Perfect Plans Aren’t Real. Spend More Time Emphasizing Decision Making.

One of the most ridiculous things I have seen in my career in education is the push to have kids doing career exploration and planning as early as sixth grade. I get why it’s done, but it’s fanciful at best and a waste of valuable time, energy, and resources that does way more harm than good at worst.

The assumption is this: by a certain age, a student should have a pretty clear plan of a career so they can get trained to work their life in an industry that will provide a decent living. How myopic.

They should know what they want to study. They should know what career they are aiming toward. They should be able to explain where they are headed and why. And if they cannot do that yet, it starts to feel like something is wrong. Dystopian, if you think about it.

Middle schoolers get asked what they want to be when they grow up. High school students feel pushed to choose activities that “make sense” for a future they barely understand. Juniors are asked about majors they have not had enough life to evaluate. And by the time college enters the picture, a lot of families are already acting as if uncertainty itself is a problem to solve quickly. Not much of a childhood.

I think that this “career over all” mindset has reached its breaking point and we’re going to have a mess to clean up.

I’m definitely not one that believes planning is bad. Planning matters. Direction matters. Thoughtfulness matters. But in a world changing as fast as this one, the real advantage is not having a flawless plan at sixteen. The advantage is learning how to make good decisions with imperfect information.

That is a very different skill and one that is far more valuable in a life well lived.

The old model rewarded students who could pick a lane early, stay in it, and move through a fairly predictable sequence. The new reality is much messier. AI is changing what work looks like. Entire categories of tasks are being automated or reshaped. Career paths are becoming less linear. Many students will end up doing work that does not exist yet in its current form, or combining skills in ways that are hard to predict in advance.

Systems designed decades ago refuse to adapt and the result is that we are reinforcing dead paradigms and selling products that no longer exist. So, more than ever, it’s important to steer students towards skills, not paths.

The students who will be strongest in this kind of environment are not necessarily the ones who lock into one perfect answer early. They are the ones who learn how to evaluate options, test interests, notice patterns, adjust intelligently, and make their next decision well.

That is the skill more families should care about.

Because when parents push too hard for certainty too early, a few things tend to happen.

• Some students latch onto an identity they are not actually ready to own, then feel trapped by it later.

• Some tell adults what sounds impressive because they think that is what they are supposed to say.

• Some get so anxious about choosing correctly that they avoid choosing anything at all.

• And some learn to treat every decision as if it carries permanent consequences, which makes them either rigid or paralyzed.

None of that builds maturity; it builds fear and paralyzing perfectionism. I see wonderful kids who have learned to drive themselves to full-on anxiety because the message of not just staying in the lines, but actually walking the lines has been drilled into them.

We need to get back to getting kids who are comfortable outside the lines, seeing where the lines are temporary, and which lines are not going to be there in five years.

That means they need practice asking stronger questions.

• What kind of work actually interests me enough to keep getting better at it?

• What environments bring out my best?

• What problems do I like solving?

• What skills keep showing up across different interests?

• What assumptions am I making that may not be true?

• What is the next smart step, even if it is not the final answer?

That last question matters a lot.

Because one of the healthiest shifts a student can make is from “I need to know exactly where this whole road leads” to “I need to know what makes sense as a next move.”

This is the exact point where many families need a hard reset.

Instead of asking, “So what is your plan?” in a way that invites performance, pressure, or panic, parents can ask better questions.

• What are you curious about right now?

• What have you learned about yourself this year?

• What kinds of work feel energizing to you?

• What options deserve a closer look?

• What would be a smart experiment?

• What information are we missing?

That kind of conversation does not eliminate uncertainty, but it does make uncertainty more productive.

It teaches students that not knowing everything yet is normal, that decisions can be made in layers, and that course correction is not evidence of failure. It is often evidence of maturity, and I would rather raise a student who knows how to think than one who just knows how to declare.

In the AI era, that distinction becomes even more important. Students will have access to more information, more suggestions, more content, and more tools than ever before. That does not automatically make decisions easier. In some ways, it makes them harder. When there are endless options and polished answers everywhere, judgment, self-knowledge, and scientific thinking becomes more valuable.

Adaptability helps a student adjust when the path changes.

Building helps them create real evidence of skill and interest.

Communication helps them ask better questions, seek guidance, and explain what they are learning.

And Decision-making is where those three start to work together.

A student with all three can move forward without pretending to know everything.

That is a much more realistic kind of readiness than the old fantasy of the teenager with the perfect ten-year plan.

I’d love to hear from parents on this one: where do you feel the most pressure for your child to have a clear plan right now? And where do you think they need more help learning how to make decisions without feeling like every choice has to be perfect?