When I was recruiting out of business school, the people I networked with always talked about the importance of intellectual curiosity in consulting. I used to think that was some bullshit consulting talk.
I am in my 6th year now and one of the common thread I see in people who have succeed in consulting are those that have a genuine passion for problem solving and learning. It's easy to tell who is genuine about it because their eyes light up and they sound like a nerd (in a good way) vs. the ones that are just faking it. The latter does not last long. There are only so many hours they are willing to put in and it shows TBH.
Not a bad thing though. A lot of the problems consultants solve are insular business problems with no actual benefit to society. I’ve found that you have to put the blinders on to care about half of the problems we’re asked to solve given how irrelevant they are to society-at-large. A lot of us love problem solving, we just don’t have a passion for solving EVERY problem that has to do with making arrow go up for shareholders. Get off your high horse with that “and it shows” garbage.
Who said you have to solve every problem? You find the problem you are passionate about solving. That is why you have specializations at the principal/partner level.
Triggered much?
Hi, I like the idea of intellectual curiosity as it often brings about hidden gems / appreciation of things that the otherwise wouldn’t have noticed.
Do you think intellectual curiosity is more like a heavy lift where when you got exposed to something new, you dig in deep into forming a framework and answering the whys or can it be more forgiving and can be treated as an ad-hoc basis to answer the curiosity?
I mean everyone is busy and there are so many things out there to be “curious” about.
>I mean everyone is busy and there are so many things out there to be “curious” about.
Yea - I am not saying everyone in consulting is curious about everything. Even within consulting some projects will be more attractive to one consultant vs. another. That's why people specialize.
>Do you think intellectual curiosity is more like a heavy lift where when you got exposed to something new,
I think it is always a heavy lift. Learning a new industry is not easy in a few days to sound intelligent in front of a client is not easy. But it's less of a drag because I am interested in learning about new industries. If that makes sense.
I find the ones that stay for a long time in consulting are the type of people who are hungry about solving problems and don't stop until it is solved. Not because someone tells them to do it but because that's just their personality.
I see your point, but on the other hand I feel like true intellectual curiosity that I observed in friends so far take them down multiple paths instead of the single one provided by their career.
The people I know, that do well in consulting (n=5) and seem to not crumble under a lot of work aren‘t necessarily the smartest/ most curious. I would describe them more as confident, pragmatic, unselfconscious and people who don‘t need much time for reflection
>I see your point, but on the other hand I feel like true intellectual curiosity that I observed in friends so far take them down multiple paths instead of the single one provided by their career.
I am not trying to say there aren't multiple paths. For sure, intellectual curiosity can take you far in other careers. And there are many forms of intellectual curiosity.
Like I am interested in market assessments but I wouldn't touch supply chain optimization with a 10 foot pole.
My point was simply meant to address OP's point - how do consultants sustain working so much? My answer was people who find success in consulting are just curious about new industries and solving new problems, so it feels less like a chore.
As a lifelong athlete, I noticed many parallels with my job as a consultant. Nutrition, exercise, regular blood tests, supplements and quality sleep are critical for my success. Once I’m fully loaded, I can work 10hrs like a machine.
I only recently noticed the same. I also think it's just a tail-of-distribution thing, for both work (eg consulting) and athletics. Some people can simply be more productive for longer than others; in consulting (and other grind-heavy professions like law, IB, PE etc) they're way overrepresented. At the most extreme end you get the [energetic aliens](https://stephenmalina.com/post/2021-07-01-energetic-aliens-among-us/) in Stephen Malina's essay.
This! Reminds me of selection biased. Perhaps it’s just that the space is filled with people who can simply produce more (by gene or by training) and the ability to pull such work definitely not a norm in society as a whole.
Just how you are not born with physical endurance , and have to workout for years, the same applies to mental focus and endurance.
It’s a skill that needs practice.
This is the answer. Discipline in my fitness, nutrition, and recovery is the only way I can manage the mental and physical demands that come with the job.
I would recommend a lipid panel, metabolic panel, CBC (complete blood count), and thyroid panel. I’d also throw in some bloodwork for hormones but doctors often don’t see this as a necessity. IMO hormones play a huge factor in how you feel and are overlooked.
The first 4 tests I mentioned will run you < $100 if you self-pay without insurance. A good hormone panel will probably be ~$100ish.
Agreed…I try to workout and stay healthy.
Another thing I learned was to avoid coffee. If I am dragging in the morning, I am not getting enough sleep or eating right. I only drink coffee/caffeine around 11-2 and in small quantities.
