Can I Plan The Next Ten Years?

If you think that planning is creating a flexible framework which enables you to redesign how you want to experience your life over the next ten year then yes - absolutely.

But if you stopped trying to predict where you’ll be in ten years, what would you want to make sure is true about your life by then?

I’ve been thinking about this after reading a fascinating Harvard Business Review article by Lynda Gratton: The Predictable Executive Career Arc Is Over.

We’re living – and working – longer.

At the same time, AI and rapid technological change are making it increasingly difficult to predict what work will look like even a few years from now.

So what happens to the traditional five or ten-year career plan?

Gratton suggests something more flexible – preparing for several possible futures, experimenting before change is forced upon us, and investing in what will remain valuable whatever happens next.

I think this becomes particularly interesting in midlife.

Because by then, we have something we didn’t have at 30 – decades of evidence about ourselves.

We know more about what we’re good at. What matters to us. What we’re no longer prepared to compromise on.

The world has changed. Longevity has changed. Work has changed. Perhaps the way we think about designing the second half of our working lives needs to change too.

Maybe we need to know ourselves well enough to make good decisions as the future unfolds.

So, if you couldn’t predict what you’ll be doing in ten years, what would you still want to make sure is true about your life?

https://hbr.org/2026/08/the-predictable-executive-career-arc-is-over