Continually Learn

The advice I’m going to give you is not necessarily mine. It’s a mashup of a few ideas I’ve heard over the course of the last couple of years. The advice is to continually learn. If you have aspirations to grow in your career then spend a little time each day learning new concepts and ideas that will help with your work. The rate at which knowledge is growing in your field seems to be exponential. You can’t just sit back and rely on what you know so far. You will grow stale in your field of expertise. This happened to me when I worked for the Air Force Research Laboratory. I was starting to get assigned more and more managerial projects and paperwork as opposed to doing actual research. I stopped learning about technical things and started learning bureaucracy. I was lucky that I recognized this and switched to a job where I could challenge myself technically again with Talkdesk. I became a Site Reliability Engineer and have loved every minute of it ever since. Yes I had to beat off some rust and learn quickly on the job, but my manager and team had faith in me. Now I spend a little time each day reading in my field. Whether it be learning the Bash Shell, Linux Administration or improving my Python skills. I work to absorb and practice what I need to learn to better myself for my job and career. I have already started to see the rewards paying off for doing this. I refuse to grow stale again. No matter what field you are in, you should be learning a little every day. I’ve heard it said that you should be investing 3% of your income into yourself and your education every year. I thoroughly believe this. My wife might beg to differ though when she sees how much I spend on books and audiobooks. The main point of this is, if you want to advance your career, take the time to care about your career and improve yourself. This post isn’t just about how to grow in your job though. It’s also about how you can grow as a person, a teammate, a leader, and much more! I had always been interested in motivational speaking, however I was ill equipped to do it. I didn't have the ability to present very well, I also didn’t have any material to present, and I didn’t know where to begin. I thought becoming a speaker would be a great side job and a great way to improve myself. So I started reading all kinds of motivational books. I have applied a lot of what I have learned in the last couple of years and have found great success. However, there was one thing I learned that topped all other things. It was how much time you have to spend listening to audiobooks. The books I read said the average person spends thousands of hours in their car each year. Most people listen to music or nothing at all! They suggested that you listen to audiobooks while driving and turn your vehicle into a mobile university. I started doing this not only when I drive but when I work out. I spend most of my time listening to more motivational books. I particularly like the books written by John C. Maxwell. This has changed my life! You see, I’m a slow reader compared to most people. So audiobooks speed up the process. I know that I need to take a speed reading course to improve or I’ll never get through all the books I’d like to read. That being said, the time I spend listening to these books has been invaluable to me. They have sparked many ideas and topics to talk about in my blog and later as a speaker. I even went as far as presenting to my team the topic of overcoming the fear of failure at work. Now I am by far not ready to become the speaker I want to be, but I’m taking little steps each day to get there. The key takeaway from this post is to take action and learn what you can when you can. Learn about your career, your personal growth, and even biographies of the people you admire. It will pay off enormously in the end.