On not having a five year plan

Someone asked me last month where I see myself in five years. I gave the answer you give in a room with strangers. Polished, plausible, slightly aspirational. They nodded, I nodded, we moved on.

Walking back home I realised I had been following a script. Not on purpose. It is just that I do not have a five year plan in the sense people expect me to. And I have not had one for a while, and I keep forgetting that this might look strange to people who do.

What I have instead is a short list of things I want to be true of me, regardless of what I am working on.

I want to still be honest with people who do not have power over my career. I want to still call my mother on Fridays. I want to still be the kind of person who reads a book that has nothing to do with my work. I want to still find the project funny when nobody else does. I want to still pray when it is time.

The above are not the exact five things I want to be true of me. They happen as a consequence when some or all the 5 are united.

If those stay true, the job title can change every year and I will be fine. If those start slipping, no promotion fixes it.

I have noticed that people with very precise five year plans are often, quietly, more anxious than people without one. I do not think this is because the plan is bad. I think it is because the plan asks the future to behave and the future does not behave. It rarely does. The people I admire most are the ones who picked a few principles and let the years arrange themselves around those.

I am not telling anyone to throw out their plan. Because having a plan is better than not having one. In fact , scratch that, I have a plan. A short, medium and long term. I am saying that if you do not have one and you feel slightly defective for it, you might not be defective. You might just be paying attention to a different thing.