Wake Up

What time do you wake up on an average working day?

I would say there isn’t a typical ‘wake up’ time. Where I work currently has an incredible amount of flexibility and autonomy – as long as I am getting the job done and communicating effectively, I am not micromanaged. Having said that – my wake up time is usually dictated by the morning routine for my kids.

What time are you in the office for?

I typically start my working day between 8:30 am and 9 am. Current policy is working 2 days in the office (minimum), with flexibility to choose where you work from on the other 3 days of the week. 

What's your typical morning routine?

My morning routine is based around getting 2 adults and 3 children ready to be where they need to be, and on time!

Daily Tasks

What are your typical morning tasks?

The nature of consulting is that your day is structured more around the project phase you are in, with different phases having different activities and priorities, as well as having different ‘peaks and troughs’ of intensity. To illustrate, a day where I am running a workshop for 30 people will be much more intense than a day of reading background information, or tweaking a PowerPoint deck for an executive meeting.

Do you save certain tasks for the morning?

It depends. When I am working at my optimum and there are no outside factors dictating what I do, I will try and do the bigger activities in the morning when I have more mental energy, and smaller activities in the afternoon when I have ‘less in the tank’. But sometimes I will reverse this to help me build up momentum for the day.

How do you structure your day?

I structure my day around the activities I need to do for the phase of the project I am in. Some of the activities I may be doing include:Stakeholder Interviews, Workshops; Gathering and analysing background information and performance data; report writing; Communication and engagement with key people; and Project Management.

What time do you finish on average?

Again, there is no typical, and will be dictated by the peaks and troughs of what project stage I am at. There are times when this requires me to work later (and into evenings), and others where I may be able to finish slightly earlier. Although the type of work is similar to what I had inconsulting, I tended to work later in consulting.

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Job rating

How stressful are you finding the job?

It's not that stressful now have the experience, but I would have been a lot higher stress levels earlier in my career.

What's the work-life balance like?

I don’t think I could find a better role or organisation for the perfect work/life balance. With my kids at the age they are, this is one of the reasons Iwork here – so I can enjoy their childhood while it lasts!

Do you enjoy what you do?

I really enjoy the work I do, and there is so much variety as I work with different parts of the business and really have to get under the skin of how they work to be able to support them. Has been fantastic to really understand all parts of how the business works.

Habits for success

Be intentional, deliberate and proactive at building your network

If you neglect the most senior people in your organisation you can miss out on career development opportunities through ‘lack of visibility’. However, if you only target this level, you will find that your effective network diminishes quickly as they move on/ retire

Do less, better

Multitasking can lead to you doing lots of things less effectively. Whilst you should find ‘side projects’ at work to help you develop and raise your profile, be deliberate and selective about what you do. Will it develop your skills in the right way? Will it give you good exposure? Doing 1 (or possibly 2 depending on how much time and effort they will take) will lead to amazing growth. Doing too risks you not doing any of them particularly well, as well as impacting performance in your key responsibilities.

 Be strategic

Think carefully about what your life goals are, and build your career around this. This may mean there are times you accelerate and really push in your career to grow, and other times you slow down to focus on other life goals (e.g. family). Having these goals also helps you be deliberate in your action and activity, which makes them more likely to happen. To illustrate, you are unlikely to be a professional athlete if you don’t train every day and build a network that allows you to be on the radar of the relevant professional organisations. The same is true of your professional career.