What counts as work?

When I'm working, I usually keep a note of the hours I work on each project each day in my diary. It's partly to keep track of what I need to invoice for and also to keep an eye on the number of hours I'm working each week from a health point of view. I only write down hours spent on "actual work" that I'm going to invoice for though.

Yesterday, I managed to spend more-or-less the whole day at my desk without writing down a single hour in my diary. It was a day spent catching up on "admin"; checking over the work I've done while I was away, sending it off with accompanying emails and invoices, replying to non-urgent e-mails that I hadn't dealt with, getting together a new bookkeeping folder for the new tax year and getting going on a couple of new projects - looking at documents, reading briefs and sending more emails with answers and queries. It felt like a really productive day and by the end of it, I felt like I was back on top of things after nearly 3 weeks away. I couldn't help feeling a little disappointed though that I had no hours written in my diary to show for it!