Keeping up to excel at it

It is the challenge you rise to

“Let me ask is it hard for you to be up to date?” That was a question from an ex-colleague with whom I have maintained contact on a professional and social level for the last couple of years. Our conversations weave in and out of life and work issues. I never tire of addressing any of the things that come up for discussion.

My professional Information Technology career started in October 1988, but things have changed so radically over the last 32 years. My niche area of expertise that I was first co-opted into began in 1996 and there have been so many iterations of the product that though the fundamentals are the same, the scope of its influence is humongous.

The answer is simple and it is likely anyone else will answer in the same vein. “It is not easier, it requires more discipline, practice, and reading. Experience helps, but new things are new things, you have to learn them properly.” I spend a lot of my free time learning to be better at what I do, because change is constant, not keeping up leads to irrelevance.

“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.” General Eric Shinseki