When you get involved in something and make decisions in your life it is important to keep momentum behind what you are doing. In the past I have had a lot of commercial experience with a proprietary web development language called WebDNA, the problem with this is that due to my involvement with this language, I have lost out on time I could have been progressing with something more commercial like PHP / MySQL.

Now when I chose to go freelance and set up my company I made a commitment to be the best that I can be and to always get better so that I can be at the top of my game and this is what I intend to do. If you want to do something, do it! Don’t start and then go “I’ve started so I am fine…”, keep it going otherwise you will be caught out by negligence!

I know that I have a short coming when it comes to programming professionally, so what I am about to do is go through a series of training days on PHP fundamentals, MySQL and then a further day of training on advanced PHP. I know that in order for this training to hold any clout in a professional context then I need to have commercial experience with it so have plans of how I want to execute this training to do so.

On top of this I know that a few days training will not have me a full on professional coder so I have already mapped out certain training that I would like to continue with once I have balanced my budget to allow it. In the web development industry, things move very very quick as I’m sure many of you know, I think it is crucial to keep on learning in order to stay on top of your game, whether it be keeping up with development blogs, self teaching or going on courses, I am of the belief that you can never learn enough. On the other hand I know it is not possible to be an expert at everything so choosing your learning path is equally important.

For the last year and a half my job focused on front end web development, building templates and passing them on to development teams, my role before that was heavily involved in developing an e-commerce store and I loved the level to which I got my hands dirty with backend coding. I know everything that I learned then is fully transferable to what I am about to learn and I am really looking forward to it, once I have dirty hands again I intend to keep them dirty and combine my new knowledge with my passion and hopefully move onto bigger and better things.

The one thing I love about what I do is that I am happy to learn new things and regularly do so off my own back, the reason I have chosen to to pay for training this time is so that I am learning quickly and efficiently. Self teaching is fine if you have the time and self discipline to do so but right now I am very busy and this is not an option, I have come to the conclusion that the money I am spending will be recouped quickly if I get the right work.

I am curious about what other people have done to further themselves and how they have kept momentum going once they have started. How have you learned your trade? How have you progressed? Did you get a qualification or has your life / work experience won through? I am self taught and have worked hard to get to where I am now so fall into the latter category, I plan to cross over slightly though and get some proper training as it can only add value to what I would already say is a good skillset. I guess I just have to keep that momentum going huh?