3 Steps for long term career planning

There are 3 steps for arriving at the long-term (5+ years) career you want:

1. Have a vision of what you want
2. Build competencies, resources, and a network
3. Find and embrace the right opportunity

Changing from short to long-term planning

I was a Java Engineer in a cubicle at a huge telecom multinational. I knew internet programming was the future, but I had no opportunity to do it in my job writing configuration apps for CDMA antennas.

I had no resources or competencies for a career change. I was new and didn't know the ropes.

I was also broke, living paycheck to paycheck in the countryside where there were no software developer jobs, commuting 40 miles each way every day to a job that was a real lucky find.

I still remember the three things that were the triggers for my career change, moving me out of corporate development and into web development:

1. I knew that internet programming was the future, that that's what I wanted to do.
2. I read several books on internet programming, even though they wouldn't help me in my current role.
3. My then girlfriend (now wife) found a job in São Paulo, prompting me to move in with her and find a new job.

Since São Paulo had several more opportunities than where I lived before, eventually, I found a job doing internet programming. I was a potential candidate only because I had built the skills through books.

This episode early in my career illustrates the cycle of long-term career planning: 1) vision of what you want, 2) competencies, and 3) opportunity.

The further along we are in our careers, the longer the cycle is, and the more specific and difficult each of the three steps is.

But luckily you don't need to be much more specific than this.

Have a vision for what you want

Many people don't know what they want to do professionally in 5+ years.

It's not that they don't know exactly what they'll be doing, which is understandable; they don't know what they want.

For some, the vision is just a blank. For others, it's an answer akin to "kind of what I'm doing now, except bigger, more senior, with higher pay (if possible)!"

While your professional vision doesn't have to be very specific, it must be real. It has to exist somewhere where you can read and see it and talk to others about.

You need to know precisely what you want to make effective progress toward your career goal.

You see, you DO want something, even if you still need to precisely articulate it.

Even if your long-term career goal is to do your current work, you still need a vision! In technology especially, work changes, and if we don't change with it, we'll stay behind, and our role will change from underneath us.

Without being clear about what you want, long-term planning is impossible.

So first thing is you must answer the following question when it comes to your career:

"In 5+ years, I want to be working as a ____ doing , ____ and ____."

Build competencies, resources and a network

Competencies are valuable professional skills.

Resources are money you can spend in your career.

Network is people who trust you and will help you professionally.

Executing your long-term career plan will be difficult without competencies, resources, and a network. You need all three.

I've interviewed many people in my career as a hiring manager. There are two types of candidates:

1. Candidates who are looking for a new job
2. Candidates who are looking for the next right thing

You want to be in the 2nd category: "How does finding this new job get you where you want to be?"

Building competencies, resources, and a network allows you to be picky.

Without competencies, money, and a network, it's really, really challenging to be in a place where you're working to choose instead of to be chosen.

Building competencies through practice

Personally, I build all of my competencies through books. Books are invaluable differentiators when it comes to building skills.

While professional experience can be a path to growth, it can also lead to no growth at all. When your focus is on adding the most value at all times, as is the case at work, it can be hard to also optimally grow your skills.

In the book The Practicing Mind, Thomas Sterner talks about how learning a good golf swing involves, in a lot of ways, finding out how to practice the different parts of your swing while not focusing on the trajectory of the ball:

As we chatted about golf and our jobs, I asked her this question: “Well, did you practice what we learned last week?" "No." she replied. [..]

I followed this up during the week with three trips to the range to actually hit balls, but again, only working on one part of the swing at a time.

When at the range, I put most of my energy into ignoring what the ball flight looked like. I was in the process of learning parts of the golf swing. I didn't expect to be hitting good shots. A beautiful golf shot is the result or product of all the parts being correct.

Sterner, Thomas. The Practicing Mind: Bringing Discipline and Focus Into Your Life . Mountain Sage Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Many hard things in life are like learning a good golf swing: if you're always caring only about where the ball is going, you won't improve your swing.

Make no mistake: at one point, you need to hit balls to know how good you are, and the whole point of getting good is to hit balls.

But the best way to grow into being very good is often not by repeatedly trying to achieve the best results on live performances, but rather by finding what skills you need to build and methodically building them in practice sessions.

Piano players don't practice by playing concert after concert or song after song. They practice scales and technique, repeating over and over the thing they don't know how to do until they learn it.

Using money to find a career

Building competencies and finding opportunities costs money.

Books cost money. Courses cost money. Tools cost money. Pursuing opportunities costs money. Time costs money.

Often, your long-term career goals will be at odds with your most profitable short-term opportunity, which also costs money.

There are two main ways that having money will help you toward your long-term goal.

First, if you have money, you can leave your job and work full-time to find your next opportunity.

I always suggest my mentees leave their jobs to find their next career step if they can financially do so, even though it's hard. Finding the right work can take a lot of time, often more than you have if you're working.

Second, changing careers can often require a temporary pay cut: Landing a leadership role at a small startup, starting an advisory business, starting from the bottom at a new career, founding a startup, etc.

All these things cost money and are only available to those who have it.

In summary: you need money to execute your long-term career goals.

A network of people who trust you

Many great opportunities come from other people. Building a network is hard, and in our post-COVID remote world, it's even harder.

But cold selling yourself successfully to your new career is even harder than building a network.

I'm still learning, so I'm not the best person to teach you how to build a network remotely.

In fact, it's hard to find info on how to build a remote network. I plan to write more about how I do it later.

But I think it boils down to two things:

1. Be active; check in with people you know. Nurture your relationships.
2. Help them when you can, without thinking about what they can do for you in return.

To me, a network is not something you have and use when you need. Ideally, it's the other way around: a network is a resource they have, and people on your network have you to count on when needed.

In the end, that's what finding a great opportunity looks like: because you've nurtured relationships, and now they need you or know somebody who does, you can help.

And that's your opportunity.

Find and embrace the right opportunity

As you build your competencies, resources, and network, you must find the right opportunity.

Most people I know wait too long to seek the right opportunity. They're trying to be "perfect."

In my experience, the main obstacle to finding the right opportunity is a fear of failure. You don't want to talk to others, apply, post, or invest because you're afraid you'll fail and be rejected.

This fear of rejection is unnecessary and hindering instead of helping you achieve your goals.

I'm not saying you won't be rejected: you will. People will say no, they'll tell you that you're bad at things you thought you were good at – and often they'll be right.

But that is the best way to calibrate your thinking with reality, free from self-serving and confirmation bias. You must get the input from others in the "real reality".

Once you find the right opportunity, you must embrace it! I've seen many reluctant to do something aligned with their goals because things could be better: the comp, the commute, the title, the stack, the industry, etc.

The new opportunity won't seem perfect because nothing is perfect. What you want is to embrace opportunities that take you closer to your long-term goal, that's it.

And then the cycle repeats: think about your long-term plan, then execute.

Entering the proactive planning cycle

If you don't plan your long-term career, you'll still have a long-term career, just not the one you planned.

The first step is knowing what you want to be doing. You can only create a plan if you know what you want.

The second step is building competencies, resources, and a network.

• Competencies will give you control over the opportunities you are a fit for
• Resources will give you space and access to build competencies and look for opportunities
• Network will give you access to good opportunities

The third step is embracing the opportunity. Start looking for it without fear of rejection and jump at it without reluctance when you find it.

In practice, you want to start with step 1 and go from there.

So fill in the blanks: "In 5+ years, I want to be working as a ____ doing , ____ and ____."