Why Career Planning Is Time Wasted
Our culture worships planning. Everything must be planned in advance. Our days, week, years, our entire lives. We have diaries, schedules, checklists, targets, goals, aims, strategies, visions even. Career planning is the most insidious of these cults precisely because it encourages a feeling of control over your reactions to future events. As that interview question goes: where do you see yourself in five years time? This invites the beginning of what starts as a little game and finishes as a belief built on sand. You guess what employers want to hear, and then you give it to them. Sometimes this batting back and forth of imagined futures becomes a necessary little game you play in order to 'get ahead'.
In reality, people frequently don't know what they want and psychology has proved it. That's why career planning, or at the very least just deciding what you're going to do next, is so unpleasant. It's no fun at 18 years old when people ask what you want to do. There seem to be so many different options, each with myriad branching possibilities, many of which lead in opposite directions, but all equally tempting. Surrounded by these endless spiralling futures, it is no wonder that many a school-leaver sticks with what they know and follows in parental footsteps. But we don't all want to trust the tried and tested, whether for good reasons or bad. We want to make a decision all of our own, based on our own values and preferences.
Midlife crisis
If it's hard at 18, it's even harder in midlife when people are theoretically better equipped to make their choice. In reality by your 30s wide-eyed optimism has normally been replaced by a more cynical outlook on jobs and the workplace. Now it's more clear what the downsides of certain jobs are. There's not only our own experiences of work but we also have friends at work, all of whom colour our perception of their careers.
Everyone has their own internal trade-offs. How much routine do you like: boring but safe? How much do you like travel: exciting but you'll be away from loved ones? How much do you care about earning more money: and taking a more boring/stressful/less fulfilling job? Whatever the outcome of all these swings and roundabouts along with many more, the reason that deciding what to do with your life is so difficult is that it involves predicting the future.
There's many reasons why it seems we should be good at prediction what we want. If I know that I'm enjoying what I'm doing now, then I should enjoy it in the future shouldn't I? On top of this I've got years of experience building up a set of things I like - cinema, books, sitcoms - and things I don't like - trips to the dentist, severe embarrassment and flu, especially not all at the same time. If I've got this huge bank of likes and dislikes it should be easy to predict my wants in the future. And yet, it seems we are often surprised by what the future throws at us.
Miswanting
The idea of making mistakes about what we might want in the future has been termed 'miswanting' by Gilbert and Wilson (2000). They point to a range of studies finding we are poor at predicting what will make us happy in the future. My favourite is a simple experiment in which two groups of participants get free sandwiches if they participate in the experiment - a doozie for any undergraduate.
One group has to choose which sandwiches they want for an entire week in advance. The other group gets to choose which they want each day. A fascinating thing happens. People who choose their favourite sandwich each day at lunchtime also often choose the same sandwich. This group turns out to be reasonably happy with its choice.
Amazingly, though, people choosing in advance assume that what they'll want for lunch next week is a variety. And so they choose a turkey sandwich Monday, tuna on Tuesday, egg on Wednesday and so on. It turn out that when next week rolls around they generally don't like the variety they thought they would. In fact they are significantly less happy with their choices than the group who chose their sandwiches on the day.
Prediction failure
This variety versus sameness is only one particular bias that people display in making predictions about their future emotional states. There is another counter-intuitive bias emerging from the work being done in positive psychology. This looks at how people predict they will feel after both catastrophically bad, and, conversely, fantastically positive occurrences in their life. For example, how good would you feel if you won the lottery? Most people predict their lives will be completely changed and they'll be much happier. What does the research find? Yes, people are measurably happier after they've just won, but six months down the line they're back to their individual 'baseline' level of happiness.
So, in the journey from the sublime - predicting how we'll feel about winning the lottery - to the ridiculous - predicting which sandwiches we'll want for lunch - we are incredibly bad at knowing our future selves. And if we can't even decide what type of sandwich we might like next week, how can we possibly decide what type of job we'd like to be doing in twenty years?
With age occasionally comes wisdom. Over time we learn, whether implicitly or explicitly, that we are not that good at predicting the future. At the very least we begin to recognise it is a much less precise science than we once thought.
