We’ve turned the five-year plan into a moral virtue.
At dinner parties, in interviews, on LinkedIn — the question appears like a loyalty test: “Where do you see yourself in five years?” If your answer isn’t polished and linear, something feels wrong. Suspicious, even.
But what if the obsession with long-range planning isn’t responsible at all? What if it’s a socially approved form of self-sabotage?
The modern world changes faster than any blueprint can predict. Industries collapse. Technologies emerge overnight. You evolve. Yet we cling to fixed roadmaps as if certainty equals maturity.
In this conversation, Paul and Lyn unpack the hidden psychological costs of rigid planning — the Anchor Effect, sunk-cost traps, selective attention, identity foreclosure — and explore a more adaptive alternative: Directional Intent. An agile, responsive approach to building a life that collaborates with reality instead of resisting it.
Because maybe the goal isn’t to engineer the future.
Maybe it’s to engage with it.
