Why you need to throw out your long term career plans

Planning, visioning and setting goals should be my Capricorn selfs dream, yet they really aren’t. And naturally, the last 18 months have me rethinking, a lot, about what it means to be so focused on goals, career plans and making decisions based on other peoples roadmaps or expectations - how we’ve all been programmed to think in milestones, goals and achievements and how much I think we desperately need to move away from that. 

I ask you to hear me out. I have some modicum of success, even if it never quite feels like enough. All the external markers of success seem to be there - a healthy six figure salary, advanced degree, leadership title, home ownership and such yet I’ve never taken a particularly conventional path. I was a late bloomer of sorts and worse yet, someone who was surrounded my entire life by a community of people who were ambitious, smart and now accomplished beyond belief. Top 40 under 40 lists each year are full of people I grew up with, so you can imagine the comparison game was strong for a long time for someone who took detour after detour to find that perfect fit career path. I spent a lot of time in the past being harder on myself than I should have been, struggling to understand why my life has so many markers of being remarkably unconventional and I have found myself humbled and redirected when I take pathways that aren’t aligned to my authentic self. Nothing particularly traumatic like getting fired or dealing with stress burnouts and such but more like wearing an itchy sweater or pants that are too tight, the deep discomfort that impacts the ability to really thrive at work. I’ve had to work my way up to a place of blissful ignorance around career plans and the inability to convincingly answer the “where do you see yourself in 5 years'' question. So I’ve made changes often yet rarely with a particular plan in mind to get to the next level and I can’t say that I’m all that mad at it. 

What really inspired this episode is a few things. I laugh everytime I recount the one time I got super clear on what came next in my career and life. It was January 2020 and well, you probably know the rest. But for real, I had all these inspired moments that come from the start of a new year to ring in my fortieth year with a bit more focus on getting closer to the possibilities for what I wanted for my whole life. I took a painstakingly long time to create a vision board that represented the life I wanted to actualize - a healthy and thriving committed relationship, getting closer to the possibilities of living in both Vancouver and Calgary, authoring a book and going full time into the space of self employment with the Colour Gap which included teaching at a post-secondary level to help change the future of HR. And then came March 2020 when the whole world literally got turned upside down and it became clear very quickly that my first attempt at real career planning failed me because suddenly the expectation that any sort of plans and good intentions were not really in our control.  The pandemic made it clear that nothing was certain except the opportunity to learn, so I left a senior level HR position to take a major career pivot in May 2020 after recognizing how stagnated I felt and how much of a jolt to my system I needed by way of an another unconventional choice. 

And the last 18 months have been full of reflection. I’ve always been a big believer in following curiosity versus a great life plan and the idea that looking for interdisciplinary approaches to ideas and expanding your mind is far more valuable than learning the same things at a more advanced level. I’m not saying that the stats course in my original psych degree pathway was all that useful, it was painful and difficult to wrap my head around the purpose of it as my 18 year old self, but I am saying that curiosity is a far better precursor to success than doing what’s expected. It’s what made me pursue an education masters after completing a business undergrad, it’s also the most convenient excuse for binge watching real housewives on the regular because it’s important to keep a pulse on pop culture and human behavior, right? But really, it’s what helped me make the tough choice to leave a Director level role in a company I won multiple awards in and received multiple promotions within to pursue a much lower level role that had me back in the learners seat, completely stumbling my way through the first 16 months. It wasn’t a straight and narrow path to that vision of future Shahzia created by the pre-pandemic version of myself, it was a path full of potential for regret, not the one really anyone would have expected me to jump on and it led to a realignment and shift in ways that I couldn’t have imagined possible. An even healthier six figure salary, a leadership title again and the opportunity to lean into my curiosity in order to make meaningful change in evolving workplace culture to create possibilities for Black, Indigenous and People of Colour to thrive at work. I get to own that as my current career pitstop, something I’m pretty proud of, something that fuels and energizes me in ways that a more conventional version of myself wouldn’t be able to access.

And I say pitstop because I don’t want to define my future by this exact scope of work. If you’ve worked in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion you know how emotionally taxing the work can be. Getting people to care about the experiences of marginalized people and make sacrifices to challenge their own behavior and biases is not easy work. It can change how you view the world and it sometimes takes the joy out of the purpose driven elements of it. For now I continue to choose to thrive in it, own the discomfort and lean into the learning, but it may not be the forever path and that excites me because it doesn’t limit me to stay where I’m not thriving. 

