These are great times to be in Tech! All this fast changing world around us, but the opportunities of growth and learning are everywhere for those who want to seize them! And the best way to do so is by keeping up to speed with the inovations and take ownership of one’s Career

The challenges of working in today’s Cloud and Cutting Edge IT are so overwhelming. However, the proper learning strategy can help us be on top of things. Please bear in mind that technical skills are as important as soft skills!

Many ingredients make the learning journey successful and the results stimulating!

In this post, I will share with you my way of keeping up to speed with the requirements of our profession.

Willing to learn

The first and most important ingredient is the will to learn and master new skills. One needs to be eager to widen their knowledge, improve their skills or aquire new ones.

This can be stimulated by many objectives: landing a new Role, getting promoted, improving financials, filling some skill gaps … Loads of reasons can be behind our motivation

Setting a Roadmap

Focus is most important, and the best way to do it is by establishing a concrete Roadmap. Ideally, for the upcoming 6-12 months and would include items such as :

  • Certification Exams to prepare for
  • Planned dates to sit for those exams (schedule them if possible to set real goals)
  • Books to read and subjects to learn or improve aquired knowledge on
  • Tech or tools to learn, master or dive deep into - Get your hands dirty and practice a bunch!

This Roadmap will evolve in time and should be adjusted to adapt to new requirements

Dedicating Time

Nothing comes easy, especially with all the responsabilities we all have at work or with our families. One should dedicate time for their upskilling and take this seriously to get the most of their efforts.

This can be some off-distruction learning sessions during weekdays and/or weekends

Using workout/walks time wisely

A great way to learn passively is to listen to Podcasts about your favorite subjects and Cloud Tech while exercising or going for errends! It is amazing the amout of information one assimilates during a 30 / 45 minutes session. Making this an excellent way to catch-up with the new stuff going on in our Industry.

Personnaly, I enjoy doing this when I go for solo walks after/before a day of work or in the weekend

Sharing your knowledge

Nothing helps your learning better than teaching others what you have learned! Share with others, Take initiatives, like organizing or contributing to Lunch and Learn events or meetups. Be them in your Organization or in the public.

You can even write blog posts on something you are using or have developped! This will give you great opportunity to go deeper and surely learn new things!

I hope you enjoyed reading this post, wishing you the best in your continuous learning journey!