Improve Your Career – You Cannot Step Into the Same River Twice
Heraclitus: Translation and Analysis
I love a good quote. And I’m sure you do too. More than a decade ago, I first came across the Heraclitus quote, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man,” while reading a book by him. Good quotes make me think, and so did this one. Of course we longer speak like that.
In today’s language, it means that you cannot step into the same river twice because the river is always changing and you’re always changing. But how can this one powerful quote improve your career prospects?
That’s a very good question, but more on that later.
Improve Your Career: What Does It Mean That You Cannot Step into The Same River Twice?
The quote implies that the river is flowing so it’s always changing. You’re also changing because you’re evolving into a better you. The world around us is changing at an unprecedented pace. Therefore, to keep up with the rate of change, all of us need to learn new skills to remain employable. If you make lifelong learning a habit, then you are changing and evolving at a faster pace than your peers. This growth mindset makes learning a priority for you.
Improve Your Career: Impact of Technology on Professional Women
According to a McKinsey Global Institute report, The future of women at work: Transitions in the age of automation:
“Between 40 million and 160 million women globally may need to transition between occupations by 2030, often into higher-skilled roles. To weather this disruption, women (and men) need to be skilled, mobile, and tech-savvy, but women face pervasive barriers on each, and will need targeted support to move forward in the world of work.”
Level Up Your Career: You Cannot Step into the Same River Twice
Learning for learning's sake won’t help you. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about, having gone that route a few times.
With the introduction of new technologies, there are always winners and losers. In this time of massive automation, professional women need new creative ways to capitalize on the opportunities that automation presents, so they become a part of the winning team. As a professional woman, if you’re strategic about the skills you invest in learning, you can actually level up your career.
To give you some context, Heraclitus was a Greek philosopher born in 544 b.c. He was an autodidact and a pioneer of wisdom. He emphasized the constant change of the universe. And you can see this from his quote that you cannot step into the same river twice — because of change. What’s also interesting about Heraclitus is that he helped to develop the concept of ‘becoming’.
This begs the question, “What might you become with the right tools and resources?”
Improve Your Career: Apply the Quote – You Cannot Step into the Same River Twice
To improve your career, you have to constantly update and learn new skills. You’re always in a state of becoming. If you decide to learn new skills, learn skills that will allow you to thrive in your career. The World Economic Forum reports on skills professionals must master if they want to remain valuable to their employer. The organization conducts its research every two years to determine in-demand skills. It’s not a bad idea to learn any of the skills the organization recommends.
What I’ve discovered though, is that even if the skills change, many of them are soft skills that will make you a more effective employee. So it makes sense to learn them anyway. Below you’ll see a comparison of the skills you need to thrive in 2020 and 2022, what do you observe? In what ways would learning the skills improve your career? How would you go about learning several of the skills?
World Economic Forum Skills Outlook
If learning the key skills sound overwhelming to you, my Performance Accelerator Plan is designed to help you learn the WEF skills. However, you can learn and master any new skills that you want to.
Figuring Out a Critical Skill to Learn to Improve Your Career
Reflect on the following question, then answer it. “What is one skill, if learned, would be a gamechanger in my career?” When you’ve figured out which skill is a priority for you to learn, do some research to figure out which are five of the top books on the topic. The article, These Two Essential Books Will Skyrocket Your Career Success, which I recently published on Forbes will give you some reading strategies to get the most out of each of the five books.
Schedule time every day to read the five books using the strategies outlined in the article, These Two Essential Books Will Skyrocket Your Career Success. Mastering a skill takes deliberate practice. This means you have to find ways to apply your newfound knowledge.
The 1 Skill That Will Ultimately Level Up Your Career
You already know that automation will always create a need for learning new skills. Therefore, in my opinion, you must master the ability of learning how to learn. This includes mastering reading, learning, memory and retention strategies. If you’re able to accomplish this, you’ll have a skill that you can use for the rest of your life.
I have faith in you. You can master learning how to learn. If you need a little help from a friend, you can register in my program, Learning How to Learn Again. In this program you’ll get:
- Names of four books to devour and digest to learn how to learn.
- Playbook where you’ll get the benefit of over a dozen books I’ve read on the topic.
- How to take notes ebook.
- How to Spot Ideas ebook.
Final Thoughts on Improve Your Career: You Cannot Step into the Same River Twice
If you’re serious about using the quote, you cannot step into the same river twice to improve your career, please create a project to work on where you can use the skills you’re learning. Applying strategies as you learn them is a surefire way to master any new skill.
The project should benefit you as well as the organization you work for. Therefore, it should involve a high growth department that is expected to continue growing or one that’s in the process of a turnaround. This is important because these two choices will expose you to the power brokers and influencers in the company. You want the visibility these departments will provide.
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