Having a direction is only a tool to get where you want to go

When I graduated from Uni, the grand plan was to get a few years experience, then go contracting - earn enough that I wouldn’t have to worry about money, whilst doing something I enjoyed. (I was very techie focused, one of my favoured sentences being “If I’d wanted to be a manager, I’d have studied management”…).

Actually, the grand plan had started before I graduated, my choice of final year project was made so I could learn C++ and Motif, and I was trying to run it as I thought a commercial project would be run (maybe that’s why it failed to ship ;-).

Fast forward a few years, and I was doing technical management for a small but promising startup. Not exactly what was laid out in the grand plan, but I firmly believe that it was because of the plan. The important part of the plan was the financial independence whilst enjoying work, which has been much furthered by my work at STNC. The contracting was just the direction that looked most promising given my limited work experience at the time, largely influenced by the contractors working for the ITSA where I worked during the summers of my degree. They looked pretty financially secure whilst discussing the £100k they were spending on a trackday Porsche 911 (see, it’s all linked, cars had to come into it somewhere :-)

But basically, having a plan meant I could see the opportunities when they presented themselves, and take advantage of them. Something Steve Pavlina discusses in The Power of Clarity, although he puts a good case for going even further and writing down specific, measurable goals.