In this video, Seth Godin argues that successful people didn’t need a long-term plan, but they also didn’t jump from one thing to the next without actually doing anything. The portion I shared below starts at 6:48, but the entire video is worth watching.
“I think that the planning is not, ‘I know what I want to do in twelve years, so I have to do this, and this, and this, and this.’ But I think the planning needs to be that life becomes a series of interactions that get you better at creating ideas, spreading ideas, engaging with people with respect so they want to help you next time, understanding how to use new tools so that when further new tools come, you won’t be afraid of them—all those things are a plan. You can do them on purpose. You can say, ‘this job might not work out. This project might not fly. But what will I have learned as a result of it so that I’ll be better positioned for the next project? What respect will I have earned as a result of it so that I’ll be better able to do the next one?”