While everybody hops on the newest trends I just try to understand the technology I am working with right now in Projects. Keeps me from wasting time with buzzwords and trends that are going to be obsolete in a couple of years.
If there is nothing new going on I usually pick a topic that I am interested in, get a good old book and read it. Usually this is knowledge not too related to my everyday work. This helps to have broad technical knowledge. Helps me heavily in my projects and everyday life.
StackOverflow's yearly survey gives a pretty good overview of where things are going. Besides that, I'll often just see discussions about new stuff when I search for solutions to problems I encounter. I've never found the need to go out of my way to keep up.
YouTube tech channels, especially tech news channels, Discord servers for Sys Admins and techies, topic specific Discord servers for things like Linux, Hardware, etc.
Lemmy communities for tech and tech news, multiple podcasts, and bookmark categories on my browser for tech news sites and forums like Level1Techs, Lawrence Systems, and Phoronix.
I also am subscribed to several tech email lists.
Most of the day while I'm at my desk, I have headphones on and I am listening to a rotation of those things. Every hour or two I casually browse random forums or discord servers on my phone for the latest news, drama, security breaches, announcements, etc.
I try to always have my ear to the industry, learning new stuff, staying in touch. Firstly because I actually really love tech, FOSS, hardware, etc. Secondly because it helps me do my job well, and more importantly, my tech hobbies well.
I stay up to date on industry trends by organizing a union. Not kidding. To be a good organizer, you need to know how your wages compare to the approximate wages of similar companies, you need to know common industry practices, you need to know positive labor news within your industry, etc.
Podcasts, blogs, and YouTube. The Jupiter broadcasting and late night Linux podcasts are great For blogs Jeff geerling and serve the home are really good.
TheRegister & Ars Technica are the 2 that give the highest quality overview,
and yeah, Phoronix is kinda required for Linux news,
and .. how the hell could churning more be somehow increasing one's productivity??
Stephen R. Covey's truth about..
the bigger one's Circle of Concern..
the smaller one's Circle of Influence..
one must Focus, or one is just mindlessly dissipating one's finite strength.
Limit one's inputs, to quality overview points, and know which other-sites to hit, for specific digging-down into some specialty,
( Leonard Susskind's lectures, on yt, e.g. for mental exercise: his "Time As A Fractal Flow" one is awesome, when the lightbulb goes on, at the end )
and then you win most.
Never let sand into your gears, in other words, eh?
Keeping all the "misc sand" out from one's "gears" makes one more productive.
Oh, also www.SemiAccurate.com for the semiconductor foundry industry news, if Demerjian's still updating that ( he's scooped the industry toooo many times to let that one escape being important! )
Webinars and attending regular meetups by local chapters of orgs in my field. Also, subscribing to related communities on forums like reddit/lemmy and following notable people in my field on mastodon. We actually ask that question when we do interviews in my company, and reddit is/was actually a legit answer we accepted.
I think there’s more people like this than people want to admit. There’s certain things where I have a personal interest and I’ll stay more up to date about etc. but the rest? I’m doing the same as you.
I think its quite easy if you're involved in an industry, as long as you're on some facebook pages or forums then you're kept up to date almost accidentally.
What jobs are trying to rule out are those guys who took a course in something then just keep doing the same thing forever more.