Learning as a Journey

A question many of us think about on a regular basis is ‘what do I need to do to continue to be successful?” The definition of success itself is very personal. If you’ve been successful up until now, it could be easy to assume that what made you successful in the past will work in the future. In reality, it’s uncertain what will make us successful in workplaces, markets, careers, and industries that are changing so rapidly.

Change has a way of doing that – creating uncertainty. What do we seek when we feel uncertain? A return to a comfortable degree of certainty again. Certainty helps us feel in control. News flash: at work, we’ll never have 100% certainty. That said, maybe rather than searching for certainty, we should ensure our relevancy.

There is a prescient article in the Wall Street Journal titled “I’m Still Under Construction; Six Tales of Lifelong Learning.” It profiles six very different individuals who are living the idea of life-long learning. It demonstrates that learning can happen in a wide variety of ways and that it pays off in big ways. If you read the article, you’ll see that learning didn’t create more certainty, but it gave them more opportunity and relevancy.

There are some predictions that 30% of today’s skills and knowledge will be obsolete in a few years. Overstated or not, this statistic represents the reality that we need to be thinking about how we are continually preparing ourselves for what’s next. Second news flash: learning isn’t a destination, it’s a journey.

Where is your journey going?