Life of a Consultant
Discover what a typical day and week look like for a management consultant. Understand the consulting lifestyle and challenges of maintaining work-life balance. Get a glimpse into the career path in consulting and salaries. Get insights into the behind-the-scenes essentials including hotel & flight bookings, credit cards, professional attire, timesheets & expense reimbursements, and other must-have accessories.
Consultant’s Weekly Hustle
A typical week in the life of a consultant
Life as a consultant is a dynamic journey filled with travel, meetings, problem-solving, and last-minute slide edits. The week kicks off early with rushing through the airport, finalizing last week’s findings, and preparing for the weekly meeting, followed by intense discussions in the review sessions. Midweek is all about data crunching, discussions with key stakeholders, and ensuring deliverables stay on track—while also tackling new client challenges, aligning with leadership, and brainstorming innovative solutions. PowerPoint decks get refined to perfection, and crucial data arrives just in time, keeping things exciting and fast-paced. By Friday, it’s a race to wrap things up and head home—only to remain connected over the weekend.
Monday – The Hustle Begins
5:00 AM Rise, Rush and Fly!
Drag yourself out of bed, rush to the airport, battle the check-in lines, survive the madness of security, and pray your flight isn’t delayed.
7:00 AM Coffee, Chaos, and Clouds
Board the flight, half-asleep and over-caffeinated, trying to tune out a snoring passenger while debating whether to risk the not-so-fresh in-flight meal
11:00 AM Game Face On, Fake Energy Too!
Arrive at the client site, pretend to be fully awake, and dive into discussions & data analysis. Start preparation for tomorrow's weekly/monthly review meeting
8:00 PM Check-in, Dinner and Slides Over Sleep
Check-in at hotel, team dinner followed by a last round of deck preparation for tomorrow’s meeting. If it's a SteerCo meeting, get ready for an all-nighter!
Tuesday – The Survival Test
9:00 AM The Weekly Battle Begins
Time for the weekly project review meeting—brace yourself. Go through the deck, pray the client doesn’t ask for "just a small change," which usually means a complete overhaul. Meanwhile, the manager adds last-minute edits, the director questions the formatting, and you wonder if the deck will ever actually be final
12:00 PM Review Meeting, Live Fire Round
The manager confidently starts the meeting but quickly hands it over to the consultants—because he has no idea what’s happening in the project. Handling a barrage of client questions while pretending you expected them. Nodding confidently while secretly scrambling for answers. Mastering the art of saying, 'That’s a great question, let me circle back on that.' Meanwhile, the director stays mute.
03:00 PM Temporary Relief, Lingering Fear
The meeting is finally over—consultants take a deep breath, somewhat relaxed but still secretly panicking. The client didn’t seem fully convinced, feedback was vague at best, and just as expected, the partner, after sensing the client's hesitation, has scheduled a 10:00 PM call with the director. Now, it’s a nerve-wracking wait before every detail is scrutinized, and any mistake is magnified.
10:00 PM The Judgment Call
The dreaded partner call—where you silently hope the weekly review went well. If it did, expect a few stern words. If it didn’t, brace yourself for a motivational speech… at full volume. Either way, the night ends with drinks and collective trauma-sharing with colleagues. By the end, you hardly remember what the partner said—but you do remember ordering one too many rounds.
Wednesday & Thursday – The Execution Zone
09:00 AM Analysis Paralysis
Spend hours crunching numbers, only to realise half the data is missing, outdated, or contradicts itself. Client reports say one thing, their team says another, and the actual numbers tell a completely different story. Debate whether to fix it, escalate it, or just make a “high-level assumption” and hope no one notices.
12:00PM Meetings and More Meetings
Back-to-back client calls, internal check-ins, and stakeholder discussions—because nothing moves forward without 10 different approvals. Sitting through useless meetings where discussions go off-track, the client vents their struggles, and instead of revealing the actual issue. Meanwhile, the key stakeholder is always unavailable
03:00 PM Excel, PowerPoint, Repeat
Addressing last-minute client concerns, fixing data inconsistencies, and pretending to be calm while everything is falling apart. Building models, refining dashboards, and squeezing insights into yet another PowerPoint deck. Meanwhile, secretly planning a night out and praying the director cancels his unnecessary late night internal review meeting.
9:00 PM Deck Perfection: The Director’s Wisdom.
Join a late-night review with the director, who provides zero relevant input but enthusiastically shares an unrelated project story from five years ago. Instead of actual feedback, expect suggestions like "Can we make this slide pop more?" and meticulous corrections to grammar, fonts, and alignment—because obviously, that’s what will win over the client.
Friday – The Great Escape
8:00 AM Hotel Checkout Hustle & Sneaky Entrance
Struggle with delayed hotel checkout, mysterious extra charges, and the eternal wait for the invoice. Finally, rush to the client’s office—arriving just a little late. Enter with a confident smile, casually flipping open the laptop, hoping no one notices. 😎
12:00 PM The Final Client Meeting: Lock It & Leave It
The last meeting of the week, one final chance to summarize insights and get client nods of approval. Smile, present confidently, and subtly steer discussions away from "next steps that require weekend work." The ultimate goal? Wrap it up cleanly so nothing spills into Saturday!
2:00 PM Inbox Overflow & Expense Tetris
One last attempt to clear emails before the weekend… only to receive five new action items. Meanwhile, frantically searching for crumpled hotel, cab, and food bills to file expenses because missing even one means explaining it to finance. Oh, and don’t forget to update the timesheet before it locks!
6:00 PM Rushed Goodbyes, Prayers & Flights
On the way to the airport, exchanging quick goodbyes while secretly hoping the partner and director are in a good mood and don’t schedule a “quick call” that ruins the weekend. Refresh inbox until the flight takes off because once you're in the air, you're officially unreachable.