No, this isn’t going to be another article about all the useful techniques for dealing with procrastination – but Google pomodoro, 10-minute rule or 3-2-1-Go if you are looking for inspiration. Today is the first day back at my desk after a week visiting family, and my ‘To Do’ list is giving me side-eye. Blogging suddenly seems like a much more interesting important task, so I’m finally getting around to writing about how much control I have over my time in my consultancy life.
In just a few weeks, Glen Shuraig Consulting will be seven years old. Every year has been different, and I have learnt so much from the fantastic clients and projects we have had over that time. One of the big changes for me since last October has been becoming a Scottish Fiscal Commissioner, which is a great joy but also a big time commitment (c1.5 days per week). It is a joy of self-employment is that it has been possible to rebalance to consultancy workload to fit, but it has set me thinking about the level of control I have as a small business owner.
Obviously, I have a lot of autonomy. As long as deadlines are met and meetings attended, I can arrange my Glen Shuraig working hours to suit myself, and I make use of that regularly. I think it would be difficult now to find myself in a job where I couldn’t take time out during the normal working day for personal commitments without someone else’s approval. I also don’t find that I’m ‘on call’ out of hours very often – in fact, when a recent project did lead to several unavoidable last-minute meetings in evenings and over weekends, it was quite a stark reminder that this used to be normal working life. I’m very grateful not to be in that position any more.
There are some downsides, of course. One is that it is very difficult to take holiday and avoid work issues altogether. I can put on an ‘out of office’ message and most things can wait till I return, but not everything. I have fantastic associate consultants who I work with on some projects, so we can provide some cover for each other, but anything about the business and my solo projects is down to me. A week away usually involves an hour or two (in total!) responding on anything urgent that comes up. I don’t find this a huge imposition, but it is different from my previous roles where I had a team to cover when I was absent.
Another issue is the difference between what is planned and what happens. I obviously keep track of time commitments and schedule things to avoid clashes between project deadlines. Unfortunately, project deadlines change – meetings and interviews prove difficult to arrange, clients find that they have to adjust the timing of their input, and so on. Adjustments to timetables always involve some negotiation so I’m not simply a passive recipient, but it’s quite easy to find that I suddenly have two or even three reports due in the same week, so evening and weekend hours suddenly become work time. This can be quite hard going, but the plus side for me is that it is time-bound – once those reports are submitted, I can get back to a sensible schedule.
The final challenge, and the biggest one for me, is that I am just not very good at estimating how long a piece of work is going to take. I am better at it now than I was seven years ago, but I still have that optimism bias. Sometimes I have those ‘peak work’ weeks not because anyone else’s timetable changed but because I underestimated the hours required to complete something. I’m particularly bad at this when carrying out data analysis, but I think that’s mostly because I enjoy it and get caught up in it, so maybe that’s not such a problem. It’s always my decision to take on a consultancy project and how much time is allocated to it, though, so I reflect on how each project has gone and what I can do to avoid overload in future.
Overall, I feel much more in control of my working time as the owner of a consultancy business than I did as an employee, and much happier that work-life balance is down to me. I would be very interested to hear other reflections on time and control – does self-employment or employment work better for your life?