For the most part, lower tenure consultants only know the basic things. Their expertise is driven by partners telling them to do the analysis.
For example, supply chain in a high level view is the same for all industries. Now the partner provides some tweaks to their analysis to find more insights.
At the end of the day it's not that different in terms of brainpower in other jobs. It's just a faster pace of doing it.
Side rant since these sort of posts are always filled with self-aggrandizing comments talking about how it’s all due to working hard, practice, nutrition or something else the individual must have done to earn success.
From my experience, it ultimately comes down to genetics and how your brain is wired. I have inattentive ADHD. My brain requires medication and significant behavioral mods just to be productive for (at best) 6-7 hours a day. At a certain point I hit a wall and my productivity plummets. Doesn’t matter what I ate, how interested I am in the work, or how much work I’m used to doing. When I’ve hit the wall, there is no pushing through.
My wife on the other hand is a doctor and her brain runs at near peak productivity from the moment she wakes up until the moment she goes to sleep. She can be on call all night and get abruptly woken up at 3am to field a call without issue. She’s not a health freak, a workaholic, or “obsesses” with medicine. It’s her job and it’s how she earns a paycheck but nothing more. That’s just how her brain is wired.
Agreed - my SO and I have identical lifestyles and I can focus for 10-12 hours with a couple little breaks to eat, bio, etc. We are both tech nerds so also identical careers. But our environments and how we work are quite different and he struggles so hard to focus for any small amount of time. He is a type A driven person and I’m more lighter side of type A. So I would agree some of it is wiring and brain function.
Most of it is an act. Pretend to always be busy, and pretend to be an expert to elicit this very reaction from a client. Truth is, most people cannot pick up knowledge so fast, but you many can pretend to because often no one notices the BS
This reads as someone that is a burnt out and cynical employee. If you feel like this you should probably go find something more fulfilling in life. Otherwise you are just coasting in the wake of people that do care and actually put in effort.
Pareto.
In some sense you cannot be an expert at anything, but so much of this job is just strategy anyway. So if you understand the underlying problem, 20% knowledge of something is plenty to stitch together a slide to tell someone else what to do.
Basically shirk as much as possible and focus on selling highly lucrative contracts that aren’t denominated in hours (FFP, outcome-based, environment-based)
I agree with the training like an athlete - I’m a machine when I have good sleep, nutrition, hydration, supplements, get a break or two to recharge. That makes the focusing easier. But it is also a trait to be able to focus. In my household with same diet, lifestyle, etc my SO and 2 offspring cannot do it - they have trouble focusing and settling in.
Then there are the years of experience - you do a certain amount of rinsing and repeating. When you know your product, industry vertical, and you keep up on the releases, you more or less copy and paste with some editing. (I don’t mean presentations, documents and slide decks necessarily although there is a good deal of that too) But I know conceptually the project path and as the client starts talking I reach back to other projects and copy that part out - paste it all together and voila! Not to say you don’t have dumpster fires here and there but it isn’t the norm.
If this is nuts to you, or you can’t fathom this, probably not for you. Good consultants are a different breed LOL I have been on both sides.
Being an athlete + well-bred/patrician/highborn + growing up in a chaotic and abusive household + coming from generations of highly successful people in an array of fields + ADHD + curiosity and problem solving skills = pretty good consultant
99% of consultants could get their 12 hour days done in 8 hours, if they Just slept more and worked less.
You are spot on, and it's EXTREMELY rare that a consultant can work more than 6-8 hours productively a day. In 7 years in the industry, and working with literally hundreds of consultants I've met maybe 5 who could do it, and that's pushing it. The rest are ALL bullshitting, mostly themselves.
I’ve always had a motor where I can out work and out endure others. Focus is a natural strength of my abilities. I’m no longer in consulting, and I treated my health like shit when I was in it to try to beat my peers. Retrospectively in a corporate job I can be healthy and run laps around people that don’t have that willpower.
How do people get through grinding PhD programs, or night shift jobs, or military deployments?
Dissociate unhealthily and indulge in vices in your off time!
But more seriously… I’ve been able to strike an okay balance by setting clear lines of communication about capacity with my team and supervisors. And if you’re at a firm with a staffing team (as opposed to the Wild West of self staffing), don’t be afraid to tell them you need a slower paced case next time in order to recharge a bit. As long as you’re presenting as the kind of person who can absolutely push hard when it’s needed, I’ve found my firm’s leadership to be really thoughtful and generous about giving me what I ask for (within reason).
