Mark of a true consultant: Beyond the boundaries of work

11 simple rules which will help you gauge if you've successfully transformed into a true consultant, and managed to take it a notch further, beyond the realms of your work life. I tried hard to refrain to 10, for it sounds well thought of and lends a closure which the oddity of 11 does not (but maybe with the auspicious number 11, I have the blessings of the divine to write this)! My fellow consultants in other firms might not be directly familiar with some phrases common at my work place, but I am quite confident that there exists similar jargon which they would identify with, for this is the very essence of consulting. For the non-consultants, hope you amuse yourselves with the follies of one of the most coveted professions of the day.

1. You end up using the words "strategic", "value add", "insight" when in want for a better word
2. You have an opinion, deeply soaked in logic, on almost every matter, the triviality of which is never such to make you do away with your obligation to enlighten
3. In conversations of consequence, be it at work or otherwise, you've a definite number of points which are almost invariably also categorised in logical buckets
4. In elaborate conversations, especially those where your mom is narrating highly banal events with special attention to minuteness so you don't fall short of anything but a vivid visualisation of the whole play, you frantically try to get to the "so-what" of the matter, and would rather talk with exec summaries
5. You find yourself applying the 80-20 rule to any task at hand (maximum impact with minimum work). Everyone follows this principle, it's just that we now prefer to allude to it a bit more intellectually
6. You schedule your social events through outlook invites (yet to hit us Indians in full swing). My calendar once showed a "Let's catch up over coffee" slot of 2 hours.
7. You are grieved and almost sympathetic for the unprivileged others unable to rise above trifle issues and discover your truely enlightened way of existence
8. You always manage to find a correction or a potential  for improvement in everyone's work or opinion
9. When corrected by your PL, you ensure you defiantly push-back to show your strong and unfaltering point of view, including on those rare occasions when you feel you've in fact erred and your PL has some legitimacy in his arguments
10. You belong to the rare species which very flamboyantly pulls out an Amex card at pay booths; and when declined, curse the antiquity of the system while you search for your other cards
11.  For events involving a large group, you ensure that you arrive at a fair and informed decision by seeking everyone's opinion (each one of which is of course duly challenged) through a long thread of mails which inevitably involves a few questionnaires and polls

A keen eye would surely remark how very strategically I have omitted any reference to one's self-belief in being an acute judge of human behaviour (and even keener ones would notice the circularity of the argument).

I am sure no one will nod in strong agreement to my observations, but if your face twisted in a grin more than once recalling some past instances, I guess I have hit the right note!