The consulting life can be awfully decadent sometimes. Work when you want. If you want. How you want. Where you want. In whatever clothes you want. But sometimes that lifestyle can get the better of you…meaning it’s time to get yourself in gear again and reset your natural rhythms.
For me, that became painfully clear on September 11, 2001. I woke up around 10:30 am Pacific that day. I got up, drank some coffee, checked my email…saw some message about the WTC from a friend. Thought it was something to do with her work, since she was an emergency preparedness planner. Went back and checked her email again. What was that about planes and towers and crashes?
As I watched the TV in horror, I realized that the rest of the world had seen those images hours before.
At that moment, I decided I needed to bring my day back into alignment with the rest of the world. I started getting up earlier. I’m still never one to be at my desk by 9 am…heck, some days I don’t get to my desk till mid-afternoon. But I do have waking hours a little more like those of the rest of the world. Besides, I have kids now…6 am is no longer a foreign concept. And sleeping in is a thing of the past!
Related
- The Body Clock Guide to Better Health at Amazon.com
It’s so true that one of the biggest challenges about owning your own consulting business (or any business that allows you to work from home or set your own hours!) is being self-motivated enough to make a schedule for yourself. The freedom of working when you want only really comes into play after you’ve endured the difficult start-up phase … and even then, realistically, you will have to set some type of schedule for yourself in order to keep clients happy and keep your business profitable. I think it’s hard to keep yourself in check unless you naturally are very self-motivating (it sounds like you are and can quickly snap back into gear when you need to). I’d be interested to hear some ways that people that own their own businesses keep themselves honest and set realistic yet flexible schedules for themselves.