Becoming Relevant

I work in an engineering industry with aging technology about to be taking several leaps forward. I am a kind and intelligent and adaptable person. I know what leaps technology has made, and what it hasn't.

But here's the deal: I haven't kept up with it. My base IT knowledge is from the era long before RAM came in gigabyte size. I have become overwhelmed with the leaps and bounds of IoT possibilities. I finally bought my first Amazon Echo. Despite looking towards the future and what technology brings to us wirelessly, I haven't brought it into my own life out of a plain old fashioned fear. 

I'm working with people who were born when I was in college. This is a new experience. I did not expect it to be so, well, intimidating. I cover this up well during my day job (sometimes). But I fear becoming irrelevant. My passion is not in technology itself. My passion is working with people to enable those technologies. Understanding the difference between what is really in front of us and applying opportunities incrementally to that baseline. 

So....there is this fascinating and sometimes overwhelming gap between old and new. How do we not break what is old and working well while improving?  And more importantly, how do we shuck off what is old but COMFORTABLE because we know it so well it has become a pattern and we have stopped bothering to ask why we do it this way.  This is not just a philosophical quandry. This is a real question for so many aspects of life it can get overwhelming to the point where it's quite simple to just shut down, tune out, blame others and give up. 

I'm not going to give up. I'm continuing to learn. Despite all the noise and the blaming and the self doubt doubled up with defensive behavior in the world, I'm going to continue making myself relevant. 

Way back in 1995, a dear mentor told me: "It's not what you know that has power. It's that you know how to find things out that has power." When I feel irrelevant among this new generation of knowledge workers, this leaps-and-bounds growth of information and innovation, I gently remind myself about this:

It's not what you know that has power.

It's your ability to find information that has power.

No one knows everything.

So. Hmm. This makes me think of a solution to a problem I had earlier that I can solve today. :) More later....