Five-year plans are a lie. They’re great in theory but, in practice, they can set you up for a world of disappointment. On paper, they help you get clear on what you want and provide direction in your career and life. But here’s my gripe with five-year plans: Most of the time, they don’t account for the one constant in life, which is change.
Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, “Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” While creating an unchangeable, concrete five-year plan may be misguided, I agree that creating a list of the personal and professional goals you’d like to achieve in the coming five years can be motivating. It can serve as a North Star to propel you into the life and career you’ve always dreamed of. But what happens when you change your mind?
At that point you have two options: You can have a growth mindset and iterate your plan or even start from scratch. Or, you can have a fixed mindset and let the weight of expectations get to you with “could’ve,” “should’ve,” “would’ve” thoughts. You can tell yourself you should stick to the plan. You can tell yourself you would be happier if you just ignored that feeling in your gut that something was off.
But that’s the thing. Once you have that unshakable feeling deep down in your soul that something is not right, that unexplainable notion that you need to change gears, you need to change your plan. And often, coming to the realization that what you wanted before isn’t what you want now is difficult. It challenges you in a way you never imagined.
It’s time to reframe that way of thinking. Throughout our lives, we’re meant to grow and evolve. Just because you change your mind and want to change your career or life or personal situation, doesn’t mean you’re wrong or admitting fault. It means you made the best decision possible with the information you had at the time, and now you have new information that is telling you to make a different decision.
Thus, five-year plans fail. We’re constantly gathering new information to inform the decisions we make. Oftentimes, it’s not monumental news. It’s usually smaller pieces of data we gather throughout our daily life. Maybe a project you thought you’d enjoy working on turns out to be a dud. Or, maybe you learn of a new organization or a new role that sounds like a great opportunity. Maybe the constant feeling of dread you have going to work that you used to think was normal becomes too big to ignore.
Hence, we must constantly be adjusting our five-year plans. They’re not static. This was my misconception when I joined the professional world. I thought you wrote down your five-year plan in pen, and that’s that. It never changes, and you use it as your guide until you achieve everything on it and start again. But just like humans are meant to evolve, so are our goals and desires. What I thought was meant to be set in pen, I know now is better served put in pencil.
At any point in my adult life, if you asked me where I thought I’d be five years prior, I’d laugh because it was never where I expected. When I started my accounting career at 22, I was an aspiring certified public accountant with over $100,000 in student loan debt. Flash forward five years, I moved across the country, got married, and was working in a completely different role with a blossoming freelance writing career on the side. Then, two years after that, I became a corporate communications manager at a Fortune 500 company and learned I was pregnant with my son. Five years ago, I couldn’t have dreamed up the life I have today.
I’m not saying to scrap your plans altogether because they fail. I do believe there’s a lot of value to planning and goal setting. What I am saying is to get comfortable adjusting your expectations. Over time, circumstances change, and you’re allowed to change your mind. If I got what I wanted when I was 12, I’d be a famous movie star who started her career working on the set of Lizzy McGuire and is best friends with Hilary Duff. While I’m still open to being best friends with Hilary Duff, my journey has taken me on a different path, and that’s okay. It’s more than okay: It’s awesome. It’s opened my eyes to a world I never knew existed.
I’m living a life I love that I could have never imagined for myself. I don’t know what the next five or ten years will hold for me. But I do know that I’ll give myself grace when I change my mind, and my plans evolve. My hope is you will do the same. Because while growth can be scary and challenging, it’s also what makes life worth living.
Danielle Doolen is a communications professional, freelance writer passionate about work, women, and well-being, and a career changer. She holds a master’s degree in professional accountancy from the University of Albany.
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