You can’t rest on what you know, or your past experiences. The world is moving, so you need to continue to sharpen your existing skills. The world is evolving, so you need to master new skills. In our VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) world the most important skill is the ability to master new capabilities.
I call this professional development, rather than the commonly used phrase “career development.” Professionalism is entirely within your control. You can take full responsibility and be happy to accept help when it is available. Professionals don’t expect their boss or their organization to “develop” them. Career prediction is impossible and impractical – there are too many variables you simply do not control.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Sidenote: The English word “career” comes from 14th century French, carere, which was a circular racetrack. We get the word “careen” from the same root. By contrast, the English word “vocation” comes from the Latin word vocare, which means “calling” or “voice.” In general, you should pursue a calling, rather than racing at top speed in circles.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
There are three critical outcomes of professional development:
- Increased effectiveness in your current role or job. Status quo skills mean you’re falling behind.
- Being prepared for opportunities as they emerge. Many of the most interesting roles and jobs for you don’t exist yet or aren’t available now. You want to be prepared when the time comes.
- Joy in the journey! A common theme among people who are “burned out” in a role is that they aren’t learning anything new.
Professional development doesn’t happen automatically, or by osmosis. It takes commitment, energy, work, and a disciplined approach. Reading this may inspire you, but you’ll need to provide those yourself. You need an investor mindset looking for delayed profits over months and years. I have a friend who says that anyone can complete a marathon, because all they must do is not stop. All professional development is outside your comfort zone; autopilot work inside your comfort zone requires zero learning. Professional development requires embracing the difficult.
Too few people receive good instruction in how to manage their professional development. This the guidance I want you to absorb here. I’m sharing what I’ve learned from my mentors and from personal experiences.
The domains of professional development
There are three spheres of information and knowledge to consider:
- Executing your current work responsibilities and being prepared for expanding your current role.
- Industry and competitors, and adjacent industries.
- New-to-you individual skill and knowledge areas.
The general development domains for every professional include:
- Communication – structuring and framing, persuasion, story-sharing and presentation, writing
- Self and People leadership – seeking out mentors, getting feedback, fundamental management practices
- Program and project management
- Analysis – data exploration, quantitative methods, data presentation, asking superior questions
Build your specific craft – your combination of learned skills and art to produce something beautiful and useful – on top of these general skill domains. Stabilize your craft on long-lasting skills. Keep pace with technical advances where the half-life of each skill is shrinking.
Professionals strengthen relationships with people. Create plans to connect with industry contacts and your personal network. Set reminders to stay in touch. Share generously with people in your network to feed relationships.
Learn about topics which interest you, even if they have nothing to do with your current employment. These give you satisfaction, energy, and ideas which help you stand out from others. Many people well along in their professions cite hobbies and interests which led to significant new relationships and cross-fertilization of ideas.
Special Projects, Sabbaticals, Internships, and Volunteer Organizations
Immersing yourself partly or wholly into a different work situation is a powerful avenue to development.
The most common opportunities are special projects. You volunteer (or are “voluntold”) or asked to help on project separate from your regular work. Pursue these opportunities! Say Yes as often as reasonable. It’s an opportunity to use your existing skills in a new setting, improve your network, learn from others, and stretch your experience further. Early in my career I was given powerful advice: “Figure out how to do your regular job in 30 hours a week, then use 10-15 hours a week on other projects and learning new things.” It takes discipline to shrink your regular work, but the payoffs are enormous.
Some roles, especially in academia, allow you a sabbatical – a time every so many years to go off and work elsewhere for a period of months. Exploit opportunities to fully immerse yourself in a different environment, working with different people, on something that fascinates you.
Internships are usually a formalized opportunity to work as a “newbie” alongside experienced people. This is a great format for when you want to try out a different kind of work. It’s forced practice with feedback built in. My observation is that internships can be hard to engineer yourself; you usually have to wait for an organization to open up internship opportunities.
Nearly all professionals can serve in a volunteer organization. Charitable and religious organizations, local associations, industry associations, and small business boards of directors are always looking for help. These are powerful opportunities to use your skills, sharpen your own capabilities, and help others in the process. You can demonstrate leadership and skills outside of your regular work, which give you credibility to move into other roles at your organization.
