How to grow your career

If you aspire to career growth, you can not be complacent. Where you are today is a reflection of the education and skills that got you there. The question is, where do you want to be tomorrow? You will not get there by coasting on what you already know.

The key to your future can be found in an ongoing commitment to learning, also known as professional training and development. By getting better at what you do and expanding the boundaries of what you understand, you become more valuable to your team, customers, and company. In fact, you become a bigger player in your entire industry, which widens your world to new career opportunities as well.

Why is continual learning so important? Because the world is moving so fast now that people who stand still will be passed by. Knowing more than the next person has become a major competitive advantage in every industry.

Yet despite these realities, many people feel stuck when it comes to increasing their professional knowledge base. They are swamped at work, overwhelmed at home, and unclear on how they might manage to squeeze the extra hours needed out of their already full schedules to make time for additional learning.

The secret lies in realizing two things.

• First, with the easy accessibility of today's technologies and mobile options, it is no longer necessary to learn in a classroom--you can bring training tools with you wherever you go.
• Second, because you do not need to carve out a big block of time to learn in a classroom, you can approach learning on your own terms and in your own timeframe.

If you do not have a solid hour to devote to picking up new skills, how about sparing 10 minutes? A couple of shorter stints composed of smaller time units can quickly add up--and mobile technologies make it almost a shame not to learn on the fly or between other activities.