Continuing on from Blogging Tip – Write a post a day on a specific subject – Who are you? and Who are you? Where am I from? and A ‘Restoration Man’ a big shout to @Cornish_Lime & Callywith Quarry. I am a firm believer that what you do now will help in the future; I have a varied career path and what’s interesting is that each path I’ve taken as been a direct help to the work I am doing now.

What I’m trying to say is that if you are uncertain of your future (at whatever age); it’s important to understand that whatever you do (as long as it’s productive) it will be of benefit at some stage in the future, here’s my example:

I was for a long while running the leading CAD & BIM consultancy in the UK and Ireland, predominantly specialising in Vectorworks. I was brought in to set-up teams of architects to work together and collaboratively over projects worth many hundreds of millions of £.

This has brought about a number of benefits to the work I undertake now as an architect:

• I’m very patient. Whilst teaching other architects the intricacies of Computer Aided Design, you need to be very patient. This translates directly into what can be many revisions requested by clients and planners to designs (luckily I’m pretty good at my job so revisions are generally kept to a minimum; but if you happen to change your mind it’s no problem.

• I’m very technically literate. Again this translates directly into my work today by my ability to present sophisticated drawings, 3D visuals and animations from the earliest design to the smallest detail. I can punch way above my weight in terms of the projects I take on; I tend to work on one-off large houses but my expertise and skills means that I can take on projects of much larger scale and depth.

I’ve also been in self-employed business over 25 years, I know what I need to do to run a profitable business. The benefit of which to the client is that I’m here to stay and I’m not a ‘Fly by night’.

Plus I’m a registered and Chartered Architect under ARB, RIBA and the RIAI; this means that I’m bound by a code of conduct which means that I am incredibly professional in the way I work and in my relationship to clients.

So, if you have doubts over what you are doing now, maybe in the future you will use those skills and experience in other work.

Comments welcome…