I started my life as an entrepreneur/web worker back in 1995. Back then, I was probably on the cutting edge of online development skills. I created some small to mid-size online, database driven applications for myself and others. Back then it was all pretty cool, and I was “the guy” that everybody knew if you needed a website built. Not only was it fun, but I was learning a ton and growing my skill set … every day.

The last five to six years have been a different story. I’ve become so busy with my busyness - oh, I mean business - that I have not really spent the time to learn anything new. I’ve just applied whatever duct tape solution I could find quickly and easily so I could get back to the “day to day” of the business.

I HATE IT!

Not only do I feel like my “hard skills” are waning, but I miss the learning/growing rush that I used to get daily. Well, about a week ago I started on a brand new “side” project that I am really excited about. But I did not want to build it the way I’ve been building/maintaining current projects. Instead I decided to learn something completely new to me that I also believe will be beneficial to my current as well as future projects. I’ve taken on learning CakePHP to build this new app. I may not stick with it, but it is forcing me to learn new concepts (eg: MVC) and encouraging me to learn new technologies (eg: AJAX). And I can already tell I am going to love these models in application development.

I have written a few web services in .NET before, but they were small and I don’t love the Microsoft platform (too expensive to create, host and maintain). I have recently fallen in love with PHP and am excited about taking my skills there to the next level.

Plus it’s just fun to learn something new. I’ve missed this and it is so worth doing. I think I’ll plan on spending at least two weeks a year doing nothing but learning a new language/tool/framework/technology. This should have multiple benefits as described above and also keep me marketable if the whole “biz on the side” thing doesn’t work out.

This post was spawned by reading this article from Web Worker Daily about professional development for the web worker set. Great site, by the way, Web Worker Daily is!