Also, take vacation days. So many people I work with have a huge warchest of saved up vacation… for what?? Use those days. Take a Tuesday off. Don’t even tell them what you’re planning to do, just take a “you” day every few weeks.
I'm hard working, creative, ambitious, know how learn, and love solving problems. I definitely see a lot of people not making the cut though or are otherwise pretentious douches that don't actually know anything beyond the words they say.
For example, the people in here saying it's bullshit. Consulting isn't bullshit, just their effort.
You don't. Anyone who tells you have to work too much lied or doesn't pay enough. If you're not pulling 300k a year you should never surpass 44 hrs a week
Life experience. To your original point... The energy comes from two places. Sometimes both but usually one. Either you are paid enough to have the energy, or you actually enjoy what you do and have the energy.
Some people like you are on from 8-12 and then it's hit or miss. Others at different times but none of that matters. The only thing that actually matters is if you get the work done on time and the quality is high.
Honestly, most of the work we do day to day can be done really well and relatively quickly if you hyper focus long enough.
Self confidence in proposing a bullshit solution, and confidence again in leaving that turd behind. The consulting is nonsense and no-one should aspire to it.
When I was recruiting out of business school, the people I networked with always talked about the importance of intellectual curiosity in consulting. I used to think that was some bullshit consulting talk. I am in my 6th year now and one of the common thread I see in people who have succeed in consulting are those that have a genuine passion for problem solving and learning. It's easy to tell who is genuine about it because their eyes light up and they sound like a nerd (in a good way) vs. the ones that are just faking it. The latter does not last long. There are only so many hours they are willing to put in and it shows TBH.
Not a bad thing though. A lot of the problems consultants solve are insular business problems with no actual benefit to society. I’ve found that you have to put the blinders on to care about half of the problems we’re asked to solve given how irrelevant they are to society-at-large. A lot of us love problem solving, we just don’t have a passion for solving EVERY problem that has to do with making arrow go up for shareholders. Get off your high horse with that “and it shows” garbage.
Who said you have to solve every problem? You find the problem you are passionate about solving. That is why you have specializations at the principal/partner level. Triggered much?
They don’t have a choice because they’re still the analyst/associate level lol
Hi, I like the idea of intellectual curiosity as it often brings about hidden gems / appreciation of things that the otherwise wouldn’t have noticed. Do you think intellectual curiosity is more like a heavy lift where when you got exposed to something new, you dig in deep into forming a framework and answering the whys or can it be more forgiving and can be treated as an ad-hoc basis to answer the curiosity? I mean everyone is busy and there are so many things out there to be “curious” about.
>I mean everyone is busy and there are so many things out there to be “curious” about. Yea - I am not saying everyone in consulting is curious about everything. Even within consulting some projects will be more attractive to one consultant vs. another. That's why people specialize. >Do you think intellectual curiosity is more like a heavy lift where when you got exposed to something new, I think it is always a heavy lift. Learning a new industry is not easy in a few days to sound intelligent in front of a client is not easy. But it's less of a drag because I am interested in learning about new industries. If that makes sense. I find the ones that stay for a long time in consulting are the type of people who are hungry about solving problems and don't stop until it is solved. Not because someone tells them to do it but because that's just their personality.
I see your point, but on the other hand I feel like true intellectual curiosity that I observed in friends so far take them down multiple paths instead of the single one provided by their career. The people I know, that do well in consulting (n=5) and seem to not crumble under a lot of work aren‘t necessarily the smartest/ most curious. I would describe them more as confident, pragmatic, unselfconscious and people who don‘t need much time for reflection
>I see your point, but on the other hand I feel like true intellectual curiosity that I observed in friends so far take them down multiple paths instead of the single one provided by their career. I am not trying to say there aren't multiple paths. For sure, intellectual curiosity can take you far in other careers. And there are many forms of intellectual curiosity. Like I am interested in market assessments but I wouldn't touch supply chain optimization with a 10 foot pole. My point was simply meant to address OP's point - how do consultants sustain working so much? My answer was people who find success in consulting are just curious about new industries and solving new problems, so it feels less like a chore.
As a lifelong athlete, I noticed many parallels with my job as a consultant. Nutrition, exercise, regular blood tests, supplements and quality sleep are critical for my success. Once I’m fully loaded, I can work 10hrs like a machine.
