How technology can help professionals become more dynamic

Professionals often describe themselves as dynamic; but, what does it actually mean to be dynamic and what does it take to be so? When something is dynamic, it is constantly being refreshed and is in tune with the real time. As such, professionals need two things to be dynamic: continuously improving their efficiency, and continuously learning.

However, in the hustle and bustle of the current global economy, professionals already have multiple balls in their hands to juggle: family, career, wellbeing, and now upskilling. The good news is that technology has come to the rescue, but only for the keen-eyed professionals who have their finger on the pulse of technology trends that can improve efficiency and hence create the much-needed time for learning.

The key thing to note is that professional knowledge has a `half-life’ – the time-span within which it becomes half as useful as it was upon graduation. For a professional who doesn’t learnt constantly, this half-life is very short. As such, skills will become obsolete unless they are updated frequently, and so will professionals. Clearly, the goal then for dynamic professionals is to stretch out this half-life throughout their career, by continuous learning, in order to remain useful and relevant for the longest time possible.

While a learning environment can be created within organizations, wisdom tells us that one can indeed take the donkey to the river, but cannot force it to drink the water. What is needed is self-directed learning - a process where individuals take the initiative, with or without the help of others, to diagnose their learning needs, identify resources for learning, and formulate learning goals and implement them.

 Here is where technology advancement has made things easy; expert knowledge is now available almost ubiquitously, and so are the tools and technologies to consolidate and consume such knowledge. Two key tools offer immense benefits here: text to speech solutions, and tools for capturing spontaneous moments of inspiration.

 Text to speech is a wonderful tool for dynamic professionals who have only little time to sit down and consume knowledge by reading, be it news, articles, or books. An example here is a mobile application called Pocket. With this application, one can store articles for reading later, and the cherry on the cake is the functionality to listen. Information is indeed ubiquitous in the current world, and very often useful information is buried in piles of rubbish. Being able to find relevant information is great, but being able to store it for easy reference at a later time is even greater.

 Again, in a world with such information overload, spontaneous moments of inspiration are plenty; hearing a piece of news on the radio, seeing an advert on a billboard, seeing a post on social media … can all happen during a ten minutes ride. However, the brain can only store so much temporary information and unless these moments of inspiration are captured and stored for future reference, they will all leak and disappear into thin air, forever to be forgotten. Being able to capture ideas in quick notes, synchronize them across multiple devices, access them anywhere and anytime, is what every dynamic professional need. An example here is an application called Evernote. With such technology tools, one can be sure that when their creativity is triggered, no idea goes uncaptured.

 Indeed, professional growth works hand in glove with personal growth. Professionals who can leverage on simple technology tools to update their banks of both professional and personal knowledge will remain relevant throughout their career, and that is the only way to win against professional obsolescence.

This article was originally published by The Citizen Tanzania