I am too busy cutting trees with a cutlass that I do not have time to learn how to use a chainsaw.

Working in tech, you will know that it is a fast-paced field. You blink and new inventions, libraries, packages are being released. It is so easy to become stagnant in a world like that.

Placing a balance, it is not also all new technologies, languages, libraries, and packages that you must keep track of or want to learn... it's quite impossible and you will drown in despair at some point because trust me, you won't keep up.

So there is a thin line between staying curious and chasing after every new thing in tech.

To progress and grow in the tech world, you need to be curious! You cannot be coding Fortran at this age and time (unless there is really a project that you are working on and you can prove beyond reasonable doubt that Fortran has an edge over other modern languages and I still don't think so). Curiosity will help you grow, code better, solve problems better, design systems better, troubleshoot better, or whatever you need to get done.

Six months into working at my current job, I got stuck. Literally got stuck. I was doing my tasks and all but I wasn't growing. I wasn't learning because I told myself I am busy working and fixing bugs. But this was so counterproductive, I was spending more time doing what I would have done in fewer hours if I have been reading and taking time to learn and keep myself up to date.

It's false productivity that most people get stuck in (I don't believe I am the only one that has ever experienced this). You get so caught up working that you don't develop yourself to work better and then your productivity starts to drop. Then you tell yourself that you don't have time to read and learn because you are so busy working. It's a non-productive cycle.

So in my case, with the help of my boss, I devised ways to learn, write and also work efficiently. I had to come up with action steps and stick to them. If I had not, there would have been no significant difference in how I continue to manage work, learn, and my growth would have remained stunted.

So I will drop some action steps that you can use to get out of the false productivity that you are in.

• Be curious! Ask questions, revive your thirst for knowledge, and learning of new things. When you hear or come across something new, research about it, have an idea of what it is about. Always want to know more.

• Have a time blocked for reading. This is very important, you need to be proactive in this respect. You can block 2 - 3 hours for reading in the morning before you start work or in the evening after work, you can do lunch breaks. Whichever works for you but make sure to do it and set an alarm that reminds you to do this daily.

• Write! The process of writing helps in numerous ways. While writing, you research the topic you are writing about and this helps you understand the topic better than you did before. The process of writing also makes you put all the things you know and you have researched upon into a meaningful flow. Your thought process can flow from point A to point B and this helps cement your understanding of the topic better. Most times, this helps you understand the basics and not just the general overview.

In fact, I will say, if you want to learn a particular thing/topic write about it. The process of research and putting what you have researched in a meaningful flow that readers can understand will also help you understand.

So, pick three or two days in a week when you will write an article or a blog on something new or something you are trying to learn about. Write it like you don't care the first time, After some time, come back and edit/review what you have written earlier. You can write like a drunk in the morning then come review and edit in the evening. It helps you not get overwhelmed and you can review with a new perspective.

• Teach. Following closely along with writing is teaching. When you teach, you are forced to learn the topic and understand it well enough to be able to communicate it to a third party. It has similar benefits to writing. You can be asked questions that you will have to read more about or think about in a different way and this will also help you learn and know more.

I have started my journey to learning and growth, I hope you will too. It is a proactive exercise. You have to decide to take action steps to achieve your goal.

Cheers.