And I’ve been doing a lot of reading, as one does when the Real Housewives start to lose their sparkle during a never ending pandemic lull. And Adam Grant has been a more significant influence that also helped inspire this episode. He talks a lot about Thinking Again and the Power of Knowing what you don’t know and reading his work is the equivalent of a warm cup of tea for me. He’s deeply pragmatic and to the point, but acutely aware of the state of the world and does a remarkable job of relaying information from a lens of humility, kindness and empathy - if you know anything about me you know these qualities are the key to my heart and brain. He talks about career planning a lot and has many things to say about it. In a tweet from August of 2021 he writes:  “A 10-year career plan is a mistake. A fixed plan can close your mind to new possibilities. You don't know how the world is going to change. You also don't know how you're going to change. You can dream 10 years ahead, but it's best to limit your plan to a year or two ahead.” Could we be more aligned and on the same page? I think not. 

I think there is something important to preface the rest of this conversation with. I’m not saying to throw out every plan you’ve ever had for your career and your life. Those big ideas, the dreams that keep you moving through the lulls are very important, they keep you moving in a direction without aimlessly following every whim of your heart. But I think it’s equally as important to stay open to the possibilities and create pathways for yourself that expand the way you solve problems, the way you see the world and the way you see yourself and your ability to contribute. Think of it as adding to your toolkit of skills, knowledge and insights all fueled by your curiosity versus dictated by expectations that may be outside of yourself. 

And let's talk real quick about expectations. For many of us that identify as women of colour, we often come from communities full of high expectations for us. If you’re a child of immigrants like me or an immigrant yourself, those expectations may be even more amplified to make up for the sacrifice and expectations for a better life. I’ve seen it time and again with people around me following pathways to success that are defined by their parents and not fuelled by their own passions or interests. There becomes this relentless pursuit of goals that leave little space for mistakes, experimentation or curiosity and I suspect leaves things feeling very unfulfilled. I don’t know the exact answer to how one shakes that off and follows a path coloured by their own passions and curiosity, but I do think it starts with boundaries, with getting clarity on core desires and of course, by starting to lean into curiosity. ​​I truly believe that if something doesn’t come easy for you - be it love, relationships, career fulfillment, financial freedom, health, that it means you have to embark on a journey that requires you to do the inner work and that’s a very individualized experience. What I do hope is that you start to believe in the possibilities of your dreams and desires outside of other people's expectations, outside of comparison to other people's progress and timelines and that you centre further in core desires that are driven by feelings not structured goals. 

Feelings - yes, feelings. I remember years ago I came across the work of Canadian author Danielle Laporte that changed the game for me on how to move further towards ideas for my future self. She speaks to the idea that if you reframe your goals and start by focusing on how you ultimately want to feel instead of what you want to attain or accomplish, your goals will have more depth - goals with soul as she says. And I’ll take it a step further and suggest that removing the pressure off yourself to reach specific milestones is a big part of how you might find some more joy in your career journey. Focusing on the core desired feelings, of what you wish to experience will guide you in a much more meaningful way than structure timelines, goals and expectations that leave little room for detours, mistakes and learning. 

For instance, say one of your core desired feelings is freedom - would you make intentional choices that worked against that feeling or would you explore the possibilities of exploring a career in entrepreneurship where freedom is the ultimate prize. Or one of your core desired feelings is authenticity and you find yourself in environments where you aren’t able to be yourself - honouring that feeling means you shift out of environments that don’t cultivate that within you. It may mean a longer timeline to success or a pivot to get closer to a feeling of authenticity everyday, but I suspect if you chase the feeling over the goal you wouldn’t hesitate to make the tough choices.   

We’re getting so close to that time of year where goal setting becomes highly trendy again. It’s a great time to rethink your approach to focus on how you want to feel in 2022. Taking into account what emotions your current situation evokes in you, asking yourself what experiences you feel like you’re missing and how you can cultivate more of those desired feelings into the new year. Take the pressure off yourself to meet that milestone or achieve that elusive goal and watch how your life will change. Consider the possibilities if you pursued things that ignited your curiosity versus checked that box 

I’ll leave you with this quote I saw recently by Joel Leon - Performer, author, storyteller - he says “your resume gets to change, your story gets to shift, your title gets to expand, your role gets to pivot, your definition of success doesn’t have to be linear. Our dreams get to be as big as our imaginations.”