Architecture is an industry notorious for a culture of long hours. Many, particularly young graduates, accept this condition as part and parcel of the industry. It must be normal because everyone is doing right? We convince ourselves that all the additional overtime working towards our project deadline can’t last forever. We make promises to ourselves about all the cool and interesting things that we are going to do once the project is completed. The truth is however, that downtime never arrives, because sure enough, right after your project finishes, there is another waiting just behind. So how then can one learn?
A growing body of research is making it clear that learners are made, not born. In short, effective learning often boils down to a type of project management. In order to develop an area of expertise, we first have to set achievable goals about what we want to learn. Then we have to develop strategies to help us reach those goals.2 This is where Continued…