A stranger future
This means your future self is probably a stranger to you. And, on some level, you know it. That's why it might be hard for an 18 year old to choose their career, but it's a damn sight harder for someone in midlife when limitations have been learnt.
This might seem like just another way of saying that people get more cautious as they get older, but it is more than that. It's actually saying that it's not caution that's increasing with age, but implicit self-knowledge. People begin to understand that the future holds vanishingly few certainties, even for those things that would seem to be under our most direct control, like our sandwich preferences.
Best guess beats careful planning
The argument about miswanting applies to any area of our lives which involves making a prediction about what we might like in the future. Career planning becomes painful precisely because it's such an important decision and we come to understand that we have only very limited useful information.
The best strategy for career planning is this: make your best guess, try it out and don't be surprised if you don't like it. But for heaven's sake don't mention this in your interviews.
[Also see the aptly named 'chaos theory' of career planning that I've noted before.]
References
Gilbert, D. T., & Wilson, T. D. (2000) Miswanting: some problems in the forecasting of future affective states. In: J. Forgas (Ed.). Feeling and Thinking: the role of affect in social cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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It felt good to read this article. My husband has just left me because I teach my children myself. He feels they should be in school and I feel that school stifles their individuality...among other abuses. My husband is now trying to force them into school using the courts which is so distressing to me I am struggling to sleep at night. He asks me what my plans are for my children's future. I keep telling him that their career choice does not belong to me, that they will go down paths that are of interest to THEM not HIM, and that they are too young to have any idea now, at 11 and 14, what is going to be good for them when they are old enough...they just haven't enough experience to make an informed decision yet so why force them to make a bad one and wreck their educational experiences? He disagrees...not for any reason. He just disagrees because it is not the "done thing".
And for that he has left forever and is now trying to use the law to force me and my children into being what he wants us to be...insitutionalised, controlled, mindless and "normal". Damn him and damn ignorant crowd followers who can't accept that there might be anyone that would enjoy the freedom of thinking outside the box! But thank you for this article...it was great! xx
A wonderful article. Career Planning often ends up in just articulating the various career options available to children completing their schooling. More often than not these talks by professional counsellors leave them confused and unsure about the future. Having read this article I think I shall be in a position to help them make realistic career choices and look to the future with greater self confidence. Thanks again.
Career planning is not anything out of the ordinary in the history of mankind.Man from the beginning of time is engaged in planning and preparing,for issues at hand and those that are expected in the future.So people equip (by learning a trade/going to college etc) themselves in order to be resourceful if given the opportunity in the future.Only change is constant. Therefore, we have to continually move with time and all it demands of us.As for HAPPINESS, we have the ability to create it;there is no price in buying happiness,if it were so,the rich would have bought all there is of it.We may not know exactly where the plan may take us because of changes along the way..But we cannot give what we do not have.Carreer planning is NEVER a waste of time unless a person is given a very distinct TALENT...even at that you still need to plan the use of it,to your advantage. OBI-ONE
At 40 I became a paralegal and at 43 I began a career in higher education and on the brink of 48 I am a college instructor. That recently began a career publishing short stories, some that I wrote 20 years ago. And as I head in to retirement in 19 years, I will sit on the beach and teach online students the joy of whatever newfangled thing that comes along. If at that time I chose to make a living skining coconuts. Planning is everything, otherwise you are unprepared for the best that life has to offer.
Mandelicious, can't you see you are just as much forcing your view on your children as you criticise your husband for.
That aside, I don't think this article is to be taken so literally as don't bother having any thoughts about the future as 'what will be will be', more than even if we plan for what we think we wanted when we get there it might not be 'all that'! I think if you asked everyone around you did they choose their career or their career choose them I think they would say 'the latter'. I trained as a photographer, I loved it, someone offered me a job to help them out and help me pay off my overdraft after college... I stayed in that industry 13 yrs. It wasn't intentional, for the most part I liked it, I learnt many skills and it paid much much better than my vocation. Now I am between jobs, it's a hard time for my industry and I am thinking 'what do I do?' - do I keep looking for a job in my adopted career, do I go back to doing the thing I enjoyed but doesn't pay so well and is very competitive or do I retrain? And if I retrain, what do I retrain in? It will be interesting to see what happens....
