Fuck the Five Year Plan
Where do you see yourself in five years?
A lot of neurotypical career advice is focused around this question, and around the idea of long-term career planning.
You’re encouraged to think about your career as a linear progression, and plan each step of the way. Something like this…
- Start as a junior developer, focused on React.
- Expand into Next.js and take on a more senior full-stack role.
- Move into an engineering lead role.
- Get promoted into an engineering management position.
But when you have ADHD, planning five or more years into the future just doesn’t make all that much sense.
Your interests change (and in the tech industry, the technology does, too)!
Instead of a five year plan, pick the thing you think you want to do next—whether that’s a particular programming language or framework, or a type of role—and focus on just that for a month or two.
Enjoying this? Is an excerpt from my new course, the ADHD Career Guide.
Dig deep. Learn as much as you can. See where it takes you.
If you like it, keep doing more of it. If you don’t, pivot into something else.
Don’t stress about where it will lead you in five years.
Who knows! Who cares! Your interests and the industry as a whole will be wildly different by then, anyways.