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IT Pros: How to Get Ready for 2021

IT Pros: How to Get Ready for 2021
If one thing can be said about 2020 is that it caught most of us completely by surprise. Here are a few steps that will help you to get ready for 2021.

If one thing can be said about 2020 is that it caught most of us completely by surprise. Sure, epidemiologists had been warning us for ages of an imminent virus outbreak that would put us all up against the ropes. But, as it’s usually the case with visionary doomsayers, they were ignored. Get ready for 2021.

Well, now we have no excuse. As 2020 draws to an end, all of us should take a deep breath and evaluate where we are in relation to where we’d like to get in the upcoming year. It’s time to do some soul-searching and make some plans. And that involves accounting for both the expected and the unexpected. Especially if you are an IT professional.  

The pandemic has made even more evident something that people in the industry had known all along: technology is vital to the success of the modern enterprise. Yet, if something is true about technology, that is that it is constantly changing. Whether you are a front-line support engineer or a CIO whose role is evolving faster than it has over the last 10 years, you will want to make some contingencies to ensure you emerge on top of the wave once the storm is over.  

Here are a few steps that will help you get there.  

Get ready for 2021 – Step 1: Know your tech 

You probably noticed the recent spike in 2021 tech prediction articles cluttering your feeds and inboxes. Yes, it’s that time of the year, and everyone is getting on board. 

However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pay attention to these proverbial revelations. There’s definitely more truth than hype in—well—most of them. But we get it: you’re busy and don’t necessarily have the time to comb through lists of similar-sounding headlines during your coffee breaks. Well, we did it for you. And here’s our winner. 

When it comes to technology, few institutions can be as trusted as the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). The world’s largest tech association, IEEE’s sole goal is to literally dedicate themselves to “advancing technology for the benefit of humanity”. They recently conducted a survey of CIOs and CTOs at major companies around the world and put numbers to what we already suspected: 

AI and machine learning lead the way as the technologies set to shape the year ahead, with 5G solutions and IoT in second and third position. The main organisational tech challenge, of course, will be coping with the effects of Covid-19.  

Step 2: Conduct an honest self-assessment 

Now that you’re all caught up with the news about the future in general, it’s probably a good time to start thinking about your own future. How are your professional and personal lives compared to what you thought they’d be a year ago? Is what you thought a year ago even applicable anymore? A thorough and honest self-assessment is due. 

Such review includes everything from career development goals to how you manage your time. Is perhaps 2021 the year to go freelance as an It pro? Or perhaps the year to get a prem job? Are you already your own boss and should conduct an audit of your freelance business? How about exploring a career change? There are tons of rewarding opportunities in booming areas like SAP S/4HANA or Microsoft technologies.  

Speculation is key, as sometimes it’s more about the question than the answer. A chat with colleagues and other members of the tech community can also be very beneficial. Helping you broaden your horizons and giving you some food for thought. 

Step 3: Skill up 

Once you have a clearer picture of your current situation, it’s time to work towards your desired one. Holiday downtime is the perfect excuse to do some upskilling. Yes, Netflix and chill sounds more like the holidays, but no one ever got anywhere without a bit of extra effort. The investment will pay in time. 

Take a look at your goals and see what skills you are lacking to achieve them. If you’d like to future-proof your CV or get into a rising career field, you might want to try a crash course to get up-to-speed with AI. Or maybe it’s about time you got certified as a Microsoft professional. How about the top tech skills every IT pro should have? How many of them can you check off your list? 

Don’t forget your soft skills. From working more effectively to strengthening your business skills, it’s these nuances that will give you a competitive edge over other tech professionals. In the fast-moving, ever-changing world of today, knowing your tech is simply not enough. 

Get ready for 2021 – Step 4: Set your targets and go get them 

Last but not least to get ready for 2021, it’s time to polish your image and go after the jobs and missions that will get you to where you want to be. Even if you are currently happy with your job, things like improving your online visibility or optimising your LinkedIn profile can help you a great deal from a professional perspective.  

It might also be a good idea to work on your interview skills.

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IT Consultants Tips for your daily life as a freelancer

IT Pros: The Best Free Software Tools to Organise Your Activity

IT Pros: The Best Free Software Tools to Organise Your Activity
What are the best free software tools to organise you activity as an IT Pro? Better time management will allow you to increase your productivity...

