Greetings! I’m Sara Vaca, independent consultant and frequent Saturday contributor of this blog.
Ever since I started my evaluation practice and became a consultant, my life has enormously change (I would say for good!) in comparison with the 10-year period when I used to work for organizations with a 9am-to-5pm office schedule.
Those whose are or have been in that type freelance professional schedule know that as much as you enjoy the advantages – such as the flexibility for organizing your time, eventually having time-off between contracts and not having a “boss” (but clients), there are other aspects that you have to structure if you don’t want to lose your sanity… or your family’s.
Hot Tips (+ Self-assessment): Initially I thought of giving tips of how I try to have a healthy and efficient consultant life, but as I am far from being perfect in what I was going to preach, I decided to make profit of it and do a self-assessment of my own advice:
As you can see, I’m still working on my own tips LOL…
How about you? How do you do it?
Maybe there is a forum for sharing, but in lack of one, please leave your comments below. Thanks 🙂 🙂 🙂
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I couldn’t agree more with these tips and reflections! The autonomy of working as a consultant is both a blessing and a curse. The freedom of managing your own schedule, managing how you work, and so forth is such a privilege, but it does seem at times we’re always “on” – it’s hard to just put an out of office message on when you know there’s no one else to do the work and clients are expecting work to be done. I find planning ahead and frequently communicating with clients about work schedules is key! I wonder if there’s another tip to add to this about “communications”? Thanks for sharing this Sara!
Thanks Sara! Each of those tips resonated so much with me, and I am not even a consultant (but travel alot providing advice to people, so maybe I am a consultant and didn’t know it?). My biggest hurdle is how to manage time more efficiently and effectively, and how to disconnect. But recognizing our problems is the first step, right? Thanks so much for sharing these tips.
It seems like you have a consultant-ish life style haha….
All the best!