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Bhavani Ravi
Bhavani Ravi

Posted on • Originally published at Medium on

Thinking Of Upskilling Your Career?

Career is a major part of everyone’s life. Both in terms of time and passion, career is where most of our life experiences revolve around. Hence making career choices seems critical and the most daunting thing in everybody’s life.

It is so common for techies like me to run behind the next shiny thing in the market. While it is good to be aware of new technologies around, don’t leave behind the core skills. Talk to any techie out there, where do you see yourself they would go like “I am currently doing this and the future is all about So I am going to start with it soon.”

Sounds completely plausible and cool to know that someone had figured their life right?. But wait, You are trying to be everything, you wanna be a know it all person. But I am sorry to tell you that there is a fault in that system.

Mastering skill takes time

Let’s say you are a frontend developer who is just starting out with HTML, CSS and JS and a couple of years went by now you incorporated ReactJS into your skill set, life seems all great and exciting by that time you have mastered all these front-end skills you would be hitting a FOMO state where you know nothing about backend.

Now, if you are a college student you have the flexibility and time to explore across multiple fields. But once you are into the corporate setup with trying to dip your feet into backend after 5 years of great front-end work is merely not a great idea.

Remember the path you have gone through to master your current skillset. Choosing something that is miles away from your current one is going to take you exactly the same amount of time and you are not sure of the hurdles you will be facing

Specialization > Generalization

The biggest boon and a ban for human beings is their curiosity. It is so hard to suppress the urge to break open that glittery box and find what’s inside. While it had made us what we are today, with the current world filled with feeds of information it is so easy to feel distracted and left out. You want to be a part of every cool thing out there, but hold your horses there and tell this out loud Specialization > Generalization. The industry expects people to be really good at one thing they are doing not a ninja who can figure out everything.

You can’t capture a black hole image and win an Olympic medal at the same time.

Find Your Sweet Spot

Yes, we all have to learn, we all have to improve, No arguments there. But the skillset you pick to master next should be aligned with the ones you have right now.

Look for complementary skills to master instead of looking for skills that make your resume shine. If you are running a clothing store, expand to accessories don’t try to sell ships and airplanes. You have a limited time in this world. hence, Upskill your career the right way, your way.

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