Your knowledge worker job will likely evolve significantly in the next 5 years. You’re probably fine if you’re the curious type who constantly experiments with your workflow. If not, I reckon you’ll struggle.
The most effective people I know are more productive now than ever, many leveraging LLMs. But their curious mindset would drive progress even if ChatGPT didn’t blast onto the scene in November 2022.
This echoes a core tenet of the agile frameworks: Continuous Improvement. It’s always been there in the evolution of the tools and workflows of the folks I find impressive, but it seems much more apparent in the last 2½ years.
Anecdotally, the strongest folks I know all share a curious, experimental approach, and I see this in every discipline without exception:
- Software engineers: Windsurf for unit tests
- Product managers: n8n & Lovable for prototyping
- Solution architects: Gemini & Mermaid for diagrams
- Business analysts: Deep Research for domain upskilling
- Fractionals: Fathom & NotebookLM for transcript analysis
Their common thread? A desire for continuous learning.
How do you integrate learning and growth into your workflow, and what are you particularly happy about having nailed recently?