Scanning the horizons and adding together current interests with possible ideas about future directions career- and business-wise, my main thoughts the last year or so have been:
- 1. There’s no sense in tearing everything up and starting over on a completely new career-path. Lack of time/resources makes this option unrealistic. The pragmatist in me recognises: far better to start where you are and pivot to a new direction.
2. My strongest aptitude academically/intellectually was always maths. This hasn’t changed. I studied both maths and advanced maths at A-level. Stupid me followed convention (knew I shouldn’t have done that) and added physics to that list. Physics was never my strongest suit. Should have played computing instead, would have made far more sense. My mind has that ferocious logic thing going on. Computers understand me, humans don’t. That should have made the ‘maths + computing’ combo a no-brainer. It’s my only regret in life: that I didn’t work this one out sooner. (In my defence, I was constrained by the world’s worst careers advisor, but that’s a subject for another day.)
3. Earning power has to be a consideration in all this. Forget fancy ideas about ‘do what you love’, ‘follow your passions’, ‘put contribution first and the money will follow’. Here’s the secret, people: you get paid for adding value, for solving problems, for meeting others’ needs/wants. Really doesn’t matter what area or niche that’s in. Although the standard internet marketers’ meme (there are only three hot niches: finance, money, health) still applies. I have plenty of experience in business/finance and know where the pain points are, especially for cash-strapped (and often technophobic) small businesses.
4. My previous profession (finance/accounting) is already under considerable pressure of over-supply (even, ironically, while there’s a major skills shortage going on). And technological developments will put increasing pressure on that career/profession in the next five to ten years. Better to be on the leading edge of that technological wave, than be swept away by it through failure to respond to the warning signs.
5. Whatever I decide to dedicate myself to for the next 10, 15, 20 years, will require a considerable commitment to learning on my part. There’ll be no short cuts, no magic bullets. But then, I like a crazy challenge and I love being able to prove my detractors wrong. 🙂
I have a business idea forming in my mind now. To pursue it will require me to study broadly across a number of different disciplines, to synthesise and bring them together. There is no doubt that others out there are already working in the same area, and they’ll be far ahead of me. I’ll need to work hard to prove to them I belong in their network (despite the lack of trad. qualifications), that I have the latent capacity and that I can hold my own against them intellectually. This is no small ask and I have a lot of work to do.
Onward and upward!