What do you want to be when you grow up?
It is a question that is asked of nearly every child, offering us just a glimpse into their future ambitions. Some children say that they want to be firefighters. Others want to be doctors, movie stars, or chefs. Even when these kids get a little older and become teenagers, the picture may not be perfectly clear and their view of the future may not be entirely accurate. Even when these teens grow up further and enter the workforce, they still can’t be entirely sure of where they’ll be ten years in the future. Does this mean that we shouldn’t bother planning for the years ahead?
Not Even Close
Over on the BlueFur blog, one of the recent community polls asked if you are now where you thought you’d be ten years ago. The overwhelming majority responded with “not even close.” I was among those who provided that reply.
Back in 1999, I was getting ready for my high school graduation. I was near the top of my class and the world was my oyster. At the time, I had no aspirations to get into freelance writing, though I did enjoy writing for pleasure. I had a small website (on Geocities) and I wrote for an email newsletter (that would grow to become TheCommentary.ca in later years). Even so, I did not foresee that I would be running my own business. It did not seem like a viable possibility at the time.
A World of Possibilities
Growing up, I was reasonably certain that I was going to pursue a career as an architect. Entering my senior year in high school, I thought it was more likely that I would take up a career in accounting. After my first year at university, I ended up majoring in my worst subject at school, pondering a career as a clinical psychologist. As I neared my graduation from university, my focus shifted slightly to forensic psychology, though I maintained an interest in journalism. As you can quite clearly see, I underwent a very common experience for young people: with so many options before me, I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do with my life.
If you asked me ten years ago where I would be today, I’d probably tell you that I would be some sort of junior assistant at an accounting firm, crunching numbers and making photocopies. In hindsight, that wasn’t exactly the most ambitious of goals and it really isn’t something that I want to do. I am very glad that I have managed to launch a career as a freelance writer, but it’s not something that I could have predicted. I may be writing feature articles and blog posts for a living today, but the widespread concept of a blog post didn’t even really exist ten years ago.
Choosing a Path (and Getting Distracted)
As you gaze into that crystal ball, it still makes sense for you to predict where you’ll be five, ten, or thirty years from now. By planning for the future, you give yourself a sense of security and a sense of direction. Just don’t expect your future view to be terribly accurate. No one can know what tomorrow will bring.
Michael,
Awesome post, and so very true. My ten year reunion is coming up this year also and I was thinking back to what I wanted to do, ten years from 1999. My father owns a very successful law practice here and that for me would have been the first thing. I hit a road block though, post secondary education as it’s so named was not a strong point for me. I went to 8 month’s of first year business and that was enough for me.
10 years ago I took one of those “tests” that was supposed to tell you what you should be; mine said mortician, not sure how I should take that but that’s what it said.
After school I went into sales, it came naturally to me and I have been very successful at it.
I like your line at the end, “By planning for the future, you give yourself a sense of security and a sense of direction. Just don’t expect your future view to be terribly accurate.”
Well said.
Great post Michael!
A lot of people have excepted the fact that their career and ambitions will change many times throughout their lives. In light of this, I find many high schoolers that I had once tutored asking me the very question, “why bother planning ahead then?”
Planning ahead and setting goals is an important step not only for gaining life skills (such as organizational skills and setting targets for achievement), but also to find out your strengths and weaknesses. As you get exposed to more of the world, your ambitions will change but it’s important to establish some generals goals to motivate yourself along the way.
Also, experiences are what you make out of them. Although you didn’t realize you would turn to freelance writing and blogging throughout school, you gained value through your studies which helped define the scope of your business now. Originally I had studied power and process engineering but I decided to pursue other education after working at an oil refinery. I took that experience to help start up my property management company which employs similar power engineers in a less industrial environment.
The key is that you are able to develop transferable skills regardless of the industry. My Psychology background helps with understanding the client-freelancer relationship, my accounting background helps with the administrative side of the business, and so on. Even though your current aspirations may not be the same as where you’ll be ten years from now, the experiences can still provide a lot of value.
Great post Michael! I see a lot of kids in our elementary school who say they want to be a policeman, or fireman or something else. That changes in those 6 years many times.
I never dreamed that I would be working in the education field, but I always wanted to be something in the technology field. My goal was a System Analyst, but that changed many times.
I believe we need to set long range goals, then break them down into smaller short term goals. That way we have stepping stones to what we imagine we want in the years to come.
When I was in school being a fireman was the dream job and every kid wanted to be one.
No doubt that those dreams change. One guy I know who wanted to join the force is now doing oil changes at a nearby Ford dealership. lol
Is it even possible to decide what you want to be doing in ten years? Due in part to the rapid development of new technology, jobs are being revised, removed and added constantly. Taking your example of writing (journalism in this case), ten years ago journalism meant writing for magazines or newspapers, whereas now, it tends to lean toward writing for non-print mediums (which is usually different from writing for print).
Because of this, you’ll probably never be today where you thought you’d be ten years ago.