I can completely understand your confusion. Your example is a bit extreme. To give you more specific examples of "things that interest me, but do not (directly)

I can completely understand your confusion. Your example is a bit extreme. To give you more specific examples of "things that interest me, but do not (directly) benefit the company": * The company uses SVN, while I'm interested in learning Git. * The company uses JQuery and PHP, I'm interested in learning React / Vue / Angular. * The company is interested in hosting websites on VM's - I'm interested in learning about containers (Docker). A better example: Let's say you're a bakery. You want to bake cookies: I want to (on a random, slow, friday afternoon) learn how to bake elephant ears. You want to produce bread: I want to produce cheesecake. Your example of bread to woodworking would be more akin to a Web developer working on embedded systems engineering or something way different. Of course that makes sense to do during your off time only. My examples above are things that could be used by the company I currently work for (git / docker / Angular), but the company chooses not to use these technologies due to various reasons (political, economic, expense, etc). As a result, I can't put that on my "Competency plan" because it does not directly or immediately benefit the company. Now good managers will allow this. They see the benefit in trying new technologies even if there's no immediate need. But those managers are far and few between. Personally I would love to work with folks who just want to try some cool shit on a boring, slow Friday afternoon.