Last updated: 30th May 2025
Developing a five year career plan can help you focus your efforts to make progress — before you wake up years from now and plaintively wonder, “well, how did I get here?”
Career planning is not just for super-ambitious people looking to become CEOs raking in huge salaries.
A career plan can drive self-improvement and help you pursue work that makes an impact or adds value to your life, rather than making you miserable.
Australian leadership coach and careers columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald, Shelley Johnson, puts it bluntly:
She argues that progression doesn’t have to mean an upwards promotion: it can be sideways moves, doing something new and bold, or saying no to the hustle.
It’s easier to make thoughtful and deliberate choices about your career if you’ve made the time to develop an effective 5-year plan.
Why You Need A 5-Year Career Plan.
Research shows that on average, most people will hold around 16 different jobs and make at least three career shifts before retirement.
It’s important to get your career plan right, because it’s actually about designing your whole lifestyle.
Work is a central part of how you spend your days, who you spend time with, where you live, and how you manage your financial, physical and mental health.
You can’t necessarily depend on your employer to help you navigate.
Less than half of employees feel supported to grow their careers at their organisations, according to a 2024 survey of 3,500 people by Gartner.
Preparing for an evolving jobs market is also smart.
World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 predicts that around two-fifths of existing skills will become obsolete within 5 years, making upskilling and re-training on the cards for many workers.
(Related: How To Showcase Strong Analytical Skills On Your Resume).
Being able to refer to your 5-year plan helps you make better decisions about:
- Professional development or further study you’ll invest time and money into.
- When and why to switch jobs, or change your industry, sector, or profession.
- How opportunities align with your preferences, skills and salary expectations.
- The working conditions and aspects of workplace culture you care most about.
A five year plan beats annual planning, according to experienced talent management executive Mary McNevin.
Why?
Because nuanced skills and big goals, like completing a degree, can take multiple years to reach.
One-year plans are more easily disrupted and set aside.
What To Include In Your Career Plan?
The format of 5-year career plans tend to mirror goal-setting templates that outline:
- What you want to achieve and by what date or timeframe.
- Actions you need to take, resources required or barriers to overcome.
- Your motivations or guiding principles and values.
It could be a text document or a spreadsheet, with multiple goals each year or even 3-4 big goals spread across the five year period.
It shouldn’t just be an outline of how to obtain the skills, experience, compensation and workplace benefits you want.
Maybe you want to:
- Improve how you connect with others.
- Provide feedback
- Become more open and accountable
- Be capable of inspiring change
- Explore your creativity, or
- Contribute to a more sustainable and fair society.
In his book 7 Strategies for Wealth and Happiness, American entrepreneur and author Jim Rohn argues that achieving the things you want is a “strictly secondary” benefit of goal-setting.
(Related: How To Ask For A Pay Rise, And Get It).
Five Steps To A Solid 5-Year Career Plan.
Here’s a practical approach to writing your plan based on advice from award-winning documentary filmmaker and careers content creator Erin McGoff:
- Envision your ideal life in five years time. McGoff said it’s important to “be a bit of a dreamer, but also combine that with realistic goals.”
- Write down the future you’ll work towards using “I am” statements. For instance ‘I am going to live in Sydney in a 3-bedroom apartment I’ve purchased with my girlfriend. I work as a senior fundraising manager at an international development non-profit working two days from home. I’m friends with my team mates and we join the local pub’s trivia night every week. I’ve paid off my student loans and now contribute 25% of my weekly income to super and a shares portfolio. On the weekends I go camping with my girlfriend and feel energetic and grateful.’
- Break down each aspect of your ideal life into discrete goals to achieve each year. For instance, to make your goal of owning an apartment happen, perhaps your yearly goal will be to save an additional $10k annually over the next four years and put that aside in a high-interest savings account.
- Define action steps across all your goals and add them into a calendar for the year, with as much specific detail as you can to help guide you — for example, will saving $10k require cutting things from your budget, or working a side gig? Give yourself tasks with deadlines, and tell your friends and family what you’re doing to help keep yourself accountable.
- Revisit and update every year. Add new actions and remove irrelevant things. You can change it as needed.
Important!
It’s rarely realistic to follow your career plan to the letter, but you can make adjustments quickly if you’re clear on what’s important to you. Understanding your ‘north star’ is critical.
Recalling how differently his life turned out compared to a 25-year plan he wrote in college, Apple CEO Tim Cook, pointed out that your journey is unlikely to be predictable.
How To Unearth Your Real Intentions And Goals.
A major limitation of career planning is that it’s easier to start from where you are now and look for practical ways to get ahead based on your current qualifications, money needs and what you’re good at.
Rather than digging deep to discover what will make you fulfilled.
According to personal development coach and author Steve Pavlina, most career planning takes this kind of bottom-up approach
(As opposed to tapping into who you really are and how you can share your core value with the world).
Top-down planning “regards creative self-expression as the most important element to get right,” Pavlina said.
He recommends a mix of both approaches, but it should start with a statement of purpose that reflects the real you.
(Related: Five Signs Of Burnout You Shouldn’t Ignore).
Otherwise you risk disillusionment long-term, even if you’re objectively thriving in your career.
Here are some exercises that might help you envision what you really want:
- Think of a time in the past when you felt most content — like all parts of your life were firing on all cylinders. Explore what made you feel that way. Was it because of the people you were around, the energy or time you had for exercise or preparing healthy meals, the kind of projects you were working on, your boss, or the level of influence you had?
- Imagine yourself five years from now and write down on a sheet of paper what a ‘perfect’ day for you would look like, from the moment you wake till you lay down to sleep. What’s your morning routine, what’s for lunch, what kinds of people do you work with, what do you do after work, what’s your bank balance, how do feel as you interact with others?
These approaches both emphasise finding a balance between a satisfying career and a well-rounded life.
If you are highly ambitious, your plan might have a narrower focus on a specific career outcome — but be aware of what you’ll be giving up.
Plan Now For The Life You Want.
If you feel like you’re moving fast, but possibly not heading in the right direction, implement the advice in this article to take back control and create the life and career you want.
A plan invokes an intentional approach to life, which helps creates momentum.
Author and management consultant Robert Fritz likens our tendency to ‘go with the flow’ with a riverbed that remains unchanged, meaning it’s natural for the water to take a certain path.
As a final note, be honest with yourself about how much change, sacrifice or extra effort you can handle. If you’re suffering too much in the pursuit of your goals, it will be harder to follow your plan.
Jody
