Hi all,I'm struggling at the moment and wanted to ask for your advice in case you have experienced something similar.I work for a well known strategy consulting firm and am regularly working 15-18 hour days and away from home Mon-Fri. Plus the normal client and partner pressure. I wondered if anyone had any advice or suggestions to make it more manageable? Any hint or tips?Always knew the score getting into this industry so not complaining just looking for advice or help on dealing with it.Thanks

Is there not more to life than working 15-18 hour days? Is it truly worth spending so much time working? What's the use of earning so much if you retire and die due to high blood pressure or other such stress-related illness?

Nobody dies wishing that they had spent more time at the office...

As the other responses intimate, the way to make it manageable is to get and retain a sense of proportion.- 99% of your work is a waste of time- your partners are in no way special- your clients are rarely right- your peers are in the same boat, you are not alone and your firm is not unique- focus on what you're putting your money towards and use the time you're in the job to work out what you really want to do- set yourself time-based goals and rewards (e.g. by the end of the month, I'll have applied to 3 jobs, but also attended 3 gigs)- book all your holidays for the year now and make sure you take them

Thanks for the responses, and i agree with all of them. The underlying message seems to be to find something better in terms of work. However I haven't been at the firm for even a full year yet so not sure that would look very good on the CV.

Within your CV you have room for a couple of short spell jobs. Especially straight out of university, you have a very strong argument that your expectations and reality didn't match up, but that you quickly learned from your experiences. If you wait another year or longer to leave, you start getting into the situation described by many on this forum - unwilling to take the pay cut to start over again, but unenthused about staying in their current job. At least if you move now, you don't have much to lose. If you're a recent graduate, you can apply to other graduate jobs and sacrifice only a couple of k a year. If you've moved from industry, you can go straight back in at the level you were previously on.