times I don't know how to answer them. And the reason is as follows.

In a professional services firm, the firm measures your performance by the number of "billable" hours you have worked. You are budgeted to work around 6.5 billable hours a day.

Anyone that has been working in a professional services firm would be able to tell you that in order for someone to have 6.5 billable hours, that person would probably need to stay in the office for at least 10 total hours. The reason why this is the case is that alot of work we do are not billable work, like client administration issues (eg looking for files, drafting engaging letters and billing clients), marketing work (eg writing articles or submitting tenders) or administration work (eg team meetings, reading new legislation or drafting precedents). Only actual work done for clients (eg documents, advices, certain meetings) are billable.

On the days when I have not much billable work, I may be doing non billable work for the full day, but my timesheet reflects that I have not done any billable work. Therefore, I may be busy in my own eyes, but to the firm, I have not performed on that day, since I have not done any billable work. Is this fair? It's hard to say, but this is the environment that I work in.

Therefore, it is always hard for me to answer the question whether I am busy because of this distinction between billable and non billable.

It is the pressure to meet the budget of billable hours that causes so much stress and anxiety in professional services firms.