Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

The world’s most famous interview question.


I always wondered why they asked it. Every time they did the same feeling would bubble up inside.
“Well sir, I have absolutely not an ounce of a clue where I’ll be in 5 years”

And then you go on to make up some bs about how you want to help their business or corporation.

Especially as just a youngen, 5 years?
No, sir. No clue.

But that’s not the point, is it?
The point isn’t to know the future.
It’s the fact that we’re thinking about the future.

If we don’t even consider the future, we’re at the mercy of whatever Life is bestowed upon us.

What do we want to be doing?
Where do we see ourselves?
How do we want to live?

Without a semblance of how we want to live, life is going to decide for us. We’ll be at the mercy of whatever Life is imbued upon us.


It’s freaking hard to think about the future though, there’s so much uncertainty.

I used to bike to work. 7 miles there. 7 miles home.
It was pleasant – a nice way to start my day and get some cool breeze. Some days it was freezing and no gloves felt like fatality for my fingers. Something about it the cool breeze and warm sunrise made me feel like I was experiencing Life as it should be.

Bike. Shower. Change. Work.
It was an airtight plan with an airtight schedule too. I had to get to work immediately after and love sleeping in.

But one day, after a viciously cold bike ride, an old black man quietly emerged from the bushes entrapping me in front of the gym in a bit of a compulsory social conversation.

Okay fine, he didn’t emerge from the bushes and he didn’t really trap me, but you understand how awkward conversations unfold. You can’t leave, either.

So there I was, nodding, and politely answering “mhmm’s” and “oh no’s” to this strange elderly man. He must have been 75 years old and living at that gym for decades, never changing out his tattered old gym bag.

He kept peppering me with questions, muttering a couple of rants about the ‘old times’. It felt like I was at the troll bridge and had to answer a riddle to get past… except the riddle never gets asked and you are just stuck at a bridge crossing indefinitely.

I knew I was in deep when he started throwing out the term ‘whippersnappers’ in casual 21st century conversation.

But then something in his speech changed.

His convoluted rant slowly churned in to coherent English. It actually started to make a smidge of sense. It started with ‘Back in my day’ but was slowly turning to ‘Now it’s your day’ and ‘Do something with your life’.

Bit by bit, he started tossing out little nuggets of wisdom.

By now I was thoroughly confused. I wasn’t sure if he trying to sell me Jesus or Girl Scout Cookies or if he really just wanted to give out some direction to a couple young lads.
Hang on a minute, I’m pretty sure he’s trying to give me advice.

The longer I stood there talking to this guy, the more I seemed to fade out of my world and in to his. The gym faded away and work seemed irrelevant. His stories were intriguing.

After about 15 minutes into this random conversation I noticed that this guy was welcoming damn near every single person that walked in to that gym.

He was hooting and hollering at every single person that walked by, and to my surprise, they all hollered back. They loved him.

Was he a door greeter? A janitor? The owner? I couldn’t figure it out, but I didn’t care. I was in too deep and his winding conversation was turning out to be quite enlightening.

Either this guy was putting on the best Shakespearean performance I had ever seen, or he was actually on to something. This guy has some good nuggets of knowledge.

The more he said, the more he seemed to make sense.
And then he dropped this goody:

“Visualize yourself when you’re my age. When you’re 80 years old, 90, 100!….. where are you in life? What do you want to have done? Who will you have helped?”

In a desperate attempt to get me to see the bigger picture, he continued:
“How many kids will you have? How many grandkids? Where will you live? What will your days look like? Crosswords? Sudoku? Picture it!”

And just like that, he was gone. He disappeared. It was like one of those old-timey movies where they throw a smoke bomb and are suddenly gone.

I thought for sure he was trying to sell me something, but if he was, that was the worlds’ worst sales pitch. This guy only had advice to give, and pretty sound advice at that too.

It was like he tried to mug me, but instead he gave me money, and instead of money it was 75 years of wisdom. He came out of nowhere, gave me a TedTalk I didn’t know I needed, handed me some stickers and left.

I went home, still reeling from the odd experience and reflected.

When you are on your deathbed, what will you want to be remembered for?

It burned inside my brain.

I did need a vision. I did need an end goal. I had planned the next couple years of my life, but 80 years old?? That was so far away. How could I even begin to know?

The more I thought about it though, the easier it became. We get so caught up in the here an now. We think it’s all permanent. Our job. Our hobbies. Our home. Our things. Hell, even our relationships.

But when you put it in the perspective of an entire lifetime, and put death in the realm of possibilities, the mind all of a sudden starts to make sense of these sorts of things. The long term thinking makes the present day much clearer.

I thought about all the things I wanted to experience and all the people I wanted to help. I thought about my current job and how I didn’t enjoy it. I thought about places I wanted to travel and people I wanted to meet.

It gave my life a bit of direction. Some clarity, if you will.

It reminded me of Jordan Peterson frequently talking about this ‘little fantasy in your mind that you’re working towards’.

We’ve got to have something we dream of so that we know where we’re going. In all aspects of life we need that vision. Career. Bucket List. Relationships. Health. Hobbies.
All of it.

80 years, huh? That’s a long time.

What does your future look like?
How will you have lived?

Back to the drawing board.


Time to figure out the future.