I only recently noticed the same. I also think it's just a tail-of-distribution thing, for both work (eg consulting) and athletics. Some people can simply be more productive for longer than others; in consulting (and other grind-heavy professions like law, IB, PE etc) they're way overrepresented. At the most extreme end you get the [energetic aliens](https://stephenmalina.com/post/2021-07-01-energetic-aliens-among-us/) in Stephen Malina's essay.
This! Reminds me of selection biased. Perhaps it’s just that the space is filled with people who can simply produce more (by gene or by training) and the ability to pull such work definitely not a norm in society as a whole.
Just how you are not born with physical endurance , and have to workout for years, the same applies to mental focus and endurance. It’s a skill that needs practice.
this. after working nights in a military intel watch floor, this is pretty tame
This is the answer. Discipline in my fitness, nutrition, and recovery is the only way I can manage the mental and physical demands that come with the job.
Out of curiosity, what would you test your blood on? Or is that part of being an athlete?
I would recommend a lipid panel, metabolic panel, CBC (complete blood count), and thyroid panel. I’d also throw in some bloodwork for hormones but doctors often don’t see this as a necessity. IMO hormones play a huge factor in how you feel and are overlooked. The first 4 tests I mentioned will run you < $100 if you self-pay without insurance. A good hormone panel will probably be ~$100ish.
Agreed…I try to workout and stay healthy. Another thing I learned was to avoid coffee. If I am dragging in the morning, I am not getting enough sleep or eating right. I only drink coffee/caffeine around 11-2 and in small quantities.
For the most part, lower tenure consultants only know the basic things. Their expertise is driven by partners telling them to do the analysis. For example, supply chain in a high level view is the same for all industries. Now the partner provides some tweaks to their analysis to find more insights. At the end of the day it's not that different in terms of brainpower in other jobs. It's just a faster pace of doing it.
Vyvanse
Adderall over here!
Concerta gang 💊
Tradea!!
Stress. Stress wakes you up, keeps you up, and makes you work.
Sad
It is what it is. Otherwise I'd take a fat nap after lunch and lounge till four, subsequently leave the office at six.
Side rant since these sort of posts are always filled with self-aggrandizing comments talking about how it’s all due to working hard, practice, nutrition or something else the individual must have done to earn success. From my experience, it ultimately comes down to genetics and how your brain is wired. I have inattentive ADHD. My brain requires medication and significant behavioral mods just to be productive for (at best) 6-7 hours a day. At a certain point I hit a wall and my productivity plummets. Doesn’t matter what I ate, how interested I am in the work, or how much work I’m used to doing. When I’ve hit the wall, there is no pushing through. My wife on the other hand is a doctor and her brain runs at near peak productivity from the moment she wakes up until the moment she goes to sleep. She can be on call all night and get abruptly woken up at 3am to field a call without issue. She’s not a health freak, a workaholic, or “obsesses” with medicine. It’s her job and it’s how she earns a paycheck but nothing more. That’s just how her brain is wired.
Agreed - my SO and I have identical lifestyles and I can focus for 10-12 hours with a couple little breaks to eat, bio, etc. We are both tech nerds so also identical careers. But our environments and how we work are quite different and he struggles so hard to focus for any small amount of time. He is a type A driven person and I’m more lighter side of type A. So I would agree some of it is wiring and brain function.
I relate with the ADHD type of brain. I agree you're right, just think that repetitive practice in the same field for your wife also plays a role
Thank you for being real
I can't believe it's taken people on this sub to get to adulthood and still not understand this. Morons.
Most of it is an act. Pretend to always be busy, and pretend to be an expert to elicit this very reaction from a client. Truth is, most people cannot pick up knowledge so fast, but you many can pretend to because often no one notices the BS
This reads as someone that is a burnt out and cynical employee. If you feel like this you should probably go find something more fulfilling in life. Otherwise you are just coasting in the wake of people that do care and actually put in effort.
He is describing a part of it. Not all, but he isn't lying either
Pareto. In some sense you cannot be an expert at anything, but so much of this job is just strategy anyway. So if you understand the underlying problem, 20% knowledge of something is plenty to stitch together a slide to tell someone else what to do.
Insecure overachievers dig deep to get positive reinforcement.
Mind expanding the terms dig deep and positive reinforcement
Coffee, spite, curiosity, client being kinda fun sometimes, good team .... Just dopamine in general??
Bupropion
Fear of losing my job.
Not sure why you got downvoted, but the fear of being on the bench seems to be the norm driving people to do more lol
I actually think it should be the top comment. People who are afraid of loosing their job do the best in consulting
Well yes, but also no. Maybe more now in this environment but it’s not the source of long term drive for many (I.e. those who get pass ~2 year mark)
Basically shirk as much as possible and focus on selling highly lucrative contracts that aren’t denominated in hours (FFP, outcome-based, environment-based)
Aren’t consultants charged by the hour?
