Learning Something From Daily Work

Today, I was just having a simple discussion with my friend and we were talking about our careers and where would it lead to. Sometimes, it is inevitable to think that we are not learning much from our job when we work on almost the same job scope on a daily basis. However, I believe a key part of learning is attitude and chances to learn are earned by having the initiative to go beyond the call of duty. When we stick to our assigned tasks, these are often tasks that our bosses know we can do, unless we are fresh graduates. Therefore, chances are that we will not be learning something new when engaging in work that we can already do. With that said, these tasks may possibly reinforce our capabilities in certain areas, which is useful as well.

When I first started working, I read an article that explains the need to update our resumes every half a year, just to ensure that we have something significant to put in, meaning we have contributed to the workplace and improved ourselves. I found this tip very important and began to practice it, except that I update on a monthly basis. Everytime I took out my resume, I would think of what to put in and when I cannot find anything to improve, I start thinking about whether I am growing or what I should do next to grow further.

While one month is a short time, I prefer to update on that basis as I felt that great things can be achieved in short periods of time. For example, it is common for interns to think that they will only be with an organization for a short time and therefore cannot achieve much. I can dispel the myth right away, because I have definitely achieved quite a lot in my two months internship. Fast forward a year to today, they are still using the automation I came up with that generate their daily reports, accounting for massive time-savings. They are also still using other processes I developed such as forecasting models and trend analysis models. It is amazing how significant we can be if we put more effort into it.

Sure enough, people always emphasize the number of years of working experience. However, I felt that the need for quality of working experience is as important, even if it is not recognized right away. The quality of work done will definitely be different if we are used to going beyond our call of duty. The learning opportunities would also be more abundant. For example, when I first started working, I was already very competent at VBA using Excel. However, I picked up VBA to interface between different office applications such as Word and Powerpoint to generate more user-friendly reports. By wanting to provide better quality work, I learnt more skills.

There are also times that I would rush my work, just so that I can start working on a specific task. For example, I once heard that my previous boss needed to do activity based costing. I rushed through my current tasks and asked to be assigned the task, since I was really interested. By being willing to take the initiative to grab these tasks, I was able to grab hold of more opportunities to learn.

With all that said, I know that when we go the extra mile, it does not mean that we will get rewarded. Often, people get disillusioned because of lack of immediate incentives to perform, yet persisting in good work should get us the rewards sooner or later, hopefully it’s sooner.