Tag Archives: internet

Why consulting?

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We’re making discoveries and innovating at a pace that’s faster than ever, thanks to population growth, world markets, and the Internet. Information transfers slowly; despite what economists say, firms aren’t efficient and lots of times they can do things better. Consultants have expertise about how to improve management and become more efficient, and when this knowledge is shared/diffused to companies, everyone is better off.

Why should I read this blog?

You’d like to know more about what consultants do than you can get from reading a Dilbert comic. Maybe you’re a college student wanting to learn more about consulting or an executive considering a career change. I’m going to provide information about the consulting profession, and interviews with current consultants. I’ll also blog about what consultants are currently doing and speculate about what they’ll announce they’re doing in the future. I might also post about good management practices and business economics, which are part of an information set that makes consultants useful.

Why me?

I find myself saying to most employers, “I’ve got a lot of knowledge about what works and what doesn’t, and I’m really smart and can help you out, but I don’t have much output,” which is sort of like what consulting firms would say if they didn’t have good reputations. Two of the things I’m best at are blogging and reading; I can get a better idea about what consulting firms do, demonstrate my skills to them and practice subject-specific blogging.

I also want to practice blogging about one specific area for a long period of time; forcing myself to focus on one area. There aren’t very many consulting blogs, so I figured this would be good.

How to get tons of reading done

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I’m about to finish my fifth book in 5 weeks (What Works in Development? edited by Bill Easterly and Jessica Cohen), in addition to reading a higher number of academic papers and the same number of RSS feeds that I usually read. There are a few good reasons for this:
1) Amazon Kindle app for iPhone: I read on the largest possible font, so there are only two or three sentences on the page at a time. The relevant unit of accomplishment is flipping this (small) page, so I can read a little or a lot and still feel like I’m getting reading done. Furthermore, with this small screen I don’t skip text and backtrack nearly as much as I do when I’m reading paper. Reading on a digital screen makes me less sleepy. There also aren’t any distractions, like my phone is when I’m reading a paper book.
Another nice thing about the Kindle is links within the book. I read more footnotes because you can skip easily to the footnotes and back to the main text by touching the screen. This is something that’s even easier to do on the iPhone than on the Kindle.
On a side note, I’ve purchased books for the first time in almost two years; it’s impossible to get paper copies of the books I’d like to read while I’m here.
2) No Internet at home: I’ve had tons of experience dealing with this one; queue up a whole bunch of tabs, print out PDFs of each page and save them to a flash drive. In addition to saving time surfing (no actual reading time,just deciding whether or not to read things later), I finish a higher percentage of my reading and I’m not as distracted because there’s no information coming in, like new RSS feeds or email/text messages. Any links I open from stories I’ve just read get saved with a “Unable to load page” page in Chrome; the next time I get on a wireless connection these open automatically. Same goes with emails, which I compose and then sit in my outbox for days at a time.
3) More free time. Everyone says that liberal arts schools ‘teach you how to think’ but also stress the irrelevance of the course material. Classes are a distraction; most of the reading is stuff that isn’t too helpful.
In short, I’m enjoying higher productivity now but all three of these are going to disappear once I get home; I won’t read on my phone when I can get free books from the library, I struggle to shut off the Internet voluntarily and next semester I’ll have thesis and job applications in addition to coursework. I’m not optimistic about maintaining this high level of productivity.