Better Consultant

On how to stay fit in consulting

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Hi friends,

This weekend, I watched the Oxford-Cambridge race with my son and remembered how, as a student, I’d have 5-8 training sessions per week with the rowing club.

Only months later, now a consultant, I was not exercising at all. I lost weight (primarily muscle) and settled into the lumpy, round shape most consultants have.

With time, I developed a system that enabled me to train for marathons while still consulting. I also used this system last year to train for a 100-mile ultramarathon while writing a book, building a coaching practice, and having a family.

This letter is about this system.

I will skip past the point of convincing you that physical fitness is important. It’s so connected to everything else that it is literally the great enabler of having a good life and doing good work.

So WHY don't consultants do it?

They ‘don’t have the time’
Their schedule is hectic
They are exhausted from travelling
They don’t have access to facilities
It’s not a priority

It’s likely that at least some of these apply to you. You also likely know they are excuses more than immutable realities.

Here are the five steps to have the system running

1. Take a decision and accept the consequences

It sounds simple, but it’s not.

Making a decision means accepting the consequences.

Most people want to exercise, but they choose the latter when deciding between exercise and ‘this urgent thing that came in’.

The reality is that making health a priority and making time for it means you will have less time for other things, and that will have consequences.

Accept them. And go on with full confidence that few to none of these consequences will have a critical effect on your life. But you know what will have a critical effect on your life? Your health, which you’ve just decided to make a priority.

2. Align your identity

Our rowing team in Oxford had PhD students who were also Olympic-calibre athletes. I found that baffling. These people were at the peak in their academic field AND in a challenging sport. Suddenly, ‘not having time for exercises’ sounded like a 💩 excuse.

That was also when I stopped smoking. I was an athlete and smoking at the same time. And, seemingly, the only one in the team doing it.

Similarly, exercise is tied to identity. Once your identity adjusts, your mindset follows, and so do your actions.

Everything becomes easier if you start seeing exercise as part of who you are rather than something you occasionally do.

Instead of being something you sometimes ‘opt-in’ to, it becomes something you rarely need to ‘opt-out’ of.

3. Set KPIs

This is key.

The reason consultants drop exercising is that they don’t set realistic targets to begin with.

Instead, on a bout of enthusiasm, they wake up early three days in a row and go hard. They get sore and sick, decide to take a break, and never come back to it.

When you do something hard in a hard environment, the odds are against you. Willpower only takes you so far.

So, you have to eliminate the need for willpower. For that, you need to build systems that will protect your good habits.

Part of building systems is setting KPIs, and part of setting good KPIs is ensuring you don’t aspire for too much, too early.

If you want to exercise 3 times per week, then start by aspiring to do it once weekly.

Do that for a couple of weeks, months even. Then upgrade to twice per week. Then, three times. All the while, ensure that the system is running.

4. Schedule

Then is the question of when and consultants have it hard.

Typically, on Monday mornings, you take a 4 am flight, land sleep-deprived, and work until late evening. You wake up early the next day, go to the client, and return late. So on until Thursday when you take a late flight back home. In the evening, there are often team or client dinners. Friday’s are in the office, but you’re typically too exhausted to wake up early because of last night’s flight. The weekend is the time to recover, often understood as a drinking contest (that was my definition).

Now, to schedule 3 workouts between Mon and Fri is a challenge. To say the least.

So, you could move one session to the weekend. When? Maybe Saturday, just before lunch. Perhaps you slept in. You’re finally up. This will energise you for the weekend ahead.

What about the other two?

Well, Monday is effectively gone with the flight and the work. You’re toast by the time you get to the hotel.

Tuesday morning is tricky because you’re still sleep-deprived from the previous night.

Evenings are challenging to plan.

But Wed morning all of a sudden has much potential. And so does Thursday morning.

Good.

Now, what sort of exercise?

Considering that you’ll want to sleep as much as possible and have energy for the day, a 15-20-minute HIIT workout will do wonders with minimum time requirements. You’ll do both cardio and strength. You can use the free 7-minute app for this and do 2-3 rounds in your hotel room. Then, take a shower and head out.

Great.

Then, next week, pick only one slot, say Wednesday morning. Put it in your calendar. Give it a sexy name, ‘Workout Wednesdays,’ and add a banana emoji. Download the 7-minute app. Now set your alarm 20 minutes earlier every Wednesday at the hotel. Do this for four weeks.

(For a more minimum viable version of this, you could use the 7-minute app once, meaning you would only need to wake up 7 minutes earlier for a few weeks.)

Now we have a system running, that is backed by a plan, which is backed by a purpose. What’s next?

5. Track and refine

Next comes sustainability.

To ensure this, you need to be flexible and learn from the feedback you’re getting from yourself and your environment.

Two things to consider.

First, blame the system, not yourself. The system needs to be working ‘for’ you, so if it doesn’t, it needs adjusting. For example, let’s say you always have a team dinner on Tuesday that typically runs late. Then don’t start the workouts on Wednesday morning. Start with Thursday. When the next challenge comes, problem-solve how you can adjust the system further.

Second, consistency over intensity. On some days, you might feel off. That’s fine. Still, show up. Do it feeling off. You’ll still feel better overall because you stuck with it rather than dealing with the guilt of having skipped it. Plus, it further strengthens the habit.

That’s it.

It was terrific to hear from a couple of you over the last few issues. Do reach out if you have questions or suggestions about what you’d like future letters to be about.

Until next Thursday,

Cristian

🏋️ Health app recommendations

7-minute: There are multiple iterations of the app that you can use for free, and they all basically do the same thing.
Whoop: This is a really cool health bracelet I've been wearing for more than half a year to improve my sleep habits and to better balance my strain and recovery. Read about it - it's really cool.

📹 New case video

I ran a new live McKinsey-style case with a candidate, and you can now watch the recording on Youtube, full with interviewer feedback