I need to take more time to learn design. I’ve been lacking in that area lately.
Its just so tempting to focus on what is making money and not what you really want to do. I’ve been focusing on building sites in WordPress because that is where I’m making good money. But its turning out to be similar to someone staying with a job that they don’t love because they like the paycheck. I don’t hate what I do by any means – I actually really enjoy it – but I want to focus more on design.
So the key is to keep learning. The key is to continually improve my skills no matter what stage I’m at, no matter how old I am.
Like I mentioned before, my goal right now is to use the Hack Design course once a week. Then I’ll choose something else from there.
I just need to keep my ultimate goal in mind: I want to create a company. I want to be the founder (or co-founder) of my own startup. And I think I will get there better by learning design rather than learning to be a better WordPress guy.
But in the mean time, I DO need to make money, so I will continue with my WordPress stuff. In fact, I’d love to keep getting WordPress clients and then be hired to do more and more design on their sites. That way I’m doing a little of both, and my WordPress work will funnel clients into my design work.
But I think the underlying factor is that I want to be great. And while I’m good at what I do, I don’t know if I will be great at it. I want to be great at what I do. So I’m going to keep moving forward, and keep adjusting my path to be in what I really want to do. (Similar to the concept that Seth Godin teaches in this post.)
So lesson of the day: Don’t stop learning.