A Professional Growth Plan Can Help You Be More Effective & Efficient

• Try not to be a man of success, but rather, a man of value (Albert Einstein)
• Transferring your passion to your job is far easier than finding a job that happens to match your passion... You can become a linchpin within an organization when you see truth, understand the situation, help the organization gain momentum with helpful insights, and focus on creating value (Linchpin by Seth Godin). 
• Following your passion can be dangerous... Instead, be so good they can't ignore you by increasing your skills and your career capital. Eventually you might have an opportunity to cash in your career capital for work you are more passionate about (So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport). 
• Boredom no longer signals the need for distraction, but rather the need for new challenges to conquer (Mastery by Robert Greene). 
• 10,000 hours is the magic number of greatness (Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell).
• The five laws of stratospheric success are the law of value, the law of compensation, the law of influence, the law of authenticity, and the law of receptivity (The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann). 
• You need to understand more fully who you are... A personal inventory of your knowledge, skills, experience, and desires can help guide your job hunt (Richard Bolles).
• Life is a struggle and the potential for failure is ever present, but those who live in fear of failure, or hardship, or embarrassment will never achieve their potential (Make Your Bed by Retired Admiral William H. McRaven). 
• Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently (Henry Ford). 
• To put away aimlessness and weakness, and to begin to think with purpose, is to enter the ranks of those strong ones who only recognize failure as one of the pathways to achievement (As a Man Thinketh by James Allen). 
• A finite game has known players, fixed rules, and an agreed upon objective. An infinite game has known and unknown players, changeable rules, and the objective is to stay in the game as long as possible. You're actually only competing against yourself, and the objective is to become a better version of ourselves this year than we were last year (The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek). 
• People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it (Start With Why by Simon Sinek).  
• Professional growth forces are knowledge, skills, resources, and relationships, and they all apply to each of the professional growth areas of focus, which are your role, organization, industry, and market. (Opportunity Truth by Jason A. Krause). 

Professional growth is supported by personal growth and supports leadership growth.

TED talks, Talks at Google, iBiology Career and Professional Development, Association for Talent Development, Learning Technologies, eLearner Engaged, and Leadership with Mike.

There are many great online courses for professional growth, consider first checking the free online college classes at coursera.org, edx.org, and OpenCulture.com. If you are interested in programming consider codecademy.com.