Catching Up

It feels bad when you know you're not growing in your knowledge and skills when everything around you, both people and technology are accelerating at the speed of light. I'm a programmer and a designer, but it seems everything that I learned for the past three years are already obsolete. I need to catch up.

Three things I'm doing now to catch up:

1. Exposure - Read books. Visit websites and articles. Even if I don't understand the terms, I just allow myself to be bombarded with the words until they make sense to me. Sometimes I have to resist the phrases "it's hard to learn", "it would take so much of my time". I just have to say "Every journey starts with a step" and almost always, the technology I thought to be difficult to learn is not that difficult at all.

2. Experience - knowledge is not enough. I have to find a way to use and apply those knowledge or else I'm doomed to lose them or forget them. It's important to have a mindset that it's never gonna be perfectly done the first time. I'd have to accept the fact that I'm gonna make mistakes and that making mistakes and solving them are the best way to learn.

3. Associate - I learned that the above steps 1 and 2 would be maximized and accelerated when I do step 3. Having people around you who can teach and coach you brings you faster to the race frontline. It's simple, when we surround ourselves with people who are updated with the latest trends and tech buzz, we get updated as well. In a way, their ceiling becomes our floor and that's acceleration. I am currently a member of a Philippine web and technology club, DigitalFilipino.com. I tell you, I'm glad I did.