Keeping up with everything in life is what we try to do all the time, relationships, friends, job. We feel the urge to know all the latest bits all the time, hence the excess use of social media.

But here, I am just going to document a specific plan, which I try to follow to keep up with always changing landscape of software development.

First thing is to know what to know. If you try to learn and keep up-to-date with everything, its quite daunting because of the breadth.

Whichever stream of development you are working in; just list down the current stack and the possible new additions to it. MAKE A LIST. Don’t make it overwhelmingly long.

This part has so many options. Depends on which way of learning one prefers. Here is what I try to do, use social media but flip it on its head to use it for your benefit, instead of just being a huge time waste. Find people, leading speakers and leaders in general ,specifically in the technology stack you are interested in. Just follow them on Twitter. If that person has a Youtube channel, Podcast or a Blog subscribe to it.

Sometimes, they will post something not quite related to why you follow them but you should expect that and consider that following anybody comes with all of their opinions.

This is the most important bit. Doesn’t matter what kind of commitments you have after work. You commute to work, take a bus/train or just drive. Listen to a podcast watch a 10 minute video(of course not while driving). You do chores, clean your house, do laundry; anything that doesn’t need your active attention can use a background score. All of this is just good enough for knowing the trend and the latest technologies.

You read and you forget, you watch and remember for a while but when you practice something you understand it. The best way to learn something or to remember it is to do it. Have a hobby project, everybody has ideas just start a project on one of your ideas, no matter how small or stupid they sound. Do it in the technology you want to learn, redo it when something new comes. This gives dual benefits, sparks your interest to learn something new and pushes forward that idea you always wanted to try.