Take your education and skill development into your own hands.
Don't count on your boss or job for it.
Each week, consistently use a certain amount of your own "off the clock" time so to speak to improve your skills, knowledge, and work efficiency. Treat it like you would the commute to work at an in-person job. Yeah, you might be getting paid for X hours per week of on-the-clock time, but budget much more time for that job in your personal schedule, to accommodate your commute and continued self-education and off-the-clock skill development.
Imagine I bring my Tesla into my long-time mechanic of whom I've been a loyal buyer of services for 20+ years, and he says, "oh, I don't know how to work on electric vehicles, only gas engines. So I need you to pay me $100,000 so I can go to electric car school. And you will need to wait while I learn, so it will take an extra long time for me to fix this and cost you an extra $100,000."
I'm not going to wait, and I'm certainly not going to pay for his future education. I'm just going to terminate my agreement with him and hire someone whose knowledge has grown with the fast-changing world. Even if he wanted his customers to pay for his electric car education, he would have needed to have built that in as a surcharge or upcharge on his gas engine repair services years ago while he did electric car self-education on the side out of regular business hours. It's too late now for that. It'd be too late for him. (Don't worry too much about him, though; he's fictional.)
If your skills, work speed/efficiency, and knowledge are about the same as they are now in a year, you will likely be let go (fired), or, if you are in business for yourself and/or are a contractor, you will notice your customers stop buying and you will go out of business.
Like cash on a table being reduced in value by inflation, you are losing market value each day. Stagnation in your skills and work efficiency is actually a constant decrease in your value in business and labor markets.
Even if you find a new job with your old unimproved skills, it will likely be at a significant pay cut, or with other penalties (e.g. having to work holidays and undesirable graveyard hours for the same pay you used to get for nice regular daytime hours on non-holidays).
The world is growing and accelerating around you. You have to grow and speed up just to stay the same size and keep up. To stay the same size is, in market value, to shrink and disappear. To keep the same speed is, in market value, to slow down and fall farther and farther behind.
Your education and growth is nobody's job but your own. Generally, nobody's going to be willing to pay for it directly but you. Generally, it's not going to be on-the-clock time.
You get the payouts and promotions after you learn, not to learn.
The job you have now likely won't exist in a year. Even if it seems to exist still, it will likely be in name only, meaning the job will be so different and require such different skills and qualifications that it's not really even the same job. To even keep your job is to get a promotion, and to get that promotion you will have to invest in yourself and your education at your own expense in your own time.
If you aren't in the process of earning a promotion right now, you are on a conveyor belt going towards termination town.
With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
a.k.a. Scott
- "If you aren't in the process of earning a promotion right now, you are on a conveyor belt going towards termination town."
- Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
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In addition to having authored his book, In It Together, Eckhart Aurelius Hughes (a.k.a. Scott) runs a mentoring program, with a free option, that guarantees success. Success is 100% guaranteed for anyone who follows the program.
