Tips That Will Make You A Great Consultant (3/3)

As mentioned in the previous posts, I would share with you some practical tips that I have observed in most of the great consultants I know. So far, I had shared

Tip 1 Keep An Excel To-do List

Tip 2 Document Down Agreements 

Tip 3 Say This When You are not Sure

Tip 4 Know the Business First

Tip 5 Ask, Clarify, Communicate

Tip 6 Have Passion

There is no particular order for the tips.  A Great consultant needs all of them.

In this post, I have a final 3 tips for you. These 3 final tips are to help consultants to manage stress and therefore to be able to work well in long term. I learned these tips from my seniors and even from conversations with clients.

Tip 7 Keep 8 Hours Strict

This tip doesn’t mean you should leave office after working 8 hours. The purpose of it is to remind yourself to work efficiently not to work long hours. You should set your target to complete everything within 8 working hours. Don’t assume or think you are going to work 12 hours. As long as you start thinking about that, you will unconsciously reduce your efficiency, tend to take on tasks outside your scope, extend 8-hour’s tasks to 12 hours, and successfully work for more than 12 hours. Plan your day according to 8 hours. Concentrate and try your best to achieve your targets. You might exceed 1 or 2 hours but it is still shorter than 12 hours. Overtime is definitely not the key to success. More than one consultants had told me this. They wanted to solve some issue before the end of day. They knew it could be done tomorrow but they still wanted to do it today so tomorrow they could do other things. They spent 4 hours at night in the office or at home but in the end they still didn’t solve it. The worse thing was that they messed up their previous work. Finally they gave up and decided to work on it tomorrow. On the next day, with a fresh mind, they solved the issue quickly and realized yesterday was a waste of time. We are all human. There is a limited number of hours your brain can fully function and concentrate. Some experienced clients know this and they are really against the idea of letting consultants work over time. It’s might not because they love consultants so much. A more realistic reason is they don’t want the overwhelmed and over-worked brains to mess up their project.

Tip 8 Learn to Release Stress in a Healthy Way

Stress is not necessarily a bad thing. And certainly there is no stress-free day for consultants. Knowing how to release stress is extremely important. And being able to release stress in a healthy way is another significant point. What is the difference? Well, you can go drinking, clubbing, party over night, etc, which can help you to release stress. You also can choose gym, hiking, short trip, etc. In a long run, the former approaches will give you some health problems like over-weighted, headache, etc., but the latter one won’t.

Tip 9 Prioritize, analyze, re-prioritize

I believe we all know the importance of prioritizing. Within a limited time, we need to work on the top priority. However, some people forget that the priority list is dynamic instead of static. It might change as new tasks comes in, or due to the changes happen elsewhere. For example, my top 1 task of the week is  to clarify the requirements with clients. On the 3rd day, the project management team tell me that clients drop the entire requirements. I need to immediately analyze the impact and make necessary changes to my priority list. In this modern age, change is the constant of life. Rather than spending time complaining about it, why don’t we strategically embrace it. Especially in the consulting industry, we need to be able to react to the changes fast, analyze the impact accurately, and take necessary actions.

Here comes to the end of my Tips That Will Make You A Great Consultant series. I sincerely hope you find the 9 tips useful. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.