Benjamin Franklin, 1767

Herein lies a dilemma many face in architecture. Should one obtain a license or pursue something otherwise. It doesn’t seem like the professional path is so cut and dry anymore. At least this is true for the one wrestling with this question. Coincidentally, it is a dichotomy that is usually accompanied by a desire to pursue something alternative — even unorthodox. The question you’re asking is, “Is it okay for me to go this other way?” Isn’t it? You know that the tried and true path is to get your license, but yet you still yearn for something a little contrarian. So, how do you make a decision?

Algorithmic Thinking

In Algorithms to Live By, Brian Christian and Tom Griffith show us how the algorithmic principles of computer science can be applied to human decision making. One such law is known as the explore/exploit tradeoff. “Simply put, exploration is gathering information, and exploitation is using the information you have to get a known good result.” In other words, do we go with what we are familiar with (exploit)? Or do we take a chance and try something new (explore)?

We do this almost every day: Do you go to your usual place for lunch, or try somewhere new?; Order the regular, or experiment? The list is endless, but ultimately you have to sacrifice one thing to have the other, hence the tradeoff.

The goal here is to consider enough options so that you will have a better chance of exploiting one that will give you the best return. And so the big question is “which options do I take action on?” and “How long do I contemplate?” When it comes to getting your license, this idea provides you with a framework to consider your conclusion. How long does one ruminate over the predicament? We are familiar with the path to licensure, but most avenues to the contrary aren’t as clear.

The authors explore several different methods, and there is indeed a science to making the decision, but for the sake of this piece, I want to talk about just one of their approaches.

Regret Minimization Framework

“Regret is the result of comparing what we actually did with what would have been best in hindsight.” When it comes to your architecture license, the big consideration is whether or not you will regret not having obtained it at this time later on in your life. With this idea in mind, Christian and Griffith turned to Jeff Bezos and what he called a “regret minimization framework”:

“...I knew that when I was 80 I was not going to regret having tried this. I was not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called the Internet...I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is never having tried.”

    – Jeff Bezos, on starting Amazon.com

And so the other question is if you will regret having gotten your license instead of trying out this other thing you’re contemplating today. It’s not uncommon to want to try something other than architecture after five years of school and so many more years of professional practice. A lot of the pressure to get licensed is usually external: it’s what you’re supposed to do, the logical next step, but sometimes you might not be so ready to dive in head first just yet. It’s okay to ease up on the pressure. Maybe you explore your options, learn as much as you can, or try out that business idea, and if by the time your say, 32 years old, you haven’t gone down a different path, you take your exams and get your license. Start getting creative with your planning.

Pros, Cons, and Benjamin Franklin

“He was, during his eighty-four-year-long life, America’s best scientist, inventor, diplomat, writer, and business strategist, and he was also one of its most practical...political thinkers.”

    – Walter Isaacson, in Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

To deal with difficult decisions, Benjamin Franklin invented what we know today as a pros/cons list. But his original version, laid out in his 1772 letter to a friend seeking guidance, has another dimension to it. Franklin would divide the paper into two sections respectively titled “pros” and “cons”. He would then populate each section over three or four days. After he had filled his sheet with all that came to his mind, he would assign each item with a “Weight” or value. This allowed him to only focus on the factors that were of the utmost importance to his decision and eliminate the inessential ones.

Maybe we make a list contemplating pursuing our license or some outlandish business idea. We might put in the pros column that the license is what’s expected of us by our peers and assign it a value of 6 (1 being unimportant and 10 being very important). In the same pros column, we might also put that having the license would give us more opportunities professionally and assign it a 9. When we go back and review our list, we can eliminate our first item with the 6 value and keep the more important one valued at 10.

There is no need to get caught up in doing this exactly how Franklin described it and more vital to train ourselves to step back and really think about the decisions we are making. This isn’t an article on the pros and cons of getting an architecture license; there are plenty of those. But instead, what we want to focus on here are the reasons for our decision to pursue one or not. We want to make these big life decisions for the right reasons. The French Emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte, amply reminds us that this is easier said than done:

“Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.”

It is the continual auditing of our values that gives us the sobriety we need in our planning and decision making.

Jump off the bandwagon

Have you ever seen one of those Japanese crowd pranks where an innocent pedestrian is walking down the street only to suddenly be surrounded by a crowd of what seems to be a coincidental rush of people? But then everyone in the crowd ducks down out of nowhere and then the innocent individual follows suit and ducks also? It’s a great example of the power of crowds and also quite hilarious.

The Bandwagon Effect is a similar phenomenon where we essentially do something because other people are doing it. We do the popular thing rather than the contrarian thing. Mark Twain reminded us:

“When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

He was telling us that we should beware the crowd, the trends, and what’s popular. Not because it’s always wrong but because we tend to conform to it. It’s easy to move through our career on auto-pilot, but you don’t have to. It’s okay to shake things up.

“Be like water my friend”

Ultimately, there are three circumstances you will find yourself in regards to this question:

1. You are 100 percent sure that you want to be a licensed architect and pursue the traditional career path

2. You aren’t sure if you want to be licensed or pursue some alternative track

3. You are 100 percent sure that you do not want to be a licensed architect

For points one and three you’ve pretty much made your decision so best of luck to you. But you’re probably reading this if you identify mostly with point two. There are a couple of ways to address this. First, stop looking at it as a binary choice. Not getting your license now does not mean that you can’t get it later. And in the same way, deciding to devote time to get your license now does not mean you will be unable to pursue an alternative desire later.

Our thinking today has become so focused on an exaggerated notion of permanence. It is a bias that has crippled your ability to take chances in life. The only real caution one should have is an echo of Theodore Roosevelt’s famous line: “The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.” Gender aside, inaction produces no fruit. And it is in our passivity that anxiety manifests. We want someone else to tell us what we should do. Counsel is great, but we have to make the last call.

We should instead embrace the power behind mistakes. If you’re reading this, chances are that you’re either in college, a college graduate, or a professional. You are in an extraordinary position! It would be remarkably difficult for you to destroy your career at this point. You’ve proven that you have the intelligence, skill, and determination to make it this far. It’s okay to go down the path that YOU think is for you. If you completely screw it up, that’s cool, go back and take another crack at it. Allow yourself to be flexible and fluid. Embrace something similar to Bruce Lee’s philosophy on martial arts:

“You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.”

Give Yourself Options

One of the foundational principles of any strategy is having options, and it’s the same in this case. In the end, you want to give yourself the freedom where, if down the road, something changes for you, you’re not completely at square one.

I’ve practiced this in my own life. Since a very young age, I’ve always wanted to be a writer, and as I got older, I developed a deep passion for architecture and design. It’s been just over eight years since I began my journey in architecture. But throughout all of that time, I was always writing, improving my skills, and looking for opportunities to grow. I didn’t give up on writing because I decided to pursue architecture, for me, they went hand in hand, and if the day ever came when I had a unique opportunity to embrace a career as a writer I had built myself up to a point where I would be ready to seize it.

For me, that time has come this year in my writing for Archinect. I’ve decided to step away from the traditional path in architecture to pursue writing full time. But also I haven’t left myself completely empty on the conventional route either. I am confident that my future moving forward will be one in writing but things happen, and things change. Even though I am sure of my decision, I have already taken the steps to complete all of my AXP hours. That means that if, for whatever unforeseen reason, I decide to pursue my license, that I can jump straight into studying for the exams. I do not have to be tied to an employer to try and complete those hours.

This is just my example. I have heard many stories of professionals where the opposite is true. They got their license, had an impressive career, and later on decided to go down a different path. Every story is unique. What will yours look like?