The 10-Year Plan Is Overrated

Ask a room of smart 20-year-olds how many know exactly where they’ll be in ten years. A few hands go up, and those often are the ones in for the biggest surprise.

I got to do exactly this recently, speaking to a group of high-performing students in the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center’s Hillman Scholars program at the University of Pittsburgh. My charge was to discuss the path that I have taken over the past 35 years. Here’s some of what I shared with them, along with their research scientists and physician advisors.

Most careers don’t run in a straight line

Only about a quarter of graduates end up working in the field they studied. Today’s graduates change jobs at roughly twice the rate of their counterparts 15 years ago. The straight-line career is the exception now. If you’re waiting to feel certain before you move, you may wait a long time.

Certainty is not the asset you think it is

The plan you write at 20 rests on the least information you’ll ever have. It feels responsible. Strip away the confidence and it’s still a nicely packaged guess. A rigid plan does one thing well. It can make you miss opportunities that did not track with the plan.

The people who build real careers didn’t nail the forecast. They kept making good calls after the path changed — and it almost always does.

What’s actually important

Skills move across jobs. Titles don’t.

Learn to take a hard problem apart and build the answer back up.

Learn to explain a complicated idea to a busy person in two minutes.

Get close to people who expect more of themselves than seems reasonable, and adopt those standards for yourself.

Chase the work you’ll learn from before you chase the paycheck.

None of that expires when an industry reorganizes.

A test that beats a plan

Before I take anything on, I ask myself three questions. Will I learn something worthwhile? Will I respect the people I work with? Will it open more doors than it closes? Three yeses and I go, even when it sits nowhere on the plan. Almost none of my best decisions ever were (and I’ve made plenty of bad ones, to be sure).

Give yourself grace

When I was your age, I was in a hurry. Most of the pressure I felt, I put there myself. Some of it served me. A lot of it wasn’t necessary.

If you’ve self-selected into a STEM path, you already push harder than most people do. You don’t need to manufacture more stress on top of it. Slow and steady gets there too — give yourself some grace (I also urged them to stay in STEM as our nation needs them!).

What this means for you

If you’re early in your career, pick the opportunity with the steepest learning curve, not the best title. The title fades. What you learn next to sharp people stays.

If you hire or back people, stop screening out the zigzag résumé. The candidate who changed lanes twice and can tell you exactly why usually has better judgment than the one who never left the track. Judgment is what you’re actually buying.

If you’re a parent, your kid doesn’t need a 10-year plan. They need reps at making decisions and recovering from those that go wrong. That skill outlasts any college major.

The goal was never to forecast every twist and turn. It’s about becoming someone who spots opportunities when they show up and has the nerve to take them.

One last thing. My daughter, a former participant in the Hillman program and now in her second year interning in a cancer research lab at the University, was in attendance. Afterward, she told me she was actually impressed by my presentation — and if you have a college-age kid, you know that’s high praise. I, in turn, reminded her that she’s still going to medical school.

What advice would you have given to your 20-year-old self?