I'm a hotel manager, a position which is immensely varied and challenging. Not only am I completely untrained for my current role, I had no idea I would ever take a job like this until I was offered it.
At no point in the past would I have imagined I would be satisfied doing what I now immerse myself in. This is particularly puzzling to my mother, a career coach...
The learning for me from this reversal is that the external perception and the internal dynamics of work roles are often at odds. Management? Hospitality? I would have yawned at what is, I find, a blend of Whack-A-Mole and a rollercoaster ride.
A very useful post.
My opinion is that we should plan our future (job/live), have objectives. The problem is that we try to plan the future using, the future. In other words, normally we try to create a plan based in things that we doesn't know yet. For example, you can say, I want to be an executive. Ok, do you know what an executive does? What he/she had to compromise from their personal lives to be an executive? Do you really want that?
If you don't know what do you want for your career or live, try to think about what you DON'T want, it's a kind of planning with different approach.
Perhaps you don't know what you want, but I truly believe that you'll know what you don't want, it's easier to use the past to plan your future. (someone said "learn from your past, or you'll repeat it")
And the key aspect is, don't get frustrated.
I'm in the middle of a career crisis. Doing searches on the web for career ideas led me to this site. At 40 I'm in an absolute panic. I've been unemployed for a year and unhappy in every job, not necessarily because of the tasks in the job, but the people I worked with. I was in the investment field. The last 5 years have been so tumultuous that I have no idea what I'll be doing next. My wife and I want kids, but how can we do that with no job stability? I need answers and I need them yesterday. I never thought I'd be so confused at this point in my life. it really sucks not having a plan and not knowing what I was meant to do.
Any plan that does not leave room for adjustments all the way up to the last minute is likely a bad plan. Planning should always include consideration for the possibility that you have misjudged what it is exactly that you want.
However, that doesn't mean that there is not a lot that one can be certain of.
I for one am certain that I will love any job that allows me to express my creativity and challenge my mathematical and analytical thinking.
As a result I look at a broad range of jobs that seem interesting to me now and I try to make sure that I develop the qualifications for as many of them as possible. My plan for the future is to have good options of which I may find one that is optimal.
This entry is unusual but bear with me...
I found this blog entry by accident or by 'planned happpenstance.' I had been trying to think about making a move from my secure, but boring and stifling corporate job to a career that I felt would reflect more of what motivates me. The comments about the difference between a Job and a Career made by the comedian Chris Rock in his last outing 'Kill The Messenger' had really hit home. I wanted to get off the corporate hamster wheel. As part of the process, I chose an unconventional approach - I consulted the I Ching Online oracle. Well, Jung's theory about Synchronicity scored again. I had asked the Oracle if I should pay for career planning. It's reply in short was that drowning people would pay anything for that promised rescue, but would often end up drowning... I took this to mean that career planning as a product or as a self-generated process is not the final and complete solution to finding that elusive career. It is often a case of 'throw it up against the all and see what sticks.' In these terms, Susan Jeffer's idea of just handling what ever happens is apt - nothing is perfect, so you just have to learn how to negotiate the even path a career may take.
Life is not static. It is too dynamic for long term commitments. One should go with the flow and follow their instincts if they wish to be happy. Enjoy the ride!
Hi
i agree with everything you say
but i like men
This was a great post. Both my kids are at the age of thinking about what and who they want to be as adults. I just want them to be happy and fulfilled. Even though career planning might not be useful, I think you can look at who you are, what you like to do, what you excell at, and then follow the clues where they lead.
where has this article been? in 1977 I started college in animal science, and ended in 1982 with a degree in political science. wanted to be a cop, ended up in the military. in 1996 started over again in warehousing, moved into computer science. in 2000 got into retail. in 2003 worked in construction. and now have been unemployed for over two dang years. At 51 years old i have absolutely NO idea what i want to do with my life. career planning is the biggest BS in the world today. I am trying so hard to keep my teenage kids from falling into the same old trap...but their mother refuses to beleive. she has only had one job for 30 years....depends on what life throws at you if you buy into this planning stuff