Stay Updated Stay Successful

Staying updated is vital for success in the IT industry today. To achieve this, you have to craft a continuous learning strategy. Successful careers are built on being an expert in your area.Besides being extremely strong in technical skills such as coding (keep learning new programming languages), you should also read about business trends in different sectors. Finally, the ability to integrate many different ideas and form a winning proposition you can sell to the customer is also a great approach.Along with that, the ability to work in teams, across time zones and geographies, is a great advantage. Sometimes we don't put enough time and effort into building one's soft skills. They matter more and more as you gather experience.1. Create a plan: Besides joining whatever training the employer has to offer, everyone must craft a plan to continuously upgrade their own skills. The internet is full of sites where you can learn new skills. Craft an individual development plan that includes formal courses (including those available free on the internet) and the ability to build technical skills and soft skills. Use sites such as Coursera.org to upgrade your skills in various areas and learn subjects you did not learn before.2. Experiment: As the number of people going online increases, the ways of learning will change. Smartphones will become your most powerful learning tool. Whether it is podcasts or YouTube videos or e-books, smart people have already integrated these into their schedules.3. Stay active on online forums: Online communities are powerful ways to connect to experts across the world. I am an avid Twitter user. I use it to learn about new ideas and trends.4. Self-motivation: All learning happens through self-motivation. As kids we get used to learning at gun-point. "If you do not study, you will fail" or "You better study or else...But as adults, it is only internal motivation that helps a person stay updated. It helps build humility to say that you need to learn something new and the courage to acknowledge that anyone, even someone junior, could be their teacher. So courage and humility are two great signs of an internally-motivated person.---------------From the chat on TimesJob.com and The Economic Times dated March 23, 2015