What is a 5-year plan?
Typically, you write down the things that you want to achieve in the next 5 years of your life. Anything that you wish to learn, experience, or achieve.
I will not go into detail on how to write an efficient 5-year plan. There is enough literature on the internet if you google it.
Is it helpful?
Back in 2015, one of my mentors asked me to make a 5-year plan. I was 25 years old and running my own startup (Travel Jar). As much as I was skeptical about the usefulness of such a plan, I created one and emailed him. We exchanged several emails where he guided me to improve the plan to be more precise & actionable.
For some reason, I could not relate to the idea then and hence did not derive any benefits as such.
Fast forward to 2018. I was not happy with my job. I was still looking around to start my own company again. And there was too much confusion. Out of nowhere, I thought of writing my 5-year plan again (this time I was a little more matured). Here is the 2018 draft version.
(this was the initial draft, later I made this more precise & actionable)
This one really made a difference.
After jotting down the things that I wanted in the next 5 years, I realized some of them were seriously conflicted.
For eg, For me to work in a foreign country for some years, the easiest & most practical way was to get into a big tech company (Amazon, Google, FB …) and then move abroad after a year. But that cannot happen if I keep investing my time in startups and thinking of starting something new.
Not that I didn’t know this earlier, but my focus was all over the place. What this plan did was to show me right in my face what my priorities were and how I should spend my time to achieve those. It brought me so much clarity, that I was surprised how this didn’t work for me the last time.
I stopped looking into startups and startup ideas. Fully focussed to move abroad. Within a few months, I was working in Grab and moved to Singapore.
Why didn’t it work earlier?
I was immature. I didn’t accept the process and undermined it.
My 2 cents:
- Highly recommend you to create a 5-year plan for yourself, even basic.
- Will definitely surprise you with the things that you think you want and the things that you actually want.
- Will bring you clarity, if you are confused as to what to do in life.
- Might now achieve everything on that list (I haven’t), and that’s okay.
- Dreams change. And so do plans.
Would love to hear your thoughts and experiences, if you have created a 5-year plan.
PS: Thanks to Mr Puneet Mittal for introducing this to me.
Right now I m 46 years old but still I will make 5 year plan and let you know how it works . This is really very good idea.i will tell my kids to make there five year plan and I will insist them to full fil that plan
Afterall there is a reason for the cliche where do you see yourself in 5 years.
The 5 year plan sure does help in getting one priorities straight.
This is a wonderful trick. I write my 5 year plan . I took a printout and read that twice a week . It does not take more than 30 seconds . In 2020 my 5 years plan completed and I was able to achieve 80% of it . I now again have a plan till 2025. One of the target Is that whatever I achieved in my life , I would like to at least double that before 2025. Achievement can be in many forms like wealth , charity , fame , position , etc.