Stockholm still feels like it’s on fast-forward. The stuff that tripped me up at first — the transit, the route to the office, working out where I’m headed — has quietly turned into second nature. When I’m not working, I’ve been out in the city more, picking up bits of Swedish life one ordinary day at a time.

At THREAD, I’ve kept my hands in customer research, competitor analysis, strategy, and building presentations. A lot of it is taking a mountain of information about a bunch of companies and wrestling it into charts someone can make sense of in a few seconds. I’ve learned a ton about consulting — but the biggest lesson hasn’t really been about consulting at all. It’s been about time.

Managing My Time

Managing your time at a job is a totally different animal than in college. In school the due dates are printed on a syllabus weeks out. Here the whole day can pivot by lunch — the team needs something, new info shows up, someone sends feedback — and suddenly what I thought I was doing isn’t what I’m doing anymore. I’ve had to get comfortable bending without letting things fall through the cracks.

So I start every morning the same way: I work out what has to happen and what matters most, and write it down. Nothing fancy, just a list. Getting it out of my head keeps the little stuff from slipping while I’m heads-down on something big — and I won’t pretend crossing a line off isn’t one of the better feelings of the day.

Whatever’s due soonest or matters most goes up top. If someone needs a chart for a 2 p.m. meeting, that beats research due Friday, full stop. The trap I had to unlearn was grabbing the easy task first just because it’s easy — sometimes the thing that matters most is also the longest and most annoying, and it still goes first.

Breaking the big stuff down has saved me too. A full competitor analysis is paralyzing if I stare at the whole thing at once, so I chop it up: which companies, dig up the info, compare them, build the visual. One piece at a time it’s doable, and I can tell sooner when I’m falling behind.

Knowing When to Ask

Part of using time well is knowing when to stop wrestling something alone and just ask. I can burn an afternoon trying to crack something myself out of pure stubbornness. Being independent is great — right up until a thirty-second question would’ve saved me an hour.

Before I do, I try a couple of things first and get clear on what’s tripping me up, so I can ask a real question instead of “uh, I’m stuck.” It’s a better question that way, and it shows I gave it a shot. Asking early also keeps me from sprinting the wrong way: if I’m unsure about a deadline, a format, or what the thing is even for, it’s way better to check now than to hand something in and find out I built the wrong thing.

Feedback and Shifting Priorities

Consulting runs on feedback and second drafts. Something can feel finished, then someone says “what if we tried this layout” or “can you add this,” and back in I go. The redoing stung at first, especially after I’d sunk real time into it, but I’ve let it go — the notes almost always make the final thing better.

When priorities flip, I stop, take a breath, and rebuild the list instead of stubbornly finishing what I’d started: what needs me now, what can sit. I’m also getting better at guessing how long things take, which I was pretty bad at. Research drags when sources disagree, and charts eat time when the data needs reshaping, so I now leave a buffer for checking my work and folding in feedback.

What I’m Taking Away

What THREAD has driven home is that managing time isn’t the same as being busy. Busy is easy. The point is spending the hours in a way that helps the team and makes something good — clearing a pile of tiny tasks isn’t the same as doing the one that mattered.

I’m getting better at planning the day, ranking what matters, breaking big projects apart, asking for help at the right moment, and rolling with it when the plan changes. Those habits are carrying me through the internship, and they’ll come back to Pitt with me, where there’s always a class, a meeting, and three other things fighting for the same afternoon. I’m not all the way there yet — but I feel more organized, and a lot more aware of where my time goes.