How I Built a Consulting Career With Narcolepsy

I built a consulting career before I had a name for the sleepiness that had followed me since childhood.

My work has included enterprise healthcare IT leadership, clinical systems optimization, engineering, governance, and complex transformation. Consulting can involve dense meetings, detailed decisions, travel, shifting priorities, and coordination across people who need different things from the same program.

I was doing that work while also trying to understand why staying awake could sometimes require so much effort.

Competence did not cancel the condition

One of the myths I want to challenge is the idea that a person with narcolepsy must choose between being ambitious and being honest about their capacity.

I care deeply about doing good work. I can lead complicated programs, solve problems, and communicate across technical and operational groups. I also have Type 1 narcolepsy.

Both are true.

Competence does not make symptoms disappear. Symptoms do not erase competence.

Before diagnosis, I built around a problem I could not name

For years, I interpreted exhaustion as stress, insomnia, or something I needed to manage more successfully. I kept finding ways to participate and perform without understanding the full reason the work could cost so much.

That experience shaped how I think about systems. If a process only works when the person using it has predictable energy, uninterrupted focus, and the ability to remember everything at the right moment, the process is fragile.

Good systems reduce avoidable load.

Written decisions, clear priorities, templates, agendas, and documented follow-ups are useful project practices. They are also practical supports when attention and alertness can fluctuate.

I plan work by cognitive load, not just duration

A thirty-minute task is not always a small task. A short review that requires precision may cost more than an hour of lower-stakes administration.

I try to distinguish between work that needs my clearest thinking and work that can happen in a lighter window. I identify fixed commitments, keep high-consequence decisions on the plan, and keep lower-focus tasks available for times when deep work is unrealistic.

This does not make the day predictable. It makes the plan more responsive.

Meetings need more than attendance

Consulting can make the calendar look like the work. But showing up to a meeting is not the same as having the capacity to listen, synthesize, decide, and remember what happens next.

I value structures that make the thinking visible: a clear purpose, the decision needed, pre-reads when appropriate, written actions, and an owner for each next step.

Those practices help everyone. For me, they also reduce the amount of critical information that has to survive only in a moment of alertness.

Flexibility works best when priorities are honest

When everything is urgent, there is no meaningful way to adjust.

The most practical question is often not “How do I force all of this into today?” It is “What is the consequence if this moves?”

That is why I use importance and cognitive load as separate signals. A task can matter greatly without needing to happen in the next hour. Another task can be easy but fixed. The plan improves when those differences are named.

Disclosure is personal, not a performance requirement

I am comfortable telling people that I have narcolepsy. I sometimes wear a narcolepsy bracelet, and sharing can prevent confusion if I become very sleepy.

That is my choice. I do not want my openness to become a rule for someone else.

People have different jobs, relationships, privacy needs, risks, and levels of comfort. No one should have to share more health information than they choose simply to prove that their needs are legitimate.

Rest belongs in a serious career

I used to absorb the idea that rest was the opposite of ambition. Now I see that ignoring capacity does not create more of it.

Rest can protect the quality of later decisions. Moving a task can prevent careless work. Making a day smaller can preserve what matters most.

None of that means I care less about my career. It means I am trying to build a career that can continue without requiring me to pretend my body is irrelevant.

Why I call this “The Narcoleptic Consultant”

There are many practical stories inside this intersection: meetings, travel, preparation, leadership, disclosure, recovery, and the quiet calculations behind a polished deliverable.

I want to tell those stories honestly. Not as a formula for success and not as proof that everyone should work the way I do.

I want to show that a demanding professional life and narcolepsy can occupy the same story—and that better systems, clearer priorities, and permission to adjust can make that story more livable.

This is the beginning of that series.