Your life plan is just today’s uncertainty with a five-year calendar.

This quote is a mirror held up to your precious five year plan, and the reflection is not flattering. You have mistaken a spreadsheet and a few hopeful bullet points for control. In reality you are simply taking today's fog of indecision, panic and half remembered ambitions and dressing it up in a calendar that stretches far enough ahead to feel impressive. The dates look orderly. You do not. Anyone can write down a promotion, a house and a holiday in five years time. That takes no courage, no talent and no grasp of the future. It takes a pen and a sad little talent for pretending that uncertainty becomes strategy when you give it a deadline. The uncomfortable truth is that your plan is not a map. It is a comfort blanket for someone who cannot admit that you are making it up as you go along, badly. It stings hardest when you are asked about your goals at a family dinner or a job interview, and you hear yourself reciting a timetable that nobody believes. The quote lands best when you realise that the only thing certain about your five year calendar is that you will still be the same mediocre person reading it.