One reason I encourage everybody to step into independent consulting, even if it’s part-time and occasional, is that consulting gives you a much better sense of the value of your work than most jobs do.

At work, they shovel work at you. You finish everything they gave you & they give you more. You don’t always have a sense of how your work helps the organization thrive. A lot of jobs have make-work in them - work your boss wants done for their own reasons that has no real impact

Your job can leave you feeling very disconnected from your own value. On top of that, if you get really good at your job your employer has a major disincentive to tell you so, because they don’t want to re-classify your job or give you an unusually large pay increase.

Consulting gets you back in touch with the way your talents can help somebody else’s business or life. When you help a client out with a project, large or small, it’s like voltage running through your veins. You’ve improved someone else’s welfare, and that feels good

If you underprice your first few projects as most new consultants do, you’ll feel that too and gradually increase your prices. This is life learning. It’s the opposite of learning how to kowtow or suck up to your boss (the stuff we learn by osmosis and against our will at work)