Before I left academia, I was all about career plans.
You have to plan if you want a shot at the tenure track. Once I moved from Seattle to Wisconsin for my post-doc, I created a multi-tab spreadsheet, organized by quarter. I was planning 20 quarters (5 years) into my future. I wrote down submission dates for every conference, early career award, grant, and fellowship. I created detailed timelines for getting all my papers published.
It was a masterpiece. I was an Excel hero.
I didn’t stop there. As the pièce de résistance, I hung a 12-month wall calendar in my campus office, complete with metallic star-shaped stickers that would reward my daily writing goals. The weeks soon lined with gold. Everything was going exactly as I planned.
That was five years ago. January 2020.
As I put stars on my calendar, my Seattle friends began talking about a novel virus spreading across the city. A state of national emergency was declared. Universities (and the world) completely shut down. By the time I finally returned to my office, over a year later, the stickers on my 2020 wall calendar were peeling off at the edges, melted by months of unfiltered sunlight. The last gold star was Friday, March 13, 2020.
So much for my spreadsheet.
The problem with plans.
In writing this newsletter, I tried to find my spreadsheet. I dug through my Google Drive, 100s of emails, and multiple laptops. Nothing. It’s gone, forever, likely deleted at peak post-academia angst after I quit my post-doc. A final rejection of the rigid planning that led me here.
That’s the problem with 5 year plans. They don’t account for major disruptions like a a global pandemic, economic contractions, or personal life events. They don't account for how much you’ll grow as a person, or how your interests and priorities might change. Even worse, 5 year plans create unnecessary pressure and guilt if you deviate in any way. No wonder I deleted my spreadsheet.
I couldn’t stand to be reminded of my “failure” to achieve academically.
I coach many PhDs who feel the same way I did - trapped by the structured plans of academia. They want to change careers, but are afraid of choosing “wrong”. They’re afraid of starting a job, disliking it, and then needing to go back on the job market. In the face of that uncertainty, staying in academia seems like the better (i.e., more comfortable) option.
But academia is not immune from major disruptions. As I’m writing this, federal funding for scientific research in the United States has stopped - grant reviews have been cancelled. Tenured faculty are losing jobs due to declining enrollment numbers and budget cuts. The rise of AI threatens to disrupt the workforce in ways we can't begin to imagine. There is no structured and predictable career path in 2025.
So, what’s the alternative?
Seeds are better than plans.
It was my business that finally broke my penchant for planning.
Rigid plans are a death sentence in the business world. Everything changes too quickly. New competitors appear, technology changes, and unexpected opportunities arise: just a few weeks ago, I received an unexpected email from a major professional organization. If I had a made a rigid business plan for 2025, I wouldn’t have space to nurture this seed.
Because that’s how I see my career (and life) these days: like a garden. I’m scattering seeds and seeing which ones grow. Of course, I have ideas about what may grow, but I can't know for certain. Perhaps the soil isn’t right. Perhaps a drought lays waste to the whole venture, and I have to switch to planting cacti. I can’t be too precious with any of it. I can’t control the weather, and I can’t force things to bloom.
I am the gardener of my life. So are you.
You don’t need a detailed plan to change careers. You don’t need to have the rest of your life planned out - in fact, you can’t. All you need is a little curiosity, the desire to explore, and bravery to follow your intuition. You just have to start scattering seeds.
It's not easy. You may have lost, as I once lost, the desire to explore. The excitement in not having all the answers. The joy in learning more about yourself, in trying new things, and in not being good at those things. How did we lose the enthusiasm that we had on the first day of our PhD programs, before we realized how little we knew about anything?
I didn't have a plan when I left academia. I chose my first industry role because I knew that I liked conducting research. I’ve had 5 industry jobs in the last 3 years. Some people might view that as "failure" or "indecision", but I don't, because each job taught me something about myself. Plus, once you actually understand how to translate your skills, going back on the job market isn’t so bad :)
I have no idea who I will be in 5 years, or 1 year, or even 1 month from now. Isn't that exciting?
