the freedom of not having a five-year plan

there’s a universal pressure that hides inside questions like “so what’s next?” people don’t usually mean harm when they ask; it’s small talk, a polite curiosity. but for anyone who doesn’t have a neat, upward-tilting trajectory to present — a job title, a promotion, a next big thing — that question can land like a test you didn’t know you were taking. we’ve been taught that direction equals worth, that the shape of your future should always be sharper than the one before it. so we keep pretending we have a plan, even when all we really have is a faint outline and a gut feeling that keeps changing.

i spent years trying to script the future into something measurable. i had lists, calendars, moodboards, timelines. i thought structure would keep me safe from uncertainty, that if i could just map the next five years clearly enough, i could stop feeling anxious about what might happen. but the irony of having a perfect plan is that it quietly traps you inside the person you were when you made it. plans look like control; what they often hide is fear.

there’s a kind of relief that comes when you admit you don’t know. not in a lost way — in a living way. it’s the relief of realizing that you don’t have to keep optimizing your life like a project. that maybe your twenties and thirties aren’t supposed to look like a steady climb, but more like a handful of experiments that teach you what kind of life feels like yours.

the obsession with five-year plans comes from a deep cultural need to appear consistent. we want to be seen as people who know what we’re doing. but the truth is, most of the people who look put-together are just improvising with better posture. growth isn’t linear — it’s a series of detours you only recognize as meaningful when you look back. the best things that have ever happened to me never appeared on a plan; they appeared in the gaps, in the unplanned weekends, in the yeses i said out of curiosity instead of strategy.

plans give us comfort because they feel measurable. but life doesn’t unfold in straight lines — it unravels in moments that don’t look impressive until much later. the most life-changing year of your life might look, on paper, like nothing: no promotions, no milestones, no big purchases. just a collection of conversations that shift something invisible inside you. but because we’re taught to equate visible progress with success, we miss the quiet, inward kind.

i think the real question isn’t “what’s your five-year plan?” but “what kind of life are you learning to enjoy right now?” the first keeps you performing productivity. the second asks you to actually be present. we’re so busy trying to turn our current selves into future versions that we forget to make the current one livable. so much of adulthood is the mental gymnastics of postponing joy — the idea that we’ll finally rest, or travel, or start painting again once the plan has been achieved. but the plan keeps renewing itself like a subscription we didn’t mean to sign up for.

the freedom in living like the next five years aren’t already spoken for. not the reckless kind, but the grounded kind — the kind that trusts you’ll still find meaning even if you don’t have bullet points to prove it. some people call that chaos. i think it’s faith. not in fate, but in your own ability to adapt, to grow new skills, to fall apart and rebuild without a manual.

there’s a myth that people without plans are unambitious. but some of the most intentional lives are the ones that allow space for uncertainty. it takes courage to admit that the next version of you might not want what the current one does. a five-year plan assumes stability of desire. but humans change — that’s the whole point. the plan you wrote in your twenties will feel like a costume by your thirties. pretending it still fits is what burnout is made of.

i’ve started asking different questions when i plan now. not “where do i want to be?” but “what do i want to feel?” do i want calm, or curiosity, or challenge, or softness? when you plan by emotion instead of milestone, you stop chasing titles and start chasing textures. you realize that the version of success that feels good at twenty-five might feel suffocating at thirty-five. and that’s allowed.

some people find safety in long-term certainty. others find it in flexibility. neither is superior. the problem only begins when we shame one another for not having the same timeline. i’ve met people who built the life they thought they wanted and then spent years quietly mourning it. not because it failed — but because it succeeded in the wrong direction.

freedom doesn’t always come from quitting your job or moving cities or burning the plan. sometimes it comes from knowing you could do those things and still choosing not to. when you stop needing every decision to serve a future version of yourself, you make space to actually enjoy the current one. that’s the kind of freedom no five-year plan can give you.

life unfolds best when you stop trying to make it proof of concept. not everything needs to scale. not every season needs to be strategic. some parts of your life are just meant to be lived and then forgotten — not archived, not analyzed, just felt. and if anyone asks what your five-year plan is, say something honest: to still be curious. because curiosity will take you farther than ambition ever could. curiosity asks questions even when it has no answers. curiosity keeps you humble when the world insists you have a direction. curiosity — not control — is what actually keeps you moving.