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Your 5-year plan? Probably useless now. AI's changing everything so fast, even 20-year pros need to reinvent every 2 years 😅 Who else is making 6-month plans instead?...
Remember when people used to have five-year plans? Is that even a coherent idea anymore? For a five-year plan to make sense, we have to have some idea of what the world's gonna look like in five years.
But I think for any of us that are paying attention to AI right now, it's pretty obvious that the world's gonna be a very different place in five years and we have no idea what it's gonna look like. And that's to say nothing about what's going on in politics. A few years ago, I heard Sam Harris say something that's really stuck with me.
He said that you could become world class at pretty much anything within five years. And his point was that if you didn't like what you're doing for a living, you could always change careers. And as long as you worked hard and were dedicated, you could pretty much get to where you were at in this new career within five years.
That was only a few years ago, but I actually don't think it's true anymore. I think now it's probably more like two years. That's because even if you've been in your career for 20 years, it's going to change so much in the next two years that it's going to be like learning a new career.
Now, there are a lot of exceptions to this, of course, if you're doing anything with your hands, if you're a plumber or a mechanic, Your job's probably going to change very little in the next two years. But for knowledge workers or anyone who does most of their job on a computer, it really does seem like the only way to succeed is to reinvent your job every few years. And two years from now, maybe it'll be every six months.
For a lot of people, I think this is scary and daunting. But for me, it's exciting. If you like learning new things, if you're willing to put in the work, I think there's gonna be a ton of opportunity.
At least until the AI can do everything that humans can do better than we can do it, which I don't know about you, but I do think that's gonna happen eventually. I'm not one of those people who thinks it's gonna happen in two years, but maybe in 20 years. And it's not gonna happen all at once, right?
It's gonna happen over time. My point is just that you shouldn't bother making five-year plans. Personally, I'm making six month plans.
My five-year plan is just to keep developing skills and prioritizing relationships.
The source argues knowledge workers should favor shorter planning cycles because AI may reshape computer-based jobs faster than five-year plans can handle.
Replace long static plans with six-month operating cycles focused on skill development, relationship building, and explicit review of AI-driven workflow changes.
This source is connected to Six-month planning under AI change.
Personally, I'm making six month plans. My five-year plan is just to keep developing skills and prioritizing relationships.