Write your five-year plan in pencil. You’re going to learn things.

Any plan you make now is built out of what you currently know, which is less than you will know next year. That is no reason to skip planning, because a direction beats drifting, but holding it too tightly means treating this year’s information as final. It is a working guess, and guesses get revised when better facts turn up.

Keep the direction and stay loose about the route. Every few months, ask what you have learned that the earlier version did not account for. Changing your mind with new information is not flakiness.