What is subtracting and why should you add space for upskilling?
All our life, we’ve been accumulating thoughts, emotions & things around us and look where we are right now!
- Not being able to handle a simple gesture of ignorance by loved ones.
- Not being able to digest hard words that don’t make sense to the one who doesn’t know the meaning of them.
- Not being able to accept failure as a part of success towards a better goal.
This is how we have become by adding more to what we have. Now it’s the right time to start subtracting what’s not needed!
A simple comparison of life with a 1 monthly trip without money. We leave all the nonessential things and pick up only the ones that are needed to leave and return back home. So, you may have to leave the expensive shoes, as you may not need them always. You need to leave behind all the super suits or fancy dresses and pick up the essential ones.
In life, it may be a thought, belief, emotion, a thing, a person or a relationship with them that you may want to let go of.
Feel the necessity of deleting; add more space to what you need!
If this content feels vague to you, it is normal! If you are a college student or a college graduate unable to visualize what I mean, then read below to understand better.
DEAR COLLEGE STUDENTS,
Divide your college life into 4 parts. Assuming that you are doing an engineering course, you have 4 years.
- In your 1st year, you gotta explore things and keep yourself open to adding more to what you are, what you know, and what you have. It may be a quality from your senior, a new tech stack, a new skill or value, a new relationship, or a new anything that adds up to your growth.
- The second year is your peak time to enjoy those add-ons. Get a lot of experiences out of them, good or bad. Ensure you don’t forget the insights and inferences.
- Now, in your third year, you can strike out or subtract the unnecessary, that drags your energy off from your brain and soul! By this time, you will have all the things that are good for your life or for that moment.
- In your final year of college, shart shedding off what is not needed for your goal from all the good you had. It takes real courage to do this!
The good thing is, we all do this someway or the other unintentionally. But,
it’s only when you realize the intention for your goal, you start uplifting your self yourself!
Remembering once again, feel the necessity of deleting; add more space to what you need!
Now, when you subtract and add more space for what you need, you need to fill that space with what’s necessary for you by upskilling yourself.
You can’t fuel a vehicle when it’s already filled. You must exhaust the fuel first so that you can add more fuel to your need.
UPSKILLING IS THE MODERN FUEL
The skills required in companies are transforming fast. And, the jobs need a new you, before you may need a new job. Since 2015 the skillsets for jobs have already shifted by ~25%.
Recently, I came across an article that spoke about the importance of upskilling for every one of us! I felt responsible to share the major points with you.
The primary goal of upskilling is to work effectively, stay relevant and competitive in your industry or place yourself for better job opportunities on the way!
Upskilling is not necessarily to learn a new skill but to enhance your existing skills. There are a lot of smaller skills that most of us lack. For example, the Excel sheet skills you may need to manage a project or team more efficiently, or document the plans and outcomes regularly to have better performance at work.
These things do not require you to be technically sound. You just have to put down everything you need to get yourself organized; helping you work effectively.
Upskilling can include your hard skills like using a software, tool, or maybe a simple graphic design and soft skills like improving your listening, or getting better at providing constructive feedback. It can be anything that helps you in doing your job a little bit better than usual.
Skills really matter as they speak very clearly about what you can do, to the recruiters!
For some of you, upskilling might sound luxurious and look to be an option. That will be an advantage for you. For others, it’s a necessity. Studies show that in the next decade, most of our works will be in lesser demand. In the worst case, almost 80% of our people may need to reskill completely, over just upskilling.
If you are already upskilling, you are investing in your future!
But, most people do their 9 to 5 job, and get back home and relax. But it’s important to realize what’s happening, from an eagle’s eye view and upskill yourself in every aspect possible, including your personal aspects of life.
Credits:- BCC — Here’s an article from LinkedIn weeks back, that spoke more about this.
4 LESSONS FROM MY FIRST JOB AS A SOFTWARE ENGINEER
In spite of your upskilling, you should definitely know these 4 lessons from my first job as a Software Engineer @ FSS
Though I didn’t excel in Java or any DataStructures, I had built a few products using Ionic and other frameworks, that were used by ~1000 users. One of them was a board game using cocos2d-js. Nothing required Java; I didn’t bother to learn DS. That helped me get placed here.
After being hired, I was trained in Java, Spring MVC pattern etc. Though I didn’t become an expert in the banking domain, I got the best confidence in JAVA programming during my training period. Yet, my interest and passion were towards Ionic and Angular frameworks, etc.
Luckily, I got a chance to work on an SDK using Ionic, which is currently used by a few banks. I had a great time exploring the possibilities in the banking domain with the most interesting (at that time) Ionic tech.
My everyday routine during my first job made my training (honeymoon) period memorable!
It was only until I was put into a server-side JAVA project which I had no interest or idea to monitor and maintain. When I requested again to put into a similar project like before, I was forced to work on both the Java project as well as the Ionic related products. Even after completing a task with all the effort, couldn’t feel any appreciation. I felt caught up even after office hours. It gradually drained my energy and made me lose my self-confidence.
This forced me to desperately want a change, of course, for many other internal reasons too. I didn’t bother even to jump off the track for no higher pay. Life couldn’t be this messed up.
I had always been grateful for the situations at my first job, which pushed me to go for something else with no expectations.
Putting me in such a situation, forcing me to do what I didn’t like, led me to something bigger and indeed a life-changing career moment for me.
It’s going to be 4 years since I left my first job. It’s indeed the best, as my life had transformed 10x from there.
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Originally published at College Covets — https://www.linkedin.com.