Today, I was reading some advice from Simon Sinek. He says we should always work to outdo ourselves. Don’t focus on others, don’t strive to be number 1, don’t compare yourselves to others, compare yourself to you. Are you making progress? This is great advice in the tech world as well as the business world. Sure, I can be disappointed that my company isn’t as big as Microsoft yet. Or I can compare where my business is today to where it was last year and ask if I’m making progress. If you are a programmer, is your code better today than it was a year ago? If you are a system administrator, are you better with Windows administration than you were a year ago? If you’re a network admin, do you understand Cisco routers better than last year? If the answer is no, why not? Unfortunately, too many people in the world today spend too little time advancing their skills. Then, when it comes time for a raise, they wonder why they didn’t receive what they expected. How do you make progress in the tech world? It’s actually not hard. Read books, see what people are posting on Twitter, write code (if you’re a programmer), attend conferences, tinker with new hardware, etc. Skill only comes with practice! I read someone else say that things are either green and growing or brown and dying. This is certainly true of skills. Use them or lose them. If you’re not advancing your tech skills, those skills will atrophy. If you want to achieve excellence in your field, challenge yourself to be better today than you were yesterday and then take action to ensure it happens!