When you're studying at university you are probably being taught in the latest technologies, the most up to date code, the latest version of software... at least you hope you are. Then you get a job and you are concentrating all your time on the programming language and tools that you've decided to specialise in or your company requires.
Technology is always changing, new trends, new languages, new ways of doing things, and keeping up with all of that is rather important but can seem like a huge task. So how do you keep up? How do you make sure you're not left behind? Here's a few ideas;
Own projects
Starting a project external to university or work is a great way to make sure you're keeping on top of your development skills. This could be a website, your own portfolio or a small app.
Read
There are so many resources to read online that you could probably get lost in information but finding a few reliable sources that can help you keep on top of things going on in the digital world is really useful. Following people and teams on twitter is a great way of having information fed to you subconsciously.
There are a ton of blogs that can be really useful. I have a list of bookmarks that I sit through and check for useful articles, the more important ones like software updates I have as alerts sent to my phone. This is especially important for open source projects like wordpress where updates might need to be applied asap.
Job Descriptions
I like to read a few job descriptions that come up to make sure I'm still at the level that would mean I could walk into another job, sometimes something new comes up that I haven't heard of yet and so I look into it, see if it's worth my time and if I can start using it in my workflow.
Set up your own dev space
It's really important that you have your own space to develop in, be that a little raspberry pi with a small server running or a shared server setup. Having this space will mean when you hear about something new you can go and install it, learn about it and add it to your skillset.
Upgrade
Make sure your software is up to date and you've got the latest security patches installed.
Self appraisal
On a final note, I tend to set myself a few goals and a time limit, then see if I've reached them goals. You could set some of the above goals as a start.