How much time should you invest in professional development?
Most professionals are putting in 50 hours a week in their job. Not every hour is effective, of course, but let’s work with that number. 10% of 50 hours/week is 20 hours/month. You can get an enormous amount of learning and practice into 20 hours if you’re disciplined. This is the 10% that makes the 90% much better! I recommend you aim for 20 hours/month. Some months might be less, but if you aim for 10 hours you’re more likely to get only 6 to 8.
If that time investment seems impossible, start with 2 hours a week. A solid 2 hours a week is about 100 hours a year, more than enough for significant progress.
How to create a learning plan for new information
A learning plan is focused on learning new information – practice and feedback are important, too, but a learning plan is primarily about expanding your base of information. Your brain has enormous capability; some neurobiologists have estimated that a typical person could learn 7 facts every second for 200 years!
Professionals take charge of their own learning plans. They don’t wait around for someone else to define it for them. Professionals solicit help from others to accomplish their learning plans.
Use this four-step process:
- Decide what you need and want to learn. (Imagine how knowing X will help you in the future.)
- Identify sources of information.
- Schedule time to consume the information, study, and learn.
- Assess the results and update your plan for the next season of learning.
Easy-peasy! Naturally, I have some detailed recommendations to add.
There are three spheres of information and knowledge to consider as you decide what you need and want to learn:
- Executing your current work responsibilities and being prepared for expanding your current role.
- Industry and competitors, and adjacent industries.
- New-to-you individual skill and knowledge areas.
Apply the 80/20 rule – focus 80% in your strength areas, 20% in new areas. For the 80% of your effort, ask these two questions: What’s most relevant to your primary occupation and interests? What are strengths you can build upon by expanding your information base? Continuous learning in these areas gives you depth.
Focus 20% of your learning plan in areas that are completely different. This is your best strategy for developing breadth. What could you learn about architecture, cooking, motorcycles, film editing, ice sculpture, astrophysics, carpet manufacturing, 3D printing, etc. – areas which are completely new to you? Most professionals do not give much thought to new areas, and yet this information will seed tremendous growth in the future. Cross-disciplinary awareness is a strong foundation for innovation.
You should also consider the long-term value proposition. Knowing relevant industry trends and keeping up with contacts is useful. Step back to consider the big trends in your industry, or adjacent industries. Some time and effort need to go towards the unglamorous foundation material with long-term payoff.
The most common sources of information are:
- Webinars, teleconferences, podcasts, local group meetings
- Formal conferences and events
- Personal interviews with experts
- Books, magazines and blogs
Recognize your preferred modes of input and choose sources accordingly for efficiency – you almost certainly are either a reader or auditory learner. I read text much faster than I can listen, for example, but I try to use audio and video materials to round out my reading.
In addition to the default approach that most of us have – a Google search! — don’t overlook your local librarian. They are experts at helping you find information and identify what’s most relevant to you. Also, Amazon reviews are good for helping you figure out if something is at the right level for your needs.
Additional comments on information sources:
- Don’t neglect Pre-Gutenberg books and writing. Only the very best information was copied and preserved when it was so expensive to do so.
- Biographies are an excellent source of insight about how to manage difficult situations and people.
- Video is abundant now. TED talks are generally excellent for introductions and insights. Many universities and colleges are posting lectures from entire course online.
- Podcasts are especially useful if you’re looking for interviews with experts in narrow fields.
- Industry associations generally publish webinars, newsletters, and magazines. These are a great starting point to explore industries other than your own.
Schedule time to consume the information and learn! Nine times out of ten, what gets scheduled gets done. Professionals block out time on the calendar for the important, but not urgent work, including learning.
You may have trouble breaking down a lot of material into “chunks” that fit your schedule. I encourage you to think “seasonally” and “piecemeal.” For example, if you want to learn more about architecture, find a book or some magazines in the field, and leaf through 2 chapters and one magazine a week over 4-6 weeks. Don’t overcomplicate the process.
