Five-year Plans and Change

When I was in highschool some of the subjects I hated were History and Social Sciences (Civics). One of the things that we were made to learn as part of the curriculum was that after independence in 1947, one of the things India adopted was a series of five year plans in order to help outline the development of the country. We had to learn the key milestones for each five-year plan.

Well, recently – and I forget who reminded me of this – it was probably Varun - that I seem to be operating in five-year plan mode. I spent five years at Carnegie Mellon. I’ve now spent five years running companies. And I think what that tells me is that it’s time for a change. And time for me to start thinking about the next five year plan. Now, it would be too presumptuous of me to actually map out anything beyond five years… because that would be assuming things and assumption is the mother of all fuckups. I’m definitely a subscriber of (or at least trying to be) the micro-economics saying that my professor in undergrad would keep repeating in order to drive the point home – “In the long run, we’re all dead.”

So all my planning and all the markers I decide to set must fit into the time frame of a five year plan. I think I’ve figured out what I want to do for the next stretch, but unfortunately, I’m not at liberty to go into that just yet. In another couple of months I’ll be able to talk about it some more.

The bar has been raised. The marker has been set.