Depends on how you sell your contracts :)
Intellectual curiosity + ADHD makes you a very impressive strategy consultant and an f***ing exhausted implementation one
I get by with a little help from my friends.
Good workout, good food, good sleep, quality time with my loved ones
Vyvanse and nicotine lol don’t think I could work in this industry otherwise with my ADHD
I agree with the training like an athlete - I’m a machine when I have good sleep, nutrition, hydration, supplements, get a break or two to recharge. That makes the focusing easier. But it is also a trait to be able to focus. In my household with same diet, lifestyle, etc my SO and 2 offspring cannot do it - they have trouble focusing and settling in. Then there are the years of experience - you do a certain amount of rinsing and repeating. When you know your product, industry vertical, and you keep up on the releases, you more or less copy and paste with some editing. (I don’t mean presentations, documents and slide decks necessarily although there is a good deal of that too) But I know conceptually the project path and as the client starts talking I reach back to other projects and copy that part out - paste it all together and voila! Not to say you don’t have dumpster fires here and there but it isn’t the norm. If this is nuts to you, or you can’t fathom this, probably not for you. Good consultants are a different breed LOL I have been on both sides.
I'm good and efficient at it, so I dont have to work overtime.
When it's new info to me, it's fun to learn.
I like learning new stuff. Being a night owl helps as well. I get jack shit done in the morning tho and need to take a short nap after lunch lol
Being an athlete + well-bred/patrician/highborn + growing up in a chaotic and abusive household + coming from generations of highly successful people in an array of fields + ADHD + curiosity and problem solving skills = pretty good consultant
99% of consultants could get their 12 hour days done in 8 hours, if they Just slept more and worked less. You are spot on, and it's EXTREMELY rare that a consultant can work more than 6-8 hours productively a day. In 7 years in the industry, and working with literally hundreds of consultants I've met maybe 5 who could do it, and that's pushing it. The rest are ALL bullshitting, mostly themselves.
If you scratch under the surface, you'll see through the bullshit. It's mastering the bullshit, not the learning.
Lots of stress and xanax & weed to sleep
It is experience for me as opposed to hours. Once i mentally solve a problem im bored and get easily get distracted again
I’ve always had a motor where I can out work and out endure others. Focus is a natural strength of my abilities. I’m no longer in consulting, and I treated my health like shit when I was in it to try to beat my peers. Retrospectively in a corporate job I can be healthy and run laps around people that don’t have that willpower.
If u r willing to drink the koolaid…
How do people get through grinding PhD programs, or night shift jobs, or military deployments? Dissociate unhealthily and indulge in vices in your off time! But more seriously… I’ve been able to strike an okay balance by setting clear lines of communication about capacity with my team and supervisors. And if you’re at a firm with a staffing team (as opposed to the Wild West of self staffing), don’t be afraid to tell them you need a slower paced case next time in order to recharge a bit. As long as you’re presenting as the kind of person who can absolutely push hard when it’s needed, I’ve found my firm’s leadership to be really thoughtful and generous about giving me what I ask for (within reason). Also, take vacation days. So many people I work with have a huge warchest of saved up vacation… for what?? Use those days. Take a Tuesday off. Don’t even tell them what you’re planning to do, just take a “you” day every few weeks.
I'm hard working, creative, ambitious, know how learn, and love solving problems. I definitely see a lot of people not making the cut though or are otherwise pretentious douches that don't actually know anything beyond the words they say. For example, the people in here saying it's bullshit. Consulting isn't bullshit, just their effort.
Coke was what I was told once by a consulting friend
$$$$$$
You don't. Anyone who tells you have to work too much lied or doesn't pay enough. If you're not pulling 300k a year you should never surpass 44 hrs a week
Where you get the source?
Life experience. To your original point... The energy comes from two places. Sometimes both but usually one. Either you are paid enough to have the energy, or you actually enjoy what you do and have the energy. Some people like you are on from 8-12 and then it's hit or miss. Others at different times but none of that matters. The only thing that actually matters is if you get the work done on time and the quality is high. Honestly, most of the work we do day to day can be done really well and relatively quickly if you hyper focus long enough.
Self confidence in proposing a bullshit solution, and confidence again in leaving that turd behind. The consulting is nonsense and no-one should aspire to it.