What are the best free software tools to organise you activity as an IT Pro? We all have our own method to organise our daily and weekly tasks, but that doesn´t mean we shouldn´t be keep trying new things to see what we can improve. Better time management will allow you to increase your productivity, develop stronger relationships with your team and clients and even have some extra time to work on your career development strategy.

To make that easier, we have put together a list of free software tools in the hopes you discover at least one you are not yet using. If that’s not the case, you can take this list as validation of how good a job you are already doing. Wink. Wink.

Some of these tools are completely free, while others also offer several subscription tiers. Whether you are an independent contractor or part of a company’s IT department, they will help you build better and more robust projects, more effectively and in less time.

Also read our article: IT Pros: How to Work On Remote in the Post-Pandemic World

Best free software tools to organise you activity

Google Workspace

Best Free Software Tools to Organise Your Activity: Google Workspace

Does this one really need an introduction? Well, maybe. Especially since Google recently went and rebranded G in a move that surely confused many of us out there. Now known as Google Workspace, the productivity suite is a whole world in and of itself. From storage, to document collaboration, you will find in it everything you need to carry out all your basic everyday tasks.

Even more so since the rebrand, Gmail serves as the platform’s backbone, making it easy to create an efficient workflow between your email, calendar and files. Workspace also comes in handy when you need to share and work on documents with clients or people external to your organisation. Google Sheets is great for easily storing and sharing data sets.

Google Workspace

Evernote

Best Free Software Tools to Organise Your Activity: Evernote

Evernote is pretty much the only notebook you will ever need, and it’s free unless you want to use it in more than two devices at once.

It’s very intuitive and quick to use, and it allows you to share individual notebooks and notes with other people, anytime, anywhere. In addition, Evernote can integrate perfectly with other tools like Google Workspace and Slack, making it an ideal solution for collaboration.

You can include almost anything you want in your notes, from images and videos to PDF documents. Furthermore, the Evernote web clipper tool makes it possible to capture screenshots and ideas directly from the web. This information is saved in a note which includes a link to the original page. All your searches are saved in one place for easy access. You can also scan physical documents directly on the app.


To transfer your emails to Evernote, you only need to forward them to your unique Evernote email address.

Evernote

Trello

Best Free Software Tools to Organise Your Activity: Trello

This easy-to-use project management tool will inevitably improve your daily life. Juggling between a thousand tasks is not, well — an easy task. No one enjoys forgetting a deadline or wasting their time.

Trello allows you to create and manage to-do lists and set up reminders, so you don’t miss anything. What makes it particularly compelling is how simple and intuitive it is to use, letting you organise your activity without adding more work to your already packed workflow.

It’s advisable to use Trello in combination with another very practical and free tool: Toggl. This time-tracking tool allows you to have a precise idea of ​​the time you spend on each task on a daily basis. The goal is not to waste too much time on tasks that require a disproportionate time investment and to manage your time better to improve your productivity.

Trello

Asana

Best Free Software Tools to Organise Your Activity: Asana

Asana is a free tool that was originally created at Facebook to organise internal workflows. Compared to Trello, this project management tool loses the simplicity but offers endless customisation and deeper integration with existing workflows. It is particularly useful for collaborative projects.

You can assign and delegate tasks to collaborators and set the deadlines to meet. The whole team can easily see all pending and completed tasks in a single place. Everyone is then able to plan their time to their taste to meet the specified deadlines.

Asana

Calendly

Best Free Software Tools to Organise Your Activity: Calendly

Calendly works with your Outlook, Google, iCloud and Office 365 calendars, allowing you to consolidate all your schedules into a single one for optimal management of your time. It also allows you to precisely define “break” periods between several meetings or projects, to create secret events, and to avoid certain meetings or last-minute appointments. 

But perhaps the best thing about Calendly is its automated scheduling feature, which saves you the time-consuming hassle of having to send back-and-forth emails to agree to a time that works for both parties.

The tool is perfect if you need to collaborate with people from other countries since it automatically detects the time zone of your contacts for even smarter time management. 

Calendly

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