Reflections 1+ year out from MBB + Informal AMA?

DDs aren’t tough unless you’re doing them with bad leadership. They should be reliably 9-11pm with no weekend work.

My personal structure on tough studies:

- Ruthlessly prioritise. Forget what your leadership is telling you is important for a moment, step back and think about what will really drive impact for your client. If this is different to what you/ your team are doing raise this and frame it as “taking a step back, X is the crux of the issue, Y and Z do not really move the needle. By prioritising X we can ensure we’re focusing on what matters”. Don’t frame it as ‘pushing back’ or as trying to improve your wlb - this is frowned on. Frame it in a way leadership can get behind. If you’re junior, run it by your EM first to see what they think. This is expected of tenured BAs, but impressive from new juniors if you are right.

- Align on priorities. Make sure your EM/ leadership knows and agrees with what will get done and when. Take ownership over the agenda and propose a reasonable timeline (be able to justify this) and then run it by them / iterate if needed. It will save you pain down the line.

- Acknowledge that there will be pain. If shit hits the fan and you need to grind, don’t be that guy who says they need an hour to go to the gym. Put your personal phone on silent, put your earphones in and grind.

- Have a predictable routine. If the next few weeks/ months will be painful, you need to be prepared to sustain this. Develop an efficient routine; mine is 10 mins between waking up and leaving home, working on the journey in, working during my meals and working in the taxi home. It’s predictable and I’m used to it, and in my experience this eliminates a lot of the stress / brainpower that is generated by unpredictability.

- Have short periods of respite. Particularly when it’s tough for multiple weeks, I like having small things to look forward to every day. That could be a 10 min shower in the evening / a 10 min run in the morning, FaceTiming a friend/ SO to catch up for a few mins.

- The final thing I would mention is to make sure that you leverage the goodwill that results from pain. It will piss people off if you work long hours needlessly because it makes leaders look bad. But leaders will love you if you demonstrate enthusiasm to go above and beyond for our/ their clients, are constantly solving for client impact and reliably good at executing. Position yourself as their go-to guy/ gal with a safe pair of hands and you’ll find yourself consistently staffed.