Consulting as a career usually has ups and downs, referred to by some as ‘feasts and famines’. These are par for the course and should be taken in your stride, but it is important to treat down-times as critical skill and knowledge recharge times where you take the opportunity to come up to speed with latest trends and developments in your area. A large part of this may be accomplished while you are on the task itself, but there will always be areas outside the realm of your projects that you will need to cover to keep your field of vision as a consultant wide enough. After all, if organizations wanted a blinkered, straight line approach to all the work that they needed to get done, they would never hire a consultant: the employee would suffice.