Think of your career in decades, and not years

By channelling your attention to new possibilities, you can break away from your past, writes Pavan Soni

A staple question at almost every job interview is, “Where do you see yourself five years down the line?” Regardless of how banal the responses are, there is a grain of wisdom in this conventional question. Paradoxically, you think far more clearly and boldly about ensuing decades than years or your immediate future. Since your mind is typically crowded with the loud and the immediate, you are hazed about in the present moment, but a serene gazing into the future can be the best way to plan your career.

Let’s understand how to think long-term and craft a career that is both fulfilling to self and impactful for others. 

It’s hard to fathom that a lot can happen over a decade while a year passes. Though you may not see yourself change drastically around your birthday, a ten-year period leaves you rather surprised about how naiveté you were. Instead of thinking of your career in terms of annual targets or, worst still, quarterly aims, it is advisable to consider decade-wise goals. Suppose you are thirty and you wish to plan your career. Then, here’s the three-step process.

Firstly, acknowledge that you have at least forty more productive years with you. Even if you plan to retire over the next ten years (which is an ever-shifting target), it’s entirely conceivable that you will still celebrate your seventieth birthday, thanks to advances in medical science and economic inflation.

And most likely, you would be keeping yourself occupied meaningfully (read a career). How you must perceive your career is not what you do to meet your ends but to keep yourself earnestly busy. Realising you have a few more decades could be liberating because you needn’t rush. If you wish, you can take it slow, which is precisely how you disengage yourself viscerally and cerebrally from the more pressing existential issues.

Secondly, a few high-leverage activities should be identified. What are these? A high-leverage activity is an asset class whose returns compound over time and are seldom urgent.

Speaking of the career, such activities could include starting your company, going for higher studies, writing a book, or being an entirely different professional. None of these happen serendipitously. They call for bold planning and sincere execution but require a deliberate disengagement from the present. Realising that you still have a few more decades, you can afford not to feel rushed. You can’t plan for the coming decades without identifying a set of high-leverage activities.

Thirdly, you put pen to paper or stylus to the screen (I prefer the former) and draft the worthy decade-wise goals. Such goals stem from the high-leverage activities you articulated only by taking your attention away from the urgent.

For instance, at thirty, you can state that you want to become a product leader at a firm by the time you are forty, run a company by the age of fifty, and get enough money to be an angel investor by sixty. This may not happen by clockwork, but you have at least articulated your desire, and with time, it will manifest, provided you are at it.

Escaping the tyranny of logic

A decade-wise view helps you escape the tyranny of logic and the linearity of thinking. As Nassim Nicholas Taleb notes, ‘history doesn’t crawl, it jumps’, and so does the future. Your future is seldom a linear extrapolation of your present state, and that is rather good news. Though life is largely path-dependent (what you sow is what you reap), you still have agency.

By channelling your attention to new possibilities, you can break away from your past to a large extent. How do you do that trajectory shift? By investing in yourself—by planting high-leverage activities. After all, you are the greatest asset of your life. You invest in your health, education and network—all of which offer rich dividends in the long run.

Talking of myself, the decades, starting with my 20s, panned out as follows: employee, researcher, entrepreneur, and author. I was an employee at Wipro during my 20s, a researcher at IIM Bengaluru during my 30s, and an entrepreneur by my 40th birthday. And now, I am shaping myself into an author. What’s next? A coach or a spiritual guru, maybe. But at least I am at it.

In summary, by modelling your career on the cadence of a decade, you momentarily escape the logic of immediate reality and then focus on the compounding effect, asset class, and high-leverage activities that set you onto a higher orbit. After all, you will remain the same person if you make the same choices all over again. Hope this helps you look at your career more systematically.

(The author is an innovation evangelist by profession and a teacher by passion)