My usual habit of work, if you can call it that, is to focus on the next task ahead of me and try to get it exactly right. I can fret for hours about something which, in the larger project, is relatively minor. This was fine as a grad student, and maybe as a post-doc, but it is completely counter-productive as a consultant. In contrast to grad school's dragging on for years, consulting projects should have been done yesterday, and, better yet, last week. The trade offs between time spent and results generated must always be weighed and acted upon ruthlessly. I have to shed my attachments to ways of doing things which, although elegant and thorough, are unnecessary.
As always, though, zen is in the mind, not in the habit. A friend who had been a consultant for years recently got a job with the East Bay Municipal Utility District. She said that her co-workers don't share her zeal for getting things done, and that she still hasn't been able to figure out what they do all day.
