Year 2 as an indie consultant: On working less

If Year 1 was about me changing how I worked, Year 2 was about how I worked changing me

“I really admire how you’re trying to work less.” My friend genuinely meant it.

I winced. I wasn’t trying to work less — right? Sure, I’m working fewer hours than I used to, but geez, I’m not some sort of slacker. I have to spend my unbilled time digesting what I see when I’m on the clock. I have to distill it into principles that can help future clients. Even when I go for a walk in the woods, I tend to think about work. I get paid, indirectly, for this time I spend “not working.” That’s what I told myself, and it also happens to be true.

But it’s not the whole story. I am working less. I’m working less because I like working less. And I’m still learning to embrace it without feeling guilty.

Fear

I was afraid this might happen. So much so, in fact, that at the end of my Year 1 review I set an intention that was designed as a countermeasure: “If Year 1’s theme was ‘Find Andrew-market fit,’ Year 2’s will be ‘Build leverage.’” (God, sometimes I sound like such a consultant.)

Left unsaid, but lurking under the surface of this intention, was that the point of the leverage was to allow me to scale my work. I knew that to grow my practice, I would have to write more, network more, market myself more. More more more. Grow grow grow.

At the end of Year 1, I was still looking at my consulting practice as if it were a growth business. Growth is the air I breathe after over a decade in startupland, so perhaps this was an unavoidable trap. Businesses exist to grow, and now I run a business, so I have to grow. QED. But indie consulting is not a business, it’s something else. (I’ll come back to this.)

I’d also internalized the consensus that humans are meant to work, a lot. Many of my peers feel working less is lazy, irresponsible, un-American, maybe even sinful. Heck, most people probably feel this way.

It’s hard not to be influenced by that judgment. It’s even harder to articulate an alternative. To think of my consulting practice as something other than a business — to instead think of it as just one piece of a whole life, ultimately unaccountable to anyone but me — raises difficult questions. To think of any given Tuesday as being about something other than work raises these questions too. Why am I here? What could I be doing instead? What are my obligations? What do I truly want? What does this all add up to?

Yikes. This is the stuff of so many midlife crises. You can probably understand, then, why I thought it best to avoid working less. To work less would be to run headlong into some pretty deep internal and external doubts. I didn’t know how to protect myself from those doubts.

Room to be more myself

Partway through this year, I started to ease off the gas a bit. Some of the slowdown reflected the business environment: Startup funding has dried up and with it, some of the demand for my services. Another part of the slowdown was inertia: I avoided the “high leverage” activities I’d tried to commit myself to a year ago, if only because I didn’t enjoy them. I hate marketing myself, I hate networking, and I hate asking for favors, even though I know I shouldn’t.

But the biggest contributor to my consulting slowdown has been a sort of crowding out. Creative pursuits have begun pushing back against my consulting. As unused time appeared in my life, what’s come rushing in to fill the void has made me happier and more fulfilled than more work would have. I spend almost every morning drawing and making linocut prints. I’ve covered my office wall in custom maps. I’ve devoted more Tuesdays and Fridays to cooking at the neighborhood community kitchen.

I now have the time and the patience to respect my compulsive learning streak. If I find something I love doing, I just do it until I don’t love it anymore. It’s thrilling.

It’s also more than a little unsettling. The consulting work is, at this point, a known quantity. The creative stuff is not. I don’t know what will come of it beyond daily satisfaction. I don’t know if I want anything to come of it beyond daily satisfaction. I enjoy it, and that’s good enough for now.

One role of many

What is indie consulting, anyway?

Is it a job? Yes, for the most part, though it lacks some of the trappings of a traditional job. Is it a career? Probably not; there's not nearly enough stability and clarity to call it that. Is it a calling? Oh c’mon — you might have a calling, and doing consulting might help you pursue it, but no one grows up wanting to be a consultant per se, nor should they.

For me, indie consulting is just a role I play. It’s an acting gig. It’s one way of being myself, and also of hiding part of myself. I play the character well because the traits the role demands — sharp attention, clear communication, a certain separateness — come naturally to me. Each part is different. Each company needs a different side of me (and they never need all of me).

What I’ve loved so much about the consulting work is it usually doesn’t require me to be things I am not, and that lack of cognitive dissonance has been a relief. I’ve managed large teams before, and it requires an extroversion and a sense of interpersonal care that drains me quickly. I’ve played the loyal follower too, which requires withholding my opinions for the good of the whole. I’ve had to be the face of things, but I prefer to be a character actor rather than a movie star.

It’s been clarifying to see my work in this way: As a role to be played. It has made me wonder, “What other roles do I want?” I need to think about this more purposefully, and to seek the answers outside of work. Having more time without work will help.

Year 3 intentions

Continue to use my leverage to work less, not more

One of the ironies of Year 2 was that I actually did find leverage, despite what you’ve read so far. I met the letter of my intention while abandoning the spirit of it. I tweaked my work so that I worked probably 30% less but only netted 10% less income. I’d like to continue this trend: Working less, in higher value ways, so that I can devote myself to creative work.

Start to introduce ambition into my creative work

So far I’ve treated my creative work as pure play. I typically spend a couple hours each morning drawing, printing, or experimenting with new materials. There have been few themes to my work, I haven’t sold anything, and I haven’t worked backwards from a complete vision for something I want to make. I’ve worked small, both in terms of size of work and size of idea. I’m going to change this.

Stop avoiding asking for help

Despite how much I’ve enjoyed the slowdown, I know I need to keep moving and keep finding new clients. To slow down too much is to stop entirely. I can’t afford to do that.

Most of the people I’ve worked with have no idea I’m consulting. These are the people who know my work best and can spot places where I’d be helpful. My skills are unusual enough that someone who hasn’t worked with me before will have no idea even that they should be looking for someone like me.

This lack of awareness is entirely my fault. I’ve avoided Linkedin or mass emails or anything else that might actually help people introduce me to new clients. I’m going to fix that, in the least obnoxious way possible.

Closing recommendation

Ever since Flow State recommended him, I’ve been obsessed with Stuart Bogie’s clarinet music, especially the sad, sparse work made during early Covid in (distanced) collaboration with James Murphy. Not only is his music great, but so is his taste — every recommendation he makes here is worth a click.