For longer learning topics, create smaller milestones around focused areas. For example, shift your thinking from “get better at presentations” to “identify ideas to help me open presentations better.” Frame your objectives as a means of performing at a higher level consistently.
Your learning plan is a living document. I set up a task reminder to update mine quarterly. I find that 3 months is long enough for serious study but short enough I can’t procrastinate.
A word of encouragement: You can do this. Don’t make your learning plan too complicated. Pick one topic to learn about, find good materials, and schedule time to work through it.
Acquiring New Skills Quickly
Knowing stuff is useful, but there are also physical and mental skills which are critical to professional success. Your learning plan supports the information side of development. The physical and mental skills require additional work.
The critical first step is to set a goal with a meaningful purpose behind it. Make it clear and concrete, so you can define what success looks like. “Fluency in a XYZ language” is too vague; “Be able to carry on a 30 minute business conversation with a native Portuguese speaker because I want to increase our business engagement in Brazil” is better.
Step two: Break down the skill into chunks. Deconstruct skills like you would break down a large project into smaller parts.
Step three: Identify the 20% of the components give 80% of the outcome value. For example, you can significantly improve your formal sales presentations overall by focusing on the start (e.g., the first 3 sentences and your body language) and the ask.
Step four: Focus your practice on one component of the skill at a time. This maximizes the value from your time. Study how professional sports players practice most of the time – hours on fundamental, individual elements of the whole game.
Celebrate your progress and accomplishments. Don’t allow any sense of “But I’m still bad at X” to steal your joy and satisfaction from your concrete progress.
Pro tip: List all the reasons you might quit before you reach your goal, or the excuses you’re most likely to give when you don’t finish. It’s hard to master new skills and especially awkward at the beginning. Commit to not giving in for any of these reasons for your first 6 practice times.
Finally, the skill of acquiring new skills quickly and efficiently is one of the most critical skills you can develop! Even an old dog can learn new tricks if he knows how to learn them.
Applying what you learn
My grandfather told me “You can’t never learn nothin’ worthless.” Though true, passively absorbing information has limits. Applying what you learn is key to learning that makes a difference.
Create an external reality to hold yourself accountable for results. I will often tell friends what I’m working on, and encourage them to ask me about what I’m learning. Another tactic is to plan to teach someone else about what you learn. Or write an article or give a presentation to others. Force yourself to use the information you’ve learned.
Take a few moments when you finish a learning block to assess how well it went. Were you satisfied with your effort? What should you do differently next time? Are there materials that you can pass along to others? I often find that I surfaced new things I want to learn about and make notes about those interests for future learning plans.
Dealing effectively with challenges
The best of plans can grind to a halt on the shoals of everyday life. Professionals find ways to keep moving forward.
Falling behind schedule? Yesterday doesn’t matter. Today is a new day. Pick up and begin again.
Starting too late? It’s never too late for learning and development. The best time to plant an oak tree was 20 years ago, and the next best time is today.
Lost interest? Re-energize by picking something that interest you, and pivot to that to regain momentum.
Not being supported? Excuses are lies we tell ourselves. Your professional development is on you. Find people who will support you.
Bit off more than you can chew? We often overestimate what can be done in a short time, and wildly underestimate how much we can accomplish over a year or 3 years. Steady work yields its fruit in time.
Professionals approach development as a continuing journey of getting better. That self-image helps pull you along, because we do what we believe we are.
Recommended Resources:
The First 20 Hours (Josh Kaufman) – core practices for rapid skill acquisition.
How to Read a Book (Mortimer Adler) – classic advice from a Master learner. I observe that most people extract very little from books because they view reading as a passive activity.
Ultralearning (Scott Young) – a guide to the practices that can help you master languages and complex fields of knowledge in short times. The section on how to break down a topic into learnable chunks is especially good.
The Art of Learning (Josh Waitzkin) – a child chess prodigy, Waitzkin went on to master several other disciplines and has thought deeply about reproducible means of mastering new skills.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Glenn Brooke is the author of the soon-coming book, “Bold and Gentle: Living Wisely in an Age of Exponential Change.” This article is adapted from one of the chapters. Learn more at https://encouragingpress.com
