---
client: 80000_hours
project_id: articles
narrator: pw
qa: km
---
People often come to us trying to figure out what they should do over the next 10 or 20 years. Others say they want to figure out “the right career” for them.

The problem with all of this is that, as we’ve seen, your plan is almost certainly going to change:

You’ll change — more than you think.
The world will change — many industries around today won’t even exist in 20 years.
You’ll learn more about what’s best for you — it’s very hard to predict what you’re going to be good at ahead of time.

In a sense, there is no stable “right career for you.” Rather, the best option will keep changing as the world changes and you learn more. Many people we’ve advised would never have predicted the job they’ve ended up doing.

Long-term planning could even be counterproductive. There’s a risk of becoming fixated on a specific plan, and failing to change your plans as your situation changes.

All that said, giving up on planning and setting goals probably isn’t wise either. As Eisenhower said, “Plans are useless but planning is essential.”

Having some idea of where you’d like to end up can help you spot much better opportunities to advance. In fact, if you want to have a big positive impact, we’d argue that planning is even more important. Many of the highest-impact roles require specialist career capital you’re unlikely to get by accident, such as connections to people in biosecurity or expertise in particular technical skills. Likewise, getting to the top of many fields often requires decades of focused effort.

This is the planning puzzle — most ‘plans’ will radically change long before they’re completed, but we still benefit from having them.

Given all this, how should you make a good career plan? Here are our main tips.

Source:
https://80000hours.org/career-guide/career-planning/

Narrated for 80,000 Hours by Perrin Walker of TYPE III AUDIO.