If you think that managing your time is challenging now, in your regular job, and you’re planning to set out on your own as a consultant, here’s a reality-check.
Managing your time as an independent consultant is going to be much tougher, I promise you.
Just Another Consulting Challenge
Of course tough time management isn’t something that should put you off the idea of becoming a consultant; after all, challenges are what your new career will be all about. It’s just good to know in advance, that managing your time is something you will need to get good at.
The thing is, when you’re employed, there’s a structure holding you accountable. Meetings get put in your calendar. Deadlines come from someone else. You might grumble about it, but that external scaffolding does a lot of heavy lifting.
When you’re on your own, all of that disappears. I worked with a consultant once—she’d left a senior role at a procurement firm—who told me her first month of independence was the least productive of her entire career. Not because she was lazy. Because suddenly nobody was telling her what to do next, and she found herself spending three hours “researching” something that should have taken forty minutes, then realising it was 4pm and she hadn’t started the client deliverable that was due Friday.
The following four tips will help you to get a handle on your consulting time—which in turn will make you more efficient, productive, credible and ultimately, profitable.
- Be realistic in scheduling your deliverables. As a new consultant, you will, of course, be eager to please your customers, but that can lead to an over-ambitious approach when scheduling your deliverables.
- Always remember that it’s better to under-promise and over-deliver, than the other way around. While your customers might be impressed at promises of fast delivery, they will be less so when you don’t meet the aggressive goals you agreed upon. When you first start out especially, it’s better to be conservative, protect your credibility, and give your customers a pleasant surprise when you deliver early.
- Budget daily time for predictable tasks, such as administrative jobs, reading and replying to email, and invoicing. Factor these tasks into your daily, weekly and monthly schedules and remember to subtract the time from your available hours when calculating delivery timelines.
- Set regular hours. Freeing yourself from the 9 to 5 might well be one of the attractions which motivate you to become your own boss. However, even when you work for yourself, it’s beneficial to set yourself a fixed start and finish time each day, which you should of course communicate to your customers. If you don’t discipline yourself to following a fixed schedule, you’ll soon find your work/life balance is more of a WORK/life balance.
The Hidden Time Drains
Beyond those four points, it’s worth being aware of where time actually goes when you’re working independently. Some of this will only become apparent once you’re in it, but forewarned is forearmed.
Client communication takes longer than you think. Not just the meetings themselves, but the scheduling, rescheduling, follow-up emails, and the mental context-switching every time you move between clients. I’ve seen new consultants budget two hours for a client workshop and forget entirely about the hour of prep, the thirty minutes of travel, and the hour afterwards writing up notes and actions.
Then there’s the business development piece. When you’re employed, someone else worries about where the next project comes from. As an independent, that’s you now. And it doesn’t stop just because you’re busy with client work. You need to carve out time for it consistently, even when—especially when—you feel like you don’t need to.
Honestly, the consultants who struggle most with time management aren’t the disorganised ones. They’re the ones who are highly capable but haven’t adjusted their mental model from employee to business owner. They keep saying yes to things without realising that every yes is a no to something else.
You’re the Reason for Managing Your Time as an Independent Consultant
In your current job, time management is important to help your employer meet its goals. In your new consulting career, great time management will be a necessity to survive and succeed.
Don’t underestimate the self-discipline you will need to employ in managing your time as an independent consultant.
There will be more at stake than a salary hike and a positive performance appraisal. On the other hand, the rewards for getting it right will be all yours to enjoy—and that’s a great reason to go forward and conquer the time-management challenge.