The Fifty-Year Plan

Most people in the working world will be asked or already have been asked this question:

What's your five-year plan?

The question measures how well the worker has planned his or her career for the next five years, and what he or she is doing in the short term that will contribute to success in the long term.

My friend asked me the same question the other night, and I think my answer surprised him.

I told him, "I actually have a FIFTY-YEAR plan."

I sort of stumbled onto it by accident, but have tried to follow it ever since. My fifty-year plan began in the mid 1990's, when the Internet started to become popular. I had just graduated from college with a degree in design, and had discovered how to make web sites.

The first web site I ever made, I created while I had the flu. Bedridden and stuck inside the house, I made a personal web site that attracted my first client. I thought to myself, "Heck, if I can do this while sick with the flu, I can probably do this when I'm seventy years old."

So the first part of my fifty-year plan is to find a job that I enjoy, that I'm good at, that I would do even in my free time, and that I could do even when I'm sick or stuck in bed.

Soon after, I wound up owning my own business, and realized that, unlike working at a company that would cover my health benefits, I had to pay for my own healthcare. If I had to pay for my expenses, I'd better avoid getting sick or injured, and so I do my best to reduce the stress in my life, get some decent exercise, eat healthy, and not do stupid things physically.

I remember back in college, during classes where we worked with machinery, like mills and lathes and bandsaws, my classmates would sometimes make fun of me because I was super careful about not injuring my hands or fingers. Even back then, I realized how important my fingers were, especially since I also played the piano. Now that I'm spending most of the day typing away, I'm glad my digits are all intact and functioning properly.

So the second part of my fifty-year plan is to stay healthy and not do stupid things with my body.

I'm also lucky that I get along with my parents and family. When I was a teenager, I was a geek and a bookworm, and never got into trouble. But just like every other teenager, I sometimes (often) thought my parents were totally wrong, that they didn't know what they were talking about, and they had no right to tell me what to do with my life. Yes, we got into arguments and fights that sometimes lasted for days, but I never burned my bridges with them, or any of my family. Years later, when I needed their financial and emotional support, they were there, bailing me out. Now that I'm older, I make sure that I'm there for them as well.

The same goes with friends. I am also lucky to have friends that are successful, not just financially but also spiritually and emotionally. Many of my friends are smarter than I am, older and more experienced than I am, and they have already gone through what I have yet to go through. I pick their brains about their experiences, and I learn from them. Many of them have given me great advice, great support, and even great client referrals. And they're funny.

The third part of my fifty-year plan is to identify, develop and nurture healthy relationships with good people.

Even though I love making web sites, I know that nothing lasts forever, and I know that I won't be able to make web sites forever, at least not exactly as how I'm doing it right now. As I get older, younger kids with more energy will be better, faster, and smarter than I am in what I'm doing now.

But there are two things that they don't have, and that's MY experience and MY instinct. No matter how good they are, they will not have the stored information that I have in my brain and the mental reflexes that I've developed over the years.

Knowing this, I make sure that I cultivate my experience and instinct, by honing my specialties. If you're wondering what are "specialties", they're the things that make each person unique and different from anybody else. Me, it's the fact that I can draw as well as write. Being a designer that can also write gives me an advantage over other designers. And so I make myself better, by doing work that lets me write as well as design (like writing this blog). Any opportunity I get that lets me get better at my specialty, I go after it. Even if it doesn't pay as much, or doesn't pay at all, if it will let me get better, I go after it.

And so the fourth part of my fifty-year plan is to find my specialty, make myself an expert at it, cultivate it and keep my eyes open for opportunities that will help me get better.

The fifth part of my fifty-year plan is simple. ENJOY the process. Fifty years is a long time. With a job that I enjoy, with people that I enjoy, with health that I enjoy, and with a lifestyle that I enjoy, I just might be able to last that long.