The challenges of over-planning your career was originally published on Intern From Home.
Our last post talked about everything that can be learned from internships… including some of the stuff that other people don’t usually talk about. Today’s post dives into why it’s best to focus on your next role and not trying to over-plan your future.
We live in a society that has conditioned us to want to plan everything. “I want to have this job in 20 years which means I need to have this job in 10 years which means I should be here in 5 years which means I should have this internship in my senior year of college which means I should have this as my first internship.” Have you ever had this mindset before, or heard others who do? It’s a very common way to think about a professional career.
While it may be tempting to want to plan things out… it’s something you should be very cautious about. It’s great to have dreams and big ambitions. We aren’t saying to let those go: in fact, we encourage you to keep thinking about those. What is most important is how you put these into action in your first role.
It is helpful to view your next internship or job not merely as a stepping stone towards a larger goal, but also what makes sense in the moment. At the end of the day, your larger goal will likely be influenced by what you do in the steps leading up to it. So, to obsess over the larger goal is ignoring everything you do in the process. That wouldn’t be the most sensical plan.
Why it doesn’t work to create a long-range plan and then find the perfect internship for that plan
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The majority of change in career interests happens before you are 30… but this requires wanting to embrace change and different paths
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Your internship(s) and first full-time jobs should be viewed as ways to figure out what excites you… not as ways to make sure you can achieve your long term goal (as a reminder, that long term goal/ambition you have may change… and you want to have flexibility in reaching it).
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People even have mid-life career changes (ie: in their 40’s and 50’s)… so why would you, in your late teens or 20’s, restrict yourself to being open to change?… when you know that people twice or three times your age are also still just “figuring it out”
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The point is not to rush these early years of your life. Rather, the point is that throughout life, your passions, viewpoints, and mindset may change. It’s best to start now building a habit of being open to change. This will allow you to continually do work that is exciting to you… which is what is most important at the end of the day.
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It might take several internship and job roles to determine what you love… and that’s completely normal
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On average, 80% of students in college change their major at least once. There isn’t quite a statistic like this for internships (by sheer nature of the fact most people only have a few internships, at most), however the same principle holds true: through your internship(s) and first few jobs, you’re probably going to continually develop opinions about the work you want to do.
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The key is to listen to what you’re feeling and to let your feelings guide what to do next. No one else can tell you what is meaningful for you. The only way to determine this is to start working and to listen to yourself and how you feel.
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The company where you work might not have even been in existence when you were born… to say that you want to be a certain spot 10 or 20 years from now is to say that you hope the world won’t change
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Now, perhaps you hope the world won’t change. We hate to break it to you, but the world will continue to change. With this in mind, it is a waste of time to try to plan out what the career options will be 10 years from now or even 2 years from now. Instead, it is much better to start by identifying what personally gets you excited for now, to do that role, and then to let that role inform what you do next. Following this pattern over a career will likely lead to a life of much more meaning and growth opportunities than being set on a specific track… which could change anyways since companies and industries change over time.
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Especially if you work in an industry like technology, the pace of transformation can be so rapid. For many technology companies, your first full-time job may be at a company that wasn’t even founded when you were in high school. Seriously.
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Except for people in certain majors (perhaps such as law and medicine), you do have the flexibility to change your career path… but doing so requires an open mind. If you are too set on your long-term plan, you close your mind off to opportunities that may be more exciting to you than you expected
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A dangerous mindset to enter an internship with is: “I’ve worked so hard to get this opportunity. I HAVE to love it and/or make it work.” Even if you’re working at one of the most prestigious companies (such as McKinsey or Goldman Sachs), you may not enjoy your work there… and that is totally okay! You should feel open to doing your next internship or job at a company and/or in a role that is different than your prior one… no matter what you are leaving behind! What matters is not the prestige of the company where you work, but rather how you enjoy it and how you can make an impact. The only thing stopping you from changing is your mindset. And the great news is that the only person who can control your mindset is… you.
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Even if you are in law or medicine, it is much better to determine early on if you want to shift your career plans before you’ve invested too much time in a certain track. And, remember that you can always merge different interests. As an example, perhaps you are on the pre-med track or in med school and you want to stick on that track. But, you realize you don’t want to be a doctor like you had initially planned. There are still opportunities to use your medical background and work at a biotech company, for a company that helps doctors, etc. The point is that everything you’ve done in the past is not lost, but rather just transformed.
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If you’re focused on making an impact and don’t want to spend too long exploring different work paths where you won’t make an impact…
Some people may take issue with our argument throughout this post which shares that you should be using internships and your first few jobs as ways to determine what inspires and excites you. You may be thinking: I hate that we’re prioritizing ourselves over making a contribution and impact at the companies where we work. If that’s how you’re thinking, we LOVE that this is on your mind… because we also want all interns and employees to make a strong contribution to their companies.
The reality is that you can make an impact (and a big one!) at any company where you intern/work…even if the company isn’t your calling and you don’t stay there for years! When we say you should be determining what company/role gets you excited, that doesn’t mean to not give the job your full effort. Regardless of how much you love the work you’re doing, you should always be committing yourself to putting your best effort forward. By doing so, you can make a helpful contribution to the company and its mission.
With all this in mind, it is illogical and not smart to lock yourself into a specific track just because you want to make an impact. In other words, you shouldn’t stay in a job because you’re making an impact, even though you don’t enjoy what you’re doing. It’s better to follow your heart, try different roles to see what makes you happiest, and to make an impact at each company you go to in the process. Prior companies where you’ve worked will hopefully appreciate the efforts and impact you made at their company. And by leaving to go to a new company, you’ll be going after truly what gets you most excited and motivated, which is extremely important.
Don’t overthink: why thinking about an internship is great, but actually getting started in an internship role is even better
Given that internships are only a matter of weeks, it can be easy to spend more time thinking about an internship than actually doing it. Don’t get us wrong: we understand that it can be a time-consuming process to find, apply to, and secure an internship. Making this process shorter and easier is why we write all the educational content that we do.
With this in mind, we commonly see students talking for weeks, if not months (or even years), about the fact that they want to do an internship. Our suggestion is to just go do that first internship. In almost every instance, you’ll learn more about yourself (and what matters to you) by doing the internship than trying to think about the ideal internship or optimal long-term plan (which will very likely change, as discussed earlier in this post). There’s no “ideal” internship: there’s only the internship you do and the internship you don’t do. Any internship you do is a meaningful one because you’ll be learning about yourself and what matters to you.
Did you enjoy this guide? You’re in for a treat: this is just one of dozens of guides created for students about how to handle the recruiting (aka: getting an internship/job) process. To see all of the other guides, subscribe to Intern From Home’s newsletter (it’s completely free!) where we talk about all things from using LinkedIn to preparing for an interview to making the most of your role.
