I’m taking all of September off from consulting so that I can present at a conference, spend time with family, and work on other skills. This five-month consulting engagement has been absolutely wonderful. It turns out that you can create tremendous value as a generalist with technical, business, and design skills, and that good engagements help you refine and pick up even more skills. :) I look forward to returning for two days a week throughout October and November, but I also want to make sure I keep pushing myself to learn about business models. It’ll be a good adventure.

Six months into my business experiment, I’m delighted with what I’m learning and how I’m learning it. It was the right time to start. Earlier, I wouldn’t have had such a good foundation to build on. Later, inertia and comfort might have kept me where I was until I absolutely needed to shift.

I haven’t been able to focus my evening time and my personal days as much as I thought I might. I think it’s because my consulting work involves a lot of novelty and creativity – a good thing – and that means I focus on other things during the evenings. I should crunch the data to see what it has actually been like instead of just how I perceive the last few weeks.

I’m looking forward to doing a more thoughtful review over the Labour Day long weekend. Much to reflect on! :)