New Associate Stressed about Billables

I’ve been at my firm for almost 6 months now and was barred last November. My hours did not “count” until January so honestly I wasn’t in the billable mindset until then and now I’m struggling.

I find myself thinking of work in the evenings and on weekends constantly worrying about my billable. I think a big issue is that since I’m new I mainly get projects here and there rather than being put on a case start to finish. So as soon as I’m finished with one project I’m kind of out of work.

I have been trying my best to ask for work and been consistently asking partners. Sometimes they have work and other times they don’t but like I said, id get assigned one project or so and I’m usually able to finish it pretty quickly in a day or two.

The good news is my weekly hours have been improving since January but I still haven’t had a week where I’ve met my goal. My yearly billables is 1800 and weekly that comes out to 37.5 or so. I’ve been hitting around 30-33 hours a week recently.

Will things just take time to ramp up for me? Or should I be asking partners for more work as soon as I finish a project? I tend to get scared I’ll annoy them by asking constantly even right after I finish an assignment for them. Also if anyone just has any general mental health tips I’d appreciate that too.