“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” ― Mahatma Gandhi
Life is like liquid in motion – it takes the path you will it to take. You can allow it to stagnate and gather moss or keep it flowing sweeping across all the obstacles. Learning in every step and turn, nook and corner is the only way in one’s possession to keep life flowing and roaring. It is the way through which life finds a new way out every time it is faced with new challenges in the face of odds.
Importance of learning in life lies in the very fact that life becomes listless and indolent when one stops learning. The other day, one of my uncles from neighborhood, my friend’s father, was lamenting the fact that how handicapped he feels not able to use computer or email. While I was trying to reason out in an effort to soothe him citing the age factor, his opinion was that his failure is causing misery in him and the dissatisfaction was writ clearly on his face.
This is more so in the current situation and context when the environment is constantly changing. At the risk of sounding clichéd that change is the only constant in today’s life, all of us recognize the fact that it is the new normal. With all the technological revolution, we witness it in our lives every day. The world has gone through major milestone changes in the past century, initiated by the industrial revolution. But the social change brought in by that was no match to the impact of technology driven digital revolution that commenced in the late nineties of 20th century. Internet –at the center of today’s this revolution and digital lifestyle, being the catalyst for the new age momentum, has fuelled this change in all directions. Innovation in getting things done differently – in significantly easier ways; is the mantra of this age and one has to keep learning the outcomes just so as to not lag behind and be outdated and outsmarted.
With so much importance on keeping pace with the changes and of continuous learning attached, it is imperative that similar thought process is followed and practiced in a contemporary technology driven company having direct bargain on the overall business impact. In terms of technology enablers towards maximizing output, there are newer tools and options coming into play very frequently obsoleting the old way of working. Let’s take a look at the shelf life of the technical gadgets available today. It is at a maximum of 6-8 months by the time when a newer alternative is available with better, sleeker and more powerful features. The rate, at which android OS are being released, advanced analytics techniques are put into play to understand intricate details of customer behavior to tailor offerings or on-premises applications are finding new home in the cloud for lower maintenance cost added with accessibility features, call for rapid change in the technology mindset of a company and staff members with the added responsibility of adapting to all these. To keep stride with these advancements, the shelf life of the related implementation technologies is also changing fast in today’s work environment. The four pillars of technology growth – mobility, social networks, analytics and cloud are dominating today’s technology landscape to drive innovation and one’s awareness of continuously evolving new skills is a must. One has to be open to changes, take active part in researches supporting these innovations –a great number of them primarily available through open source projects on internet and be skilled before these become commonplace in the market. There is very little or no scope of complacency as someone else will grab the opportunity making the other person redundant in the workplace.
To sum it all, continuous learning and new skill development are the only ways to keep one relevant in today’s work environment and keep pace with the new normal– the change.
Let me know your thoughts.