One way to stay ahead of the curve is to do what lawyers and doctors do: Take on some pro-bono work by contributing to an open-source project. There are lots of them out there, and there is probably no better way to increase your repertoire of skills than to actually work on something that someone else cares about. So if you are a Java programmer, contribute to a Rails project. If you write a lot of C++ for your employer, find a Python project and contribute to it.
